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Archive for the ‘Books’ Category.
16th August 2009, 10:00 am
The book discussion’s group yearly planning meeting was held Thursday morning. 20 books were suggested for consideration to be included in the program. See the full list below, out of which nine will be selected to be read by the group.
8th March 2009, 10:00 am
You may not be aware of this, but today, March 8, is International Women’s Day. In former Communist countries it was a day officially dedicated to celebrate women. I still remember how to say the name of the holiday in Russian. The event was established in 1911 by Clara Zetkin, who married a Russian Jew.
Commemorating this holiday I would like to recommend a splendid title, “Four centuries of Jewish women’s spirituality” edited by Ellen Umansky and Dianne Ashton.
 Gathered in this volume are writings by North American, European, and Israeli Jewish women of different ages, sexual orientations, and educational and socioeconomic backgrounds. The voices of women from all four modern Jewry’s major religious movements – Orthodoxy, Conservativism, Reform and Reconstructionism – are represented here as well as those of women who identify their spirituality as Jewish, but are not part of a particular movement.
Divided into chronological sections, each with a historical introduction, the book mirrors the experience of Jewish women in society as well as their spiritual lives. Early sections include such personal documents as a woman’s letter to her husband, written in 1619 from the Prague ghetto, and a mother’s farewell letter to her son on the occasion of his emigration to America n 1880. Among the nineteenth-century selections are writings by prominent Jewish women such as Emma Lazarus and Rebecca Gratz, as well as lectures, minutes, and addresses that reflect the proliferation of local Jewish women’s organizations in the late 1800’s Zionism, educational reform, and women’s suffrage are among the social and political issues touched on their writings.
3rd March 2009, 10:00 am
Arthur Koestler passed away 26 years ago today. He is most famous for his “Darkness at noon“, a novel giving an inside view of Stalin’s purges of the 1930’s USSR. Koestler was Jewish, lived in a kibbutz in the 1920’s, but had an antagonistic relationship to his Judaism. In a Jewish context Koestler is mostly known more for “The thirteenth tribe; the Khazar empire and its heritage.” In it he advocated the idea that contemporary European Jewry are descendents of the Khazars. According to his theory the Khazars, people form the Caucasian region converted to Judaism en masse in the 8th century. More recent scholarship disputed his theory. Nevertheless we have the book and it is a very interesting read even if proven unfounded later.
25th February 2009, 05:29 pm
Rabbi Benjamin J. Segal is an author and as you can see from his brief bibliography at the end of this post has served the Jewish community in many functions throughout his life. His latest book, a translation and commentary on Shir haShirim, titled “The Song of Songs: A Woman in Love” will be published in March. Rabbi Segal will be with us the whole weekend as our scholar-in-residence.
- Friday evening he will give the drash titled “Must Israel Do T’Shuvah-Morality While Living with Terror” (Services start at 7:30 PM)
- Shabbat morning we will have “Lunch and Learn” session with him on the topic of “Politics and Peace–After the Election.” (Services start at 9:30 AM, potluck lunch around 12:30.)
- Sunday morning at 11 AM Rabbi Segal will give a book talk and we will have a chance to talk with him about the book.
His book can be purchased on Sunday or ordered on Saturday and picked up on Sunday.
The official description of his book from the publisher’s site (Gefen) reads:
 A love poem as old as the Bible, as contemporary as today…
One love poem–the Bible’s Song of Songs – continues to be read and to inspire after thousands of years. Using the best of biblical scholarship and sharp literary analysis, Benjamin Segal’s new translation and commentary reveal a picture of ideal love so appealing that it became for centuries the monotheistic model of human-divine attachment. Here one also finds a rare ancient effort to capture the female voice. Segal’s literary analysis captures the pulsating rhythm of the poem, and allows the reader to confront its ever-contemporary and challenging view of love.
Information on Rabbi Segal:
Benjamin J. Segal is the past President of Melitz, the Centers for Jewish and Zionist Education, in Jerusalem, and most recently has created within that context the major Jewish learning festival of Sukkot in Jerusalem, “Gateways.” A past President of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, the academic and educational center of Masorti Judaism in Israel, he previously served for nineteen years as the Director of the Ramah Programs in Israel, He is former Chairman of the Masorti Movement in Israel and, for many years, served on the Expanded Executive of the World Zionist Organization. He is the chairman of the Executive of the Meimad Political Party in Israel, and serves on the boards of several non-profit enterprises.
In addition to authoring the book, Returning: The Land of Israel as Focus in Jewish History, he is the author of two study texts: Missionary at the Door: Our Uniqueness and Midrash: The Quest for a Contemporary Past. His translation and commentary, The Song of Songs: A Woman in Love, is now being published. He has also published various articles on biblical, educational and Zionist issues, including the (Hebrew) booklet, “A People and its Land,” an ideological statement on the Jews and Israel. Recent articles include: “The Liberated Woman of Valor”, “The Land of Israel in the Torah” (an appendix to the new Torah commentary, Etz Hayim), “Terms of Endearment: Toward a Clearer Horizon for Israeli Masorti Judaism,” “Psalm 126: Of Dreams, Prayer and Fulfillment” and “Anger and Old Age: An Appreciation of Psalm 90.” He was a member of the committee which wrote “Emet Ve’Emunah,” the ideological statement of the Conservative Movement.
Rabbi Segal was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, in 1969, and served as a pulpit rabbi in Congregation Kol Emeth, Palo Alto, California for four years. He made aliyah in 1973, and now lives in Jerusalem with his wife Judy and their family. Since moving to Jerusalem, Rabbi Segal has served as scholar in residence and visiting rabbi (high holidays) for numbers of congregations abroad. The Segals have five children and 11 grandchildren.
19th February 2009, 10:00 am
 After I wrote yesterday’s entry on Black History Month I received the email notification that the latest issue of the Book of Life podcast (“about the Jewish people and the books we read”) is online. It happens to be about Sonia Levitin’s book (and now stage play) “The Return“, which is one of the more popular books at our library. It chronicles an Ethiopian Jewish girl’s walk to freedom in Israel via Operation Moses. On the podcast’s webpage you can listen to an interview with Ms. Levitin, in which she describes what inspired her to write the book and about the current situation of Ethiopian Jews in Israel; watch a clip from the musical and if you scroll down a whole other entry on “Black History Month, Jewish Style.”
18th February 2009, 05:00 pm
February is Black History Month. Last year same time I wrote an entry about our books on African-American Jewish relations and another one the book titled Glimpses by Reverend Ann Gray Byrd, who visited our synagogue that month.
This year I would like to recommend two books that relate to the topic in different ways. A patron just inquired about one of them today. (Thank you Susan for pointing me to this item we had and I was not familiar with.) “The flying camel; Essays on identity by women of North African and Mid. Eastern Jewish heritage“ , edited by Loolwa Khazzoom, contains 16 essays. Here is the description from the back cover:
 Expanding the very definition of what is Jewish, this collection reveals and explores the often-hidden experiences and identities of Jewish women descended from, two rich and varied regions: North Africa and the Middle East. Writing from their unique perspectives, contributors bridge divisions between East and West, “foreign” and “familiar”, and discuss the impact of historical and contemporary tensions between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity have had on them and their families. Essays include a harrowing and desperate flight from persecution in Libya; an exploration of the category “Arab Jew”; discrimination in the Ivy League; and a light-skinned, Moroccan-born woman’s attempts to pass in order to gain acceptance among European Jews in Israel. A tender, honest, and above all, brave collection, “The flying camel” offers a new, critical perspective on the interplay of Arab and Jew and the complexities of people.
The other book also puts Jews and Africa together but in a different way and period. Gary Greenberg’s “The Moses mystery: The African origins of the Jewish people” asks the question ” Why does the archaeological record show no evidence for the origins of biblical Israel? ” Here is an excerpt from the author’s website with the framework of the answer he gives
 According to Greenberg, Moses served as Chief Priest to Pharaoh Akhenaten, whose religious changes provoked a major social and governmental crisis in Egypt. Shortly after Akhenaten’s death, the religious establishment regained control over the government and under Pharaoh Horemheb the government launched a full scale effort to purge the Egyptian record of any reference to Akhenaten’s existence, an effort that included the persecution of Akhenaten’s associates and followers. Moses fled Egypt at this time but returned on Horemheb’s death, claiming the throne as the only legitimate blood heir. This resulted in a civil war between the allies of Moses and Ramesses I, Horemheb’s co-regent at the time. Moses lost and led his followers out of Egypt, an event remembered in the bible as the Exodus.
12th February 2009, 11:00 am
 As today is Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday let me introduce you to a slim volume by Naphtali J. Rubinger titled “Abraham Lincoln and the Jews.” The six chapters on 92 pages are filled with stories and historical references you may not find elsewhere. First we learn about “Jews in the Ante-Bellum Period” and “Lincoln’s Jewish friends.” After touching on “The effects of the Civil War” we get a detailed description of “The Chaplaincy issue,” i.e. whether and how Jewish clergyman can serve the spiritual needs of Jewish soldiers. After a lengthy controversy “Lincoln signed the Bill in July of 1862, permitting Jews to serve as chaplains.” (page 60). Before the concluding chapter of “The final tribute” the specifics of “Grant’s order No. 11,” in which he expelled Jews from the army in December 1862, is discussed. (The short version: the president revoked the order. )
What better way to celebrate president’s day than borrowing and reading this book.
11th February 2009, 10:42 am
 Last week Henry Roth would have been 103 years old as he was born February 8, 1906. He is most known for his 1934 novel “Call it sleep.” He wrote many short stories, but only a few more novels, the first of those 50 years after his first novel. We also have one volume of his final tetralogy, “Mercy of a Rude Stream.”
“Call it sleep” has sold over 1million copies. Time magazine listed it as one of the 100 best English novels from 1923 to 2005. It is a masterpiece on immigration set in the Great Depression era. Instead of trying to entice you to read the novel with a short summary, let me just copy the opening lines. I hope it will show you the literary qualities of the work;
Standing before the kitchen sink and regarding the bright brass faucets that gleamed so far away, each with a bead of water at its nose, slowly swelling, falling, David again became aware that this world had been created without thought of him. He was thirsty, but the iron hip of the sink rested on legs tall almost as his own body, and by no stretch of arm, no leap, could he ever reach the distant tap. Where did the water come from that lurked so secretly in the curve of the brass? Where did it go, gurgling in the drain? What a strange world must be hidden behind the walls of a house! But he was thirsty.
“Mama!” he called, his voice rising above the hiss of sweeping in the frontroom. “Mama, I want a drink.”
The unseen broom stopped to listen. “I’ll be there in a moment,” his mother answered. A chair squealed on its castors; a window chuckled down; his mother’s approaching tread.
10th February 2009, 11:04 am
 Betty Friedan passed away three years, on February 4, 2006 on her 85th birthday. To understand her role in the feminist movement I recommend Justine Blau’s biography of eponymous title, written for young adults. The 100 page book contains many black and white pictures and covers Friedan’s life in 8 logical and chronological chapters. Friedan as the author of The Feminine Mystique and founder of NOW was the most influential feminist in the US. The last lines of the book sums up her significance:
Friedan has already taught millions of women–and men–to understand the ideas that constrained them and thus has helped them to change themselves, as well as the laws and attitudes of America, so that women now are closer than ever to living in full equality with men. In doing so, she has fundamentally altered the course of life in America. Throughout her career she has moved from analyzing her personal experience as a woman and as an aging American to thinking, writing, and teaching about larger public issues that affect all women and the aged.
She and her work deserves to be remembered. Read the book and be awed how much has changed thanks to her efforts.
9th February 2009, 10:11 am
 Yesterday was Martin Buber’s birthday. He was born February 8, 1878 and became undoubtedly one of the most influential 20th century Jewish thinker, theologian, author educator. Before listing the 20 books we have written or edited by him (and the 9 books about him.) Let me quote from the introduction of Pamela Vermer’s short biography of Buber:
He himself emphatically refused to accept that he was a philosopher at all… He similarly rejected the suggestion that he was a theologian… Was he a mystic? Many think so. He undeniably passed through a phase in which mysticism was deeply attractive to him… Another question which may reasonably be asked is whether Buber was basically a teacher. This would seem difficult to contradict. Yet he wished to make sure that his role was interpreted as that of a guide rather than an instructor. Was Buber then a biblical scholar? … Buber aimed primarily at an existential understanding of the text, and thought cold critical methods by themselves to be inadequate for such a task. … At least there can be no doubt that Buber was a Zionist. Can he have been a Hasid?
As you can see from the short excerpt above he was a complex character. But beyond reading about him, let me recommend his books themselves.
- A believing humanism: My testament, 1902-1965
- Between man and man
- Eclipse of God
- For the sake of Heaven
- Good and evil
- Hasidism and modern man
- I and thou
- Israel and the world; essays in a time of crisis
- The knowledge of man
- The legend of the Baal Shem (We have it as a book and as an audio tape.)
- Moses: The relevation and the covenant
- On Judaism
- On the Bible
- Origin and meaning of Hasidism
- Paths in Utopia
- The prophetic faith
- Tales of the Hasidim
- Ten rungs
- Two types of faith
- The way of response
Our books of/about Buber
- Vermes: Buber
- Brown: Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Buber and Barth
- Friedman: A dialogue with Hasidic tales; hallowing the everyday
- Friedman: Martin Buber and the eternal
- Friedman: Martin Buber; the life of dialogue
- Herberg: The writings of Martin Buber
- Hodes: Martin Buber, an intimate portrait
- Rothschild: Jewish perspectives on Christianity
- Schaeder: The Hebrew humanism of Martin Buber
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