RJ Blog

by Peter ShapiroRead the review of this book in Reform Judaism magazineSee other Significant Jewish Books Meir Shalev, in his book “Beginnings”, has provided the reader with a novel and provocative approach to assessing the Tanakh. This is a book of biblical firsts each of which gives rise to further occurrences. Those firsts set forth in eleven chapters are love, dream, king, weeping, spies, animal, loving woman, prophet, laugh, hate, and law. Those firsts may in several instances surprise the reader. The author’s stated self-imposed rule was that “the word (i.e. love, hate, etc.) had to appear in the text [...]

by Peter ShapiroRead the review of this book in Reform Judaism magazineSee other Significant Jewish Books A reader of Nicole Krauss’s novel “Great House” in my judgment will either like it or dislike it but there will be no middle ground. The plot lines are complex and the central characters are difficult to identify with nor do they garner any empathy from the reader. They are chained to the past, having been exposed to losses that make it impossible for them to lead normal lives. For many those losses are rooted in the Holocaust. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, in her review [...]

by Peter ShapiroRead the review of this book in Reform Judaism magazineSee other Significant Jewish Books Christians and Jews by Rabbi James Rudin is a scholarly analysis of interfaith relations that portrays a tragic history, a promising present and a fragile future. The central theme of the book is: why has “the other” hated us so much and what, if anything, we can do to change that culture. The problem began after the death of Jesus when his disciples referred to themselves and their followers as “New Israel” and the other Jews as “Old Israel”. Years later when their sacred [...]

Zionism is the story of the modern liberation of the Jewish people restored and renewed to our homeland. It is also the story of remarkable individuals who carved a path for the growth of the Jewish State and a flourishing democracy in the Middle East. The leadership of Weitzman, Ben Gurion, Meir, Eban, and others is well known and well documented. However, the leadership of some of the practitioners and thinkers who played key roles in Israel’s growth is less well known. In his new memoir For the Sake of Zion: Reform Zionism–A Personal Mission, published by URJ Press and [...]

by Peter ShapiroRead the review of this book in Reform Judaism magazineSee other Significant Jewish Books “Es is schwer zu sayn a yid — It’s hard to be a Jew”. There are many demands made and sacrifices called for. The setting for Eli Amir’s novel The Dove Flyer is Baghdad in the 1950′s. He draws on his experience as a youth living in Iraq to tell the stories of ordinary Jews, their trials, tribulations and dreams. Amir, a social activist, made this statement in Cairo: “How can there be peace without us knowing each other?” “If we know each other [...]

by Peter ShapiroRead the review of this book in Reform Judaism magazineSee other Significant Jewish Books Have you ever been a party to either or both of the following scenarios? Parent: “It’s Yom Kippur we are required to fast and you can’t play football”; or “we don’t eat bread on Passover”; or “you have to visit Aunt Shirley in the hospital.” Child:  “Why?” Parent: “Because we’re Jewish and that’s what Jews do.” Child:  “But why?”  Parent: “Because I say so.” ************ Temple President: “Your son-in-law can’t have an aliyah because he isn’t Jewish”; or “even though Jack committed suicide he [...]

by Esther SaritzkyRead the review of this book in Reform Judaism magazineSee other Significant Jewish Books Jewish Living by Mark Washofsky is a book  that had been long needed by Reform Jews. Published originally in 2001, now revised, it touches on all of Jewish life and can serve as an easily understandable guide to those who search for an authentic Reform life. We have often been told that there is no Reform halacha, but Rabbi Washofsky  sees our rules as practice and custom, balanced with tradition. For this reader, it is an essential addition to my library. Reform Jews will [...]

by Peter ShapiroRead the review of this book in RJ magazineSee other Significant Jewish Books Homesick: A Novelby Eshkol Nevo If you appreciate the literary style and works of Amos Oz you will enjoy Homesick by Eshkol Nevo. The narrative’s locale is Mevasseret, a suburb of Jerusalem. In 1947 it was abandoned by the Arabs who were fearful of suffering the same fate as the Arabs massacred at Deir Yassin. It was the fall of 1995, Yitzhak Rabin had been assassinated and there were ongoing hostilities in Lebanon. The principal characters all resided in or were in some way connected to [...]

by Peter ShapiroRead the review of this book in RJ magazineSee other Significant Jewish Books Where Ever You Goby Joan Leegant Anton Chekov famously advised “it is not the role of the novelist to solve problems, only to present them correctly”. Anita Diamant indicated that “a novelist may take license with character development, but the attendant facts must be accurate or else the reader will lose trust in the narrative”. Joan Leegant has religiously adhered to those principles in her novel Wherever You Go as she has woven together three lives caught in the grip of a volatile and demanding [...]

by JanetheWriter Like so many of the things we’ve done in the last few months, the annual Yom Kippur afternoon jaunt of my father and me to Barnes and Noble following the morning service at temple was more rambling, disjointed, and unfocused than it’s been in previous years. Unsure of exactly where we wanted to browse, we started with new paperbacks and then wandered to history – where I showed him The History of White People, one of the nearly dozen or so texts for my class this semester on race, politics and the media. Tired, hungry and distracted, we then made [...]

by R. Peter ShapiroRead the review of this Significant Jewish Book in RJ magazineSee other Significant Jewish Book selections Palace intrigue, ethnic cleansing, murder, unrequited love, and the quest for new lands and their riches are all woven together in Michael James Kaplan’s novel By Fire and By Water. The story takes place in Spain during the mid 1480′s through the late 1490′s in the reign of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. In that time frame four world-changing events were simultaneously occurring: the establishment of the New Inquisition in Castile and Aragon, the reconquest of Granada, the expulsion of the [...]

by Larry Kaufman Hidden, or maybe not so hidden, in the New York Times and Tablet Magazine obituaries for Inna Hecker Grade is a novel about her fierce protectiveness of the literary legacy of her late husband, Yiddish novelist and poet Chaim Grade, and particularly her contempt for and feud with his much better-known and more popular contemporary, Isaac Bashevis Singer. (This to-be-wished for novel is somewhat foreshadowed in Cynthia Ozick’s much-anthologized novella “Envy; or Yiddish in America,” which pits the Singer stand-in against another writer of the same era, who enjoyed even less English-language recognition than did Grade.) As [...]

by Peter ShapiroRead the review of this book in RJ magazineSee other Significant Jewish Book selections Good for the Jews:A Novelby Debra Spark Debra Sparks has recast the story of Esther in modern day Madison, the home of the liberal University of Wisconsin The first letter of the names of the principal characters as well as their respective roles corresponds to those in the Story of Esther.  Ellen, like Esther, is an innocent young secular Jew who reluctantly stands up for her people. Mose (Mordecai) is the Jewish voice of conscience and alarm who encourages and convinces Ellen to act. [...]

by Peter ShapiroRead the review of this book in RJ magazineSee other Significant Jewish Book selections America’s Prophet – Moses and the American Storyby Bruce Feiler In his previous books Walking the Bible and Where God was Born Bruce Feiler took the reader on journeys primarily through the ancient Middle East. America’s Prophet, his most current book, leaps ahead several thousand years and thousands of miles. He takes us on an American journey that commenced in 1620 on Clark’s Island situated off the coast of what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, and continues on to the election of Barack Obama as [...]