The Book of Ruth
Excerpted with permission from Every Person's Guide to Shavuot (Jason Aronson, Inc).
In traditional settings, the Book of Ruth is read on the second day of Shavuot. The book is about a Moabite woman who, after her husband dies, follows her Israelite mother-in-law, Naomi, into the 
Jewish people with the famous words "whither you go, I will go, wherever you lodge, I will lodge, your people will be my people, and your God will be my God." She asserts the right of the poor to glean the leftovers of the barley harvest, breaks the normal rules of behavior to confront her kinsman Boaz, is redeemed by him for marriage, and becomes the ancestor of King David.
The custom of doing this is already mentioned in the talmudic tractate of Soferim (14:16), and the fact that the first chapter of the Midrash of Ruth deals with the giving of the Torah is evidence that this custom was already well established by the time this Midrash was compiled. [Tractate Soferim is one of the latest books of the Talmud, probably dating no earlier than the eighth century.]
There are many explanations given for the reading of Ruth on Shavuot. The most quoted reason is that Ruth's coming to Israel took place around the time of Shavuot, and her acceptance into the Jewish faith was analogous of the acceptance of the Jewish people of God's Torah.
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Judaism's Great Debates
Some will tell you that we need less debate in the Jewish community; that for the sake of unity we need to stifle dissent and limit the amount we argue. I say that we need more debate, not less, and that we will emerge the stronger for it. But what we need is the right kind of debate….
My new book, Judaism’s Great Debates, posits that debate is not only desirable but is central to Judaism. Abraham, Moses, Ben Zakkai, Hillel, the Vilna Gaon, Geiger, Herzl… heroes of every era of Jewish history are engaged in great debates. Moreover the Talmud is replete with debate; it is at the very core of rabbinic reasoning. Indeed it is the Talmud that coins a unique Jewish expression, makhloket l’shem shamayim-an argument for the sake of heaven. The tractate Avot famously teaches: “Every debate that is for the sake of heaven will make a lasting contribution. Every debate that is not for the sake of heaven will not make a lasting contribution.” (5:20) Our sages understood that a debate for the right reasons enhances Judaism. A debate for the wrong reasons detracts from Judaism.
Perhaps the most famous debating pair in Jewish history was Hillel and Shammai (after Abraham and God, that is). In actuality it was not these two sages but their disciples that did most of the arguing. A wonderful passage in tractate Eruvin states: “For three years there was a dispute between Beit Hillel and Bet Shammai, the former asserting, the law is in agreement with our views, and the latter contending, the law is in agreement with our views. Then a voice from heaven announced: eilu v’eilu divrei Elohim hayim, both are the words of the living God.” Deep respect is given to both schools because both sides are speaking the truth as they see it, and have the welfare of the community in mind.
Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote that although in practice one viewpoint will usually prevail (the law went according to Beit Hillel almost every time), “both views will have permanent value because…[they] shed new light on the issue under debate, and will have contributed to the attainment of the proper understanding of the question discussed.
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Haggadah - With Many to Choose, Find One That's Right for Your Seder
Has your family ever led a Seder before? Are there young children present? Is it all adult?
Do you enjoy discussions or would you rather just get on with the meal? There are many Haggadot to choose from.
Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, an athiest or a non-observer, find one that’s right for your needs:
Adult-oriented
Every few years there’s one Haggadah that comes out that captures the imagination and prevailing zeitgeist. This year Jonathan Safran Foer (“Everything is Illuminated”) and Nathan Englander (“For the Relief of Unbearable Urges”) have come out with the New American Haggadah. Jonathan Safran Foer orchestrates a new way of experiencing this text. His unique book is beautifully designed and illustrated by the acclaimed artist and calligrapher Oded Ezer, with a new translation by Nathan Englander. It brings together: Howard Jacobson, Lemony Snicket, Alain de Botton, Simon Schama, Tony Kushner, Michael Pollan, Jeffrey Goldberg and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.
Read an interview with Jonathan Safran Foer in the latest edition of Hadassah Magazine.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's Haggadah: Hebrew and English Text with New Essays and Commentary by Jonathan Sacks
From the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, this Haggadah is actually two books in one. At what would be the back of an English-language book is the Haggadah in large, beautiful Hebrew typography, with an English translation adapted and with a running commentary by Rabbi Sacks.
Go Forth and Learn: David Silber (Author), Rachel Furst (Collaborator) Hebrew and English text with new commentary and essays. Rabbi Silber has given us two books in one: the Haggadah itself, in English and Hebrew, with his Seder commentary and a collection of essays that provide close readings of the classic biblical and rabbinic texts that inform Seder-night ritual and narration. Both parts work beautifully together to illuminate the central themes of Passover: people hood, Covenant, our relationship to ritual, God’s presence in history, and other important issues that resonate with us all.
Elie Wiesel (Author), Mark Podwal (Illustrator)
With this Passover Haggadah, Elie Wiesel and his friend Mark Podwal invite you to join them for the Passover Seder. Wiesel and Podwal guide you through the Haggadah and share their understanding and faith in a special illustrated edition.
Accompanying the traditional Haggadah text (which appears here in an accessible new translation) are Elie Wiesel's poetic interpretations, reminiscences, and instructive retellings of ancient legends. The Nobel laureate interweaves past and present as the symbolism of the Seder is explored.
Children
Shmuel Blitz and his brilliant children’s books never cease to amaze. This is his seventh book -- and they just seem to get better and better. This time, he puts his talents to the task of creating a Children’s Haggadah, and the result is one that will be enjoyed by child and grown-up alike. Specifically written for children ages 4-8, the full Hebrew text of the Haggadah is accompanied by a child-oriented, yet accurate English translation. There are clear, precise instructions that will guide the child through every stage of the Seder. And, each page contains a box that provides additional information about the Pesach narrative for the interested youngster.
by Harriet Goldner. Adults and children alike will appreciate this traditional Seder presented in a non-traditional way.
It is easy to understand, enjoyable, and interesting. One six-year-old asked if it was written by Dr. Seuss!
What better way to engage children in this wonderful, ritual observance?
All
30-Minute Seder
The "Must Have" Haggadah written for the contemporary Jewish family.
Whether you purchase the book or download the print-your-own version of 30minute-Seder™... this refreshingly brief, rabbinically approved Passover Haggadah maintains the reverence of Passover while keeping the high points intact. The contemporary gender-neutral text, beautiful full-color illustrations, and Seder songs make for a memorable Passover Seder that engages and entertains the entire family.
New for 2012
Written by Alan S. Yoffie Illustrations by Mark Podwal
The inclusive text, commentary, and magnificent original artwork in this new Haggadah will make all family members and friends feel welcome at your seder. Young and old, beginners and experienced seder participants, will experience the joy of celebrating Passover together with clear step-by-step explanations, inspiring readings on the themes of justice and freedom for all, and opportunities for discussion. Songs to sing along with will be available for download also.
Feminist
Feminist Haggadot emphasize the role of women in the Passover story. “The Journey Continues: The Ma’yan Passover Haggadah,” from 2006 as part of the Jewish Women’s Project, tells the story of the Exodus in the voices of both men and women and reflects a vision of a world in which freedom belongs to all people.
Downloadable
About.com
This website offers 8 downloadable Haggadot crossing all lines, from novices to experts, even non-observant Jews, including the vocalized Haggadah, enabling you to hear the Seder service.
The Wandering is Over - from JewishBoston.comThis free, downloadable half-hour Seder might be just the thing for you and your guests. It’s pretty bare bones but has all the essentials.
GLBT Passover Haggadah
Downloadable:
The GLBT Haggadah integrates GLBT Passover traditions within the spirit of the traditional Passover experience. It includes a GLBT-specific Seder plate, the Four GLBT Children, the Prophetess Miriam's Cup, a Timeline of GLBT Events that parallels the Magid and much, MUCH more. This Haggadah is interactive and allows participants to color-in graphics for a unique & colorful personal touch. Download and read more.
Anne Frank: Still Writing in the Attic
At the start of Shalom Auslander’s staggeringly nervy new novel “Hope: A Tragedy,” a doleful Jewish non-farmer named Solomon Kugel climbs fearfully into the attic of his recently acquired farmhouse. He hopes the tapping sounds in the attic are being made by nothing worse than mice.
No such luck. The tapping is from a typewriter. And the typist, a stooped, foul-mouthed old lady who does not suffer fools gladly, is the single person about whom Jewish writers most avidly fantasize: Anne Frank.
Other fiction writers have gotten this fresh with Anne Frank. But they don’t get much funnier. Mr. Auslander (not to be confused with Nathan Englander, whose “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank” is imminent) is neither a voyeur nor a romantic when it comes to conjuring Anne. He is an absurdist with a deep sense of gravitas. He brings to mind Woody Allen, Joseph Heller and — oxymoron here — a libido-free version of Philip Roth.
As a man who becomes involved with a famously and totally unattainable woman, Mr. Auslander’s Kugel aligns nicely with Mr. Allen’s Kugelmass, the guy who was dropped into the midst of “Madame Bovary” only to find out how overrated Emma Bovary’s charms could be. Certainly that’s how “Hope: A Tragedy” unfolds at first. When Kugel first encounters the old bat claiming to be Anne, he is too dumbfounded to be diplomatic. Indignantly, he calls her an insult to the memory of the young girl who died in Auschwitz. “It was Bergen-Belsen, jackass,” Anne Frank replies. (She was imprisoned in both.)
“While there’s never a good time to find Anne Frank in your attic, this was a particularly bad time,” Mr. Auslander writes. The Kugels are recent transplants from New York City to the countryside; they have a dangerously nosy tenant who demands storage space in the attic where Anne is living; and Kugel’s mother lives with the family, pretending to be dying. She is also obsessed with the Holocaust; she travels with baggage that she will never unpack, “just in case.” The only item she makes an exception for is a large framed picture of Alan Dershowitz that she hangs on the wall.
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Is Jewish Funny? Is Funny Jewish
The Arts: Comic Relief
Leah F. Finkelshteyn
What is “Yiddishkeit”? The term encompasses Jewish culture, secular or religious. Its language, Yiddish, was born from a fusion of Hebrew, German and Slavic tongues. Its attitude can be cultured and warm or folksy and abrasive.
A new, superbly illustrated anthology, Yiddishkeit: Jewish Vernacular & the New Land (Abrams, 240 pp. $29.95), edited by the late comics writer Harvey Pekar and historian Paul Buhle, seeks to describe what Neal Gabler in the book’s introduction admits is a “large, expansive and woolly” concept. With a loving eye—and emphasizing early socialist leanings—Pekar and Buhle extract moments and personalities from Yiddish history. They trace the culture from Eastern Europe, through its flourishing in American theater, periodicals and novels and to current nostalgia, influences and revival, with rich vignettes illustrated by over a dozen artists, largely using the storytelling argot of comics.
As Gabler notes, the book is “sprawling, kaleidoscopic, eclectic,” because Yiddishkeit cannot be defined neatly in word or pictures. “You sort of have to feel it by wading into it.” Click here to enjoy a selection of the wonderful, eclectic and evocative illustrations from the book.
By Curt Schleier
Journalist Calvin Trillin is a long-time staff writer at The New Yorker who has written over two dozen books. But he is perhaps best known as a humorist, a career that began in 1978 when then-editor of The Nation, “the parsimonious Victor Navasky,” took him to lunch.
As Trillin recalls, Navasky wanted to “discuss his grand vision for transforming The Nation from a shabby Pinko sheet to a shabby Pinko sheet with a humor column.” That column, which ran from 1986 to 1995, was eventually syndicated in newspapers and then ran in Time magazine from 1995 to 2001.
It was in 1990, with a brief rhyme titled “If You Knew What Sununu,” that Trillin added poetry to his repertoire. He became what he called a “deadline poet” for The Nation, writing one new poem about current events each week, except in warmer months. “The Nation is published only every other week of the summer, even though the downtrodden are oppressed every day of the year,” Trillin explained.
Over the years, many of his columns and poems were collected in book form, including the just-published “Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff.” It includes a number of his Jewish-themed pieces in a section called “Bagels, Yiddish and Other Jewish Contributions to Western Civilization.” Trillin spoke to The Arty Semite about finding inspiration and his Jewish sense of humor.
Curt Schleier: When did you realize you could make people laugh?
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Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe
Lisa Alcalay Klug’s new book, Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe, is a history and how-to manual of…well, being a cool Jew. Among other things, she has a yarmulke decoder, a “Marley or Matisyahu?” lyric contest, and the funniest example of Jewish Geography-in-action I’ve ever seen. But our favorite part of the book is this brief history of the book Curious George…and how it narrowly escaped from the Nazis. And just to give you an extra bonus, Klug has done a DVD-extras version of the page. Just click away to see.
The following is an excerpt from Cool Jew. Printed with permission, Andrews McMeel Publishing and Lisa Alcalay Klug, © Lisa Alcalay Klug 2008
Did you know Curious George is a Heebster? It’s true. The “parents” of Curious George, Hans Augusto Rey and his wife Margret Rey, first met in their native Hamburg, Germany. They remet and married in Rio De Janeiro.
Later, the happy couple moved to Paris and there, they conceived their story about a lovable, inquisitive monkey. As the Nazis began their advance on Paris, Hans realized they were in danger. Much like their beloved George might, Hans cobbled together spare parts into two bicycles. And in the early hours of June 14, 1940, he and Margret started pedaling.
Within hours, the Nazis occupied Paris but the Reys had already escaped to safety. Four days later they reached the Spanish border, bringing their precious manuscript with them. From there, they traveled on, to Lisbon, Brazil, New York City, and finally, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they lived out the rest of their days.
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Best 100 Contemporary Jewish Books Since 1985
With 2011 coming to a close and the holiday season upon us, you may be looking for some books as gifts to friends, or yourself, of great Jewish reading. Michael Lerner compiled a list of 100 significant books from the last 25 
years that have a profound message or are written in ways that are overwhelmingly beautiful and compelling or have had a profound impact on public Jewish discourse or have influenced the most creative people in their take on reality or are likely to have that impact.
And so, in alphabetical order:
1. Rachel Adler,
Engendering Judaism
2. S.Y. Agnon,
Only Yesterday
3. Rebecca Albert,
Like Bread on the Seder Table
4. Robert Alter,
Canon and Creativity
5. Yehuda Amichai,
Open Closed Open
6. Judith S. Antonelli,
In the Image of God
7. Aharon Appelfeld,
The Conversion
8. Yehuda Bauer,
Rethinking the Holocaust
9. Saul Bellow,
Ravelstein
10. Meron Benvenisti,
Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948
11. Ellen Bernstein,
Ecology and the Jewish Spirit
12. David Biale,
Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History
13. Harold Bloom,
The Book of J
14. Daniel Boyarin,
Carnal Israel
15. Melvin Jules Bukiet,
Stories of an Imagined Childhood
16. Jules Chametzky and others (eds.),
The Norton Anthology of Jewish American Literature
17. Steven M. Cohen and Arnold M. Eisen,
The Jew Within: Self, Family, and Community in America
18. David Cooper,
God is a Verb
19. Anita Diament,
The Red Tent
20. Elliot N. Dorff and Louis E. Newman (eds.),
Contemporary Jewish Ethics and Morality
21. Evan Eisenberg,
The Ecology of Eden
22. Yaffa Eliach,
There Once Was a World
23. Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi,
Booking Passage
24. Marcia Falk,
The Book of Blessings
25. Michael Fishbane,
The Exegetical Imagination
26. Eva Fogelman,
Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust
27. Ellen Frankel,
The Five Books of Miriam
28. Saul Friedlander,
Nazi Germany and the Jews
29. Tikva Frymer-Kensky,
In the Wake of the Goddesses
30. Neil Gilman,
Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew
31. Sander L. Gilman,
Jewish Self-Hatred
32. Allan Ginsberg,
Selected Poems, 1947-1995
33. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen,
Hitler's Willing Executioners
34. Elyse Goldstein (ed.),
The Women's Torah commentary
35. Rebecca Goldstein,
Mazel: A Novel
36. Allegra Goodman,
Paradise Park
37. Roger S. Gottlieb,
A Spirituality of Resistance
38. Arthur Green,
Seek My Face, Speak My Name
39. Irving Greenberg,
The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays
40. David Grossman,
See Under Love
41. Moshe Halbertal,
The People of the Book
42. David Hartman,
Israelis and the Jewish Tradition
43. Geoffrey Hartman,
The Longest Shadow
44. Judith Hauptman,
Rereading the Rabbis
45. Susannah Heschel (ed.),
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel
46. Lawrence Hoffman,
My People's Prayer Book: Traditional Prayers, Modern Commentaries
47. Paula Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore,
Women in America
48. Rodger Kamenetz,
Jew in the Lotus
49. Aryeh Kaplan,
Innerspace
50. Judith A. Kates and Gail Twersky Reimer (eds.),
Reading Ruth
51. Alfred Kazin,
God and the American Writers
52. Irena Klepfisz and Melanie Kaye-Kantrowitz (eds.),
The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology
53. David Kraemer,
Reading the Rabbis
54. Chana Kronfeld,
On the Margins of Modernism
55. Lawrence Kushner,
God Was in This Place and I, i Did Not Know
56. Tony Kushner,
Angels in America
57. Lawrence Langer,
Art from the Ashes
58. Emmanuel Levinas,
Nine Talmudic Readings
59. Deborah E. Lipstadt,
Denying the Holocaust
60. Bernard Malamud,
The Complete Stories of Bernard Malamud
61. Daniel Matt,
The Essential Kabbalah
62. Diane Matza (ed.),
Sephardic American Voices
63. Benny Morris,
Righteous Victims
64. Jacob Neusner,
Recovering Judaism
65. Peter Novick,
The Holocaust in American Life
66. Carol Ochs,
Our Lives as Torah
67. Debra Orenstein,
Lifecycles: Jewish Women on Life Passages and Personal Milestones
68. Amos Oz,
In the Land of Israel
69. Grace Paley,
Collected Stories
70. Marge Piercy,
The Art of Blessing the Day
71. Peter Pitzele,
Our Fathers' Well
72. Judith Plaskow,
Standing Again at Sinai
73. Letty Cottin Pogrebin,
Deborah, Golda, and Me
74. Marcia Prager,
The Path of Blessing
75. Riv-Ellen Prell,
Fighting to Become Americans
76. Adrienne Rich,
Selected Poems, 1950-1995
77. Thane Rosenbaum,
Elijah Visible
78. Philip Roth,
The Counterlife
79. Steven J. Rubin (ed.),
A Century of American Jewish Poetry
80. Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi,
Paradigm Shift
81. Nosson Scherman (ed.),
The Stone Edition of the Chumash
82. Howard Schwartz (ed.),
Gabriel's Palace: Stories from the Jewish Mystical Tradition
83. Tom Segev,
The Seventh Million
84. Rami M. Shapiro,
Minyan
85. Laurence J. Silberstein and Robert L. Cohn (eds.),
The Other in Jewish Thought and History
86. Isaac Bashevis Singer,
Shadows on the Hudson
87. Art Spiegelman,
MAUS: A Survivor's Tale
88. Ilan Stavans (ed.),
The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories
89. Adin Steinsaltz (ed.),
The Steinsaltz Edition of the Talmud
90. Aryeh Lev Stollman,
The Far Euphrates
91. Joseph Telushkin,
The Book of Jewish Values
92. Ellen M. Umansky and Dianne Ashton,
Four Centuries of Jewish Women's Spirituality
93. Michael Walzer and others (eds.),
The Jewish Political Tradition
94. Arthur Waskow,
Down-to-Earth Judaism
95. Susan Weidman Schneider,
Jewish and Female: Choices and Changes in Our lives Today
96. Elie Wiesel,
Memoirs
97. Leon Wieseltier,
Kaddish
98. A.B. Yehoshua,
Mister Mani
99. Richard Zimler,
The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon
100. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg,
Genesis: The Beginning of Desire
Books You'll Kvell Over this Fall
Summer ends, and things begin to get a little more hectic. That's why we're recommending a bit of "light" that we think you'll kvell over. Take a break from preparing your holiday meals and pick one up today!
Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish
by Abigail Pogrebin
Abc.com
Journalist Abigail Pogrebin first began to grapple with her Jewish identity at 25, when her Jewish mother disapproved of her Irish Catholic boyfriend. Fifteen years later, married (to a Jewish man) and raising two children, she was still trying to understand her own relationship with Judiasm. She decided that speaking with other Jewish people would help her find her own answer.
In her new book, "Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish," Pogrebin interviewed 60 people about their cultural and religious experience. She spoke with Hollywood stars, such as Sarah Jessica Parker and Dustin Hoffman, and luminaries such as Gloria Steinhem. Barney Frank and Tony Kushner talked about what's like to be gay and Jewish.
[Linked] is the prologue of the book and the "Sarah Jessica Parker" chapter.
One Foot in America
By Yuri Suhl
Tablet Magazine
Henry Roth’s Call it Sleep—a masterpiece of Jewish immigrant life—was published to considerable acclaim in 1932 but soon vanished from literary consciousness. It languished until 1960, when Alfred Kazin and Leslie Fiedler named it “the most neglected book of the past twenty-five years.”
Make it the second-most-neglected book: One Foot in America, Yuri Suhl’s recently reissued immigrant novel, covers much of the same territory as Roth’s masterpiece, but whereasCall It Sleep is dark and brooding, Suhl’s book is a fast-paced, entertaining picaresque.
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Sarah's Key
By Tatiana de Rosnay
Good Reads
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.
Summer Reading Lists
It's finally time to brush off those beach blankets, pull out those umbrellas and head to the beach or pool! What better than to relax under the sun with a good book? Why not try a book from one of Amazon.com's Jewish reading lists?
These lists compile the best fiction, non-fiction and memoirs from Jewish authors, on Judaism or Jewish history.
With thousands of titles to choose from, you're bound to find something that inspires you pool-side or maybe just makes you smile.
Get a Head Start on Your Summer Reading List!
Spring means that summer is right around the corner! Every summer, we sit at the beach or pool and dive into a great book, but why wait? This year, spend your spring reading some of the best books in Jewish-American literature. In his American Jewish Fiction, Josh Lambert lists what he thinks are the top 125 books in this category. Or you can start by checking out some of the best young, Jewish authors like Jonathan Safran Foer.
Everything is Illuminated: a book by Jonathan Safran Foer
by Judy Bolton-Fasman
reprinted from MyJewishlearning.com 
Jonathan Safran Foer's first novel showcases two distinct narratives that illuminate the truths embedded in historical events and acts of memory. It's an ambitious agenda that Safran Foer advances with sharp observation. But Everything is Illuminated is also a very funny book, a laugh-out-loud funny book that earns the reader's admiration through linguistic acrobatics and feats of good, old-fashioned storytelling.
At the heart of Safran Foer's narrative beats the classic road-trip novel, replete with unlikely buddies. Think of a Jewish-American version of Don Quixote. The hero of the book--the author's fictional alter ego is also named Jonathan Safran Foer--is on a quest to the Ukraine to find a woman named Augustine, who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, the only thing that Jonathan has to identify this woman with is an old photograph that he found in his late grandfather's personal effects. The Sancho Panza of this story is Alexander Perchov. Safran Foer constructs a brilliant parallel narrative using Alex's mangled English. I'm not a fan of written dialect, but Safran Foer has gone beyond presenting odd spellings and strange random words: he has constructed a new language (let's call it Russienglish). Alex is a young, self-consciously hip Ukrainian who embodies post-Soviet culture. He is an amusing rogue who provides the book with a unique vibe.
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The Consummate Showwoman
Reprinted with permission from My Jewish Learning
Sarah Bernhardt flirted with the novelist Alexandre Dumas, posed for the painter Alphonse Mucha, had an affair with Victor Hugo, and was, in the late 19th century, the most famous actress in the world.
Bernhardt was a character in her own right too. For several years, she slept in a coffin, claiming that it helped her identify with her tragic roles. She was also proudly Jewish, despite living in a time and a country (France) where the general populace harbored significant anti-Semitism.
Read more.
Buy the book on Amazon.
Winter Reading List
Winter is the perfect time to cozy up with a cup of tea or cocoa and settle in with a good book. If you're in need of some great new titles, look no further than the Association of Jewish Libraries. They've compiled
Book Club reading lists from over a dozen congregations around the country.
Jewish Voices, New and Old
The Foundation for Jewish Culture has awarded the 2010 Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers to Joanna Smith Rakoff. Her debut novel, A Fortunate Age was also a New York Times Editors' Pick, a winner of the Elle Readers'
Prize, a selection of Barnes and Noble's First Look Book Club, an
IndieNext pick, and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. As a
journalist and critic, she's written for The New York Times, the Los
Angeles Times, Washington Post Book World, the Boston Globe, Vogue, Time
Out New York, O:The Oprah Magazine, and many other newspapers and
magazines. Her poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, Western
Humanities Review, Kenyon Review, and other journals. She has degrees
from Columbia University, University College, London, and Oberlin
College.
What Jewish Book Changed Your Life?
What do contemporary writers
Jonathan Rosen,
Allegra Goodman,
Tova Mirvis, and
Dara Horn all have in common? Each of them has been deeply influenced by Jewish literature.
Read more here, and consider asking your partner, your friend, or your colleague: What Jewish book changed your life?
On Matters of Faith
I
haven’t seen the new movie Religulous yet, but my guess is director
Bill Maher didn’t invite Rabbi David Wolpe to be a guest in his film.
Religulous, the documentary by the comedian best known for his show
Politically Incorrect, pokes fun at religious believers and all the
wacky things—from biblical parables to the tenets of Scientology to the
ultra-Orthodox case against Zionism –that they believe. For anyone
curious to see the movie, but scared of how it might challenge their own
faith, it might be wise to bring a copy of Why Faith Matters to the
theater.
It’s serendipitous that this movie and Rabbi Wolpe’s new
book are coming out around the same time, but Wolpe’s book actually
originated as a response to Maher’s print predecessors. For years,
secularist and atheistic books like The End of Faith by Sam
Harris,Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett, The God Delusion by Richard
Dawkins, and God Is Not Greatby Christopher Hitchens have found their
place on bestseller lists. Wolpe, who openly details his own struggles
with faith and periods of doubt, decided after overcoming a bout with
cancer that it was time to set the record straight.
Continue reading "Wolpe's Faithful Response" by Rebecca Phillips, and check out Rabbi Wolpe's
blog post on the question of faith.
On One Foot
A new Nextbook Press biography of Hillel makes clear that the rabbi's words and thoughts—though millennia old—resonate today
By Joseph Telushkin
According to rabbinic tradition, Hillel the Elder, one of the
great sages in Jewish history, died 2,000 years ago, in the year 10. But
even after two millennia, there is a contemporary urgency to his life
and thought, particularly at this moment of debate not simply over the
mechanics of conversion but over the very essence of Judaism itself.
Hillel was, as the Talmud describes him, a poor man so desperate for an
education that he nearly froze to death as he lay in a snowstorm on the
roof of a study house, listening in on the study of Torah below. That
sense of being the outsider never left him and lights up many of the
stories told about him in the Talmud. He emerges, in Joseph Telushkin’s
new book, Hillel: If Not Now, When?—the
prologue of which appears below—as a sort of once and future rabbi, a
teacher whose fearless openness to Gentiles seeking conversion, and
whose insistence on morality as the core of Judaism, make him as
relevant today as he was 2,000 years ago.
I was sitting with a rabbinic friend swapping stories about our lives
and our work. He started talking about an encounter he had recently
had: “A Jewish man, probably in his early thirties, and his non-Jewish
girlfriend came to speak with me. They want to marry, but his parents
are dead-set against their only son marrying a Gentile. I asked the
woman what she thought about the parents’ attitude, and she was honest.
She said it seemed primitive and ridiculous. But she also said that, if
necessary, she’d be willing to convert. After all, she wants to be a
good person, and Judaism, she assumes, wants people to be good and might
well have something to teach her about goodness. That’s how she put it,
‘might well have something to teach her about goodness.’ ”
“And what did you tell her?” I asked.
My friend, a rather traditional rabbi, answered: “I told her
that we’re in no rush to bring people in, that conversion to Judaism is a
not a quick business: ‘Presto, you’re a Jew.’ There’s a lot to study, a
lot of rituals to learn, and I certainly can’t convert you before you
do all that studying, and commit yourself to practicing all that you
study.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“It was the boyfriend who spoke up. He seemed really annoyed. ‘I told
you this was pointless,’ he said to the girl, and then he turned to me.
‘We’re getting married in six weeks, rabbi. With or without your
help.’”
My friend shrugged. “I told them that even if the two of them had
come in with a more open attitude, six weeks was way too quick to do a
conversion. Six months would be a stretch. They walked out with a book I
gave them, but they’re not coming back, I can tell.” My friend shook
his head back and forth a few times, his expression a mixture of sadness
and annoyance. “What I was really thinking was that they’d be better
off going to City Hall, and just getting their license. We don’t need
converts like that. One day, if she’s interested in becoming a real Jew,
she can come see me.” He shrugged his shoulders, and regarded my
skeptical face. “I know, I know, that day’s never going to come.”
I was quiet a minute, thinking about, of all things, a 2,000-year-old
talmudic sage named Hillel, and about an American-Jewish community
that’s been getting smaller and smaller and whose members have now been
intermarrying at rates of 40 percent for over 30 years.
“What about that comment she made to you?” I finally asked him.
He looked puzzled. “Which comment?”
“That Judaism might well have something to teach her about being a good person.”
“Nice words,” he conceded. “But I would have been a little more
encouraged if she had actually said something about religion. Like maybe
she had read about Shabbat and wanted to observe it. Or was willing to
keep kosher. At least then I would have felt that I had something to
work with. But this couple gave me nothing to work with.”
Nothing to work with. His words reverberated in my head.
Read the rest.
This article was reprinted with permission from Tablet Magazine.
On the Bookshelf
On rootlessness and family trees
By Josh Lambert
A midsummer day’s nightmare: shlepping all your worldly possessions to a
new apartment. Everybody wants to settle in before the High Holidays
and the school year starts, making June, July, and August the busiest
season for moving companies. This also explains why the sections of
Brooke Berman’s No Place Like Home: A Memoir in 39 Apartments (Harmony, June) typically run from one summer to another. A prize-winning playwright
who had already auditioned under a stage name (“Brooke Alison—it sounds
less Jewish”) by the time she began her peripatetic New York City
sojourn at the age of 18, Berman manages somehow to make relocating
almost 40 times in half as many years sound more like an ongoing
adventure than like a godforsaken, perpetual exile.
Berman’s bohemian-ish wanderings may seem inevitably less stultifying
than life in the suburbs, but as readers of John Cheever and Richard
Yates know, subdivisions harbor roiling inner lives all their own. Soon
to be available in paperback, David Kushner’s account of harsh
real-estate politics, Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb
(Walker & Company, August) describes the attempt integrate one of
the famed model communities planned by Abraham Levitt and his sons.
While the Levitts were self-conscious of themselves as Jews and claimed
to have “no room … for racial prejudice,” they sold homes only to
whites. In late summer 1957, a Communist-leaning Jewish family in the
Pennsylvania Levittown subverted the developers’ policy by arranging a
private sale to an African-American couple. Riots and harassment
followed, with visits from the Ku Klux Klan, all of which provides a
reminder of the complex and often distasteful history of American
suburban living.
But then again, the city has its fair share of problems. Adam Langer’s The Thieves of Manhattan
(Spiegel & Grau, July) romps its way through a borough so
thoroughly saturated with literary pretension that it would be
insufferable to visit, let alone reside there. (Sort of like the real
one is, some might say.) Telling a tall tale of publishing aspiration
and fraud, Langer packs the novel with inside jokes and goes so far as
to invent a slang based on the names of contemporary and classic
authors, in which, for example, a “chabon” is “a wavy mane” and a
“ginsberg” “a somewhat unruly beard.” The author knows whereof he
satirizes, having toiled as a literary journalist before publishing his own fiction:
“I’ve been blown off by E.L. Doctorow,” he reports, “condescended to by
Harold Bloom … treated to lousy herring by Gary Shteyngart, [and]
regaled with unprintable, really yucky stories by Jonathan Safran Foer.”
Read more about this book and others.
Reprinted with permission from Tablet Magazine.
Unorthodox Theology
By Adam Kirsch
An anthology of liberal Jewish thought evinces a deep unease with traditional conceptions of God
Earlier this month, in Jerusalem, more than 100,000 haredi
Jews took to the streets to protest the Israeli government’s attempt to
desegregate an Orthodox girls’ school. The school had been physically
separating Ashkenazi and Sephardi students, ostensibly because the
latter did not live up to the standards of piety and modesty demanded by
parents of the former. When Israel’s High Court ordered the barriers
removed, a group of parents belonging to the Slonim Hasidim withdrew
their daughters from the school, and when the court ordered them to
return, the parents preferred to go to jail. These arrests triggered the
massive protest, in which signs were displayed that read “God will rule
for all eternity.”
To turn from headlines like these to Jewish Theology in Our Time
(Jewish Lights), a new book of essays by professors and rabbis
associated mainly with the Reform and Conservative movements, is to see
the dilemma of liberal Judaism in a starkly ironic light. In Bnei
Berak—and, for that matter, in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of
Williamsburg and Crown Heights—are thousands upon thousands of Jews who
not only know with utter certainty just what Judaism is and what God
wants from them, but are willing to defy the powers of the earth to do
it. Meanwhile, the contributors to this book—edited by the rabbi of
Manhattan’s Park Avenue Synagogue, Elliot Cosgrove—can barely even use
words like God and Judaism without a blizzard of explanations and qualifications.
“God,” writes Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson,
dean of rabbinic studies at American Jewish University, “is the dynamic
that makes for novelty, innovation, complexity, and growth.” Similarly,
Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum
writes that “divinity is the radical force that moves the entire
cosmos.” Such a God, quite obviously, cannot be the God who walked in
the cool of evening in the Garden of Eden, or spoke to Moses out of a
burning bush. Eitan Fishbane,
assistant professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, confesses that
“I could not believe in the God of heavenly transcendence, the highly
anthropomorphic deity of classical Judaism.” And if, as Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky
agrees, “The character in the Bible is not God,” then everything the
Bible tells us about the covenant between God and the Jewish people is
equally incredible: “[W]e cannot imagine that only Israel … possesses
the covenant with God.” Rabbi Or N. Rose is still more explicit: “I do not believe that the Jewish People are God’s chosen people.”
This article was reprinted with permission from Tablet Magazine. Read the rest.
Coffee & Conversation
Back
in April, JBooks teamed up with Peet's Coffee & Tea to present a
very interesting live event in which Elinor Lipman kibbitzed with Anita
Diamant about Diamant's latest novel, Day After Night, and
a
batch of other Interesting Things (Jewish, Literary, Feminist, and
Otherwise). Well, this illuminating conversation has been videotaped
and edited and can now be seen in three easy-to-watch parts:
Part I, in which Elinor Lipman admits to pitching Diamant's
latest novel, Day
After Night, as a
movie and Diamant tells the fascinating story of the Atlit detention
camp.
In Part II we learn how Bill Moyers and Tony Kushner helped Diamant
write The Red
Tent. There's also
a little joke about hummus...
Part III
showcases Diamant's idea that we're living in "the century of the
Jewish woman." She also says that she and novelist Stephen McCauley
have "study hall," in which the two authors force themselves to get
together and write at the same time. "It's a way to keep... the ass in
the chair," says Diamant.
Alice Apologizes
By Elinor Lipman
"I
came up with the opening line standing at my stove, then went up to my computer
and pretty much wrote it," says Elinor Lipman about this story. "I
liked the sound of the 'Jews-on-the-beach' theme, with its suggestion of
something slightly comic and (sorry) fish-out-of-water-ish. If the assignment
had been 500 words on just anything, I don't think I would have been
inspired." To see what else the assignment inspired, read Dara Horn's
"Song at
the Sea," Neal Pollack's "Mr. Pacific Beach,"
and Danit Brown's "Jews at the Beach."
It is absolutely not the making of amends, nothing 12-stepish or
externally imposed, merely Alice,
on her 50th birthday, promising herself she'd apologize to those whom she
thinks she's offended. Her list is short. There is a sweet boy from tenth grade
whose sexual overtures she had rebuffed for a prudishness she now regrets.
There are playground and roommate insensitivities and a Thanksgiving meltdown
over a dropped chafing dish that didn't even break. But first: her 30-year-old
discourtesy, a week's worth, from her whitewashed lookout, Red Cross lifesaving
badges sewn proudly to her orange tank suit, whistle between her straight front
teeth.
They were a whole family: mother, father, two boys, unmistakably Jews on the
Edgartown beach, needle-pointed yarmulkes bobby-pinned to dark hair. Their
lunch was the same every day: hard-boiled eggs, carrot sticks, grapes, cheese,
crackers. She knew the boys' names because their mother called to them
unabashedly, "Dovey! Shmuely! Not yet! You just ate! Another ten minutes!"
Had Alice heard
accents? Were they from New York?
Were they even Americans?
She had studied this family, and had noted a failure of fashion in their
bathing suits and motel towels. Her fellow lifeguards knew them, too. Dovey and
Shmuely were ecstatic and squealing little fish, requiring attention. Between
car and sand, they'd drop whatever bundles had been assigned them, and run into
the water, regardless of temperature, of sand castles, of tides.
Their chosen spot hardly changed, in the shadow of the lifeguard's chair,
umbrella never planted with any athletic grace. Despite the smiles and waves
offered to the handsome college students on duty—we're here; please protect
us—Alice
pretended that her job was ignoring those on sand, while staring conscientiously
out to sea. Who had recommended Martha's Vineyard
to these Bernsteins, their name shouted in Magic Marker on their red-and-white
cooler, their rations kosher, their skin pale?
And finally to be reckoned with: An impulse within Alice that had allowed Mr. Bernstein to
flounder for—how long had it been?—ten seconds longer than the fastest leap she
was capable of from chair to ocean? "You have no business out here in
rough water if you can't swim," she had scolded.
"I can swim," he had answered. His wife, throwing a towel and
a protective arm around her husband's shoulders, had given Alice a condemning stare. I know the
person you are, it said.
They hadn't come back to the beach. "Embarrassed," said the blond
Duke senior who shared Alice's
shift and who lived on his own, unchaperoned, that summer. "It's
Saturday," she might have said.
In order to apologize, she would have to find them. The Bernsteins of where?
Dov, David, Shmuel, Sam?
Alice
remembered the overhead buzz of planes towing banners, aerial
declarations—"I love you, Brenda, marry me, Vinny." What would hers
say that was adequate, and over what crowded beach? "Dear Bernsteins,
wherever you are. Forgive me. I didn't hate you. I knew you. Your lifeguard,
Alice Eisenberg, coward."
Elinor Lipman is
the author of nine novels, including "The Inn at Lake Devine,"
"Then She Found Me," and most recently, "The Family Man."
This article was reprinted with permission from JBooks.com,
the online Jewish book community. To hear Elinor Lipman read “Alice Apologizes,” click here.