topics Torah Defining Reform Jewish History Jewish Living Community Social Action Israel/World Holidays Shabbat Lifecycle Youth & Family College Life Books

BOOKS & MUSIC The Torah: A Women's Commentary (URJ Press)

Union for Reform Judaism

Book Discussion: By Fire and By Water July 28, 2010 (1 Comment) by R. Peter Shapiro Read the review of this Significant Jewish Book in RJ magazine See 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 Jews from Spain, and Cristobal Colon's (Christopher Columbus) so-called discovery of the Western Hemisphere. The author opined that these four events when taken together "amounted to a cataclysm, foreshadowing the collapse of the medieval economic, governmental and religious systems and the birth of the modern nation-state." The book's protagonist, Luis de Santangel, is a composite fictional character. He was the Royal Chancellor of Aragon, a widower, with a young son. As a third generation converso he was caught between competing faiths, social classes and loyalties. His problems were complicated because he was a close friend of King Ferdinand. His rival for the ear of the Monarchy was Inquisitor General Tomas de Torquemada whose power and influence over Queen Isabella allowed him to steadily increase the brutality of the Spanish church and the paranoia it inspired. read MORE Filed Under: Books | Jewish History

Unsung, but Better than Singer May 25, 2010 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 we read in Ecclesiastes, of making many books there is no end, and the Yiddish literary pantheon has room for Grade alongside Singer. In fact, one of the comments added to the Tablet obituary said that among Yiddish writers, Grade is to Singer as, among writers about the South, Faulkner is to Margaret Mitchell.  read MORE Filed Under: Books

Book Discussion: Good for the Jews May 12, 2010 (1 Comment) by Peter Shapiro Read the review of this book in RJ magazine See other Significant Jewish Book selections Good for the Jews: A Novel by 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. Alex (Ahashuerus), the Superintendent of Schools, is duped by one of his principals, Hyman (Haman), into approving regulations that will allow Hyman to fire Mose. Alex's wife, Valerie (Vashti), who he divorces plays a minor role. Valerie's falling out with Alex is essential to setting up his relationship with Ellen. The story's ending is predictable. But the plot and the treatment of the characters are intriguing. I prefer not to say more as to do would substantially diminish the interest of the reader. In peaceful Shushan where the Jews were accorded dignity and respect it took one evil man, Haman, to cause them to be treated as pariahs. The first question the author puts before us is: "is it realistic to expect that today one person's actions could cause Anti-Semitism to rear its ugly head in a liberal college town"?  My answer would be a resounding yes, based on having spent my entire life in a small liberal community. I welcome your responses to this question and imagine they might be both experiential and generational. read MORE Filed Under: Books | Holidays

Book Discussion: America's Prophet February 23, 2010 by Peter Shapiro Read the review of this book in RJ magazine See other Significant Jewish Book selections America's Prophet - Moses and the American Story by 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 President. The landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights struggle are referred to continuously and equated contemporaneously with the Biblical Exodus and its leader Moses. Feiler describes each episode and its leader's conduct in great detail and chronicles references to the Biblical Exodus and Moses. It should be noted that substantially all of the references were made by people not of the Jewish faith and the author expressed no opinion as to the appropriateness of the analogies of the events and their leaders to the Biblical Exodus and Moses. read MORE Filed Under: Books

Book Discussion: Day After Night February 23, 2010 by Peter Shapiro Read the review of this book in RJ magazine See other Significant Jewish Book selections Day After Night by Anita Diamant The English essayist and poet Alexander Pope wrote, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast..." That adage is challenged by the four protagonists in Anita Diamant's book, Day After Night. The author introduces the reader to four young women who have distinctly different experiences and survived the nightmare of life in Europe during the Holocaust. The book's power comes from the author's extraordinary ability to breathe life into the characters. It is after just a few chapters that one can easily shut his or her eyes and not only picture a character but have a sense of their voice, moods and mannerisms. She allows the reader to transform him or herself into the characters and experience their emotions of pain, sorrow, anger, hatred and joy. Tedi, a blond Danish girl, was sent by her family to live with a Christian family. For a sustained period of time they physically and sexually abused her. The family then turned her over to the Nazis and she was shipped to Auschwitz. Fortunately, she escaped from the train that was to take her to the death camp. Tedi remained in hiding for the duration of the war. read MORE Filed Under: Books

Book Discussion: A Seat at the Table October 26, 2009 by Rabbi Marci Bellows Read the review of this book in RJ magazine See other Significant Jewish Book selections A Seat at the Table by Joshua Halberstam I vividly remember learning how to read. Sometime around the age of 4 years old, I could suddenly make out the letters and words around me. I read constantly, and, as you would guess, my parents proudly encouraged me to read more and more. Most memorable is the statement that my father made as I began to feel more and more confident with my reading: "Now, there will be no secrets in the world, because you can learn everything by reading." I felt like a large, wide, important door had been opened, and that the universe of knowledge would always be there, waiting for me to discover it word by word. It goes without saying that we Jews are a people of reading, stories, and learning. Our Passover Seder revolves around our Haggadah, our retelling of the Exodus from Egypt. We are known as the "People of the Book." Midrashim, creative interpretations of our biblical text, add allegory, folklore, and depth to many of more elusive or confusing tales. Yet, to some Jewish communities, there are some doors to learning that should not be opened, and there are some stories that should not be shared. read MORE Filed Under: Books

Book Discussion: Houses of Study - A Jewish Woman Among Books October 26, 2009 by Rabbi Marci Bellows Read the review of this book in RJ magazine See other Significant Jewish Book selections Houses of Study - A Jewish Woman Among Books by Ilana M. Blumberg One of my favorite activities to bring to a classroom of elementary school-aged religious school students is a deceptively simple art project: "Draw a Jew." Easy, no? In fact, I encourage you to do so, even just in your own mind, as you read these words. What does a Jew look like to you? Even more interesting, what would you imagine if I said, "Draw a rabbi?" I am infinitely intrigued by how many of my students draw, a) a man; b) an Orthodox man; and/or c) an Ultra-Orthodox, black-hat covered, payes-wearing man. After they share their drawings, I ask them a short, important question: "Where are you in these pictures?" Silently, they look down at the drawings, slightly baffled, as a new understanding spreads over the group - they, too, are Jews. And they, too, would have been just as valid in someone's drawing of a Jew. The drawing could have been of a CHILD! A modern, baseball cap-covered, jeans-wearning child. Even more eye-opening - that drawing could have been of a woman!! Holy moly!! read MORE Filed Under: Books

Book Discussion: A Seat at the Table October 22, 2009 (5 Comments) by Peter Shapiro Read the review of this book in RJ magazine See other Significant Jewish Book selections A Seat at the Table by Joshua Halberstam "A Seat at the Table" is a metaphor for the Chassidic adage that no matter what one has done to stray from the teachings of Torah he or she will not be abandoned by their family. This is similar to the sentiment expressed in Robert Frost's poem, "Death of the Hired Man": "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Mr. Zeitchik, a minor character, sets the tone when he says "... a story is never just a story". The author, Joshua Halberstam, used that statement as a lead-in to employ the literary device, "a story within a story". That is where the inner story often has symbolic and psychological significance for the characters in the outer story. read MORE Filed Under: Books

Book Discussion: Houses of Study - A Jewish Woman Among Books October 22, 2009 by Peter Shapiro Read the review of this book in RJ magazine See other Significant Jewish Book selections Houses of Study - A Jewish Woman Among Books by Ilana M. Blumberg Jewish women for almost five thousand seven hundred seventy years have struggled with a tradition that moved them into a life of modesty, early marriage and motherhood. Formal education was forbidden to women, a point brought home in Maggie Anton's three novels "Rashi's Daughters I, II and III". Women inherited wisdom by what was referred to as Binah, a mystical process where they acquired all the knowledge necessary to sustain their family's needs.   The progressive streams of Judaism recently have opened up their doors to women's full participation in all aspects of religious and communal life. The author Ilana Blumberg's journey is that of a woman in love with learning of Judaism whose full participation in the Modern Orthodox world is often blocked by the rules in the sacred texts she reveres. read MORE Filed Under: Books

So Many Books, So Little Time: A Yom Kippur Minhag October 5, 2009 By JanetheWriter It's not as though I don't have any unread books on my bookshelf.  In fact, sometimes it feels as though most of them are unread and there's just no time to pluck one from the shelf, curl up and get lost in its pages.  Among my recent acquisitions still waiting for the binding to be broken and the pages to be devoured are Rabbi Jill Jacobs' There Shall Be No Needy:  Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach, The Woman with a Worm in her Head and Other True Stories of Infectious Disease by Pamela Nagami (yes, I'm the daughter of a parasitologist) and Simon Baatz' For the Thrill of It:  Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago.  My father recently finished the Baatz book and has now passed it along to me, highly recommended.  You may recall that I first mentioned this particular book in a blog post I wrote last year at about this time.  That was shortly after he and I - as we do each year - spent a bit of time on Yom Kippur afternoon browsing in the Barnes and Noble near my parents' congregation. read MORE Filed Under: Books | Community | Holidays | Lifecycle