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Archive for the ‘Books’ Category.
23rd March 2010, 09:00 am
 A few months ago our books discussion group read Paul Auster‘s “The Brooklyn Follies”. It has a photo of Brooklyn street corner, where every person is looking to the side, nobody facing the photographer/reader or even each other. There is one exception, the central figure, who looks like he could be the central character of the novel itself too. He is looking down into a plastic bag, surveying its content.
On one hand this scene depicts quite well what’s happening in the book, despite that the people on the cover do not directly correspond to the people between the covers. But for the most part it seems that they pass each other without really caring or even noting. The book is a rollercoaster ride, where so many things are happening to so may people, that you may get dizzy. On the other hand if you think that the main character is looking for depths you would be mistaken. The shopping bag is more of a symbol that the author went to the writers’ supermarket and bought a lot of techniques, characters and trick and through them together in the attempt of trying to make a single book. While I enjoyed the ride, but won’t remember much o iit later as there is not much to remember beyond the events.
However that maybe the point of the book. On page 158 he writes, “Why do I linger over these trivial details? Because the truth of the story lies in the details, and I have no choice but to tell the story exactly as it happened.” It seems that Auster’s intention is to comply with post-modernist ideals and grab the surface of events before they disappear. Then on page 303 we found these lines,
“Most lives vanish. A person dies and little by little all traces of that life disappear… My idea was this: to form a company that would publish books about the forgotten ones, to rescue the stories and facts and documents before they disappeared—and shape them into a continuous narrative, the narrative of life.”
I love the idea and would love to be involved in such a process. (For example at the book club where we discussed the book we remembered and read the obituary of a former book club member, whose life covered a multitude of countries, languages and eras. The little I know about her makes me think that her life story would have been fascinating to read.) The problem is that Auster’s novel is not a real life story but a segment of his imagination. I haven’t read any of this other books, but I’ve been told this fast-paced novel full of comic elements is not his usual style. Maybe he should return to his more solemn prose.
P.s. A quick summary of the story: Nathan Glass, a life-insurance salesman, retires to Brooklyn after he divorced and got terminal cancer. There he encounters Tom Wood, his lost cousin, who works in a used books tore, owned by a(n ex-?)criminal who got out of prison for forgery. Nathan gets entangled with with characters of his neighborhood and his family members in other parts of the country, this his idea of dying peacefully gets dissolved in the lives of others. As a result he gets a new life through the lives of others and eventually of his own.
18th March 2010, 09:00 am
 Isaacs, Ron. Have a Good Laugh: Jokes for the Jewish Soul. Illus. by Franklin Feldman. Jersey City , NJ : Ktav, 2009. 185 p. Paperbound. (ISBN-978-1602801301).
In seven chapters the author groups jokes by subject: Israel , Theology and God, Family, Bible, Rabbis, Humor from Chelm, and last but longest, Potpourri of Jewish humor. Though many of the jokes are well-worn and familiar to older readers, there is always a new generation to entertain and surprise. When you sit in your armchair all by yourself and read funny stories, they may not seem so funny, but if you are a good story-teller, you may add some of these to your repertoire and use them at an appropriate moment in a social setting or to enliven an otherwise serious speech. Illustrations are few but inject sparkle into this volume.
Recommended for collections in need of more anthologies of jokes.
Susanne M. Batzdorff, Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library, Congregation Beth Ami, Santa Rosa , CA .
14th March 2010, 09:00 am
 Kaplan-Mayer, Gabrielle. The Creative Jewish Wedding Book. 2d ed.; a Hands-on Guide to New and Old Traditions, Ceremonies & Celebrations. Woodstock , VT : Jewish Lights,
2009. paperbound. 261p., illus. $19.99 (ISBN-13: 978-1580233989).
This is a very complete overview of the many varieties of Jewish weddings, from orthodox to barely religious, from traditionally Jewish to marriage of two people belonging to different faiths, but also not shying away from marriage between two persons of the same sex. Traditions and customs are explained, writing your own texts for wedding rituals is encouraged. Altogether the author empowers the marrying couple to decide what style of wedding is best for them and their family situation. A step-by-step plan facilitates what could be a daunting process. Choice of foods, music, chuppah, decorations are discussed in detail, with many suggestions included. Besides the general index, the book includes a14 page list of websites and (how old-fashioned!) a 4 page bibliography for further study. This title should be a welcome addition to your collection as a very practical and up-to-date guide to this important life-cycle event.
Susanne M. Batzdorff, Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library, Congregation Beth Ami, Santa Rosa , CA
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.
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