Havurah Shalom

Autobiography by a woman who now lives in the Portland area. By the late 1930s, as the holocaust approached, many Jewish families in Germany fled to one of the only open ports available: Shanghai. Eleven-year-old Ursula Bacon and her family made the difficult 8,000-mile voyage to Shanghai. But instead of a storybook China, they found streets teeming with peddlers, beggars, opium dens and prostitutes. Amid these abysmal conditions, Ursula learned of her own resourcefulness and found within herself the fierce determination to survive. She taught English to Chinese concubines and they became very good friends. She learned about spirituality and herself from a Buddhist monk. She also met the man she eventually married. There are many stories rolled into this one book. Discussion led by Stacey Hankin.