American Ghost: A Family’s Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest
In American Ghost: A Family’s Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest (HarperCollins), award-winning author Hannah Nordhaus treats us to a genealogical detective story that combines memoir, cultural history, and ghost hunting in her quest to discover the truth about her great great-great-grandmother.
The Good Book: Writers Reflect on Favorite Bible Passages
The Bible continues to be the best-selling book in history, perhaps because each reader can identify with some aspect of its ancient text. It is this notion that informs the essays of the 24 novelists, poets, scholars, and journalists who answered Andrew Blauner’s call to write an essay centered on a Biblical book or passage with personal meaning to them.
The Abba Eban Paradox
While serving as the rabbi of Temple Beth El in Rockford, IL, in the late 1970s, I introduced the legendary Israeli statesman Abba Eban at a community event sponsored by a local college. After enlightening us with his Churcillian eloquence on Israel and the international situation, a frightening mishap ensued. As Eban sat down heavily in the large armchair provided for him, it rolled backward, tipped over, and deposited the diplomat behind the Rockford College banner. To everyone’s great relief, he reemerged unscathed.
Homesick: A Novel
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 Mevasseret.
Wherever You Go
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 novelWherever You Go as she has woven together three lives caught in the grip of a volatile and demanding faith.
By Fire, By Water
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.
A Seat at the Table
"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.
Houses of Study: a Jewish Woman Among Books
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.
Ben-Gurion: A Political Life
The authors, Shimon Perez and David Landau, made it clear from the outset that their views on David Ben-Gurion as a man, his accomplishments and failures, as well as his vision for Israel could be considered biased. Perez, the current President of Israel, was his friend and worked with him for many years on issues about which they felt passionately, but on which they were not always in accord. Landau is a lifelong journalist and the former editor of Haaretz. He was born in 1947, and was more critical of Ben-Gurion. The authors concede that the book is a fusion of memory and history with multiple competing narratives.
Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel
In Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel (Princeton University Press, 2016), Northeastern University’s Professor Dov Waxman argues that Israeli politics and policies are a growing source of tension and division within the American Jewish community to the point that he questions whether there is still an identifiable Jewish voice on Israeli affairs.