WINTER 2006 RECOMMENDED JEWISH BOOKS

WINTER 2006 BOOK READINGS

Nov 28, 2005: Tree Lighting at NYC Lincoln Center featuring the Klezmatics hehe
Dec 04, 2005: Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks speaks. Yorkville Synagogue, NYC 4PM
Dec 05, 2005: Jackie Hoffman at Joe's Pub in NYC. Monday nts in December
Dec 05, 2005: Joseph Dan (Professor Emeritus of Kabbalah at Hebrew University) speaks on "From Neo-Hasidism to Contemporary Kabbalah. The Quest of Spirituality and Its Worldly Benefits." JTS in NYC. 7:30PM
Dec 06, 2005: On Being (And not Being) a Jewish-American Writer. Featuring Yael Goldstein, Dara Horn, Thane Rosenbaum, Jonathan Rosen, Erica Jong, Derek Rubin, and Lara Vapnyar. 92nd St Y. 8:15PM
Dec 07, 2005: Freeing The Captive. The Jewish Response to Human Trafficking. HUC NYC 6:30
Dec 07, 2005: Jews and Justice. With Author Ronald Dworkin. Center for Jewish History, NYC 7PM
Dec 07, 2005: NAOMI ROSENBLATT reads from AFTER THE APPLE. B&N Rockville MD
Dec 09, 2005: Abigail Pogrebin reads from STARS OF DAVID. B&N Skokie IL
Dec 11, 2005: Jewcy Chanukkah Party at CroBar featuring Triumph the Insult Dog. See SmartTix.com for $25 tix NYC
Dec 14, 2005: NOVEL JEWS - DARA HORN reads from THE WORLD TO COME and AVIVA KUSHNER reads from FOR A PLACE IN THE NEXT WORLD. KGB Bar 7:00
Dec 18, 2005: Hadassah gross-Unwrapped with Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross. 92nd St Y. 7:30 PM
Dec 18, 2005: Yo Chanuka Yo Chanuka Party in NYC. 45e33rd. 6-9PM Dec 18, 2005: Rabbi Marcia Prager, the author of new prayers, discusses prayers. 92nd St Y. 7:30 PM
Dec 21, 2005: Susan Stamberg. Stories of the Season. 92nd St Y. 7:30 PM
Dec 24, 2005: NYC Gotham Comedy Club. A Very Jewish Christmas featuring three Jewish headliners. 7:30/9:30
Dec 24, 2005: NYC Comic Strip Live. Moo Shoo Meshuginas. 7:30/9:30
Dec 25-30: KLEZKAMP. Check LivingTraditions.ORG They best Winter camp, featuring top musicians and chef Anne Rosenzweig, and authors Henry Sapoznick and Michael Wex.

Jan 05, 2006: Abigail Pogrebin reads from STARS OF DAVID. B&N NYC 82nd Bway
Jan 13, 2006: New York City's 92nd Street Y starts Saturday programs for the first time since 1874. Hurray.
Jan 13-16, 2005. Limmud NY. See LimmudNy.org
Jan 16, 2006: Elliot Perlman reads from REASONS I WON'T BE COMING. B&N NYC Linc Sq.
Jan 17, 2006: The Moth at the JCC featuring Andy Borowitz and Myla Goldberg. NYC $30.
Jan 17, 2006: Sherry Halperin reads from RESCUE ME, HE'S WEARING A MOSOSE HAT . Borders NYC.
Jan 20, 2006: SchmoozeDance 2006 Film Festival. Park City UTAH. Temple Har Shalom
Jan 22, 2006: Lecture on SOSUA. An Island Refuge. NCJW, NYC.
Jan 22-25, 2006: Annual Conferece of the NAJC, Natnl Association of Jewish Chaplains, NY. See Najc.org

Feb 01, 2006: Dara Horn Reads from THE WORLD TO COME. NYC UWS B+N 7PM
Feb 06, 2006: Ayelet Waldman Reads from LOVE AND OTHER IMPOSSIBLE PURSUITS. NYC UWS B+N 7PM
Feb 07, 2006: Yair Lapid speaks and screens WAR ROOM, JCC UWS NYC 8 PM
Feb 08, 2006: Israel Non Stop screens JOY by Julie Shies, JCC UWS NYC 8 PM
Feb 08, 2006: Kenji Yoshino Reads from COVERING. NYC Chelsea B+N 7PM
Feb 09, 2006: Yiftacjh Klein stars in Cameri's High Noon, JCC UWS NYC 8 PM
Feb 10, 2006: Yair Lapid dinner at Israel Non-Stop, JCC UWS NYC 7 PM
Feb 11, 2006: Ehud Banai in concert at Israel Non-Stop, JCC UWS NYC 8 PM
Feb 12, 2006: Israel Non-Stop featuring Chumus taste-off; photography; music; fashion; etc, JCC UWS NYC 8 PM
Feb 18, 2006: Robin Gorman Newman Reads from HOW TO MARRY A MENSCH. NYC Bayside B+N 1PM
Feb 19, 2006: Yeshiva University SOY Seforim Sale in NYC, which sells over $1 million in Jewish books over 2 weeks wraps up with a community wide study session for men and for women featuring Rabbis Moshe Tendler, Michael rosensweig, Kenneth Brander and Prof Smadar Rosensweig. 9:30 AM
Feb 21, 2006: T Cooper Reads from LIPSHITZ SIX, OR TWO ANGRY BLONDES. NYC Astor Place B+N 7:30PM
Feb 21, 2006: Anthony Rapp Reads from WITHOUT YOU: A MEMOIR... NYC Chelsea B+N 7PM
Feb 21, 2006: Jewish Mysticism and West Coast Kabbalah. A lecture at UCLA by Professor Rachel Elior of Hebrew Univ. 314 Royce Hall 7:30 PM
Feb 24, 2006: Comic-Con in NYC. Javits Center
Feb 24-25, 2006: Chief Canter Helfgot in New Moon Prayers for Adar at Park East NYC

Mar 03, 2006: Shabbat Across America. 888-shabbat or www.njop.Org
Mar 05, 2006: UCLA lecture on Di Razza Ebraica. Jewish Intellectuals, Fascism, and Anti-Semitism in 20th Century Italy. Featuring Guri Schwarz (University of Pisa), Michele Sarfatti (CDEC Ebriaca), S. Sullam (Columbia), and others. UCLA 1 PM
Mar 06, 2006: All day conference on Conversion and Reversion featuring teachers from YU, Hebrew U, Touro, BC, Emroy, BGU, NYU, and more. Center for Jewish History NYC
Mar 07, 2006: ALLEGRA GOODMAN reads from INTUITION, B&N UWS NYC 7 PM
Mar 08, 2006: JCC of Manhattan opens exhibit on Jewish Woman's Lens. 7 PM NYC
Mar 13, 2006: MACUALAY CULKIN, former husband of Natalie Portman, reads from JUNIOR, B&N Union Sq NYC 7 PM
Mar 14, 2006: Purim starts at sundown.
Mar 16, 2006: GERSHOM GORENBERG reads from THE ACCIDENTAL EMPIRE, NYC Cong B'nai Jeshurun in Nyc. 7 PM
Mar 20, 2006: JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER reads from EXTREMELY LOUD... , B&N Union Sq NYC 7 PM
Mar 22, 2006: RABBI JOSEPH TELUSHKIN reads from A CODE OF JEWISH ETHICS, B&N UWS NYC 7 PM
Mar 27, 2006: ARTHUR KURZWEIL AND DALE L. MINTZ read from the HADASSAH JEWISH FAMILY BOOK OF HEALTH AND WELLNESS, B&N UWS NYC 7 PM
Mar 28, 2006: Israeli elections. Watch the results live, NIF Office in NYC 7PM
Mar 28, 2006: ABIGAIL POGREBIN speaks on STARS OF DAVID. JTS, NYC 6 PM

Apr 09, 2006: The Sixth Annual Dowtown Seder, live on XM Radio, NYC $135.

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DECEMBER 2005

THE COMMENTATOR'S BIBLE
The JPS Miqra'ot Gedolot: Exodus
Michael Carasik, Editor (The University of Pennsylvania)
WINTER 2005, JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY
Compiled by Michael Carasik, a teacher of Bible at the University of Pennsylvania, Miqra'ot Gedolot (or "large format bible") is now available in an understandable English edition. First published 500 years ago (the second edition was published in 1525 by Rabbi Yakov ben Hayyim) as the "Rabbinic Bible," the biblical commentaries known as the Miqra'ot Gedolot have inspired and educated generations of Hebrew readers. The format is a Hebrew text from the bible in the middle of the page. Surrounding this Hebrew text is a Targum, or translation(s) in English, and medieval commentaries from Rashi (RAbbi SHlomo ben Yitzhak, 1040-1105, Northern France), Rashbam (RAbbi SHmuel Ben Meir, 1085-1174, grandson of Rashi, Northern France) , Ibn Ezra (Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra, 1089-c1164, Muslim Spain/Italy/France/England), Nachmanides / Ramban (RAbbi Moshe Ben Nahman, 1195-c1260, Spain/Israel) in new more understandable English translations. Other commentators are included when appropriate, including "masorah", Bekhor Shor (12th Century France), Rabbi David Kimhi (RaDaK, c1160-c1235, Provence), Hizkuni, Gersonides/Ralbag, Abarbanel (15th Century Inquisition/Spain/Portugal, Italy), and Sforno (Italy, 1470-1550). The biblical passage is translated using BOTH the 1917 and 1985 JPS English translations, since great scholars wrote them in each period, and nuggets of insight can be derived from each one, even if they are not parallel. The beauty of reading medieval commentaries on Exodus is that they find connections and contradictions that lay readers in English may miss from the more modern bibles. Also, since the commentators lived at different times in different circumstances, the reader can see how the biblical passage spoke to various scholars over time. It also is more raw than the Hertz bibles (U.K. Chief Rabbi J. H. Hertz), that were used in many synagogues, and written to gloss over "primitive" Hebrew practices. The editor recommend that you follow one particular commentator through an entire story, compare different commentators, compare the two differing English translations and try to understand why they differ, read an entire chapter in the Old JPS translatoin and then in the New JPS translation and see what insights you can find; and ponder whether the questions you ask on the text are the same questions that Abarbanel and others felt were the glaring issue. Go and Learn.
With this edition, the voices of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Nahmanides, Rashbam, and other medieval commentators come alive once more, speaking in a contemporary English translation annotated and explicated for lay readers. Each page of The Commentators' Bible contains several Hebrew verses from the book of Exodus, surrounded by both the 1917 and 1985 JPS translations and new English translations of the major commentators. This large-format volume is beautifully designed for ease of navigation among the many elements on each page, including explanatory notes and selected additional comments from the works of Bekhor Shor, Hizkuni, Abarbanel, Sforno, Gersonides, and others. Click the book cover above to read more.
View sample page: http://www.jewishpub.org/pdf/pg%203%20from%20comm%20bible.pdf




The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate
Edited by Ruth Fredman Cernea
DECEMBER 2005, University of Chicago Press
Forget the bibles, zohar, kabbalah books.. forget Ragen, Roth and Ozick... this is the most important book in the past few months and I have waited over 25 years for its release. I first became an addict of the Great Latke-Hamantash debates in the 1970's when I read about them in the now defunct Israel Magazine (or was it a 1970s issue of Moment). This is the sort of event that makes you want to become a Hillel Program Director.
In 1946, a debate was started each November at the University of Chicago as a way to foster a sense of community among Jewish students and faculty members. The debates were farces; they attracted the top Jewish professors and students, Nobel laureates, university presidents, and notable scholars together to debate whether the potato pancake or the triangular Purim pastry is in fact the worthier food. They applied their fields of study to these symbolic Jewish foods. Professor Marvin Mirsky observed the roundness of the latke which clearly suggested Plato's circle of perfection and its flatness emphasized Plato's ultimate truth. Professor Lawrence Sherman reminded his audience that in Romeo and Juliet, "Juliet was a Capulatke, Romeo a Hamantashague." In poetry, essays, jokes, and revisionist histories, members of elite American academies attack the latke-versus-hamantash question with intellectual panache and an unerring sense of humor, if not chutzpah.
The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate is the first collection of the best of these performances, from Martha Nussbaum's paean to both foods-in the style of Hecuba's Lament-to Nobel laureate Leon Lederman's proclamation on the union of the celebrated dyad. The latke and the hamantash are here revealed as playing a critical role in everything from Chinese history to the Renaissance, the works of Jane Austen to constitutional law. One law professor stunned the audience by breaking the rules, and defending the knish. One professor showed that Jewish foods influenced the roots of rock and roll, including "Good challeh, miss molly" and "Borsht Gudonov"; while another two teachers focused on Darwin and the evolution of bagels, latkes, and hamantaschen. During one satirical symposium (1961), the Historian Bernard Weisberger discussed the latke in the context of original frontier (frying pan) American history, freedom, and manifest destiny (the latke expands in the oil). The late Allan Bloom explored the foundation of the foods in manna, and expounded on the Jewish Canon, Hegel, Marx, (latke as Freudan round male thesis, hamantasch as female triad antithesis). Professor of Medicine, Lawrence Sherman, showed the Shakespeare was actually a baker, and Juliet's moon was actually "mohn." Was 'Love and Latkes' the unpuboished sequel to 'Pride and Prejudice'? Eminent philosopher and humorist Ted Cohen, who has moderated many debates, supplies a wry foreword, and anthropologist Ruth Fredman Cernea provides a larger context with her overview of the Jewish holidays, recipes, and a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew terms, making the book accessible even to the uninitiated. The University of Chicago may have split the atom in 1942, but it's still working on the equally significant issue of the latke versus the hamantash. Click the book cover above to read more.





Megillat Esther
(Paperback) by J. T. Waldman
Jewish Publication Society of America (January 15, 2006)
Megillat Esther is commonly referred to as the Book of Esther: but there is nothing common about JT Waldman's interpretation of this Biblical story. In what may be the world's first religious, scholarly comic book, Waldman tells the epic tale of exile and redemption in graphic form. When Esther, a Jewish woman, is made Queen of Persia she must keep her identity hidden, all the while maneuvering to save her people from annihilation. This is a story familiar to many Jews who have heard it recounted every year on the holiday of Purim. But readers of all backgrounds will be entranced by what artist Waldman depicts in his interpretation of the text. At once traditional and groundbreaking Megillat Esther will challenge secular assumptions about the Bible. Each page of Megillat Esther is a visual tour de force and features the Hebrew text with original English translation, as well as opulent drawings depicting the story of the Persian Queen. Traditional interpretations of the story are woven throughout the panels. Megillat Esther presents the reader with a topsy-turvey world in which fortunes reverse and nothing is what it seems. This vibrant, edgy retelling of a classic Biblical tale is sure to amaze and intrigue scholars and laypeople of all religions and comic book lovers alike.
VISIT www.megillatEsther.com to see the artwork






Striking Back
The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and
Israel's Deadly Response
by Aaron J. Klein
DECEMBER 2005, Random House
Spielberg's film, MUNICH, will be released in December 2005. If you want the real story, buy this book and consume it. This is the full account, based on access to key players who have never before spoken, of the Munich Massacre and the Israeli response-a lethal, top secret, 30 year long antiterrorism campaign to track down the killers. In 1972, Black September murdered 11 Israeli athletes. Nine hundred million people watched the crisis unfold on television. Back in Israel, Prime Minister Golda Meir vowed to track down those responsible and, in Menachem Begin's words, "run these criminals and murderers off the face of the earth." A secret Mossad unit, code named CAESAREA, was mobilized, a list of targets was drawn up. Thus began the Israeli response-a mission that unfolded over decades. The Mossad has never spoken about this operation. No one has known the real story. Until now. Aaron J. Klein is Time magazine's Military and Intelligence Affairs correspondent in the Jerusalem Bureau. He was the recipient of 2002 Henry Luce Award and has been a consultant for CNN. Klein was the military/security correspondent and analyst for Hadashot and Al-Hamishmar, two of Israel's leading national newspapers. He is a contributor to Malam, the journal for former IDF Intelligence, Mossad and Internal Security Agency officers. He teaches at Hebrew University and is a Captain in the IDF's Intelligence. Klein shows that the Israeli response to Munich was not simply about revenge, as is popularly believed. By illuminating the tactical and strategic purposes of the Israeli operation, Striking Back allows us to draw profoundly relevant lessons from one of the most important counterterrorism campaigns in history. Click the book cover above to read more.





Awakening to Kabbalah
The Guiding Light of Spiritual Fulfillment
by Rav Michael Laitman
December 2005, Jewish Lights
Publishers Weekly wrote: By the author's own admission, this book may seem "dry, schematic... unemotional," more instruction manual than heart-moving guide. Laitman comes from a very specific school of thought regarding Kabbalah, originating from a belief that his mentor, Baruch Ashlag, carried a reincarnated soul that originated with the biblical patriarchs, passed to the rabbi known as the Ari and finally to Ashlag's father, Baal HaSulam. Kabbalah, as Laitman sees it, requires one to "rise to the spiritual world while living in this world," but this "can only be achieved through the right study, with the real books" written by rabbis in this particular lineage. Unfortunately, his efforts to make Baal HaSulam relevant to our current times result in thin and sometimes contradictory arguments. In discussing the importance of the numbers seven and 70, for example, he refers to 70 nations in the world today (there are nearly 200) and an average life span of 70 years, which is too low both in fact and for his schema of the Messiah's return to make mathematical sense. More revealing of the exclusive, myopic nature of interpretation than of the world of Kabbalah, this guide will serve few readers other the followers of Baal HaSulam . Click the book cover above to read more.









ALIYA
Three Generations of American-Jewish Immigration to Israel
by Liel Leibovitz (Columbia J School)
DECEMBER 2005. St Martin's Press
As a 10-year-old Israeli, Leibovitz thought his American cousins had it all: freedom, prosperity and McDonald's. So he was shocked to learn that his cousins were abandoning their New Jersey "oasis" for the blood-soaked land of Israel. The question of why anyone would make such a move haunted his journey to adulthood, and now he attempts to explain this phenomenon, known in Hebrew as aliya, of diaspora Jews leaving comfortable homes to immigrate to Israel. He concludes that the answer "simply isn't available to the cognitive faculties. Why would American Jews-not just materially successful but, perhaps unique among the Jewish diaspora, truly socially accepted-choose to leave material comfort and safety in the United States for uncertainty and violence in Israel? This is a fundamental question for American Jewry, and one that Liel Leibovitz answers with resounding success in Aliya. Leibovitz focuses on three sets of immigrants, from Israel's chaotic birth through its equally turbulent present. One couple came to Palestine before Israel was even created, and were present through its violent birth. One man was involved in the Yom Kippur War. And one family of four made aliya in 2001, during the most recent unsettled phase of Israel+s existence. Aliya is the powerful story of the relationship of American Jews to Israel, both those who make the journey and those who stay behind. Click the book cover above to read more.





THE EMPTY MEN
The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel
by Gregory Mobley
DECEMBER 2005, Doubleday
Gregory Mobley (a Baptist Minister, and past teacher at Harvard, Union Theo and currently at Andover Newton Theo) brings a highly original eye to the familiar stories found in Judges, which depicts Israel's frontier era, and the First and Second Books of Samuel, which portray the ragged and violent emergence of kingship in Judah and Israel. From Ehud's mission into an inaccessible Moabite palace to the triumph of Gideon and his elite squadron against a Midianite swarm, from the gangland epic of the warlord Abimelech's rise and fall to the narrative of Samson, Israel's great outlaw-hero, Mobley rescues these stories from their theologically minded biblical editors and traditional interpreters. Mobley draws upon Semitic and European heroic traditions about warriors and wild men, and upon Celtic, Anglo-American, and African-American balladry about borderers and outlaws, to dig out the heroic themes submerged in biblical adventure stories. THE EMPTY MEN describes the process by which adventure stories-replete with foolish love, warfare, assassinations, ritual slaughter, and grim masculine codes-were transformed into sermons and history lessons. Mobley also offers reflections on the Iron Age theology of these narratives, with their emphasis on poetic justice, and on the mythic dimensions of landscape in these stories. Mobley is sure to attract a lot of attention in the scholarly community for his raw portrayals of biblical heroes, for his unblinking attention to the martial codes and the warrior subculture of ancient Israel, and for his bittersweet reflections on the theological and ethical significance of this corpus of adventure stories which are under the surface-but close to the bedrock-of the many mansions that Judaism and Christianity have built in subsequent centuries on these foundational texts Click the book cover above to read more.





A FIRE IN THEIR HEARTS
Yiddish Socialists in New York
by Tony Michels (Wisconsin)
DECEMBER 2005, Doubleday
Did infighting and rising economic incomes of Jewish immigrants put the nail in the coffin of Jewish socialism?
Nothing is harder to envision today than the burning passion for knowledge, self-improvement, and social justice that once united working-class immigrants and fiery intellectuals under the banner of socialism. A Fire in Their Hearts is an illuminating and exceptionally well-researched account of the early decades of the Jewish left, the immigrant cauldron in New York, and secular Yiddish culture in America. Michels's book has much to tell us about this still fascinating era. The Yiddish socialist movement shaped Jewish communities across the United States well into the twentieth century and left an important political legacy that extends to the rise of neoconservatism. A story of hopeful successes and bitter disappointments, A Fire in Their Hearts brings to vivid life this formative period for American Jews and the American left. Click the book cover above to read more.





The Reasons I Won't Be Coming
by Elliot Perlman
DECEMBER 2005
The nine smart, thoughtful stories in this collection explore the complex worlds of lovers, poets, lawyers, immigrants, students, and murderers. They tell of corporate betrayals and lost opportunities, and the hopes, fears, and vagaries of desire. Witty, vulnerable, and honest, they display the same preoccupations that made Perlman's novel, Seven Types of Ambiguity, one of the most notable literary publications of 2004. "A Tale in Two Cities," the final novella charting the limits of Jewish emigré resilience, is Perlman in full: mystery, tight dialogue, layers of irony. At his best, Perlman makes false reasoning testify eloquently Click the book cover above to read more.





The Jazz singer
(Wisconsin/Warner Bros. screenplay series)
by Robert L. Carringer (Editor),
Alfred Abraham Cohn and Samson Raphaelson
DECEMBER 2005
Script for the Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson.. The first talkee. Click the book cover above to read more.





The Brooklyn Follies
by Paul Auster
DECEMBER 2005, Henry Holt
Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life insurance salesman seeks only solitude and anonymity. Then Nathan finds his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working in a local bookstore-a far cry from the brilliant academic career he'd begun when Nathan saw him last. Tom's boss is the charismatic Harry Brightman, whom fate has also brought to the "ancient kingdom of Brooklyn, New York." Through Tom and Harry, Nathan's world gradually broadens to include a new set of acquaintances-not to mention a stray relative or two-and leads him to a reckoning with his past. Among the many twists in the delicious plot are a scam involving a forgery of the first page of The Scarlet Letter, a disturbing revelation that takes place in a sperm bank, and an impossible, utopian dream of a rural refuge. Meanwhile, the wry and acerbic Nathan has undertaken something he calls The Book of Human Folly, in which he proposes "to set down in the simplest, clearest language possible an account of every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I had committed during my long and checkered career as a man." But life takes over instead, and Nathan's despair is swept away as he finds himself more and more implicated in the joys and sorrows of others. Click the book cover above to read more.





How to Read the Bible
Translating the Culuture of the Bible
by Marc Zvi Brettler
DECEMBER 2005, JPS Jewish Publication Society
In his new book, master Bible scholar and teacher Marc Brettler argues that today's contemporary readers can only understand the ancient Hebrew Scripture by knowing more about the culture that produced it. And so Brettler unpacks the literary conventions, ideological assumptions, and historical conditions that inform the biblical text and demonstrates how modern critical scholarship and archaeological discoveries shed light on this fascinating and complex literature. Brettler surveys representative biblical texts from different genres to illustrate how modern scholars have taught us to "read" these texts. Using the "historical-critical method" long popular in academia, he guides us in reading the Bible as it was read in the biblical period, independent of later religious norms and interpretive traditions. Understanding the Bible this way lets us appreciate it as an interesting text that speaks in multiple voices on profound issues. This book is the first "Jewishly sensitive" introduction to the historical-critical method. Unlike other introductory texts, the Bible that this book speaks about is the Jewish one -- with the three-part TaNaKH arrangement, the sequence of books found in modern printed Hebrew editions, and the chapter and verse enumerations used in most modern Jewish versions of the Bible. In an afterword, the author discusses how the historical-critical method can help contemporary Jews relate to the Bible as a religious text in a more meaningful way. Click the book cover above to read more.





God's Mountain
The Temple Mount in Time, Place, and Memory
by Yaron Z. Eliav
DECEMBER 2005, John Hopkins Press
From Publishers Weekly: Previous works on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, such as Gershom Gorenberg's The End of Days, have mostly been journalistic and nationalistic explorations of the claims and counterclaims to this disputed area. By contrast, Eliav, a faculty member in the University of Michigan's Department of Near Eastern Studies, has written an academic treatise based on extensive research during the last 12 years. Beginning with his doctoral dissertation at Hebrew University, he expanded his investigation at libraries in Princeton, Oxford and New York. Eliav uses his impressive knowledge of Talmud, the Bible, archeology, languages, rabbinic texts, the classics and patristic literature to debunk the notion that the Temple Mount was a sacred space for ancient Jews and Christians. According to him, it did not achieve this status until long after the Second Temple was destroyed. In a dazzling display of erudition, he supports his thesis by providing new readings of familiar sources and by citing many little-known references. Defying conventional wisdom, Eliav also claims that there were several Temple Mounts. Unfortunately, most nonspecialists will have neither the patience nor the knowledge to follow his closely reasoned argument, since the book is densely written in often impenetrable language. . Click the book cover above to read more.







SIEGFRIED SASSOON
A LIFE
by MAX EGREMONT
December 2005, FS&G.
Siegfried Sassoon was born in 1886 in Kent, and began writing verses as a boy. While a brave young officer, he confronted the terrible realities of the First World War on the battlefield, in verse, and, finally, by announcing his opposition to the war in 1917, showing that physical courage could exist alongside humanity and sensibility. In 1918, Sassoon found himself one of the most famous young writers of the time, a mentor to Wilfred Owen, and admired by Winston Churchill and T.E. Lawrence. He joined the Labour Party, became literary editor of the socialist Daily Herald, and began close friendships with Thomas Hardy and E.M. Forster, while trying to adapt his poetry to peacetime. Then Sassoon fell in love with the artistocratic aesthete Stephen Tennant, who led him into his group of Bright Young Things who inspired the early novels of Evelyn Waugh. At the demise of his passionate and fraught relationship with Tennant, Sassoon suddenly married the beautiful Hester Gatty in 1933 and retreated to a quiet country life until their eventual estrangement and Sassoon's subsequent conversion to Catholicism. Click to read more.







The Natural History of the Bible
An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew Scriptures
By Daniel Hillel, Univ Mass Professor Emeritus
Winter 2006, Columbia University Press
From Publishers Weekly: That environmental factors affect our daily lives is disputed by no one. But can environment, climate and topology play a part in the development of a religious community? Hillel, professor emeritus of environmental studies at the University of Massachusetts and senior research scientist at Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems Research, says yes. He comes to the subject immersed in the lore of ancient Israel, from his grandfather's instruction to his own years living in modern Israel. He sees the Jewish belief system as an amalgam of ideas emerging from an interplay of human beings with both the land and its peoples, "absorb[ing] all the cultural strands... from all the ecological domains of the ancient Near East... and assimilat[ing] them into their own culture." He divides sacred history into seven "domains," dispensations based not on some theological construct but rather on the terrain in which the Israelites lived. What emerges is a largely naturalistic explanation of Israel's beliefs and laws, with a strong emphasis on the impact of culture and environment on the evolving Jewish religion. Hillel recounts, in a richly detailed and beautifully told manner, the origins of the Hebrew Bible in a new and satisfying way. . Click the book cover above to read more.







Two Thousand Years of Jewish Life in Morocco
by Haim Zafrani
DECEMBER 2005, Ktav
A collection of notes, observations and statistics, some of them enlightening, a few fascinating, but all presented as a mélange .... Zafrani assumes a familiarity with his subject matter that renders much of the book inaccessible to readers with only a passing familiarity with Moroccan Jews.... Click the book cover above to read more.







You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again
The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny
by Suzanne Hansen
DECEMBER 2005, CROWN
From Publishers Weekly: Misadventures in nannyhood" is how Hansen, an Oregon teen who'd trained at the Northwest Nannies Institute, characterizes her amusing account of several years as live-in drudge to the stars. Readers of James B. Stewart's DisneyWar are already acquainted with her first employer, Michael Ovitz, then still the superagent commander of the CAA talent agency, and parent, with his wife, of three children. Hansen isn't a flippant writer; she doesn't try to score easy shots; and she cites her own inexperience and shyness, but it becomes increasingly clear through her account (backed up by the diary she kept) that the portraits drawn by other writers-of a cold, shrewd, controlling man-are accurate. Still, there was glamour, which at first made up for the grueling 24/7 workload and a curious chintziness. However, Hansen lasted just over six months. She later found work with the charming Debra Winger and left only because it became clear that the doting Winger didn't really need a full-time nanny. Her next and last nanny job was with the wonderful and thoughtful Rhea Perlman and Danny DeVito and their three kids. Hardly backstabbing, this entertaining book possesses a sincerity other nannying tomes lack.. Click the book cover above to read more.





Gotz and Meyer
by David Albahari, Ellen Elias-Bursac (Translator)
DECEMBER 2005, Harcourt
From Booklist "What would I have done?" is a fundamental question in Holocaust literature. Translated from the Serbian, this stirring novel draws on a wealth of archival materials, maps, and Nazi bureaucratic records about the concentration camp at the Belgrade Fairgrounds, from where, over five months in 1942, 5,000 Jews were loaded into a truck and gassed. A Serbian Jewish college professor looks back now and obsessively imagines himself as perpetrator, victim, and bystander. Who were the two drivers who connected the exhaust pipe each time so that the fumes killed the passengers? How did it become just a routine job? Who buried the heaped corpses? What if one kid tried to resist? How could Belgrade citizens not know? There are no chapters or even paragraphs, but the spacious text is simple and eloquent, and readers will be drawn into the professor's obsessive first-person narrative in which the horror is in the facts of bureaucratic efficiency and the unimaginable evil in ordinary life. Click the book cover above to read more.





The Warsaw Uprising of 1944
by Wlodzimierz Borodziej, Barbara Harshav
Wisconsin. December 2005.
The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 dramatically tells the largely unknown story of the Warsaw resistance movement during World War II. Desperate to free themselves from German military oppression but also hoping to show the advancing Soviets that they could not impose easy rule upon the citizens of Warsaw, the Poles launched an almost hopeless attack against the Germans on August 1, 1944. Wlodzimierz Borodziej presents an evenhanded account of what is commonly considered the darkest chapter in Polish history during World War II. In only sixty-three days, the Germans razed Warsaw to the ground and 200,000 people, mostly civilians, lost their lives. The result-a heroic and historically pivotal turning point-meant that the Poles would lose both their capital and an entire generation. This concise account of the trauma-little known to English-speaking readers-will appeal to anyone interested in the history of World War II in general and is a must-read for students of Polish history in particular. Wlodzimierz Borodziej is professor of history at Warsaw University and the author of a number of books dealing with German-Polish topics. The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 is his first book available in English. Click to read more.




Telling the Little Secrets
American Jewish Writing since the 1980s
by Janet Handler Burstein
Wisconsin. December 2005.
Janet Burstein argues that American Jewish writers since the 1980s have created a significant literature by wrestling with the troubled legacy of trauma, loss, and exile. Their ranks include Cynthia Ozick, Todd Gitlin, Art Spiegelman, Pearl Abraham, Aryeh Lev Stollman, Jonathan Rosen, and Gerda Lerner. Whether confronting the massive losses of the Holocaust, the sense of "home" in exile, or the continuing power of Jewish memory, these Jewish writers search for understanding within "the little secrets" of their dark, complicated, and richly furnished past. Janet Handler Burstein is professor of English at Drew University and chair of the Modern Literature section of the Association for Jewish Studies. She is the author of Writing Mothers, Writing Daughters: Tracing the Maternal in Stories by American Jewish Women. Click to read more.




The Zohar : Volume 3
Pritzker Edition Volume 3(Zohar Pritzker Edition)
by Daniel C. Matt (Translator)
Stanford University Press, December 26, 2005
The first two volumes sold over 15,000 copies. This is the third volume of a planned 15 volume set. This third volume of "The Zohar: Pritzker Edition" completes the "Zohar"'s commentary on the book of Genesis. Here we find spiritual explorations of numerous biblical narratives, including Jacob's wrestling with the angel, Joseph's kidnapping by his brothers, his near seduction by Potiphar's wife, his interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams, and his reunion with his brothers and father. Throughout, the "Zohar" probes the biblical text and seeks deeper meaning-for example, the divine intention behind Joseph's disappearance, or the profound significance of human sexuality. Divine and human realities intertwine, affecting one another. Toward the end of Genesis, the Bible states: "Jacob's days drew near to die"-an idiomatic expression that the "Zohar" insists on reading hyperliterally. Each human being is challenged to live his days virtuously. If he does, those days themselves are woven into a garment of splendor; at death, they "draw near," enveloping him, escorting him to the beyond. "Sefer ha-Zohar" (The Book of Radiance) has amazed and overwhelmed readers ever since it emerged mysteriously in medieval Spain toward the end of the thirteenth century. Written in a unique Aramaic, this masterpiece of Kabbalah exceeds the dimensions of a normal book; it is virtually a body of literature, comprising over twenty discrete sections. The bulk of the "Zohar" consists of a running commentary on the Torah, from Genesis through Deuteronomy. Click the book cover above to read more.













MOSES LEVY OF FLORIDA
JEWISH UTOPIAN AND ANTEBELLUM REFORMER
BY C S MONACO
DECEMBER 2005, LSU PRESS
It is only recently that the importance of Moses Elias Levy (1782-1854) as a Jewish social activist has come to be appreciated. C. S. Monaco's discovery of Levy's Plan for the Abolition of Slavery in the late 1990s began the transformation of historians' understanding of this man's life and work. Now, in the first full-scale biography of Levy, Monaco completes the picture of one of the antebellum South's most influential and interesting Jewish citizens. Long known only as the father of David L. Yulee, the first Jew elected to the U.S. Senate, Levy appears here in all his many, sometimes contradictory roles: abolitionist and slave owner, utopian colonizer and former arms-dealer, religious reformer and biblical conservative. Each aspect of Levy's life and character comes into sharp relief as Monaco follows him from his affluent upbringing in a Sephardic Jewish household in Morocco-where his father was a courtier to the sultan-through his career as a successful merchant shipper, to his radical reform activities in Florida. With his many residences abroad-in Morocco, Gibraltar, Danish Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Curacao, England-Levy virtually epitomized the Atlantic world, and Monaco escorts readers from country to country, considering Levy's accomplishments in each. The sole Jewish voice during the British abolitionist crusade... Click the book cover above to read more.



Rescue Me, He's Wearing a Moose Hat
And 40 Other Dates After 50
by Sherry Halperin
Seal Press (December 10, 2005)
With some trepidation, author Sherry Halperin reentered the dating scene in 1994 at age 51, several months after her husband of 26 years passed away. At first she thinks the dating game isn't for her, until she gets set up by a friend and begins to feel some long-lost emotions. Halperin goes on 40 dates, which she finds through web sites like match.com, professional services that cost up to $5000, blind dates, singles parties, and more. Each chapter is a short vignette - often funny and poignant, sometimes sad, and always candid - with a humorous caricature of the featured man. Though most of her dates can be considered calamities, with partners such as Moose Hat, Turkey Neck, and Rich Old Man, she also dates several younger "studmuffins," gets hit on by a woman, and even falls in love again. Rescue Me hits a nerve by shelling out the real deal on what being single again truly means. As Halperin continually revises her Perfect Man list, she is transformed from idealist to realist, eventually coming to terms with being single. Meanwhile, she's still tackling her inexhaustible dating options with gusto, humor, and an energy that outpaces any 20-year-old dating enthusiast. Among her dates are a lot of stock Jewish men, including a tax specialist who is a bagel intellectual, and an OB-GYN. She found love more at Starbucks than she did on Jdate.com Click to read more.






HAGGADAH AND HISTORY
Reprinted
A Panorama in Facsimile of Five Centuries of the Printed Haggadah from the Collections of Harvard University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
by YOSEF HAYIM YERUSHALMI
Jewish Publication Society of America (January 2006)
Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published in 1975, Haggadah & History is much more than a history of the Passover story. It is also a mirror of the last five centuries in Jewish history as reflected in the haggadah itself. In an updated preface to the book, Yerushalmi recounts the story of the discovery of the Sarajevo Haggadah, which he says is "arguably the most renowned illuminated haggadah manuscript from the Middle Ages to have survived." Two hundred facsimile plates reproduce representative pages from rare printed haggadot in two of the world's outstanding Judaica collections: the libraries of Harvard University and The Jewish Theological Seminary. This visual history is complemented by Professor Yerushalmi's fascinating historical introduction and richly detailed place descriptions. The result is a rare blend of scholarship and art.






JANUARY 2006


The World to Come
A novel
by Dara Horn
January 2006, WW Norton
In 2005, a million-dollar painting, a sketch for "Over Vitebsk" by Marc Chagall, is stolen from a museum - during a singles' cocktail hour. The unlikely thief is Benjamin Ziskind, a lonely former child-prodigy who writes questions for quiz shows, and who believes the painting belongs to his family. Ben tries to evade the police while he seeks out the truth of how the painting got to the museum - whether the "original" is really a forgery - and whether his twin sister, an artist, can create a successful forgery to take its place. As the story unfolds - with the delicacy and complexity of origami - we are brought back to the 1920s in Soviet Russia, where Marc Chagall taught art to orphaned Jewish boys. There, Chagall befriended the great Yiddish novelist known by the pseudonym "Der Nister," the Hidden One. And there the story of the painting begins, carrying with it not only a hidden fable by the Hidden One, but also the story of the Ziskind family - from Russia to New Jersey and Vietnam. Dara Horn interweaves mystery, romance, folklore, theology, history, and scripture into a spellbinding modern tale. She brings us on a breathtaking collision course of past, present, and future - revealing both the ordinariness and the beauty of "the world to come." Nestling stories within stories, this is a novel of remarkable clarity and deep inner meaning. Click the book cover above to read more.





Night (Oprah's Book Club version in Paperback)
by Elie Wiesel
January 2006, Hill and Wang
Less the $7
In Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust and the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers in this harrowing book, which probes life's essential riddles with the lucid anguish only great literature achieves. It marks the crucial first step in Wiesel's lifelong project to bear witness for those who died. Click the book cover above to read more.





THIS BOOK WILL NOT BE RELEASED IN THE USA UNTIL FALL 2006.
BUT... IF YOU ARE A BOOK - A - PHILE
YOU CAN GET THE BOOK FROM THIS LONDON BOOKSELLER
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
John Boyne
January 2006, David Fickling
This work was set in Berlin, 1942. When nine year old Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people he can see in the distance. But, Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than what meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different to his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences.
OK OK spoiler.. spoiler... the job that the father takes is.. he is Commander of Auschwitz
Click to read more.






American Vertigo
Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville
by Bernard-Henri Levy
January 2006, Random House
One of France's most famous Jewish person and philsopher visits America in the footseps of Tocqueville. What does it mean to be an American, and what can America be today? To answer these questions, celebrated philosopher and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy spent a year traveling throughout the country in the footsteps of another great Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in America remains the most influential book ever written about our country. The result is American Vertigo, a fascinating, wholly fresh look at a country we sometimes only think we know. From Rikers Island to Chicago mega-churches, from Muslim communities in Detroit to an Amish enclave in Iowa, Lévy investigates issues at the heart of our democracy: the special nature of American patriotism, the coexistence of freedom and religion (including the religion of baseball), the prison system, the "return of ideology" and the health of our political institutions, and much more. He revisits and updates Tocqueville's most important beliefs, such as the dangers posed by "the tyranny of the majority," explores what Europe and America have to learn from each other, and interprets what he sees with a novelist's eye and a philosopher's depth. Through powerful interview-based portraits across the spectrum of the American people, from prison guards to clergymen, from Norman Mailer to Barack Obama, from Sharon Stone to Richard Holbrooke, Lévy fills his book with a tapestry of American voices-some wise, some shocking. Both the grandeur and the hellish dimensions of American life are unflinchingly explored. And big themes emerge throughout, from the crucial choices America faces today to the underlying reality that, unlike the "Old World," America remains the fulfillment of the world's desire to worship, earn, and live as one wishes-a place, despite all, where inclusion remains not just an ideal but an actual practice. At a time when Americans are anxious about how the world perceives them and, indeed, keen to make sense of themselves, a brilliant and sympathetic foreign observer has arrived to help us begin a new conversation about the meaning of America. Click the book cover above to read more.





A Writer at War
Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941-1945
by Vasily Grossman
January 2006, Pantheon
Edited and translated from the Russian by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova Knopf Canada is proud to present a masterpiece of the Second World War, never before published in English, from one of the great Russian writers of the 20th century - a vivid eyewitness account of the Eastern Front and "the ruthless truth of war." When the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, Vasily Grossman became a special correspondent for the Red Star, the Red Army's newspaper. A Writer at War - based on the notebooks in which Grossman gathered raw material for his articles - depicts the crushing conditions on the Eastern Front, and the lives and deaths of soldiers and civilians alike. It also includes some of the earliest reportage on the Holocaust. In the three years he spent on assignment, Grossman witnessed some of the most savage fighting of the war: the appalling defeats of the Red Army, the brutal street fighting in Stalingrad, the Battle of Kursk (the largest tank engagement in history), the defense of Moscow, the battles in Ukraine and much more. Historian Antony Beevor has taken Grossman's raw notebooks, and fashioned them into a narrative providing one of the most even-handed descriptions - at once unflinching and sensitive - we have ever had of what he called "the ruthless truth of war." Click to read more.






THE RABBI'S WIFE
THE REBBITZIN IN AMERICAN JEWISH LIFE
By SHULY RuBIN SCHWARTZ
January 2006, NYU PRESS
In 1973, Professor Schwartz, the daughter of a rabbi and rebbitzin, married a rabbi. It was the cusp of Jewish feminism. Marrying a rabbi, prior to the ordination of women, gave many women a congregation to teach and counsel and lead. Schwartz gives a much needed history of the role of these women in American Jewish culture and history, with special light on their roles in the period of The Great Depression.
Long the object of curiosity, admiration, and gossip, rabbis' wives have rarely been viewed seriously as American Jewish religious and communal leaders. We know a great deal about the important role played by rabbis in building American Jewish life in this country, but not much about the role that their wives played. The Rabbi's Wife redresses that imbalance by highlighting the unique contributions of rebbetzins to the development of American Jewry. Tracing the careers of rebbetzins from the beginning of the twentieth century until the present, Shuly Rubin Schwartz chronicles the evolution of the role from a few individual rabbis' wives who emerged as leaders to a cohort who worked together on behalf of American Judaism. The Rabbi's Wife reveals the ways these women succeeded in both building crucial leadership roles for themselves and becoming and important force in shaping Jewish life in America.
PW writes: Schwartz writes this book as a scholar-she is a professor and dean at Jewish Theological Seminary-but also as a rebbetzin herself; for nearly 25 years, she was a rabbi's wife. (Her husband died in 2004.) Here, she examines the complex rebbetzin role in America over the past century, demonstrating how marriage to a rabbi could sometimes provide women with an accepted ministerial identity when they could not be openly ordained themselves. Schwartz rescues important but heretofore unstudied rebbetzins from historical obscurity and assesses their contributions as educators, organizers, charitable fund-raisers, writers and public speakers. Overall, this well-written book successfully uses the rebbetzin as a window into larger issues: the evolution of Judaism in America, the opening of new possibilities for women in the late 20th century and the changing mores of the institution of marriage. Shuly Rubin Schwartz is the Irving Lehrman Research Assistant Professor of American Jewish History and Dean of the Albert A. List College of Jewish Studies at The Jewish Theological Seminary, New York.... Click the book cover above to read more.





The Bird is a Raven
by Benjamin Lebert
January 2006, Random House
From Publishers Weekly: Lebert became a literary sensation in Germany when his Crazy was published in 2000, when he was 18. This follow-up is, in a word, sophomoric. Two young men meet on a train from Munich to Berlin when they're given adjacent sleeping compartments. Henry asks Paul if he can tell him an involved tale; Paul, in his 20s and more experienced with Berlin and much else, relents out of a kind of restless need for distraction. As Henry drones on about a pathetic love triangle involving an anorexic named Christine, an obese rich kid named Jens and his own problems with his bowels, Paul's attention wanders, and we get bits of his own banal backstory. There's nothing remarkable about Henry's telling-in fact, it's aggressively boring-and Paul's own ruminations are run-of-the-mill dour. The tension fails to rise as Henry narrates the denouement of his problems with Christine and Jens, and a completely unmotivated surprise ending doesn't do anything to redeem the proceedings. This book misses even the club kid readers it's aiming for. Click the book cover above to read more.









The Bomb in the Basement
How Israel Went Nuclear and What That Means for the World
by Michael Karpin
January 2006, Simon and Schuster
Publishers Weekly wrote (Lydia Millet): Until recently there were five declared nuclear powers in the world: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China. Israel has never admitted to possessing a nuclear arsenal, pursuing a policy of "ambiguity" and refusing to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but for decades it has been recognized internationally as a nuclear state.Israeli journalist Karpin's groundbreaking new book, following in the wake of a documentary of the same name he made in 2001, offers an in-depth look at Israel's acquisition of nuclear arms technology and at the ideology and politics driving it. The stories of the men who played major roles in bringing the bomb to Israel-longtime prime minister David Ben-Gurion, scientist Ernst Bergmann, diplomat and intelligence operative Shalhevet Freier, future Nobel laureate Shimon Peres-are compelling and finely drawn. That Israel's technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons should have come through backdoor negotiations with France, rather than from its richer and more powerful American ally, will come as a surprise to many readers not familiar with this complex and intriguing history.Karpin's strength lies in tracing material detail rather than in speculation of a more abstract kind. He avoids exploring the philosophical and moral dimensions of Israel's deployment of nuclear weapons or of its policy of official denial, tending to invoke the horrors of the Holocaust as inspiration for defense of the Jewish state rather than to examine the specific reverberations of the official choice to embrace and hide weapons of mass destruction. The irony that Israel-a state created with a very special mission as a utopian refuge for Jews escaping persecution and genocide-has chosen to base its security on a weapons system historically used exclusively for the mass killing of civilians is barely examined.This is hardly surprising, since such a discussion could amply fill a second volume; nonetheless, the author's conclusion that achieving the nuclear option, though possibly a "great mistake," did have a "certain justification," namely the threat of the destruction of Israel by neighboring Arabs, is conceptually underwhelming. Still, for all those interested in understanding how Israel's idealistic origins dovetail with its hawkish position in the game of nuclear deterrence and fraught relationship with other countries in the Middle East, this well-researched study is a must-read.
Click the book cover above to read more.









The Skills to Pay the Bills
The Story of the Beastie Boys
by Alan Light
JANUARY 2006
In 1987, three white Jewish boys from New York City were the most fascinating phenomenon in the burgeoning rap music scene. No, really. The Beastie Boys, barely out of their teens, had just released Licensed to Ill, which quickly became the first hip-hop album to reach number one on the charts. Pairing vulgar and hilarious lyrics with heavy-metal-derived musical backing and a punk DIY attitude, the Beasties-MCA (Adam Yauch), King Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz), and Mike D (Michael Diamond)-changed the face of rap forever by bringing it into the mainstream. In the years that followed, they would change it again and again-musically, culturally, and politically. To create The Skills to Pay the Bills, Alan Light spent years taping conversations with the group, their friends, roommates, producers, engineers, collaborators, and other artists from Madonna to Chuck D. Here, as told from the inside, is the fascinating tale of three rump-shaking, innovative rappers whose albums still go platinum and whose tours continue to fill arenas after more than two decades of making music. The Skills to Pay the Bills chronicles the Beasties' unique journey from the hardcore New York underground to the top of the Billboard charts. It is a story of larger-than-life personalities, noble causes, funky beats, and truly one of the most influential and ambitious groups of all time. I said, Where'd you get your information from, huh? Click the book cover above to read more.







I Married My Mother-In-Law
Edited by Ilena Silverman
JANUARY 2006< RIVERHEAD
In the tradition of The Bitch in the House, a provocative anthology of original essays about one of life's most complicated relationships. In-laws are the family members you inherit when you choose your spouse. They're the unavoidable human baggage attached to the person you love. It's a relationship that can be traumatic, harrowing, maddening, and hilarious-sometimes all at once. In I Married My Mother-in-law and Other Tales of In-laws We Can't Live With-and Can't Live Without, Ilena Silverman brings together seventeen writers who plumb their individual in-law experiences for extraordinary and unexpected wisdom about this uninvited and intense relationship. We hear from a variety of writers, including Michael Chabon, who writes movingly about what he learned from his ex-wife's father; Kathryn Harrison, whose relationship with her father-in-law was more rewarding and less complicated than the one she had with her own father; Martha McPhee, who explores the role that money plays in the in-law dynamic; Susan Straight, who recounts her experience as the first white woman who married into her husband's African-American family; and Ayelet Waldman, who ponders the competition between wives and mothers for the attention of their husbands/sons. By turns blunt and poignant, horrifying and touching, these essays are small mirrors that reflect some of the myriad aspects of this bewildering and complex relationship. Contributors: Matt Bai, Amy Bloom (Dead, Thank God), Michael Chabon (My Father in Law, Briefly), Ta-Nehisi Coates, Anthony Giardina (My So Called Jewish Life), Jonathan Goldstein (Her Father Under My Skin), Colin Harrison, Kathryn Harrison, Barbara Jones, Tom Junod, Karen Karbo, Martha McPhee, Peter Richmond, Dani Shapiro (My Mother's Four Rules of Family Life), Darcey Steinke, Susan Straight, Ayelet Waldman (Dividing a Man from his Mother).
Click the book cover above to read more.







Questions and Answers
Intellectual Foundations of Judaism
by Jacob Neusner
JANUARY 2006, Hendrickson
The FAQs of Judaism from a frequently-asked answerer What is rabbinic Judaism? Was Jesus a Jew by the definition of Judaism? What is Midrash? When and how did rabbinic Judaism recognize Christianity as a separate religion? What is Reform Judaism? Orthodox Judaism? Conservative Judaism? Jacob Neusner addresses the fundamental questions students of the Bible, Judaism, or World Religion often pose about the literature, history, religion, and theology of Rabbinic Judaism. Here are the recurring questions asked of this renowned Jewish scholar during forty years of lecturing to non-Jewish students at countless Protestant and Roman Catholic schools-plus a few questions he wished they had asked. His clear, succinct answers feature portions of rabbinic texts drawn from the rich tradition of Judaism, and include supplementary readings. Click the book cover above to read more.







SECRET ANNIVERSARIES OF THE HEART
NEW AND SELECTED STORIES
by LEV RAPHAEL
JANUARY 15, 2006, Leapfrog
When Lev Raphael published "Dancing on Tisha B'av", he broke new ground in the publishing world. Never before in one book had an American writer dealt with the conflicts between homosexuality and traditional Judaism, linked the chilling mind diseases of antisemitism and homophobia, and borne witness not only to the legacy of Holocaust survivors but the suffering and conflicts of their children. Winner of the prestigious Lambda Literary Award, Raphael opened the door to a new kind of American Jewish fiction. Secret Anniversaries of the Heart unites the best stories from Dancing on Tisha B'av with 12 new stories, including one never before published. Here we encounter tales of antisemitism on the college campus, of self-hatred and body obsession, and of survivor parents whose only response to the Holocaust is to isolate themselves, unconsciously committing a kind of emotional suicide. In a collection that encompasses over 25 years of his award-winning stories, Lev Raphael proves himself a visionary like James Baldwin and shares Anita Brookner's gift for dramatizing the pain of seemingly quiet lives in stories that are both passionate and precise. Click the book cover above to read more.







The Poems Of Charles Reznikoff
1918-1975
by Charles Reznikoff. Edited by Seamus Cooney
2006, Godine/Black Sparrow
PW writes: Starred Review. Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976) is the quintessential poet of New York City and one of the key figures in Jewish-American poetry. A writer of astonishing insight and unsurpassable charm, his poems endeavor to make visible much that usually goes unnoticed, from the piecework of factory laborers to scraps of paper floating in air. Like my father, Reznikoff was born around the turn of the last century to Yiddish-speaking immigrants, grew up on the Lower East Side and lived all his life in the city. Reznikoff made a strong start on the immigrant's road to upward mobility, graduating from NYU law school. But he never practiced law, preferring to work at a variety of mostly editorial jobs in order take on the full-time task of creating a new urban American poetry. Though he lived a very quiet life, Reznikoff was an aesthetic radical: he rejected the conceits, symbolism and metrics of the verse of his time in favor of a direct engagement with the materials at hand, the stuff of everyday life, which he noted in a spare language that, against all odds, takes on mystical resonance. His disarming poems, some just a few lines long, present incident after incident, observation after observation, averting commentary or conclusion so as to leave space for the reader to come to terms with the experiences presented-an aesthetic he articulates in a poem from 1934: "Among the heaps of brick and plaster lies/ a girder, still itself among the rubbish."Like his comrades in poetry, George Oppen and Louis Zukofsky, Reznikoff moved American writing away from fixed moral and literary core values and toward a multiplication of perspective and condition. Reznikoff's is a poetry of listening and recognizing, of dialogue and difference, that holds up today with remarkable force. His platform as a writer of verse, as he once called it, can be summed up in a poem from the years immediately following WWII, in which he takes in the double loss of both his immigrant generation coming to a New World and the Jews left behind in the old one: "Not because of victories/ I sing,/ Having none,.../ but for the day's work done/ as well as I was able;/ not for a seat upon the dais/ but at the common table."Reznikoff's engaging, powerfully evocative poetry has been steadily gaining a passionate following. This definitive edition of his poems (which augments and supplants an earlier version) will be welcomed both by old and new readers of his work. Click the book cover above to read more.







A Good Place for the Night
Stories (Paperback)
by Savyon Liebrecht, Sondra Silverston (Translator)
January 2006, Persea.
Ms. Savyon Liebrecht, one of Israel's most distinguished and popular authors, has won an avid readership in the U. S. for her rich, believable fiction about affairs of the heart. Her newest collection includes seven long stories named for places-Munich, America, Tel Aviv, Hiroshima-and features Israelis abroad, women and men in love and in trouble far away from home. A woman living congenially in Hiroshima for nine years becomes involved in a love triangle with an American and a Japanese, and learns with chilling finality that she can never be at home in this city of the Japanese holocaust. The tables turn on an Israeli journalist, in Munich to cover the trial of a Nazi war criminal, when he becomes a witness to anti-Arab violence and to the murder of a beautiful Muslim woman he has secretly desired. In these searing stories setting becomes an accomplice to fate, and history intrudes into the heat of passion. In the end, A Good Place for the Night makes us realize that we are all wanderers, and the safe haven of "home" is only an idea. Click to read more.






Confessions of a Jewish Priest:
From Secular Jewish War Refugee to Physicist to Episcopal Clergyman
by Gabriel Weinrich (son of famed Yiddishist Max Weinrich)
Pilgrim Press.
Confessions of a Jewish Priest comprises the reminiscences of Weinreich, a secular Jew who was born in Poland and moved to the U.S. as a young adolescent during World War II, thus narrowly escaping the Holocaust. The book follows Weinreich as he becomes an American, twice-husband, father, and an award-winning scientist, and shows how his subsequent journey toward Christianity and ordination to the Episcopal priesthood do nothing to impair his sense of Jewishness. In addition to telling a compelling story, the book discusses Christianity as perceived by a Jew who began as a complete atheist but realizes toward the end of his life that he never really was one. GABRIEL WEINREICH, born in Poland into a prominent Yiddish-speaking family, is a retired Episcopal priest and emeritus professor of physics at the University of Michigan. Confessions of a Jewish Priest, while steeped in love for the church, also shows a keen perspective about its historical persecution of the Jewish people. The book is especially rich in detailed sympathetic recollections of the family into which he was born and whose legacy he carries deep in his heart. Indeed, Weinreich's Jewishness is integral to his life as a Christian, and his first purpose in writing the book was to explain the seeming paradox that "my Jewishness" of this I am profoundly convinced "in no way departed from me when I acquired a clerical collar"(from the Prologue). Although his claim to being simultaneously Jewish and Christian may prove controversial, readers will see it as a memoir by an Episcopal priest who prays in his most personal moments by silently reciting the twenty-third psalm--in Yiddish. He is the retired rector of Saint Stephen's Episcopal Church in Hamburg, Michigan. He and his wife live in Chelsea, Michigan and attend Saint Clare's Episcopal Church in nearby Ann Arbor. Click to read more.








FRANTIC TRANSMISSIONS TO AND FROM LOS ANGELES
by KATE BRAVERMAN
January 2006, Graywolf.
From Publishers Weekly: Experimental poet and novelist Braverman (The Incantation of Frida K.) proffers a brash, witty memoir comprising a dozen bubbling, occasionally repetitive essays chronicling her 1990s move from L.A. to an upstate New York farmhouse. After the last spate of riots and a major earthquake, the 40-something Braverman decides to quit the city of her birth and head to the Allegheny Mountains to live through brutal winters with her husband, an academic scientist, and teenage daughter. In the first and funniest essay, Braverman relates how a longtime denizen of L.A. like herself manages to leave, an ordeal in itself: "Such a departure requires magical intervention." Then she is prey to advice from others, such as Uncle Irving, who gives the lowdown on their Jewish family's desperate emigration from the Old World: "They couldn't even invent a past with a single exception to impoverishment." In six "Transmission" essays, Braverman delineates her thorny new eastern habitat, where she enjoys four bathrooms, gardening and "active correspondence necessitating pens and the postal service"; with snow falling for eight consecutive months, she even craves the crass fantasyland of L.A. malls. In fact, once removed from that city's crime and materialism, Braverman finds she can draw in sharp relief its "accumulated atrocities."
Click to read more.







Terror Town
An Abe Lieberman Mystery
by Stuart M. Kaminsky
January 2006, Forge.
From Publishers Weekly: Starred Review. Edgar-winner Kaminsky writes four ongoing mystery series, but his books about close-to-retirement Chicago police detective Abe Lieberman are the ones that get the least attention. With luck, this terrific ninth book (after 2004's The Last Dark Place) will change all that. Managing to be genuinely scary when he describes urban crime, Kaminsky is also blessed with a subtle irony about his hero: "His wife, Bess, thought he looked like Harry James. His grandchildren thought he looked like the dog in some cartoon they watched. Abe had watched the cartoon with them once and admitted the resemblance." The particular crimes that occupy the working hours of Lieberman and his partner, Bill Hanrahan, this time out include the savage murder of a young mother in a gangster-ridden South Side Chicago neighborhood; the sudden, unmotivated smack on the head with a Coke bottle suffered by a former Chicago Cubs player in his favorite hot dog establishment; and the truly frightening antics of a religious maniac who dabbles in extortion. In between, Abe finds time to eat everything in sight and to try very hard to be a devout Jew. The MWA recently named Kaminsky a Grand Master. Click to read more.







Hedgehogging
by Barton Biggs
JANUARY 2006, Wiley
Hedgehogging is one of the most instructive, fascinating, and inherently entertaining investment books of this or any year. Written by legendary Wall Street investor and executive Barton Biggs, it provides an impressionistic view of professional investors as well as the agony and ecstasy that are endemic to this frenetic and highly competitive world. The book tells of the successes and the failures of these men and women. It unveils the moral code that they live by, and describes their different life styles and operating patterns. It also relates the adventures and travails of these incredibly intense and obsessed investment personalities, their peculiarities, and the stresses they experience. Hedgehogs are strange, insecure, but fascinating characters, preying on each other and other investors in the battle for investment survival. Click the book cover above to read more.







How to Marry a Mensch
The Love Coach's Guide to Finding Your Mate
by Robin Gorman Newman
JANUARY 2006, Fair Winds
Every woman secretly (or not-so-secretly) wants to marry a mensch-the all-around nice guy that Jewish grandmothers recommend-but where are we to find them? The Love Coach comes to the rescue in How to Marry a Mensch. Full of witty tips on where to find a mensch, how to woo him, and what to do when you have the ring on your finger, this book will help millions of women find their soul mates and live happily ever after. You'll learn where to go to maximize your chances of meeting a mensch, how to seduce a mensch without scaring him off, getting him to "close the deal" with a ring!, and the best way to deal with in-laws and other assorted obstacles. Click the book cover above to read more.







SOLD AS IS
by Kal Rosenberg
Behler Publications
It was summer, 1976, when a major psychotic episode ended Corey Doctoroff's successful career and also wrecks his marriage. He accepts a job selling used cars "until something else comes along," and becomes the unlikely denizen in a psychedelic world of rituals, easy money, fast women, Quaaludes, cocaine and Jamaican Gold. So begins Corey's descent and sojourn, mired in a bizarre subculture to which few are privy. By day, he lives an eat-or-be-eaten life on the car lot. By night, his inner self ponders universal mysteries. Corey's battle to reconstruct himself and reintegrate his two halves is a swirling landscape of extreme mood swings, youthful dalliances, venomous contempt for psychiatrists, a love affair with his social worker, his oddball buddies-Boychik, The Fish, Beach Ball, Half-Deal Harry, and Jaws-illuminating the metaphor for life that was found on stickers pasted to the windows of used cars: "Sold as is-with all faults-no warranty expressed or implied." /// Kal Rosenberg writes from first-hand experience. Nearly twenty years in the car business and forty years suffering from the still misunderstood malady of bipolar disorder offers the background for fearless honesty and literary brilliance. Mr. Rosenberg received his MFA from Goddard College at age sixty-six and went on to receive many literary awards such as Winner of the 2004 Ed Hirshberg Award for Excellence in Florida Fiction, and First Place in the Short Story category from Tallahassee Writers Association. Click the book cover above to read more.







Chicken Soup to Warm the Neshama
101 Short Stories, Insights & Sayings Containing Life-Long Lessons
Paperback
by Pesach Burston and Chana Burston
Dwelling Place, January 2006
DwellingPlacePub.com is a publisher of mostly chassidic/Chabad books. Chicken Soup: the traditional, rich golden broth coveted by every generation. Like penicillin, it is a powerful remedy that cures all ailments. Several spoonfuls warm the body and the Neshama (soul). Similarly, to warm our neshamos, we go to teachers, parents, and friends. They share a rich, golden Torah thought - sometimes wrapped in a story. A concise statement packs a wealth of meaning into a few words and can, when internalized, warm the soul. These are not just stories that relate to everyone; these are stories to which everyone can relate. These are not just any stories, as chicken soup is not just any soup. Click the book cover above to read more.






How to Cure a Fanatic
by Amos Oz
January 2006, Princeton University press
Internationally acclaimed novelist Amos Oz grew up in war-torn Jerusalem, where as a boy he witnessed firsthand the poisonous consequences of fanaticism. In two concise, powerful essays, the award-winning author offers unique insight into the true nature of fanaticism and proposes a reasoned and respectful approach to resolving the Israeli Palestinian conflict. As an added feature, he comments on contemporary issues--the Gaza pullout, Yasser Arafat's death, and the war in Iraq--in an extended interview at the end of the book. Oz argues that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a war of religion or cultures or traditions, but rather a real estate dispute--one that will be resolved not by greater understanding, but by painful compromise. As he writes, "The seeds of fanaticism always lie in uncompromising righteousness, the plague of many centuries." The brilliant clarity of these essays, coupled with Oz's ironic sense of humor in illuminating the serious, breathes new life into this centuries-old debate. He emphasizes the importance of imagination in learning to define and respect other's space, and analyzes the twisted historical roots that have led to Middle East violence. In his interview, Oz sends a message to Americans. Why not, he proposes, advocate for a twenty-first-century equivalent of the Marshall Plan aimed at preventing poverty and despair in the region? "What is necessary is to work on the ground, for example, building homes for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who have been rotting in camps for almost sixty years now." Click the book cover above to read more.







THE SPECTRAL JEW
Conversion and Embodiment in Medieval Europe
by STEVEN F. KRUGER
University of Minnesota Press, January 2006
. Medieval European culture encompassed Judaic, Christian, Muslim, and pagan societies, forming a complex matrix of religious belief, identity, and imagination. Through incisive readings of a broad range of medieval texts and informed by poststructuralist, queer, and feminist theories, The Spectral Jew traces the Jewish presence in Western Europe to show how the body, gender, and sexuality were at the root of the construction of medieval religious anxieties, inconsistencies, and instabilities. Looking closely at how medieval Jewish and Christian identities are distinguished from each other, yet intimately intertwined, Kruger demonstrates how Jews were often corporealized in ways that posited them as inferior to Christians-archaic and incapable of change-even as the two mutually shaped each other. But such attempts to differentiate Jews and Christians were inevitably haunted by the knowledge that Christianity had emerged out of Judaism and was, in its own self-understanding, a community of converts. Examining the points of contact between Christian and Jewish communities, Kruger discloses the profound paradox of the Jew as different in all ways, yet capable of converting to fully Christian status. He draws from central medieval authors and texts such as Peter Damian, Guibert of Nogent, the Barcelona Disputation, and the Hebrew chronicles of the First Crusade, as well as lesser known writings such as the disputations of Ceuta, Majorca, and Tortosa and the immensely popular Dialogues of Peter Alfonsi. By putting the conversion narrative at the center of this analysis, Kruger exposes it as a disruption of categories rather than a smooth passage and reveals the prominent role Judaism played in the medieval Christian imagination Click the book cover above to read more.







Two Covenants
Representations Of Southern Jewishness
(Southern Literary Studies)
by Eliza R. L. McGraw
LSU PRESS
Jews have long occupied visible roles in the South. Jewish families have owned establishments ranging from dry-goods stores to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, and some of the region's most important writers and scholars have been Jewish. Despite that, surveys of southern culture rarely assess the contributions of Jews, while histories of Jews in America virtually exclude those living in the South. Eliza R. L. McGraw's multifaceted study serves to fill both gaps and in doing so expands how we define the South. In Two Covenants, McGraw mines eclectic representations of southern Jewishness as varied as the Carolina Israelite newspaper, the Mardi Gras Krewe du Jieux, southern Baptist conversion-instruction pamphlets, and the film Driving Miss Daisy. She also considers literary representations of southern Jews in the works of both Jewish and non-Jewish writers, including Thomas Wolfe, Robert Penn Warren, Walker Percy, Lillian Hellman, David Cohn, Louis Rubin, Jr., Eli Evans, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, and Charles Chesnutt. While concerned with established concepts such as ethnicity and region, McGraw raises many questions that illustrate the complexity of southern Jewishness. Can one individual straddle two identities? How do race, class, and gender influence southern Jewishness? What are the differences between southern Jews and other southerners, or between southern Jews and other Jews? Does anti-Semitism manifest itself differently or with unique effects in the South? In suggesting answers to these and other questions, McGraw ranges widely over the southern cultural landscape and reveals that although southern Jewishness remains a marginal identity due to the small size of its constituency it nevertheless inhabits and helps to form the South at large. The very presence and vitality of southern Jewishness demonstrate that southern identity, like national identity, is a fluid cultural experience. Click the book cover above to read more.







The Bill from My Father
A Memoir (Hardcover)
by Bernard Cooper
January 31, 2006, Simon and Schuster
Bernard Cooper's new memoir is searing, soulful, and filled with uncommon psychological nuance and laugh-out-loud humor. Like Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, Cooper's account of growing up and coming to terms with a bewildering father is a triumph of contemporary autobiography. Edward Cooper is a pugnacious, slightly paranoid, hard man to know.Dour and exuberant by turns, his moods dictate the always uncertain climate of the Cooper household. Balding, octogenarian, and partial to a polyester jumpsuit, Edward Cooper makes an unlikely literary muse. But to his son he looms larger than life, an overwhelming and baffling presence. As The Bill from My Father begins, Bernard and his father find themselves the last remaining members of the family that once included his mother, Lillian, and three older brothers (who all died young). Now retired and living in a run-down trailer, Edward Cooper had once made a name for himself as a divorce attorney whose cases included "The Case of the Captive Bride" and "The Case of the Baking Newlywed," as they were dubbed by the Herald Examiner. An expert at "the dissolution of human relationships," the elder Cooper is slowly succumbing to dementia. As the author attempts, with his father's help, to forge a coherent picture of the Cooper family history, he discovers some peculiar documents involving lawsuits against other family members, and recalls a grim, not too funny bill his father once sent him (when he was 28) for the total cost of his upbringing, an itemized invoice adding up to 2 million dollars. Edward's ambivalent regard for his gay, Jewish, 50-something son is the springboard from which this deeply intelligent memoir takes flight. By the time the author receives his inheritance (which includes a message his father taped to the underside of a safe deposit box), and sees the surprising epitaph inscribed on his father's headstone, The Bill from My Father has become a penetrating meditation on both monetary and emotional indebtedness, and on the mysterious nature of memory and love.
Click the book cover above to read more.
Read an excerpt: http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?sid=33&pid=514200&agid=2






Acting Jewish
Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and Screen
by Henry Bial, University of New Mexico
2006, University of Michigan Press
The history of the American entertainment industry and the history of the Jewish people in the United States are inextricably intertwined. Jews have provided Broadway and Hollywood with some of their most enduring talent, from writers like Arthur Miller, Wendy Wasserstein, and Tony Kushner; to directors like Jerome Robbins and Woody Allen; to performers like Gertrude Berg, John Garfield, Lenny Bruce, and Barbra Streisand. Conversely, show business has provided Jews with a means of upward mobility, a model for how to "become American," and a source of cultural pride. Acting Jewish documents this history, looking at the work of Jewish writers, directors, and actors in the American entertainment industry with particular attention to the ways in which these artists offer behavioral models for Jewish-American audiences. The book spans the period from 1947 to the present and takes a close look at some of America's favorite plays (Death of a Salesman, Fiddler on the Roof, Angels in America), films (Gentleman's Agreement, Annie Hall), and television shows (The Goldbergs, Seinfeld), identifying a double-coding by which performers enact, and spectators read, Jewishness in contemporary performance-and, by extension, enact and read other minority identities. The book thus explores and illuminates the ever-changing relationship between Jews and mainstream American culture.





Jews and Gentiles in Early America - 1654-1800
by William Pencak, Penn State University
2006, University of Michigan Press
Jews and Gentiles in Early America offers a uniquely detailed picture of Jewish life from the mid-seventeenth century through the opening decades of the new republic. Though the first national census in 1790 counted barely three thousand Jews, the Jewish community was nevertheless far more important in the history of early America than their numbers suggest, author William Pencak reveals in this fascinating chronicle of an often-overlooked aspect of American Jewish history. Pencak approaches his topic from the perspective of early American, rather than strictly Jewish, history. Rich in colorful narrative and animated with scenes of early American life, Jews and Gentiles in Early America tells the story of the five communities-New York, Newport, Charleston, Savannah, and Philadelphia-where most of colonial America's small Jewish population lived. How did these communities rise and fall? How did they interact with the larger gentile population? Pencak's exploration of popular anti-semitism in the pre-Revolutionary era describes the persistence of prejudices derived from traditional European society, and his abundantly detailed community studies explore the forms these prejudices took in colonial America, some of which continue to this day





AN IMPERFECT LENS
A novel

by Anne Roiphe
2006, Shaye Areheart Books
From Publishers Weekly: Cholera arrives in Alexandria in 1883, followed by an intrepid French research team sent by Louis Pasteur to find and identify the "swimming monster." In this riveting account of a public health crisis and the (then) cutting-edge science that aimed to save countless lives, Roiphe (Secrets of the City) blends fact with fiction to bring historical scientists to life. The team includes Louis Thuillier, whose exacting professional persona belies a romantic side; compassionate veterinarian Edmond Nocard; Emile Roux, much respected, if a bit rough around the edges; and their fun-loving young assistant, Marcus. The Frenchmen race rampant death-and the German Dr. Robert Koch, who discovered the cause of tuberculosis-to find the cholera microbe. Roiphe weaves a love story within the urgent scientific mission, providing Thuillier with an object of affection in Este Malina, the intellectually curious daughter of a Jewish doctor. Este admires the medical passion of the French scientists, Thuillier in particular, and the two fall in love when she begins assisting in their lab. Against Alexandria's vibrant backdrop, Roiphe infuses her richly textured, propulsive story with a sense of doom brought by a microscopic enemy.








FEBRUARY 2006

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's Haggadah
Hebrew And English Text With New Essays And Commentary by Jonathan Sacks
by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain
February 2006. ContinnumBooks.com
Highly acclaimed author and theologian Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks brings his wisdom and unique insight to this version of the Haggadah, which features large, beautiful Hebrew typography side-by-side with an English translation, designed specifically to be easy to use at the Seder table, making this book an ideal companion for use at the Passover meal. It is Sacks's thoughtful annotations, however, which make this Haggadah so special. The qualities that make Rabbi Sacks one of the world's foremost religious leaders - keen intelligence, acute moral sensitivity, and a wide-ranging historical and literary imagination - are here put to the task of explaining in their full richness and scope the fundamental themes of the Pesach story: the concept of a free society, the role of memory in shaping Jewish identity, and the unique connection that exists in Judaism between spirituality and society, giving rise to what he has called a "politics of hope."
"The seder service on Pesach is the oldest surviving ritual in the Western world, dating back some 3,300 years....Through the Haggadah more than a hundred generations of Jews have handed on their story to their children....Few texts have received more attention than the Haggadah. There are thousands of commentaries, and more are published each year. Anyone who contemplates adding to this number must ask not 'Why is this night different?' But 'Why is this edition different?' My answer is that I wrote this commentary because, amongst all the many I have read, I could not find one that explained in their full richness and scope the fundamental themes of the Pesach story: the Jewish concept of a free society, the role of memory in shaping Jewish identity, and the unique connection that exists in Judaism between spirituality and society, giving rise to what I have called elsewhere 'the politics of hope.' Nor could I find a Haggada that told me in detail about the role of Pesach in shaping Jewish identity through the millennia, or its influence on Western thought as a whole." Click the book cover above to read more.




Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg
A collection of 26 essays to make your seder a meaningful diaplogue. Click through for sample chapters. Click the book cover above to read more.









Intuition
A novel
by Allegra Goodman
Dial, February 26, 2006
One of my fave writers, Geraldine Brooks, wrote the following in the Washington Post: "I once spent Shabbat with an Orthodox family in Jerusalem's Kiryat Mattersdorf, a neighborhood where, on Friday evenings, a siren marks the beginning of a 24-hour pause in every human act of creation. Against that looming deadline, my unflappable hostess prepared dinner for 19 -- a tough order in any situation, but even more so when the cook is abiding by the rules of kashrut. Everyone knows that pork isn't kosher, but until that Friday I wasn't aware that "things that swarm" also are off the menu. To make sure that no tiny swarming insect found its way into the meal, she peeled apart and inspected every layer of two dozen onions. Allegra Goodman's new novel, Intuition, revived that memory. Not because Goodman is a famous Jewish-American writer, whose National Book Award finalist Kaaterskill Falls probed deep into a closed world much like Kiryat Mattersdorf. Not because Goodman herself is Orthodox. (She has described herself as "a fairly observant Jew, but a very observant writer.") What brought the memory back to me was the patient handling of the onions, their careful dissection, the attentive scrutiny of layer after layer until the very center had been reached and nothing more could be done. This is the way Goodman handles her characters in Intuition. Every character here -- even the relatively minor ones, even the relatives of minor ones -- is endowed by their creator with the fullest complements of flaws, tics, vices, strengths, virtues and moments of nobility. Just when we think we know her self-promoting, hard-charging oncologist Sandy Glass, just when we are smirking contemptuously at him, Goodman peels back another layer and invites us to peer harder. We find ourselves looking at a loyal chevalier whose capacity for devotion to a colleague wipes the smirk off our face. It works in reverse with another character, Jacob, husband to Glass's exacting scientific partner, Marion Mendelssohn. Jacob has put his own brilliance at the service of his wife's career and seems the model of modest self-sacrifice. Yet he's gradually revealed as a secret manipulator who, with a few careful words, will set in motion the events that threaten his wife's reputation and the existence of her research lab. But it is not a simple matter of "people are not what they seem." Goodman doesn't stop. Sandy Glass has many more layers, and so does Jacob Mendelssohn. So does everybody.... .. continued... ... click the book cover to read more
From Publishers Weekly. "In another quiet but powerful novel from Goodman (Kaaterskill Falls), a struggling cancer lab at Boston's Philpott Institute becomes the stage for its researchers' personalities and passions, and for the slippery definitions of freedom and responsibility in grant-driven American science. When the once-discredited R-7 virus, the project of playboy postdoc Cliff, seems to reduce cancerous tumors in mice, lab director Sandy Glass insists on publishing the preliminary results immediately, against the advice of his more cautious codirector, Marion Mendelssohn. The research team sees a glorious future ahead, but Robin, Cliff's resentful ex-girlfriend and co-researcher, suspects that the findings are too good to be true and attempts to prove Cliff's results are in error. The resulting inquiry spins out of control. With subtle but uncanny effectiveness, Goodman illuminates the inner lives of each character, depicting events from one point of view until another section suddenly throws that perspective into doubt. The result is an episodically paced but extremely engaging novel that reflects the stops and starts of the scientific process, as well as its dependence on the complicated individuals who do the work. In the meantime, she draws tender but unflinching portraits of the characters' personal lives for a truly humanist novel from the supposedly antiseptic halls of science." Click to read more reviews.






Scars of War, Wounds of Peace
The Israeli-Arab Tragedy
by Shlomo Ben-Ami
Oxford University Press
One of the best books I have read on Israel in years. His analysis of the Israeli/US peace attempts with Ba'athist Syria are simply amazing.
An Oxford-trained historian who became Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami was a key figure in the Camp David negotiations and many other rounds of peace talks, public and secret, with Palestinian and Arab officials. He offers here an unflinching account of the Arab-Israeli conflict, informed by his firsthand knowledge of the major characters and events. Clear-eyed and unsparing, Ben-Ami traces the twists and turns of the Middle East conflict and the many missteps of the Israelis and Palestinians. The author paints particularly trenchant portraits of key figures from Ben-Gurion to Bill Clinton, and gives us behind-the-scenes accounts of the meetings in Oslo, Madrid, and Camp David. He is highly critical of Ariel Sharon and the late Yasser Arafat ("the sad embodiment of an archaic political orthodoxy devoid of a vision for the future"). He sees Arafat's rejection of Clinton's peace plan as a crime against the Palestinian people. The author is also critical of President Bush's Middle East policy ("a presumptuous grand strategy"). And along the way, Ben-Ami highlights the many blunders on both sides, describing for instance how the great victory of the Six Day War launched many Israelis on a misbegotten "messianic" dream of controlling all the Biblical Jewish lands, actually making the Palestinian problem much worse. In contrast, it has only been when Israel has suffered setbacks that it has made moves towards peace. The best hope for the region, he concludes, is to create an international mandate in the Palestinian territories that would lead to the implementation of Clinton's two-state peace parameters. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace is a major work of history--with by far the most fair and balanced critique of Israel ever to come from one of its key officials. It is an absolute must-read for everyone who wants to understand the dynamics of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Click to read more reviews.









Military Misfortunes
The Anatomy of Failure in War
by Eliot Cohen and John Gooch
Free Press reprint from 1991, now 2006
WHY DO COMPETENT ARMIES FAIL? Why did the American-led coalition in Iraq fail to wage a classic counter-insurgency campaign for so long after the fall of Baghdad? Why was the sophisticated Israeli intelligence service so thoroughly surprised by the onslaught of combined Arab armies during the Yom Kippur War of 1973? How did a dozen German U-boats manage to humiliate the U.S. Navy for nine months in 1942 -- sinking an average of 650,000 tons of shipping monthly? What made the 1915 British-led invasion of Gallipoli one of the bloodiest catastrophes of the First World War? Since it was first published in 1990, Military Misfortunes has become the classic analysis of the unexpected catastrophes that befall competent militaries. Now with a new Afterword discussing America's missteps in Iraq, Somalia, and the War on Terror, Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch's gripping battlefield narratives and groundbreaking explanations of the hidden factors that undermine armies are brought thoroughly up to date. As recent events prove, Military Misfortunes will be required reading for as long as armies go to war. Click to read more reviews.









Prince of Fire
A novel by Daniel Silva
Signet. Paperback edition. February 2006.
BOTH A THRILLER AND A HISTORY LESSON
PW writes: Silva's latest novel to feature art restorer/Israeli agent Gabriel Allon (after 2004's A Death in Vienna) is a passionate, intelligently crafted entry that cements the series' place among today's top spy fiction. The structure is classic - the semireluctant spy, Gabriel, is pulled from his cover to hunt down terrorists who have committed a horrific crime, in this case the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Rome. The mastermind behind the bombing is French archeologist Paul Martineau, aka "Khaled, son of Sabri, grandson of Sheikh Asad. Khaled, avenger of past wrongs, sword of Palestine." Orphaned as a child after his father is killed by the Israelis, Khaled is also the adopted son of Yasir Arafat, who has now activated Khaled to wreak vengeance on his mortal enemies. Gabriel assembles a team of crack young agents and sets out to find when and where Khaled will strike next. The determined team tracks down the terrorist, but when Gabriel goes in for the kill the plot takes a stunning twist; the lives of all, plus hundreds of innocent bystanders, are threatened. Gabriel is a complex character with a rich past. His wife, Leah, is confined to a psychiatric hospital in London, mentally damaged and physically disfigured from the bombing that killed their son. He lives with the beautiful Chiara, whom he can't marry out of loyalty to Leah, even though she seems to barely know him. Silva hints at further entries in the series in which Gabriel must step up and assume new duties: "Gabriel, you are the mightiest," his former mentor tells the agent. "You're the one who defends Israel against its accusers. You're the angel of judgment - the Prince of Fire." Click to read more.







Six Million Paper Clips
The Making Of A Children's Holocaust Memorial
by Peter W. Schroeder, Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand
Kar Ben.
Rachel Kamin writes: Grade 4-8 -With clear and concise language, color photographs, and an attractive layout, this book tells the inspiring and touching story of the teachers, students, and community of Whitwell Middle School in Tennessee, and their quest to understand and teach about the Holocaust. The authors, White House correspondents for a group of German newspapers, helped the school publicize the project to collect six million paper clips to show just how many people were murdered and obtained a German railcar to house them. The book includes a lot of quotes and behin