Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

While I was writing a review/recommendation of Rabbi Lew’s latest book (“Be still and get going“) a few minutes ago I received the following email:

Rabbi Emeritus, Rabbi Alan Lew passed away on Monday, January 12/Tevet 16.

This morning, after teaching rabbis at a Seminary leader training institute, Rabbi Lew meditated, prayed Shacharit, went for a run, and left this world. The funeral service will be held on Thursday, January 15, at 12 noon at Congregation Beth Sholom. Internment will follow at Home of Peace Cemetery, 1299 El Camino Real, Colma, CA.

The next book we won was written by a friend of several people in our congregation: Rabbi Alan Lew. We had already a book by him (“This is real and you are completely unprepared“) that our rabbi quoted from before the last High Holy Days. “Be still and get going” is Lew’s latest, book published in 2005. Its subtitle is direct about the book in a different way than the title: “A Jewish meditation practice for real life.” The official description reads:

A guide to deepening our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world through meditation and a new reading of traditional Jewish texts. Rabbi Alan Lew is the founder of the country’s first meditation center connected to a synagogue. For the past 10 years, he has been teaching his congregation how two ancient traditions-classical Jewish writings and Zen meditation-can shed light on each other in electrifying ways.

I only read so far the introduction, but I already like the book. It explains not just how the thinking/meditating/teaching behind the book was born, but also why the combination of normative Judaism and Zen meditation can be more fruitful and rewarding than recreating lost Kabbalistic rituals. I also enjoyed the style of Lew as he retold a known midrash and explained how its meaning has been changed in recent retellings, where the ending was changed. The lesson learned is, or should be, that the treasure is often in plain sight ant buried deep, i.e. in Kabbalah. I hope you will enjoy too the books, which has these inspiring chapter titles:

1. Transformation
2. Suffering
3. The inner roots of conflict
4. Don’t be afraid!
5. Sacred emptiness
6. In the transformed world
7. Revelation
8. The overflowing cup

With our attention to all the books and DVDs we have sometimes it is easy to forget that we have great periodicals, newspapers and magazines as well. For example today the latest issue of Lilith magazine has arrived. Its 48 pages are filled with “independent, Jewish & frankly feminist” topics according to its tagline. The detailed table of contents is posted on the magazine’s website. From the numerous interesting articles I would like to draw your attention to the six stories daughters wrote on/about/in relation to their mothers.

Two stories, by Laurie Mozian and Esther Moritz, are about coming of age against the backdrop of strong Jewish mothers; two, by Amy Katz and Rebecca Himber Berg, limn the intense emotional partnership between mother and daughter in the absence of men; two by Berg and Litwak, are about desperately, magically wanting to compensate Mom for her losses; and one by Eva White, is about the huge nexus of meaning that falls away in the absence of mom.

Come on in check out this issue to read these stories and more or browse through precious issues. And unlike at the public library you can borrow copies of magazines from us.

You have a simple way to support our nursery school tomorrow, Tuesday, and have a great dinner. Just have pizza (or pasta or whatever else is on the menu) for dinner from/at Mary’s Pizza Shack and give a copy of this PDF flyer with your order and 20% of the total of your order will benefit our nursery.

You knew it, right? I rarely can post without mentioning one of our books. You can go beyond pizza when thinking of cooking Italian and we can help you with that. Joyce Goldstein‘s “Cucina Ebraica: flavors of the Italian Jewish kitchen” is en excellent resource in expanding your taste and cooking skills. The introduction covers all areas you might be interested: Jews in Italy, information about the recipes, kashrut laws, and a note on holidays. Then we’re onto the meat of the book, so to speak although only one section is. The rest of the chapters are about antipasti (appetizers), minestre (soups), pasta e riso (pasta and rice), verdure (vegetables), pesce (fish), pollame (poultry), salse (sauces), and dolci (desserts). The book concludes with a bibliography, index and for your convenience a table of equivalents between US and metric system of measurement (liquid, dry, length, temperature). Almost two dozen full page, full color photographs make the volume more enticing and whetting your appetite.

The Sydney Taylor Book Award recognizes the best in Jewish children’s literature. A few days ago this year’s winners were announce. You can read more about the three gold medalists in this blog post or see them below. You can access the full list, including silver medalists and notable mentions here. I added all books to our Amazon.com wishlist, in case you want to purchase any of them for the library.

The Sydney Taylor Book Award Winner for Younger Readers:

As Good As Anybody: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom by Richard Michelson with illustrations by Raul Colon (Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books)

The Sydney Taylor Book Award Winner for Older Readers:

Brooklyn Bridge by Karen Hesse (Feiwel & Friends, an imprint of Macmillan)

The Sydney Taylor Book Award Winner for Teen Readers:

A Bottle in the Gaza Sea by Valerie Zenatti (Bloomsbury)

As usual, our group had a great meeting with lively discussion about the book most of us finished reading: Tamar Yellin‘s “The Genizah of the House of Shepher.” After discussing logistics for the coming meetings Vivien summarized the book for us and shared some observation from the reviews she read. Then we went around the table in a more or less orderly fashion and each of us shared a few or more words about our impression of the book. A theme quickly developed: all of us liked the descriptive power of the author. We read our favorite short and long quotes, which were amazing descriptions of people, places and events. On the other hand we also agreed that the pieces of the books felt disjointed when put together. It probably would have been better to read them as a series of short stories.

Three members of the group donated their copies to the library. (Thank you!) Thus we will have one copy available for borrowing and two for purchasing.

We will meet in a month, on February 4, to talk about Moacyr Scliar‘s “A Centaur in the Garden.”

Last month I mentioned that we won five books. They have arrived. I will talk about all of them one by one, but first I want to share the most amazing piece. It is a beautifully designed and executed pop-up book by Chuck Fischer, called “In the beginning – the art of Genesis“. Being a fragile item, this will be on reserve, i.e. available only to read/view in the library, but I still would love to share this volume with as many people of all ages as possible. As you can suspect it contains lots of artwork from different eras and regions of the world worked into incredible pop-up sculptures. Below is a picture of one of the 7 compositions, but 2-dimensional pictures do not give justice to this “book.” (Click on the picture to get a bigger view.)

Who would not want free books, particularly if they are of good quality? What if your child could get a free one every month? There is no catch, no strings attached. This is exactly what PJ Library does. It “sends Jewish-content books and music on a monthly basis to children from age six months to ages five, six or seven years depending on the community.” I happen to have a six months old daughter and we have just received our first installment. It is the soundtrack of the “Oy baby” DVD. Our daughter clearly enjoys it and so do we.

You can sign up for the program here or come by at the library to learn more about it and pick up a brochure.

Last month I attended the first PJ Library committee meeting in San Francisco and found myself in the position for being the volunteer in spreading the world in Sonoma County. In the coming months I will try to reach as many families as I can. I think this is a great program with benefits only, no reason for every Jewish family to sign up.

The next meeting of our monthly bookclub ins this Wednesday (January 7) at 10 AM. We will be talking about Tamar Yellin‘s “The Genizah of the House of Shepher.” Right now, Monday afternoon, I am only halfway through the book, but I can tell you that the discussion will surely be interesting. There are so many facets of the book to discover, share, talk about, and yes in some cases disagree with or dislike. It is a rich book, I encourage you to read it. Even if you cannot finish (or start) it by Wednesday come to our meeting to enjoy warm company and intelligent discussion.

Having joined the library a year ago, it is time to take stock of my experiences. They include so many positive areas it is hard to know where to start.

First of all, I enjoyed being surrounded by books, many of which I am interested in, some I actually read. The process of getting to know the collection will take many years, but I dove into the process head first. What can I say? I love books, learning from them, being entertained by them, touching the textures of the pages, admiring the illustrations. I also love to spread the word when I find a good one.

I take pleasure in writing, as you might have noticed if you read any of the 300 hundred blog entries I wrote. The purpose of my posts is to let you know about the offerings we have, whether they are new or old books, events we put on or anniversaries worthy of remembering. If you haven’t checked it out, maybe it’s time. (The address is at the top of this article)

My thirst for technology is also met because I can play with software I was not familiar with. By the time you read this we should have our new catalog up and running, with several new exciting features for patrons. I also happened to slip in the role of maintaining Beth Ami’s website, yet another task I am having fun with.

Our collection grew with over 300 books and DVDs in 2008. Thank you, dear readers, for donating them or giving money to the library’s dedicated fund so we could purchase them. Organizing information is another passion of mine. Thus cataloging all these new items was a rewarding task.

I admit I watch a lot of movies. Working at the library gave me the opportunity to share my enthusiasm via running last summer’s film club, when we watched 10 movies. I plan to restart the series in February. Recommendations for what movies to include in the series are welcome.

But none of this can be compared to the most thrilling part of my job: interacting with visitors and patrons. Seeing the joy of a child when I ask how she liked the book she just returned, finding the most suitable book when somebody asks a reference question, watching people as they browse our shelves to pick something to read, hearing the children’s laughter when I read stories to them, listening to people’s stories on how they relate to a certain book – these are the best of times in the life of a librarian.

Thank you for your ongoing support that allowed me to work in my dream job. Now, you can join in the fun as well. The beginning of the New Year is the perfect opportunity to start volunteering at the library. I need to take a short vacation for personal reasons, starting January 22. We need more people while I am away to cover shifts if we are to keep our usual opening hours. If any of the above appeals to you, I urge to inquire how you can be more involved.