Monday, July 4, 2016

Goose Fat for the Soul

by Gloria Levitas for Moment Magazine

Book Review of Rhapsody in Schmaltz: Yiddish Food and Why We Can’t Stop Eating It by Michael Wex


Rhapsody in Schmaltz is not a book to devour in one sitting, nor should it be casually nibbled. Something of an oxymoron, this witty, entertaining volume overflows with food for thought and thoughts about food. It is stuffed with Talmudic arguments, biblical injunctions, slyly sexual linguistic tropes, and an exploration of the intimate relationship between Yiddish food and metaphor. Wex, a Canadian novelist, professor, linguist, Talmud scholar, cultural analyst and standup comedian, is best known for Born to Kvetch (2005), his hilarious yet profound analysis of Yiddish language and culture. This new volume is its more-than-worthy successor.

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Monday, June 27, 2016

Raised with miracle of parents’ survival, author writes magical Holocaust tales

With the X-Men and vampires as her influences, Helen Maryles Shankman brings ‘fabulist’ realism to Wlodawa, Poland


By Matt Lebovic or The Times of Israel
   
It took a story about a partisan with a knife jumping out of a tree to convince a young Helen Maryles Shankman that “Jews fought back” during the Holocaust.

As she grew up in Chicago during the 1960s and 70s, Shankman’s survivor parents — the late Brenda and Barry Maryles — often told her “vivid stories” about wartime Poland.

Almost all of her parents’ friends had lived through the Shoah, and the author recalls thinking of them, “they didn’t know how to be American. My parents were not like the people in ‘Dick & Jane,’” she told The Times of Israel in an interview.

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Monday, June 20, 2016

As Close to Us as Breathing by Elizabeth Poliner

Review by Philip K. Jason for Jewish Book Council

There is no shortage of books focused on Jewish family life, but Elizabeth Poliner’s stands apart as an instant classic. It is an inspired literary exploration of the tension between personal and family identity, between masculine and feminine models of achievement, between tradition as habit and tradition as choice, between love that gives and love that demands.

Though the novel examines an extended family and its world over three generations, its point of focus is the summer of 1948, immediately following modern Israel’s birth and, for the Leibritsky family, the trauma of its youngest member’s accidental death. Spatially and culturally, its main arena is a place informally named Bagel Beach: the family vacation area on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound that constitutes a summer Jewish beachfront neighborhood in the midst of other ethnic enclaves.

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Monday, June 13, 2016

Israeli Author Etgar Keret Awarded $100,000 Bronfman Prize

The Jewish Week

Israeli author Etgar Keret has been named the recipient of the 2016 Charles Bronfman Prize.

The prize recognizes Keret’s work “conveying Jewish values across cultures and imparting a humanitarian vision throughout the world,” the prize said in an announcement Wednesday.

The annual prize, which carries a $100,000 award, goes to a Jewish humanitarian under age 50 whose work is informed and fueled by Jewish values and has broad, global impact that can potentially change lives.

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Monday, June 6, 2016

How one publisher revolutionized American Judaism

by Jeffrey K. Salkin for JewishJournal

When the news came, it was like learning of the death of an old, trusted friend.

Last week, it was announced that Turner Publishing Company would be acquiring Jewish Lights Publishing, as well as the other imprints associated with its parent company, LongHill Partners -- SkyLight Paths, Christian Journeys, and Gemstone Press  (www.jewishlights.com, www.skylightpaths.com, www.christianjourneysbooks.com, www.gemstonepress.com).

(Full disclosure: almost all of this author’s books have been published by Jewish Lights).

Jewish Lights was not simply a Jewish publishing company. Such companies have come and gone. Some have disappeared because of the vicissitudes of Jewish history; gone are the Jewish publishing houses of Amsterdam, Livorno, Warsaw, and Vilna. Others disappeared because of the vagaries of the publishing industry itself -- Jason Aronson, the URJ Press, and the venerable Schocken house is no longer independent.

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Monday, May 30, 2016

Interview: Michelle Adelman

with Nicole Loeffler-Gladstone for Jewish Book Council
Michelle Adelman's debut novel introduces a heroine whose failings, grief, and disability have become the background music of her life, but who nonetheless grows stronger because of her scars. Jewish Book Council chatted with the author about this unusual novel, Piece of Mind, its portrayal of the family dynamics in dealing with disability, and how Judaism emerged as a source of comfort to its protagonist, Lucy.

Nicole Loeffler-Gladstone: Your background is in nonfiction and journalism. How did you become interested in writing fiction? And how did you use those skills when you wrote this novel?

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Monday, May 23, 2016

Advanced Style: Older & Wiser

By Amy Klein for Hadassah Magazine
When Ari Seth Cohen moved to New York more than eight years ago, he was missing his grandmother Bluma, his “best friend” who had recently passed away. So in tribute to her, he started documenting the style and stories of the city’s most inspiring older people. And a phenomenon was born.

To wit: first the blog, then the book, then the documentary Advanced Style, showing photos of the flashy, the classy, the colorful and the eclectic “elderhood” around the world.

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Monday, May 16, 2016

A fresh crop of Jewish books for spring

By Victor Wishna for JTA

Spring — when nature itself seems to reawaken — is a time for renewal. Indeed, Jewish tradition teaches that Passover is a holiday of rebirth, a second new year. So it’s probably a good idea to spruce up your bookshelf (or e-reader or audiobook app), no? Here are nine Jewishy suggestions to rejuvenate your reading.

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Monday, May 9, 2016

95 Year-Old NYC Appeals Lawyer Releases New Books in Mystery Series

JV STAFF

New York City Sleuth Emily Lewis Investigates Murders While Seeking A Divorce In Reno, Going Backstage On Broadway, Visiting The Intrepid Museum, And Stepping Inside A Brooklyn Mikvah Bath.


Former appeals lawyer Sally Weinraub is celebrating her 95th birthday in grand fashion. She’s releasing the first four books in her new mystery series all at once. Books Six Weeks Time, Murder On The Intrepid, Death Of A Goddess, and Murder At The Mikvah mark the debut of British-born sleuth Emily Lewis, an appeals lawyer in New York. http://sallyweinraub.com.

“Why should anyone in this day and age have to wait to see what mystery Emily solves next?” Weinraub said. “At 95, publishing all the books at once works for me!” Her strategy fits right in to today’s on-demand, binge entertainment trend.

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Monday, May 2, 2016

Sami Rohr Prize 2016

Jewish Book Council is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2016 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature:




The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust by Lisa Moses Leff

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Monday, April 25, 2016

But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir

By Raphael Magarik for The Jewish Daily Forward   

But You Did Not Come Back: A Memoir By Marceline Loridan-Ivens
Translated by Sandra Smith


In 2015, more than 7,000 French Jews immigrated to Israel. A Jewish agency think tank began planning for 120,000 more, roughly a quarter of all the Jews in France. Jewish schoolchildren increasingly cannot attend public French schools safely. Under these circumstances, a new French Holocaust memoir cannot help but be a political manifesto. And indeed, Jewish, leftist filmmaker Marceline Loridan-Ivens includes some thoughts on France, anti-Semitism, Zionism and the like in her Holocaust memoir, “But You Did Not Come Back.”

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Monday, April 18, 2016

The Evolution of a Maverick Reform Rabbi

John Moscowitz started out as a New Left activist, then turned to Judaism, then broke with the orthodoxies of his own liberal movement. In a new book, he takes stock.


Martin Krossel for Mosaic

It’s no easy chore to find Reform rabbis who deviate from their movement’s liberal orientation on matters ranging from the revelation at Sinai to the Israel-Palestinian “peace process,” and who are unafraid to say so in public. One of them is John Moscowitz, who throughout his adult life has been out of step with friends and colleagues politically, intellectually, and theologically. His fascinating journey, from radical left-wing activist to outspoken spiritual leader of a 6,000-member congregation in Toronto, Canada, is on display in a recently published collection of his sermons, speeches, and writings entitled The Evolution of an Unorthodox Rabbi.

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Monday, April 11, 2016

Seder Stories: Passover Thoughts on Food, Family, and Freedom

By Nancy Rips

Review by Maron L. Waxman for Jewish Book Council

Everybody has a story, especially a family story. At a senior center in Omaha, Nancy Rips began collecting seder stories—personal, funny, instructive, significant, embarrassing. Over the years her collection grew, and in Seder Stories she records the childhood memories of 101 Jews, familiar figures, friends, and the well-known anonymous. Grouped in chapters that speak to various aspects of the seder, the stories are entertaining in their own right; judiciously dropped into a seder, a sprinkling can provide an allowable leaven of laughter or poignancy. A glossary provides translations of Yiddish and Hebrew words and phrases.

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Monday, April 4, 2016

New Book Reviews March 2016

This week's new book reviews at Jewish Book Council:


  • The Road to Resilience: From Chaos to Celebration
  • Roman Vishniac Rediscovered
  • The Good and the Good Book: Revelation As A Guide To Life
  • White Walls: A Memoir About Motherhood, Daughterhood, and the Mess In Between
  • The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial
  • The Sages: Character, Context and Creativity, Vol. IV: From the Mishna to the Talmud

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Monday, March 28, 2016

The Two-Family House: A Novel by Lynda Cohen Loigman

Review by Evie Saphire-Bernstein for Jewish Book Council
Who is your family? That question is the simmering center of this novel, begging the reader to question so much of what he or she believes. Is it just your immediate family—your brothers, sisters, mother, father? Is it more than that—your cousins, your sisters-in-law, your aunt on your mother’s side? And if your family lies to you, betrays you—are they still your family? And if not, what are they? Who do they become?

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Monday, March 21, 2016

For Harry Houdini's Wife, Love Was Not a Magic Trick

By Julia M. Klein for The Jewish Daily Forward   

Mrs. Houdini By Victoria Kelly


The epigraph of this novel, a fictionalized account of the love story between the escape artist Harry Houdini and his wife, Bess, is a quotation from W.B. Yeats: “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

The Irish poet’s words serve as a warning of sorts: This is not a book for the rationalists among us, given to seeing magic merely as a trick of the mind, a sleight of hand or — as in Houdini’s case — the product of superb physical conditioning and long practice. “Mrs. Houdini” is instead a brief for the mysterious and the unknown, as well as the transcendent, death-defying power of romantic love.

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Monday, March 14, 2016

Sami Rohr Prize 2016

Finalists

Jewish Book Council is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2016 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature:


Killing a King: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Remaking of Israel
by Dan Ephron

The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible
by Aviya Kushner
The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History in the Wake of the Holocaust
by Lisa Moses Leff

The Rag Race: How Jews Sewed Their Way to Success in America and the British Empire
by Adam D. Mendelsohn
Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution
by Yehudah Mirsky

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Monday, March 7, 2016

The Yid: A Novel by Paul Goldberg

Review by Gary Katz for Jewish Book Council

Paul Goldberg’s debut novel takes place over several long Russian winter days spanning February 24 to March 5, 1953, set against the frigid milieu of Joseph Stalin’s “Final Solution” plans to purge all the Jews from Russia.

Three government agents start their nightly routine of arrests in Moscow. They knock on the door of Solomon Shimonovich Levinson, a marginal Yiddish actor from a closed Yiddish State Theater company, unexpectedly setting off a Kafkaesque path of no return to the bleak countryside accompanied by a bizarre cast of friends and acquaintances.

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Monday, February 29, 2016

The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks


By David J. Wolpe for The Weekly Standard

The biblical framework for a novel of redemption.


The Hebrew Bible is shaped by two extended portraits, of Moses and David. Of the two stories, Moses’ is better known, but the narrative of David is more psychologically complex and dramatically vivid. As they divide the great mountains (Sinai and Zion) and two dominant terrains (desert and land) between them, Moses and David represent, respectively, the giving of the law and the attaining of ultimate redemption through the line of the Messiah.

The story of David is less familiar, partly due to its placement in the book of Samuel instead of the Pentateuch. David's story is intricate, incident-packed, and follows several different strands. Fascinating in all its parts, it requires some thought and time to weave it together. In some ways, therefore, David's life is ripe for a novel. Skillful novels unfurl complicated stories and run a strong narrative line through them, helping the reader to understand their shape. Novels can also alter or supplement the original to help the reader understand its essential shape. Here, in Geraldine Brooks's skillful and eloquent account of the life of David, rather than hint at the apparent hostility David's brothers bear him, she has one of them accuse him of bestiality. There is no warrant for this in the biblical text, but it certainly does fix the animosity in the reader's mind.

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Monday, February 22, 2016

Jewish Book Council Book Clubs

From  Jewish Book Council

Whether your book club is formal or informal; social or educational; interested in reading only books of Jewish content, just a few Jewish books throughout the year, or good literature that happens to have Jewish themes, JBC has a book for you and the resources to take you to the next level.

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Monday, February 15, 2016

The Catskills: Its History and How It Changed America

by Stephen M. Silverman and Raphael D. Silver

Review by Maron L. Waxman for Jewish Book Council

Mention the Catskills and most Jews immediately call to mind the Borscht Belt. But as Stephen Silverman, a Time Inc. veteran, and Raphael Silver, a real estate developer and film producer, demonstrate in this richly illustrated volume, the Catskills have far more stories to tell than a Grossinger’s tummler.

The story begins with Henry Hudson, who sailed up the river now named for him—he called it the “Great River of the Mountains”—in 1609, seeking the northwest passage to Asia. The search was futile, but Hudson claimed the territory for the Netherlands. A trading post was established a few years later and settlement followed, with the English taking over in 1664. Soon after, the Catskills became an active center of American social, economic, and cultural history, perhaps influencing if not, as suggested in the subtitle, changing it.

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Monday, February 8, 2016

The Raging Skillet, From Microwave to Top Caterer

By Amy Kritzer for Hadassah Magazine

Oprah. Cher. Madonna. Rossi. One of those names may not immediately conjure up a powerful, take-no-prisoners woman, but as the owner of The Raging Skillet catering company, Chef Rossi has earned her mononym nonetheless. She shares her wild rise to award-winning caterer in her memoir with recipes, appropriately titled The Raging Skillet: The True Life Story of Chef Rossi.

Chef Rossi has a vivacious and unapologetic personality that gives life to her almost unbelievable anecdotes, from rebellious, runaway teenager, to a short-lived stint in Lubavitch Brooklyn (“Feminism was not popular in shul,” she writes) to maritime bartender, to her eventual success as an “anti-caterer.” Chef Rossi’s favorite career moment? Catering the celebrity-packed Vagina Monologues after-party. Complete with an anatomically correct feast including a giant vagina-shaped fruit platter.

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Monday, February 1, 2016

Photos from the World’s Most Isolated Jewish Communities

By Abby Sher for Jewniverse

The wandering Jew is more than a stereotype and a striped houseplant.

In their beautiful new book, Scattered Among the Nations: Photographs and Stories of the World’s Most Isolated Jewish Communities, Bryan Schwartz, Jay Sand, and Sandy Carter explore what it feels like to practice Judaism in far-flung corners of the globe.

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Monday, January 25, 2016

Herman Wouk, the American Jewish Writer Who Wrote Huge Best-Sellers and Wasn’t Especially Neurotic

The 100-year-old titan of American letters recalls his very happy publishing career, in the new ‘Sailor and Fiddler’


By Adam Kirsch for Tablet Magazine   

Looking back on it, the triumph of American Jewish literature in the 20th century seems like something foreordained. Take a people, Eastern European Jewry, that had always cherished literacy and give them a freedom they had never been granted before, and the result is a creative explosion—Death of a Salesman, The Adventures of Augie March, Portnoy’s Complaint, The Catcher in the Rye (not to mention the Broadway musical, Tin Pan Alley, and Hollywood). Why is it, then, that the American Jewish writers who were most successful, whom we now regard as classics, did not make success their theme? On the contrary, they generally wrote about failure, alienation, neurosis, and guilt—to the point that these subjects came to seem stereotypically Jewish in American culture. If the American Jewish story is, on balance, a very happy one, why are our books so miserable? Where are the well-adjusted Jewish writers?

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Monday, January 18, 2016

Good on Paper: A Novel

Review by Juli Berwald for Jewish Book Council

Don’t be fooled by the chick-lit-sounding title of Rachel Cantor’s second novel, Good on Paper. Much more than a beach read, this book a highly-crafted, multi-layered, complex story that prompts the reader to question the line between fiction and reality.

Shira Greene is a temp worker and a single mother raising her daughter, Andi, with the help of her old college friend Ahmad. She’s also a Ph.D. washout. Her thesis on Dante was nearly brilliant—until life got in the way. Shira suffers from the wounds of her mother’s abandonment of her when she was a child, her father’s suicide, and a freak accident that killed Ahmed’s best friend. Unable to cope with the compounding losses, Shira retreats into a comfortable safety of mediocrity.

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