The Secret Chord
It's a good bet that many Americans are doing some deep thinking about the qualities we seek in a leader. Do we value charisma over moral purity? Do we forgive personal flaws in deference to rank and power?
We Were the Future: A Memoir of the Kibbutz
The word “kibbutz” may suggest a healthy, outdoorsy lifestyle on a self-sustaining farm, a cooperative of hardy, dedicated men and women, living and working together, sharing their lives. Yael Neeman’s memoir, We Were the Future details a surprisingly different scenario.
L’Chaim: Pictures to Evoke Memories of a Jewish Life
The book is large and fits comfortably on a lap. The color photographs nearly fill each page. Each image depicts real people doing everyday Jewish things — a young girl eating matzah ball soup; a bubbe and her grandchildren lying in the grass; a man wearing tefillin, praying. The sentences are in large print; they are simple ("Mother says the blessing over the candles") and easy to read.
Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman
There is a photograph in my study of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with me in a crowded Jerusalem hotel ballroom.
Alfred Stieglitz: Taking Pictures, Making Painters
Phyllis Rose’s book Alfred Stieglitz: Taking Pictures, Making Painters (part of Yale’s Jewish Lives series) brings her subject out of the shadows and into his deserved place in history as the person who made “taking pictures” a respected art form.
Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent
In his highly readable and concise biography – Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent (Yale University Press) – of the famous philosopher, Paul Mendes-Flohr, chief editor of the 22-volume German language collection of Buber’s works, described him as a man who championed “a life of dialogue” and taught that “all real living is meeting.”
The Mandela Plot
Adolescence, otherness, and Apartheid make a literally explosive cocktail in National Jewish Book Award winner Kenneth Bonert’s new novel, The Mandela Plot. Half hyperbolic adventure and half historical fiction, Bonert elevates his unlikely hero, Martin Helger, to almost mythic status, while reminding readers both of South Africa’s Jewish diaspora and the horrors of Apartheid.