What's New
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The Mom of a Trans Child Wrote a Beautiful New Rosh HaShanah Book
September 7, 2020
As the mother of a transgender child, Rabbi Ari Moffic knows that personal transformation is a key and beautiful part of who each of us is.
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Feminism, Female Protagonists, and Finding Ourselves in Biblical Narratives
May 18, 2020
To honor the uncounted women in the Book of Numbers and to celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the U.S. this year, Rabbi Carole Balin, Ph.D., has crafted an “alternative Book of Numbers” for her weekly Torah commentaries for Ten Minutes of Torah.
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For Mother's Day in Quarantine, I'm Revisiting Jewish Mother-Daughter Memoirs
May 6, 2020
For Mother’s Day this year, I’m revisiting memoirs that have provided comfort through their relatability over the years. My life isn’t exactly like those of my beloved memoir writers, but so many details and stories ring true, almost bringing me back to being in close proximity to my mom.
Social Justice Literature
Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen
By the time she was 3 years old, Jazz Jennings (not her original first name or her real last name) knew she was meant to be a girl. In her new book Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teenager, Jazz tells her story, including how she and her family became reality TV stars and outspoken advocates for transgender rights.
Children's Book Reviews
Bone Button Borscht
A tired beggar reaches a small town on a cold, wintery night, seeking food and a warm bed. When the poor locals are reluctant to assist, he promises to make a delicious soup from six bone buttons.
Book Reviews
Florence Adler Swims Forever
Protecting children from harmful news is a natural parental instinct, but matriarch Esther Adler goes to extremes in Florence Adler Swims Forever, a novel based on a real-life incident in author Rachel Beansland’s family. In 1934, Atlantic City, N.J., was a business community on the rise, supported by the vacation industry and the influx of immigrants from Europe. Small neighborhood hostels gradually gave way to booming hotels as the country rebounded from the Great Recession
Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg
The four power International Military Tribunal (IMT) took place in Nuremberg, Germany between November 1945 and October 1946. Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union joined the United States in bringing 24 Nazi leaders to justice after the end of World War II. Three U.S. accounts – Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Nuremberg (2000), and The Nuremberg Trials (2006) – present the IMT as a triumph of the American justice system. But Soviet participation in the
On a Clear April Morning: A Jewish Journey
On a clear April morning in the early 1900s, Brazilian poet and author Marcos Iolovitch’s father, Yossef, a merchant in Russia, saw “beautiful brochures with colored illustrations describing the excellent climate…of a vast and faraway country of America.” Homesteads on favorable terms were being offered to “all those who wished to become farmers.” Having always interested in agriculture and dreaming of a better life, Yossef took up the offer of the Jewish Colonization Association, funded
Parenting on a Prayer: Ancient Jewish Secrets for Raising Modern Children
There are two groups that I think will benefit from Parenting on a Prayer (Ben Yehuda Press, 2020): those of us who are worried that we may not be raising children in the way that we should and those of us who have no idea how the Jewish prayer book can possibly speak to the challenges of parenting and all of the other issues that we face in life. As I read Rabbi Amy Grossblatt
The Dairy Restaurant
Ben Katchor, an American cartoonist and illustrator best known for his critically acclaimed comic strip Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, begins The Dairy Restaurant (Schocken Books, 2020) with the Garden of Eden story. He speculates whether Adam and Eve were the world’s first vegetarians, and we follow his journey through time to America’s ubiquitous Jewish dairy restaurants – and their ultimate demise. With his humorous illustrations on nearly every page, Katchor presents an extraordinary range
Discussion Guides
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Night, A Memoir, by Elie Wiesel
Eliezar Wiesel was born in 1928 in the small Hungarian village of Sighet, in what is today Romania.
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Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
Prior to its publication in Spring 2002, an excerpt of Everything Is Illuminated appeared in the New Yorker'sdebut-fiction issue.
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The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
The cover of Anita Diamant's extraordinary book reads, The Red Tent: A Novel. A more accurate description of her rich elaboration on the biblical narrative of Dinah would be The Red Tent: A Midrash.
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Mr. Sammler’s Planet, by Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, was born near Montreal in 1915 to Russian Jewish immigrant parents.
Learning
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Building a Serious Jewish Library
A young friend and former student of mine recently asked her Facebook network for suggestions as to what books she ought to buy as first steps in building a serious
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7 Elie Wiesel Books that Show the Range of His Influence
Most people know Elie Wiesel as the author of Night, one of the first published autobiographical accounts of what life was like inside Nazi concentration camps.
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How to Start a Social Justice Book Club
RAC Reads, hosted by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, provides all of the tools necessary to help get you started.
History
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First They Came for the Books
In his fascinating and eminently readable new book, Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books, Rabbi Mark Glickman reminds us that Jews have always relied on books as essential sinews, binding Jews to God, to each other, and to the rest of humanity, regardless of time or space.
Making Meaning of Tisha B’Av Through the Lens of Literature
When you have come into the land that the Eternal your God is giving to you as a heritage, and you have possessed it and settled there, you shall take
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A Dangerous Trend in World War II-Era Novels
I understand why Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction last month. It is a beautiful, captivating and moving story. Set in World
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Were Shakespeare's Plays Actually Written By a Jewish Woman?
William Shakespeare's name appears on many of play, but no evidence demonstrates that he actually wrote them. Could they have actually been written by Aemelia Bassano?