Grigory Kanovich, acclaimed author who chronicled Lithuanian Jewry, dies at 93

DAVID I. KLEIN JTA

Grigory Kanovich, a Lithuanian-born Jew and award winning author who endeavored to tell the story of his people despite Soviet pressure, died Jan. 20 at 93 in his home in Tel Aviv.

Kanovich’s repertoire includes more than 30 plays and screenplays, a dozen novels and several collections of poems and short stories, almost all of which are devoted to stories of Lithuanian Jews.

Kanovich was born in 1929 in the shtetl of Janova, an almost entirely Jewish village just north of Kaunas, which was the capital of independent Lithuania in the interwar period. In his youth, the city was home to over 3,000 Jews, 80% of its population. There were hundreds of Jewishowned shops, a Jewish bank and several synagogues and Jewish schools. Over 2,100 of Janova’s Jews were murdered in a series of massacres in the summer of 1941.

Kanovich’s family were among the lucky ones and escaped during the brief period of Soviet Occupation in between the Russian-German non-aggression pact in 1939 and Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The family went east through Latvia and deeper into Soviet-controlled Central Asia, where they rode out the war.

When the war ended, Kanovich returned to the region of his youth to study at the University of Vilnius, but the world he knew there was forever gone. From as early as 1949, he began to put his thoughts about that loss down onto paper, both eulogizing the world of Lithuania Jewry and documenting the new Soviet Jewish reality.

Though he wrote largely in Russian, his works weaved the Talmudic thought of Lithuania’s yeshivas with the Yiddish wit that remained a part of Soviet comedy long after the Holocaust.

“Kanovich wrote about the fate of the Jewish people, about their relationship with Lithuanian and Russian culture. At the center of his works is the ‘little man,’ who stubbornly opposes evil and for the author embodies a person in general,” Wolfgang Kazak, a German Slavicist, once said of Kanovich’s work.

Kanovich’s first trilogy of novels, written between 1974 and 1979, and based on short stories he wrote in 1959 and 1967, was written through the eyes of a young yeshiva student navigating the Holocaust.

“Kanovich wrote about tragedy, but about the tragedy of people who, even in the face of inevitable death, did not lose either their dignity or a sense of belonging to their people and their civilization,” wrote Vitaly Portnikov, a Ukrainian journalist and editor, in a tribute for Radio Svoboda, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Russian service. “He took us back to biblical times, to the times of parables and prophets. We, his readers, felt human, we felt strong. We felt like we were in flight,”

The themes of Kanovich’s work, such as nostalgia for a past steeped in religiosity and struggle against assimilation, limited the reach of his work in the Soviet Union; it was only permitted to be published within the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, where he lived. Still, it became beloved by Jews throughout the Soviet Union. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Kanovich was briefly elected president of the Jewish community in newly-independent Lithuania, but like so many other Eastern European Jews, he chose to immigrate to Israel in the 1990s. There he kept writing, continuing to tell the story of the Lithuanian shtetl, with work being published as recently as 2019.

“He was a stranger to Russian writers because he wrote about Jews. And he was a stranger to Jewish writers, because he wrote about those Jews whom Soviet literature did not want to know and notice – about the Jews of the Book and deed, about Jews who not only were not ashamed of their origin, but also did not consider themselves ‘little brothers,’ did not want to please the ‘big brother,’ tell him stupid jokes and share cooking recipes,” Portnikov wrote.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Kanovich was a recipient of the Israel Writers Union Prize and the Commander’s Cross of the Order of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas — one of Lithuania’s highest honors — and was named the Laureate of the Prize of the Government of Lithuania in the field of culture and art. He is survived by his two sons and wife Olga.

Bob Born, Jewish maker of Peeps marshmallow candies, dies at 98

BY ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL JTA

Ira “Bob” Born, the son of the Russian Jewish immigrant who founded the company that makes Peeps candies, died Jan. 29. He was 98.

Born was the former president of Just Born Quality Confections, the 100-yearold family-owned candy company in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, that makes Mike and Ikes, jelly beans and Goldenberg Peanut Chews, but is probably best known for the marshmallow treats that are staples in Easter baskets.

Just Born’s Jewish roots came as a surprise to this reporter, who in 2012 reported for the New Jersey Jewish News on the company’s acquisition of Goldenberg Peanut Chews, a venerable Philadelphia brand that had recently dropped its kosher “pareve” certification. Ross Born, Bob’s son and co-CEO of the company, explained the difficulty in sourcing ingredients for the candies and spoke about the family’s commitment to Jewish causes in the Lehigh Valley and beyond. (Peanut Chews are kosher dairy; Peeps are not kosher.)

He also spoke about his father’s innovations as head of the company, which the elder Born joined in 1945 after graduating from Lehigh University with a degree in engineering physics and service in the U.S. Navy. Born had been accepted to medical school but fell in love with the business.

After Just Born acquired a maker of marshmallow candies in 1953, Bob Born devised a way to greatly speed the process. At the Bethlehem factory, huge machines squirt armies of the chickshaped confections onto a conveyer belt, on which they glide past little guns that paint on the eyes.

Bob Born also cut down on waste when he figured out what to do with Mike and Ike candies that emerged misshapen in the manufacturing process: He remelted the candies, added a hot cinnamon flavor to mask their original taste, and repurposed them as Hot Tamales.

“That was his nature. He didn’t say, ‘No, we can’t do something.’ He said ‘Well, we’ll figure it out,’” Ross Born told the Lehigh Valley News.

Bob Born was born on Sept. 29, 1924, in New York City. His father, Sam Born, had been a rabbinical student from Berdichev, Ukraine, before his family fled to Paris, where he learned the art of chocolate-making. After opening a factory and store in Brooklyn, Sam brought his brothers-in-law, Irv and Jack Shaffer, into the business. A nephew, David Shaffer, is currently board chair and co-CEO of Just Born.

Bob Born retired after almost 40 years at Just Born and moved to Florida, where he was chairman of a literacy program in an underserved community.

In addition to his talents as a candymaker, Born was a musician, woodworker, chess player and photographer, according to his son. In 2019, the city of Bethlehem declared Feb. 15 as “Bob Born Day.”

Ross, a past president of the Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley, told the local newspaper that his father will be remembered as a “real mensch” — Yiddish for a person of integrity and honor.

“He was a kind person, he was generous with his talents, sharing his abilities. He was very fair minded: he wanted to embrace differences rather than just tolerate them,” Ross Born said.

The family asked that contributions be made to the American Technion Society, Israel Guide Dog Center or any literacy program.