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Opposition continues despite new Boy Scout policy
In 2001, Temple Israel of Hollywood (TIOH) overwhelmingly decided to end its sponsorship of Cub Scout Pack 1300 to protest the Boy Scouts of America’s (BSA) policy banning openly gay…
Jews should get offended
If there’s one thing the Palestinians are great at, it’s saying no. For years now, many peace-loving Jewish heads have been bruised from banging against the brick wall of Palestinian rejectionism.
NSA and JEW
If you ever needed a sign that Jews feel fully integrated and accepted by society, consider this: Not one major Jewish group made a peep over the revelations of National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance.
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“Curb” star Jeff Garlin spends two days in jail following parking lot confrontation
Actor Jeff Garlin ("Curb Your Enthusiasm") was released from a Van Nuys jail yesterday, at approximately 7:30 a.m., according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) website. An incident…
‘Man of Steel’ screenwriter David S. Goyer on Superman and religion
“People are always so quick to point out the Christ allegory in “The Man of Steel” but Superman has always struck me as a combination of Old Testament and New…
Superman is a Jewish Fantasy
This past week my wife surprised me with tickets to the new Superman movie “Man of Steel” for my birthday. So late Saturday night, we sat in a packed movie…
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Archie Comics feature film in the works
Archie comics lovers, rejoice!
Israel’s SodaStream inks deal with KitchenAid
The Israeli company SodaStream agreed to develop a home system for making carbonated drinks for KitchenAid appliances.
Barbra Streisand receives Honorary Doctorate from The Hebrew University
Barbra Streisand, after receiving an honorary doctorate from The Hebrew University, stands in front of the plaque of the Institute of Jewish Studies Building, established in 1984 in honor of…
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Summer Peaches Are Here
I always figured peaches were a super sugary fruit as they are so darn good. But it is not so. Peaches: are often less than 100 calories, making them a…
The Power of Language: Cultivating Positive Emotions
Language affects the heart. When we’re surrounded by others who speak negatively, it can really affect our mood and disposition. Are we aware of how much negative language there is…
Attention Forward: We Aren’t That Radical
It has been said that most of us believe newspaper reporting to be generally accurate, until we read an article on a subject with which we are intimately familiar. It…
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Sandee Brawarsky
Looking Inward in the New Year
The caretaker of the only shul in Rangoon, Burma, posted this notice just outside the sanctuary before Rosh Hashanah, 2007:
Melancholy Russian soul flourishing in immigrants
In an interview, the Moscow-born author, who immigrated to the United States at the age of 7, admits that she, too, has a lingering Russian soul. Her well-written and very enjoyable first novel recasts Tolstoy, as its title suggests, observing immigrants from the former Soviet Union, body and soul.
New books challenge readers to revitalize their Judaism
Sounded every morning during this month of Elul, the shofar is a call to review, rethink, renew, revitalize, to shake things up a bit, to go deeper. This season, a number of new books also challenge readers to think anew about their connection to Judaism and to Israel, to their ritual practice and religious lives.
Young Manhattanite’s diary of old is new again
She learned that her building was expanding its bike room and had cleaned out an area where these trunks, whose owners had moved on, had sat unopened for decades. Amid the chaos, a building porter told her that he had found a young girl's diary and gave her the small book with its crackling leather cover and chrome lock.
Book details journey to a father’s distant land—Kurdish ‘Jerusalem’
"My father had staked his life on the notion that the past mattered more than anything.He sublimated homesickness into a career."
Urban love story brings Berlin’s past to the present
Winger, an American who has lived in Berlin for the last five years, grew up in Cambridge, Mass., along with long periods in Kenya and Mexico, as well as New York City. The daughter of Harvard anthropologists, she picked up their skills of observation, which she has fine-tuned in her work as a professional photographer and in this beautifully written fictional debut.
‘Simplexity’ explains the methods to the madness
A handshake might seem to be a simple, even thoughtless social exchange. But behind the meeting of hands are a lot of neural firings, tactile feedback, control of muscles, depth perception; it's a ritual that grows out of a long tradition of greetings and social cues.
Novelist Warren Adler back in a New York state of mind
Warren Adler, 80, talks about his new novel
New haggadahs bring fresh approaches to celebration
This season, several new haggadahs raise new questions. New interpretations bring new approaches to the seder, enabling readers and participants to bring new layers of meaning to their own celebrations of the holiday.
Books: Why choosing rationally might not be so easy
Dan Ariely is an MIT professor who served beer in a brewery and dressed in a waiter's outfit as part of his research into decision making. A leading behavioral economist, Ariely has heightened abilities to observe what's going on around him, from tiny details to the big picture. His uncommon findings and their wider applications are presented in "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions".
The Bible for dummies—and experts
In "How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now" (Free Press, $35) -- which recently won the 2007 Jewish book of the year prize of the National Jewish Book Awards -- Kugel's interest is not only in what the text says, but in what a modern reader is to make of it.
A different attic’s holocaust secrets
Joseph Hollander left the untold story of his life packed up in a suitcase, waiting to be found.
Book captures before and after of Israel’s Ethiopian Jews
A woman of biblical beauty, a dark-eyed Ethiopian gazing directly at the camera, appears on the cover of a new book of photographs, "Transformations: From Ethiopia to Israel" by Ricki Rosen (Reality Check Productions, $45). She's wearing white embroidered robes, her hair covered with a kerchief. Flip to the back cover and fast forward 13 years, and the woman, with the hint of a smile, is dressed fashionably in an orange sweater, her hair falling loosely in tiny braids.
Stories and essays and pictures illuminate holiday
Books about Chanukah.
Books: Brits behaving badly
Interview with author Charlotte Mendelson about her novel "When We Were Bad".
An Orthodox ‘cast-off’ holds God accountable
Dressed in black, Shalom Auslander wears three tiny silver blocks on a chain that falls close to his neck, with Hebrew letters spelling out the word "Acher," or other. This was a gift from his wife when he completed his memoir, "Foreskin's Lament." Acher was the name given to Elisha ben Abuya, a learned second-century rabbi, after he adopted heretical opinions.
Books: A stranger on a journey
In Amy Bloom's novel "Away," Lillian Leyb makes her way from the Lower East Side to Seattle and then Alaska, hoping to get to Siberia to find her daughter.
Chart a new course with these spiritual guides for the New Year
As we think about rewriting our personal narratives in the New Year, adding new pages and chapters, several new books inspire new visions, renewed creativity and new relationships between the calendar and a sense of holiness.
Books: Exile from Egypt through a daughter’s eyes
Lucette Lagnado, an award-winning investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, portrays her father and the cosmopolitan Cairo he loved and had to flee in 1963 when life became exceedingly difficult for the Jews, in the decade after King Farouk's fall and Gamal Abdel Nasser's ascent to power.
Author’s advice on sex and intimacy makes her hot stuff
I open Esther Perel's new book on the bus, and I know that my seatmate is staring at the cover photo of a man and woman in bed not touching beneath the red sheets. "Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic & the Domestic" (HarperCollins) has caught the man's attention, but he maintains the bus rider's code and doesn't ask about it. Perel's book has also captured the attention of large numbers of readers, journalists and producers.
Books to remember this summer by
Our summers have markers, memories that trigger a specific time: The summer of the walk on the moon, Hurricane Bob or the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles; personal events like a high school prom, a kitchen renovation or a houseguest who long overstays.
Oy vey! You should read what they’re writing about them—in books yet
So I read this season's selection of books with perhaps a different eye and an increased curiosity. There are serious books about Jewish mothers, lighthearted books, how-to volumes and memoirs and some manage to cross categories. Some offer knowing advice, others observations and jokes. The best are those that are open, honest and wise, not preachy or sentimental.
Call to ‘write and record’ brings new books on Shoah
"Write and record," historian Simon Dubnow urged his fellow Jews, as he was taken to his death in Riga. Over the decades since Dubnow's murder in 1941, many have taken his words to heart, and scholars, survivors, novelists, poets, members of the second and third generations continue to publish new work on the Holocaust. This season, in time for the commemoration of Yom HaShoah, there are impressive historical works, memoirs of lost childhoods, personal testimonies and artful works of fiction; many written by those who feel an obligation to those whose voices were stilled.
In Spring a reader’s fancy turns to thoughts of ... books
In Spring a reader's fancy turns to thoughts of ... books.
Books: Max Apple is a bard of the background
One of the best American short story writers, Apple has just published "The Jew of Home Depot and Other Stories" (Johns Hopkins Press), his first collection of stories in 20 years. He writes with the same playful imagination and comic intelligence as in his earlier stories, layered with irony and an infallible sense of detail.
Peter Cole receives MacArthur ‘genius award’ for poetry
Poet, translator and publisher Peter Cole is among the 24 recipients of the 2007 MacArthur Foundation fellowships, or genius awards, as they are popularly known. The no-strings-attached award, honoring creativity, includes a $500,000 stipend that is paid quarterly over five years.
Books: Wrap up new worlds for your young readers
Books
Writer spins thrillers from his own undercover adventures
Jet lag launched Haggai Carmon into his career as an author. The international lawyer found himself in a small, unheated hotel room in a remote country he won't identify. He was on U.S. government assignment, collecting intelligence on a violent criminal organization, but his security cover had been blown, and he was advised by Interpol not to leave his hotel room.Tired, but too scared to sleep, Carmon sat at a child-sized desk with his laptop computer and spun 100 pages of a thriller based on, but disguising, his experiences. Those first 100 pages became the basis for "Triple Identity," the first in a series of three thrillers featuring Dan Gordon, a lawyer and former Mossad agent working for the U.S. Department of Justice.
Books: ‘Holy’ Ethically Speaking—Rabbi Joseph Telushkin Covers It All
When it comes to ethics, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin is an idealist and an activist. He'd like to see Jews develop moral imaginations as much as intellectual imaginations, parents praise children for their kind acts as much as for their academic achievements and individuals improve their track records in doing the right thing.
Six self-help books seek to help you get sealed in the Book of Life
Self-help books are essential tools.
The Perfect Reads for Those Lazy Days of Summer
This season brings engaging reading in a mix of genres: literary fiction, comedy, love stories, detective novels, memoirs, historical fiction and books that break genre boundaries; books by veteran authors and others not-yet well-known.
Eluding Death Gives Life to Roth Novel
Eluding death is the central issue of life for Philip Roth's nameless leading character in his newest novel, "Everyman" (Houghton Mifflin). A thrice-married and divorced retired advertising executive, Roth's lonely everyman wants to keep on with the messy business of his life -- "he didn't want the end to come a minute earlier than it had to" -- even as friends get sick and die around him, and his own body's failings persist. "Old age," Roth writes, "isn't a battle, it's a massacre."
Wiesel’s Words of Hope for ‘Uprooted’
Wounds are plentiful in Eli Wiesel's "The Time of the Uprooted," an absorbing novel that moves back and forth in time, from 1940s Hungary to New York at the end of the 20th century, shifting points of view, with emotional intensity packed into memories and stories.
Search for Similarity in Aliyah Tales
"Aliya: Three Generations of American-Jewish Immigration to Israel" by Liel Leibovitz.
Bar/Bat Mitzvah - A Postmodern Coming-of-Age Guide
When a book on bar mitzvah opens with a poem by Rudyard Kipling and a quote from French ethical philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, it's clearly not your usual bar mitzvah book, of which there are many.
Mother and Daughter Authors Are Klass Act
Sheila Solomon Klass and Dr. in Perri Klass -- mother and daughter co-authors -- don't finish each other's sentences, but they do elaborate on them
Three Madelehs of the Written Word
The author, who also graduated from Harvard Law School, keenly portrays the life of well-to-do professionals who strive for the best for their children, unable to see the downside of their single-minded pursuits.
Some ‘New’ Shoah Books Not So New
If there's an overriding theme among the newest books related to the Holocaust, it's one of concealment and discovery, whether in the writer's own wartime experience or invented on the page. Sometimes it's a case of lost books being rediscovered.
PASSOVER: Myriad Ways to Tell an Ancient Tale
Every haggadah has a story, its own story, beyond that of the exodus from Egypt. Depending on illustrations, design, typesetting, additions, where the edition is printed and who commissioned its creation, each version is a marker of Jewish history.
‘Voodoo’ Jew Finds Love, Truth in Haiti
The title, "Madame Dread: A Tale of Love, Voodoo and Civil Strife in Haiti," comes from the nickname given to her by the kids in her Port-au-Prince neighborhood. In Haitian tradition, women take on the first names of their husbands; in her case she was named for the dreadlocks of her boyfriend (who later became her husband). She also refers to herself as a "Voodoo Jew."
Spectator - My Husband, the Rabbi
The first time the word "rebbetzin" appeared in The New York Times was in 1931, in a review of a book about Yiddish theater. The term stood untranslated; the reviewer and his editors assumed that readers would understand the meaning.
A Line Drive Down Jewish History
In an interview, Jeffrey Gurock, a New York City-area resident, says that this is a book he has been thinking about for almost his entire adult life and spent the last five years working on. His passion for the subject is clear.
A Developing Reputation
The two young, sari-clad women, one in blue and one in orange, stand in the thatched-roof meeting hall, take hold of the microphone and join their voices.
"We don't need any fancy materials," they croon by heart. "What we need is just some food to live. We don't ask for a refrigerator, a TV or a car. We just need some small capital to start a business."
The audience of women in the village of Alamarai Kuppam applaud with enthusiasm. The few men, seated or hovering around the edges, are more circumspect, but they, too, nod approvingly.
Call it women's lib, post-tsunami-India style.
The outpouring of financial support that followed the 2004 tsunami has accelerated efforts to improve the lives of rural women -- an initiative that goes well beyond helping families recover from the tsunami.
Scholar Discovers Hidden Russian Gem
"The Five" is a novel set in Odessa at the dawn of the 20th century, unfolding the story of a colorful upper-middle-class Jewish family and its path of assimilation. An autobiographical tale, it's also a romantic portrait of the cosmopolitan city Jabotinsky loved and a life that is no more.
The Hit Man Who Came to Dinner
>"Blood Relation" is Eric Konigsberg's account of his uncle's life, gleaned from 10 visits to the Auburn facility over three years, interviews with family members as well as the families of Harold's victims. It also includes the author's examination of extensive court testimony and FBI records. More than a biography in crime, this powerful book is a nuanced view of Harold in the context of his family, and the author's own reflections on coming to know and attempting to understand his uncle.
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
Arlene Blum describes her new book, "Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life," as an answer to a question she has often asked herself, as she did on Annapurna in the Himalayas: "What's a nice Jewish girl from the Midwest doing at 21,000 feet, going down a knife-edged ridge all alone?"
Call Him Henry Roth
Until now, there has been no full-scale biography of Henry Roth, whose 1934 novel, "Call It Sleep," is considered a masterpiece of American literature.
Go Ahead—Read That Book in Shul
Independent readers -- who might pull out a book during a particular part of the service in which they lose interest -- are likely to be reading serious books, trying to deepen their experience of the holidays.
L.A. Authors Break the Heroine Mold
California purists who like to shop local, travel local and eat local will have no problem reading local. Among the season's offerings of new books are several impressive works by Los Angeles-based writers.
Spectator - Hard Truths of ‘Hamburg’
Polish journalist Hanna Krall's "The Woman From Hamburg: And Other True Stories" (Other Press, $19) is based on interviews she did that in some way involved the Holocaust. But when one of the 12 stories was recently featured in The New Yorker's fiction issue, an accompanying note explained that her writing is indeed factual.
The 60-something Krall was a reporter for Polityka from 1957 to 1981 when martial law was imposed and her publications were banned. Her award-winning books have been translated into 15 languages, (the English version is by Madeline G. Levine). Yet the boundary between fact and fiction can seem blurred in her work, for Krall writes in an unadorned but intimate style, moving in fractured time, creating a rhythm that might resemble contemporary fiction.
Private Author’s Public ‘Memory’
As a child, Joseph Lelyveld's parents called him "memory boy."
Sacred Words Come Naturally
Ellen Bernstein has been called the birth mother of the Jewish environmental movement. In 1988, she founded Shomrei Adamah (Keepers of the Earth), the first national Jewish environmental organization, and since leaving the group in 1996 has been an educator, consultant and writer.
Books - ‘Love’ Tries to Solve Mystery of the Heart
Masterfully, Krauss ties together the stories of Gursky and the young Alma as each searches for clues about "The History of Love."
The Best of Passover Reading
The Best of Passover Reading
The Many Lives of Lev Nussimbaum
Lev Nussimbaum lived as though life were theater, inventing an identity, dressing the part, shifting scenes, seeking audiences everywhere. He thought he could keep rewriting the ending, believed he could talk his way out of anything including his Jewish past, but ultimately he could not.
Eating Ham for Uncle Sam
Walking near my parents' home in Florida -- where I'm writing this column -- I noticed a hat with World War II insignias, much like the one my father sometimes wears, in the back window of a parked car. I'd just finished reading "GI JEWS: How World War II Changed a Generation" by Deborah Dash Moore, so the image of the hat really struck me, and I imagined that most men on this street must own similar versions.
Israel’s Cain and Abel Syndrome
The book is particularly timely, in light of Yasser Arafat's death, and new possibilities for hope in the Middle East. Rees writes about individuals, many of whom have not spoken publicly before, and he proves himself a good listener and skillful as a teller of other people's stories.
Hungarian Novelist Takes Manhattan
When Imre Kertesz was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2002, few Americans had read the work of the Hungarian novelist, the first survivor of the concentration camps to be awarded the literary prize. Even in his own country, his works were not well known; his subject, largely the Holocaust, was not popular.
Finding Love in the In-Between
It's a novel with humor and a good share of darkness as well as light, the contrast alluded to in the Psalm from which the title is drawn, "Weeping may endure for a night. But joy comes in the morning."
Passing on a Legacy of Love
Walk into Zabar's and it's easy to spot 76-year old Gittel "Gabby" Zuckerman. She's feisty and funny, and her shrinking height and failing health don't diminish her power. Nor do the memories of the family she lost in the Holocaust ever leave her.
Jewish America’s Trials and Triumphs
Although the first Jews to establish a community in North America arrived in New Amsterdam from Recife, Brazil, in September 1654, the first Torah scroll was brought over a year later in 1655, borrowed from a synagogue in Amsterdam.
‘First’ an Atypical New York Story
A brother announces to his sister that another sister has vanished, as "The First Desire" (Pantheon) opens. Nancy Reisman's highly-praised novel is unusual in many ways, from its premise to the quality of writing to its setting. She follows the lives of the Cohen family, from the Depression to the years following World War II, not on the Lower East Side or in Brooklyn, but in a stately neighborhood in Buffalo, N.Y.
Sentence by sentence, this is an exquisite story of family. Reisman writes with assuredness and tenderness, as the story unfolds serially from five perspectives: three of the four Cohen sisters, the brother and their father's mistress.
The Grand Design of Daniel Libeskind
It was in Poland's primeval forests, where bison roamed amidst labyrinths of poplar and maple trees that Daniel Libeskind first began to understand concepts of land, space, shelter and natural resources, themes that would be the underpinnings of his career as an architect.
In his new book, "Breaking Ground: Adventures in Life and Architecture" (Riverhead), the world-renowned architect who designed the master plan for the World Trade Center site, describes his early life in Poland, Israel and the Bronx, and he speaks with eloquence and passion about the ideas behind his "overtly expressive" work.
Preserving Yiddish One Book at a Time
Aaron Lansky is the Yiddish Indiana Jones. The founder and president of the National Jewish Book Center, Lansky has been an intrepid archaeologist and adventurer in his decades-long effort to find and save Yiddish books around the world before they are destroyed or lost forever.
Dream Achievement
A historical romance, "Songbird," is told through the voice of Mia; when the novel opens in 1939, she is a 17-year-old vacationing with her family at a resort called Krzemieniec, "the Polish Athens."
Works of Renewal and Celebration
At present, the tradition or writing hanhagot continues. At the back are two neo-Chasidic hanhagot, by Hillel Zeitlin, a writer and martyr of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Arthur Green, a contemporary scholar and theologian, who is the author's mentor.
‘Memory’ Shapes Life and History
Tony Eprile opens up the complex terrain of a changing South Africa in "The Persistence of Memory."
This is an ambitious novel, a novel of many ideas. Eprile is a gifted storyteller who delves into the inner life and family, and also politics, social commentary and warfare. The literary thread that links these different kinds of stories -- whether accounts of sensual meals, embarrassing school episodes or brutal battles -- and propels the narrative is suggested by the title: the way that memory, the act of remembering, shapes life and history.
The Arts
In this collection of linked stories, the three figures at the center are a mother, father and son who leave Riga, Latvia, for Toronto, Canada. The stories are told from the point of view of the son, Mark Berman, who observes everything and helps interpret the New World for his parents.
Russian Emigre’s Tales of New World
The three A's in "Natasha" are filled in by tiny stylized Matryoshka dolls, the traditional Russian stacking dolls, on the book jacket of David Bezmozgis' radiant debut (Farrar Straus and Giroux, $18).
In this collection of linked stories, the three figures at the center are a mother, father and son who leave Riga, Latvia, for Toronto, Canada. The stories are told from the point of view of the son, Mark Berman, who observes everything and helps interpret the New World for his parents.
Psychic Channels Her Gift Into Novel
I don't know how many Jewish psychics there are in Great Neck, N.Y., but Rochelle Jewel Shapiro is easy to spot in the lunchtime crowd at Bruce's, a restaurant and bakery in the heart of the Long Island town.
When Two Orthodox Worlds Collide
Tova Mirvis began her second novel with the thought of writing an Orthodox "Madame Bovary."
Loud and Proud Mizrachi Voices
"The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage," edited by Loolwa Khazzoom (Seal Press, $16.95)
On the last night before her family would flee Libya in 1967, Gina Bublil Waldman recalls that she had to choose between taking her only warm sweater or a photo album with the words "Souvenir of Libya" on the cover. Its hand-painted image of a peaceful seascape was in absolute contrast to the political turbulence and danger her family faced. She packed the photos, remnants of a life she wouldn't know again.
Her essay is included in a compelling collection, "The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage," edited by Loolwa Khazzoom.
Mixed Marriage, Mixed Message
"Sort of Jewish","Jewish and something else" "might as well be Jewish" are some of the ways people describe their Jewish identity in Sylvia Barack Fishman's significant new book probing the religious character of mixed-marriage households, "Double or Nothing: Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage."
Gay Orthodox Rabbi Peels Back His Life
"Like peeling an onion," Rabbi Steven Greenberg said, about the process of coming out.
Q & A With Jonathan Kirsch
With best-selling books like "The Harlot by the Side of the Road" and "Moses: A Life," Jonathan Kirsch has been pioneering an unusual genre that combines themes religious, historical and literary, written with a Jewish sensibility.
New Memoirs Join Shoah’s Canon
"To write or not to write," Eva Gossman ponders in the first chapter of her Holocaust memoir, recounting the internal debate she had about whether to write this book. She asked many deep and tough questions: about whether it made sense, given all that has been written about the period, to write one more account; whether a personal narrative would add to historians' understanding; whether memory is reliable after so many years.
Exile the So-So Seder
Some people like their Passover seders just as they remember them: the same lines recited by the same relatives with the same emphasis, the same songs, jokes and foods, the same delicate glassware that picks up the light in a certain way, reflecting past and present.
An Examined Life During the Intifada
For the epigraph of his new book, Israeli journalist David Horovitz chooses two quotes.
Essays Reflect on Pearl’s Last Words
Three words, among the last uttered by journalist Daniel Pearl before his murder two years ago this month (on Feb. 21, the public learned of the murder), have become a nucleus for thoughtfulness and creativity. "I Am Jewish," edited by his parents, Judea and Ruth Pearl (Jewish Lights), is a collection of brief essays by almost 150 noted contributors who tease out meaning from these words and compose personal statements of Jewish identity.
Writer Displays Keen Eye for Israeli Life
The Israel that Donna Rosenthal depicts in her new book, "The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land" (Free Press) can sound like one very crowded apartment building, filled with interesting, passionate people from many backgrounds, often shouting in the hallways, sitting on the stoop, offering advice out their windows, sharing tragedies. But the tenants don't know much about those neighbors who aren't like them.
Noir Fiction Fills in the Babel Blanks
"King of Odessa" by Robert Rosenstone (Northwestern, $24.95).
In an impressive effort of literary boldness, historian Robert Rosenstone fills in some of the blanks in Issac Babel's life and work in a first novel, "King of Odessa." He writes as though he has recovered a lost Babel manuscript, imagining what one of Babel's final years might have been like. Other than a few postcards sent to his family, no records remain of the summer and autumn of 1936, when Babel, then 42, returned to Odessa, the city of his birth.
New Releases Keep Shoah an Open Book
>"The secret of redemption is remembrance," as a sign announces in Israel's Yad Vashem, an institution dedicated to remembering the Holocaust.
Different From All Other Pesach Books
Passover is our holiday of words -- words to study and ponder, lines that evoke memories and also inspire hope of better times. Every year, publishers bring out a significant number of new books related to the holiday -- new editions of the haggadah, books of essays and commentary, children's books and cookbooks. This season, there's plenty to read geared to the weeks leading up to the holiday, throughout its duration and afterward. What's common among the new titles are stories, whether reminiscences about great scholars or accounts of unusual circumstances for seders. Here are stories that weave history and transcend it.
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
"Welcome to Heavenly Heights" by Risa Miller (St. Martin's Press, $23.95).
Many writers have imagined the Jewish immigrant experience, setting their novels and short stories on the Lower East Side and places like that, where newcomers can forge their way to become Americans. Risa Miller's debut novel, "Welcome to Heavenly Heights," is a different version of that story, with American Jews making new homes in Israel, reversing the exile. This transition can be more pressure cooker than melting pot, mixing idealism, religion, bureaucracy, family complexities, shifting expectations, love and, never far away, violence.
A Writer, A Rabbi and a Connection
Some synagogues want a rabbi who's a good sermonizer, others want a scholar; some want someone who relates well to their teenagers, others want a rabbi they can call by first name and play tennis or basketball with; some want an individual well known in the larger community, others want a rabbi who knows them well; some go for formality, others for lots of hugging. Some want it all.
In "The New Rabbi: A Congregation Searches for Its Leader," investigative reporter Stephen Fried gets inside the congregational mindset the way no other writer has. He intensely follows the process of finding a replacement for Rabbi Gerald Wolpe, when he steps down after leading a Main Line Philadelphia synagogue, Har Zion, for 30 years. But the compelling book is as much about Judaism in America and the role of the rabbi, as it's about Har Zion. And it's as much about Fried's return to synagogue life as it's about Wolpe's departure.
Jews’ Winning Words
Nobody remembers whether the Torah has ever won a book award before.
Out on a Limb
At a time when many people are writing and publishing memoirs, Sternburg's "Phantom Limb" is uncommon.
Beyond Revenge
"Revenge: A Story of Hope" is Laura Blumenfeld's account of her journey to understand the concept of revenge and ultimately act on it.
When bad Things Turns 20
In 1981, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a 150-page book, published with little fanfare, that changed the lives of the more than 4 million people who read it and made its title, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," part of the vernacular.
Afterlife Rabbi
When Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz delivered a sermon about survival of the soul to a group of rabbis in Los Angeles in 1996, a charged discussion followed, and an Orthodox rabbi remarked that he had never before heard rabbis publicly discuss the supernatural.
Competing Good
"Good vs. evil is boring," Samuel G. Freedman likes to tell his students at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. "The real drama is in competing visions of good."
The Fires This Time
This is a story of rebuilding family, of returning to Judaism.
Rose’s Quest
The hiding places in the title of Daniel Asa Rose's new memoir refer to the haylofts and cellars where his relatives hid from the Nazis during the war years, and also to the suburban tool sheds and coat closets where the author crawled into during his childhood in a mostly gentile Connecticut town. The title also alludes to the author's efforts to avoid his Judaism. Traveling to Europe to find his family's hiding places in Belgium and France with his two young sons, Rose comes to see that hiding places are "not merely dark holes of concealment" but also "places of revelation." The trip leads him to understand the links between present and past, his own connections to his family's past and to the Jewish future.
One Day at a Time
The question at the heart of David Horovitz's provocative new book, "A Little Too Close to God: The Thrills and Panic of a Life in Israel" is whether to choose to live in Israel.
The Lost Bird
Yvette Melanson is a woman who might say the Sh'ma before going to sleep, and in the morning light whisper the Navajo prayer, "May I walk happily and lightly on the earth." Both are deeply felt, authentic expressions of her soul. As she explains, "I know that I'm Jewish. I feel Jewish. I've been raised Jewish. I'm also Navajo."
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