Some young girls acted as Kashariyot, underground couriers between ghettos. Their varied experiences represent the extremities of human suffering, endeavour and courage. The author herself is a survivor, born in Her mother struggled to keep her safe in the mayhem of the Budapest Ghetto when she was a tiny baby and dealt with the threat from Russian soldiers after the liberation of Budapest in January Jerusalem, Drawn and Quartered: From the recent recipient of a coveted Schusterman Foundation fellowship On a night in when Sarah Tuttle-Singer was barely 18, she was stoned by Palestinian kids just outside one of the gates to the Old City of Jerusalem.
In the years that followed, she was terrified to explore the ancient city she so loved. But, sick of living in fear, she has now chosen to live within the Old City's walls, living in each of the four quarters: Christian, Muslim, Armenian, and Jewish. Jerusalem's Old City is the hottest piece of spiritual real estate in the world. For millennia empires have clashed and crumbled over this place. Today, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians plays out daily in her streets, and the ancient stones run with blood. But it's also an ordinary city, where people buy vegetables, and sooth colicky babies, where pipes break, where the pious get high, and young couples sneak away to kiss in the shadows.
Sarah has thrown herself into the maelstrom of living in each quarter-where time is measured in Sabbath sunsets and morning bells and calls to prayer, in stabbing attacks and check points-keeping the holidays in each quarter, buying bread from the same bread seller, making friends with people who were once her enemies, and learning some of the secrets and sharing the stories that make Jerusalem so special, and so exquisitely ordinary.
Jerusalem, Drawn and Quartered is a book for anyone who's wondered who really lives in Israel, and how they coexist. It's a book that skillfully weaves the personal and political, the heartwarming and the heart-stopping. It's a book that only Sarah Tuttle-Singer can write. The Old City of Jerusalem may be set in stone, but it's always changing-and these pages capture that.
A Novel by Meg Wolitzer April Riverhead Books From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Interestings, an electric, multilayered novel about ambition, power, friendship, and mentorship, and the romantic ideals we all follow deep into adulthood, not just about who we want to be with, but who we want to be. To be admired by someone we admire - we all yearn for this: But sometimes it can also mean entry to a new kind of life, a bigger world. Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at sixty-three, has been a central pillar of the women's movement for decades, a figure who inspires others to influence the world.
Upon hearing Faith speak for the first time, Greer- madly in love with her boyfriend, Cory, but still full of longing for an ambition that she can't quite place- feels her inner world light up. And then, astonishingly, Faith invites Greer to make something out of that sense of purpose, leading Greer down the most exciting path of her life as it winds toward and away from her meant-to-be love story with Cory and the future she'd always imagined.
Charming and wise, knowing and witty, Meg Wolitzer delivers a novel about power and influence, ego and loyalty, womanhood and ambition. At its heart, The Female Persuasion is about the flame we all believe is flickering inside of us, waiting to be seen and fanned by the right person at the right time.
It's a story about the people who guide and the people who follow and how those roles evolve over time , and the desire within all of us to be pulled into the light. The Myth of the Nice Girl: If women are nice, they are seen as weak and ineffective, but if they are tough, they are labeled a bitch. Her accessible advice and hard-won wisdom detail how to balance being empathetic with being decisive, how to rise above the double standards that can box you in, how to cultivate authentic confidence that projects throughout a room, and much more.
Gateway to the Moon: Luis de Torres, a Spanish Jew, accompanies Columbus as his interpreter. His journey is only the beginning of a long migration, across many generations. Five hundred years later, it is in these same hills that Miguel Torres, a young amateur astronomer, finds himself trying to understand the mystery that surrounds him and the town he grew up in. Entrada de la Luna is a place that holds a profound secret--one that its residents cannot even imagine.
It is also a place that ambitious children, such as Miguel, try to leave. Poor health, broken marriages, and poverty are the norm. When Miguel sees a flyer for a babysitting job, he jumps at the opportunity, and begins work for a Jewish family new to the area. Rachel Rothstein is not the sort of parent Miguel expected.
A frustrated artist, Rachel moved her family from New York in search of a fresh start, but so far New Mexico has not solved any of the problems she brought with her. Interwoven throughout the present-day narrative are the powerful stories of the ancestors of Entrada's residents, highlighting the torture, pursuit, and resistance of the Jewish people. A beautiful novel of shared history, Gateway to the Moon is a moving and memorable portrait of a family and its journey through the centuries.
Mengele's sadistic experimentations, this story follows twins as they travel from the Lodz ghetto, to the partisans in the forest, to a horrific concentration camp where they lose everything but each other. It's in Poland, and the world is coming to pieces. At least that's how it seems to Chaim and Gittel, twins whose lives feel like a fairy tale torn apart, with evil witches, forbidden forests, and dangerous ovens looming on the horizon. But in all darkness there is light, and the twins find it through Chaim's poetry and the love they have for each other.
Like the bright flame of a Yahrzeit candle, his words become a beacon of memory so that the children and grandchildren of survivors will never forget the atrocities that happened during the Holocaust. Filled with brutality and despair, this is also a story of poetry and strength, in which a brother and sister lose everything but each other. Nearly thirty years after the publication of her award-winning and bestselling The Devil's Arithmetic and Briar Rose, Yolen once again returns to World War II and captivates her readers with the authenticity and power of her words.
Candid Conversation About Grief. Rebecca's mother died suddenly in a car accident. Soon after, her father passed away from a heart attack. Gabi's father and his wife were murdered. Together Gabi and Rebecca started to keep a website about mourning. The New York Times hailed it as "redefining mourning.
Accompanied by beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and witty "how to" cartoons, each contribution provides a unique perspective on loss as well as a remarkable life-affirming message. Brutally honest and inspiring, Modern Loss invites us to talk intimately and humorously about grief, helping us confront the humanity and mortality we all share. Rachel is a woman with a problem: Her recent troubles-widowhood, a failing business, an unemployed middle-aged son-are only the latest in a litany spanning dozens of countries, scores of marriages, and hundreds of children. But as the twenty-first century begins and her children and grandchildren-consumed with immortality in their own ways, from the frontiers of digital currency to genetic engineering-develop new technologies that could change her fate and theirs, Rachel knows she must find a way out.
Gripping, hilarious, and profoundly moving, Eternal Life celebrates the bonds between generations, the power of faith, the purpose of death, and the reasons for being alive. What many people do not know is that anxiety and depression can be experienced during pregnancy, as well, and the impact can be both debilitating and devastating.
Rebecca Fox Starr shares her personal story of marriage, motherhood, prenatal anxiety and depression, severe postpartum anxiety and depression, recovery process and hope for the future. Woven throughout the narrative, Dr. Amy Wenzel, a specialist in the field of Perinatal Mood Disorders, provides readers with clinical information and advice, addressing risk factors, warning signs, definitions and recovery options.
Stories from other women who experienced prenatal anxiety or depression are included as well. No longer do women have to suffer in silence, question their mental symptoms, or try to hide their feelings. Here, readers will see themselves in the narrative and understand that the devastating effects of prenatal and post-partum depression can be confirmed, treated, and managed, giving them hope for a brighter future. It's in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die.
The prophecies inform their next five decades. A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds. Not long ago, Sarah Rich and Wendy MacNaughton discovered a painted manuscript at an antiquarian book fair that drew them in like magnets: Completed in , it was a keepsake of her connection to her childhood's Eastern European food--she called it Leave Me Alone with the Recipes.
For Wendy and Sarah, it was a talisman of a woman they had not known was their idol: With Pineles's illustrated cookbook and a section of updated recipes as its centerpiece, this gorgeous volume will delight foodies and design devotees alike. Birthrate Politics in Zion: During these years Jews were caught in contradictions between political and social objectives, religion, culture, and individual needs. Lilach Rosenberg-Friedman takes a deep and detailed look at these diverse and decisive issues, including births and abortions during this period, the discourse about birthrate, and practical attempts to implement policies to counter the low birthrate.
Themes that emerge include the effect of the Holocaust, economics, ethnicity, efforts by public figures to increase birthrate, and the understanding that women in the society were viewed as entirely responsible for procreation. Providing a deep examination of the day-to-day lives of Jewish families in British Mandate Palestine, this book shows how political objectives are not only achieved by political agreements, public debates, and battlefields, but also by the activities of ordinary men, women, and families.
Martin's Press Ilana Kurshan grew up on Long Island, NY, the daughter of a rabbi, in a family that had to sit in the front pews, with all eyes on them. She attended a Schecter school through eighth grade; and as a voracious reader, she studied at Harvard and became a translator and literary agent. Marrying, she and her husband, like many young couples, moved to Israel to start their newlywed lives. Sadly, the marriage faltered after the move, and a painful divorce followed. Kurshan, an accomplished literary analyst, began to study the Talmud daily, and compare it to her daily life.
Perhaps she chose late night classes so she could avoid being alone at home, a divorced woman not knowing if she would find love again. Here she was in the promised land of dreams, yet she was feeling lost in the wilderness. But studying a page Daf a day Yomi , and joining the tens of thousand of others around the world who study the same page, one page a day, of the Babylonian Talmud over the seven and a half year it takes to finish all the tractates, was like a daily dose of Xanax -- an anchor on the seas of ink but not one that drowns you.
Slowly we follow the author as she recovers from divorce and an eating disorder and seeks new love and pregnancy, and as she compares the writings of the Talmud's rabbis to her own adventures, and to the writings of her literary heroes. She lugs a heavy tractate with her everywhere, even on the flights to literary conferences in Europe. Actually, there is a page on her interrogation by an El Al security agent at Heathrow that throws her into a sadness. Where are you going? Why do you live in Israel if your friends are elsewhere, Why, Why Why, etc. But fortunately the structure of the daf yomi was there to help.
A fascinating, intelligent adventure. This memoir is a tale of heartache and humor, of love and loss, of marriage and motherhood, and of learning to put one foot in front of the other by turning page after page. Kurshan takes us on a deeply accessible and personal guided tour of the Talmud, shedding new light on its stories and offering insights into its arguments-both for those already familiar with the text and for those who have never encountered it. For people of the book-both Jewish and non-Jewish-If All the Seas Were Ink is a celebration of learning-through literature-how to fall in love once again.
A biography of Meir is hard, she left no diaries, and did not write letters much. She swore those closest to her to keep her secrets and closest opinions. Klagsbrun has interviewed them all, and most have now passed away. Meir was the the iron-willed leader, chain-smoking political operative in Israel, and tea-and-cake-serving grandmother who became the fourth prime minister of Israel and one of the most notable women of our time. As Ben Gurion quipped, she had the most balls of anyone on his cabinet Golda Meir was a world figure unlike any other. Born in czarist Russia in , she immigrated to America in and grew up in Milwaukee, where from her earliest years she displayed the political consciousness and organizational skills that would eventually catapult her into the inner circles of Israel's founding generation.
She left home as a teen to escape her overbearing parents and moved in with her married sister.
Bliss - Death and Resurrection in a Chinatown Stripclub (Paperback)
There she fell in love with the man she would marry. Together they moved to British Mandate Palestine in The passionate socialist joined a kibbutz but soon left for Tel Aviv with her husband and two children, and was hired at a public works office by the man who would become the great love of her life: A series of public service jobs brought her to the attention of David Ben-Gurion, and her political career took off. As prime minister Golda negotiated arms agreements with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, agonized over the mixed signals being sent by newly installed Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, and had dozens of clandestine meetings with Jordan's King Hussein in the unsuccessful pursuit of a land-for-peace agreement with Israel's neighbors.
But her time in office ended in tragedy, when Israel was caught off guard by Egypt and Syria's surprise attack on Yom Kippur in Resigning in the war's aftermath critics were calling her an old lady, and a murderer , Golda spent her final years keeping a hand in national affairs and bemusedly enjoying international acclaim.
Francine Klagsbrun's superbly researched and masterly recounted story of Israel's founding mother gives us a Golda for the ages. For those of you expecting some unique intimate details from Lou Kadar, Meir's confidante and secretary for over 30 years, you will have to look elsewhere. The memoir of a woman who leaves her faith and her marriage and sets out to navigate the terrifying, liberating terrain of a newly map-less world. Born and raised in a tight-knit Orthodox Jewish family, Tova Mirvis committed herself to observing the rules and rituals prescribed by this way of life.
After all, to observe was to be accepted and to be accepted was to be loved. She married a man from within the fold and quickly began a family. But over the years, her doubts became noisier than her faith, and at age forty she could no longer breathe in what had become a suffocating existence. Even though it would mean the loss of her friends, her community, and possibly even her family, Tova decides to leave her husband and her faith. After years of trying to silence the voice inside her that said she did not agree, did not fit in, did not believe, she strikes out on her own to discover what she does believe and who she really is.
This is a memoir about what it means to decide to heed your inner compass at long last. Honest and courageous, Tova takes us through her first year outside her marriage and community as she learns to silence her fears and seek adventure on her own path to happiness. In this witty, insightful, and poignant book, Devorah Baum delves into fiction, film, memoir, and psychoanalysis to present a dazzlingly original exploration of a series of feelings famously associated with modern Jews.
The Modern Jewish Table: Bringing their fun, upbeat, and infectious brand of energy to the kitchen, self-proclaimed Jewish Princesses Tracey Fine and Georgie Tarn don their high heels and aprons to revamp the kosher kitchen and raise the culinary bar. Complete with stunning photography, outrageous tips, and a dash of chutzpah, The Modern Jewish Table introduces innovative dishes that will soon become Jewish traditions for the future.
Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history. As the novel opens, Helen has been summoned by a former student to view a cache of seventeenth-century Jewish documents newly discovered in his home during a renovation. Enlisting the help of Aaron Levy, an American graduate student as impatient as he is charming, and in a race with another fast-moving team of historians, Helen embarks on one last project: When Sue Glassman's family needs a new home, Sue relents, after years of resisting, and agrees to convert to Judaism.
In return, Sue's father-in-law, Sy, buys the family--Sue, Dan, and their two daughters--a capacious but ramshackle beachfront house in Rockaway, Queens, a world away from the Glassmans' cramped Tribeca apartment. Sy is moving in, too. And the house is haunted. On the weekend of Sue's conversion party, ninety-year-old Rose, who literally got away with murder on the premises years earlier, shows up uninvited.
Towing a suitcase-sized pocketbook, having escaped an assisted living facility in Forest Hills, Rose seems intent on moving back in. Enter neighbor Tim--formerly Timmy see From Rockaway , a former lifeguard, former firefighter, and reformed alcoholic--who feels, for reasons even he can't explain, inordinately protective of the Glassmans. Comprising 15 percent of the settler population today, these immigrants have established major communities, transformed domestic politics and international relations, and committed shocking acts of terrorism.
They demand attention in both Israel and the United States, but little is known about who they are and why they chose to leave America to live at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this deeply researched, engaging work, Sara Yael Hirschhorn unsettles stereotypes, showing that the s generation who moved to the occupied territories were not messianic zealots or right-wing extremists but idealists engaged in liberal causes. They did not abandon their progressive heritage when they crossed the Green Line.
Rather, they saw a historic opportunity to create new communities to serve as a beacon? Later, the movement mobilized the rhetoric of civil rights to rebrand itself, especially in the wake of the Hebron massacre perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein, one of their own. On the fiftieth anniversary of the war, Hirschhorn illuminates the changing face of the settlements and the clash between liberal values and political realities at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But news of the scandal makes its way from America to the rest of the Solomon clan on the kibbutz in the Jordan River Valley.
Their two young children were staying with the grandparents in California. She and Goldberg were friends for six years before dating. Goldberg had quipped that he had to wait nearly six years for Sheryl to realize she was dating jerks including a former Navy SEAL who slept with a loaded gun and finally date and marry him.
Sheryl fell asleep at the pool, and Dave went to the gym. In a freak accident, he fell at the gym and bled; he died suddenly at the age of Sandberg and her two young children were devastated, and she was certain that their lives would never have real joy or meaning again. They came up with a plan for someone to fill in.
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- Learn How to Draw Cartoons - For the Absolute Beginner (Learn to Draw Book 2).
- Lessons for Laura.
She doubted herself and her own parenting skills. We all deal with loss: The question is not whether these things will happen but how we face them when they do. Thoughtful, honest, revealing and warm with footnotes and interviews.
The book features stories of people who recovered from personal and professional hardship, including illness, injury, divorce, job loss, sexual assault and imprisonment. Option B offers compelling insights for dealing with hardships in our own lives and helping others in crisis. And pre-traumatic growth is also possible: Sandberg and Grant explore how we can raise strong children, create resilient communities and workplaces, and find meaning, love and joy in our lives.
Mark Zuckerberg, her colleague, boss, and friend, gave her the room to grieve at work and was supportive, even if she would weep in a meeting. But I also learned that when life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface and breathe again. A gifted and audacious writer confronts her lifelong battle with depression and her search for release.
Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction. Her mother starved the kids, because she felt guilty that her Israeli relatives were living poor and underfed.
Her mother hired an abusive nanny for the kids, so the kids would never love the nanny more than their mother. Merkin fantasized about killing both her parents. Merkin goes on to recount her early hospitalization for depression in poignant detail, as well as more about her complex relationship with her mercurial, withholding mother.
Along the way Merkin also discusses her early, redemptive love of reading and gradual emergence as a writer. She eventually marries, has a child, and suffers severe postpartum depression, for which she is again hospitalized. Merkin also discusses her visits to various therapists and psychopharmocologists, which enables her to probe the causes of depression and its various treatments. How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life by Ayelet Waldman January 24, Knopf A revealing, courageous, fascinating, and funny account of the author's experiment with microdoses of LSD in an effort to treat a debilitating mood disorder, of her quest to understand a misunderstood drug, and of her search for a really good day.
When a small vial arrives in her mailbox from "Lewis Carroll," Ayelet Waldman is at a low point. Her mood storms have become intolerably severe; she has tried nearly every medication possible; her husband and children are suffering with her. So she opens the vial, places two drops on her tongue, and joins the ranks of an underground but increasingly vocal group of scientists and civilians successfully using therapeutic microdoses of LSD.
As Waldman charts her experience over the course of a month--bursts of productivity, sleepless nights, a newfound sense of equanimity--she also explores the history and mythology of LSD, the cutting-edge research into the drug, and the byzantine policies that control it. Drawing on her experience as a federal public defender, and as the mother of teenagers, and her research into the therapeutic value of psychedelics, Waldman has produced a book that is eye-opening, often hilarious, and utterly enthralling.
Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate.
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What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? A fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookstores, and men she should stay away from, Shelby has to fight her way back to her own future. Here is a character you will fall in love with, so believable and real and endearing, that she captures both the ache of loneliness and the joy of finding yourself at last.
With beautifully crafted prose, Alice Hoffman spins hope from heartbreak in this profoundly moving novel. The previously untold story of the Jews in twentieth-century Russia that reveals the complex, strange, and heart-wrenching truth behind the familiar narrative that begins with pogroms and ends with emigration. In , the Soviet Union declared the area of Birobidzhan a homeland for Jews.
It was championed by a group of intellectuals who envisioned a place of post-oppression Jewish culture, and by the early s, tens of thousands of Jews had moved there from the shtetls. The state-building ended quickly, in the late s, with arrests and purges of the Communist Party and cultural elite. In the late s, another wave of arrests swept through Birobidzhan, traumatizing the Jews into silence, and effectively making them invisible.
Stasha must care for: It's when the twin sisters arrive at Auschwitz with their mother and grandfather. In their benighted new world, Pearl and Stasha Zagorski take refuge in their identical natures, comforting themselves with the private language and shared games of their childhood. As part of the experimental population of twins known as Mengele's Zoo, the girls experience privileges and horrors unknown to others, and they find themselves changed, stripped of the personalities they once shared, their identities altered by the burdens of guilt and pain. That winter, at a concert orchestrated by Mengele, Pearl disappears.
Stasha grieves for her twin, but clings to the possibility that Pearl remains alive. When the camp is liberated by the Red Army, she and her companion Feliks--a boy bent on vengeance for his own lost twin--travel through Poland's devastation. Undeterred by injury, starvation, or the chaos around them, motivated by equal parts danger and hope, they encounter hostile villagers, Jewish resistance fighters, and fellow refugees, their quest enabled by the notion that Mengele may be captured and brought to justice within the ruins of the Warsaw Zoo.
As the young survivors discover what has become of the world, they must try to imagine a future within it. A superbly crafted story, told in a voice as exquisite as it is boundlessly original, MISCHLING defies every expectation, traversing one of the darkest moments in human history to show us the way toward ethereal beauty, moral reckoning, and soaring hope.
Does the store make you feel like you are walking into someone else's vagina? As both a tomboy and a late bloomer, comedian Jessi Klein who wrote for SNL grew up feeling more like an outsider than a participant in the rites of modern femininity. These include her "transformation from Pippi Longstocking-esque tomboy to are-you-a-lesbian-or-what tom man," attempting to find watchable porn, and identifying the difference between being called "ma'am" and "miss" "Miss sounds like you weigh ninety-nine pounds".
Portrait of a Photographer by Arthur Lubow June Ecco The definitive biography of the beguiling Diane Arbus, one of the most influential and important photographers of the twentieth century, a brilliant and absorbing exposition that links the extraordinary arc of her life to her iconic photographs. Diane Arbus brings to life the full story of one of the greatest American artists of the twentieth century, a visionary who revolutionized photography and altered the course of contemporary art with her striking, now iconic images.
Arbus comes startlingly to life on these pages, a strong-minded child of unnerving originality who grew into a formidable artist and forged an intimacy with her subjects that has inspired generations of artists. Arresting, unsettling, and poignant, her photographs stick in our minds. Why did these people fascinate her?
And what was it about her that captivated them?
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Diane Arbus is the definitive biography of this unique, hugely influential artist. Diane Arbus includes a page black-and-white photo insert. Judenstaat by Simone Zelitch June 21, Tor An alternate history that makes sense What if, in , a Jewish state was created in Germany The very place we faced our deaths is where we will build our lives The flag is made from an Auscwitz striped uniform with a yellow Jewish star in the middle What happens when you lose everything, but have to go on living, What will you become and do to live? On April 4th, the sovereign state of Judenstaat was created in the territory of Saxony, bordering Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.
Forty years later, Jewish historian Judit Klemmer is making a documentary portraying Judenstaat's history from the time of its founding to the present. She is haunted by the ghost of her dead husband, Hans, a Saxon, shot by a sniper as he conducted the National Symphony. With the grief always fresh, Judit lives a half-life, until confronted by a mysterious, flesh-and-blood ghost from her past who leaves her controversial footage on one of Judenstaat's founding fathers--and a note: The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem: Ever since Gabriela can remember, she and Luna have struggled to connect.
But when tragedy strikes, Gabriela senses there's more to her mother than painted nails and lips. Desperate to understand their relationship, Gabriela pieces together the stories of her family's previous generations-from Great-Grandmother Mercada the renowned healer, to Grandma Rosa who cleaned houses for the English, to Luna who had the nicest legs in Jerusalem.
But as she uncovers shocking secrets, forbidden romances, and the family curse that links the women together, Gabriela must face a past and present far more complex than she ever imagined. Set against the Golden Age of Hollywood, the dark days of World War II, and the swinging '70s, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem follows generations of unforgettable women as they forge their own paths through times of dramatic change. With great humor and heart, Sarit Yishai-Levi has given us a powerful story of love and forgiveness-and the unexpected and enchanting places we find each.
Eastern Europe, August After years of Jewish refugees streaming across the border from Europa, fleeing the war, Germania launches its siege of Khazaria. But as the elder daughter in a traditional home, her urgent question is how. Before daybreak one fateful morning, she embarks on a perilous journey across the open steppe. She seeks a fabled village of Kabbalists who may hold the key to her destiny: The Book of Esther is a profound saga of war, technology, mysticism, power, and faith. Betsy Lerner takes us on a powerfully personal literary journey, where we learn a little about Bridge and a lot about life.
When Roz needs help after surgery, it falls to Betsy to take care of her. She expected a week of tense civility; what she got instead were the Bridge Ladies. Impressed by their loyalty, she saw something her generation lacked. Through her friendships with the ladies, she is finally able to face years of misunderstandings and family tragedy, the Bridge table becoming the common ground she and Roz never had. Soon Walter and Rosalie are exchanging notes, sketches, and secrets, and begin a transcendent love affair in his attic room, a temple of dusty tomes and whispered poetry.
With extraordinary empathy and virtuosic skill, The Beautiful Possible considers the hidden boundaries of marriage and faith, and the mysterious ways we negotiate our desires. Yes, there will be a quick service and then a festive meal afterwards, but this night is different from all other nights. The Rothschilds are the stuff of legends. They control banks, own vineyards in Napa, diamond mines in Africa, and even an organic farm somewhere in the Midwest that produces the most popular Romaine lettuce consumed in this country.
And now, Sylvia Gold's daughter is dating one of them. When Sylvia finds out that her youngest of three is going to bring her new boyfriend to the Seder, she's giddy. When she finds out that his parents are coming, too, she darn near faints. Making a good impression is all she thinks about. She still has to consider her other daughter, Sarah, who'll be coming with her less than appropriate beau and his overly dramatic Italian mother.
But the drama won't stop there. Because despite the food and the wine, despite the new linen and the fresh flowers, the holidays are about family. Long forgotten memories come to the surface. Old grievances play out. And Sylvia Gold has to learn how to let her family go. It is meditation on identity, faith, and belonging, peppered with laugh-out-loud moments. It will make you laugh. It will make you mad at the Bet Din in DC. It will make you wonder about omens and plans Was a child found in Adar on Purim?
Casting Lots will resonate with anyone who has struggled to find their place in the world, to understand the significance of that place, and to sustain a family amid the world's chaos. The highly anticipated second novel from a writer Emily St. Her life has some happy certainties, though: Suddenly, Shira sees a new beckoning: That is, until Romei starts sending her pages of the manuscript and she realizes that something odd is going on: A deft, funny, and big-hearted novel about second chances, Good on Paper is a grand novel of family, friendship, and possibility. It is too funny and engrossing.
When their high-school-aged, punk, runaway daughter is found hosting a Jersey Shore hotel party in Point PLeasant, Rossi's parents feel they have no other choice: Within the confines of this restrictive culture, Rossi's big city dreams take root. Once she makes her way to Manhattan, Rossi's passion for cooking, which first began as a revolt against her mother's microwave, becomes her life mission.
Forever writing her own rules, Rossi ends up becoming the owner of one of the most sought-after catering companies in the city. This heartfelt, gritty, and hilarious memoir shows us how the creativity of the kitchen allows us to give a nod to where we come from, while simultaneously expressing everything that we are. Includes unpretentious recipes for real people everywhere lots of hot dog recipes. Rossi is the owner and executive chef of The Raging Skillet, described as a "rebel anti-caterer" by the New York Times.
She is the host of a long-running radio show in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
The inclusion of numerous recipes related to each narrative is an added garnish to an already satisfying meal. I heard you can do 20 pushups. Yes, but we do ten at a time. And then I breathe for a bit and do the second set. Nearly a half-century into being a feminist and legal pioneer, something funny happened to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg offers a visually rich, intimate, unprecedented look at the Justice and how she changed the world.
As the country struggles with the unfinished business of gender equality and civil rights, Ginsburg stands as a testament to how far we can come with a little chutzpah. In this landmark work, Attorney Kaplan describes her strategy in the lower courts and her preparation and rehearsals before moot courts, and she shares insights into the dramatic oral argument before the Supreme Court justices.
Full of never-before-told details, this is the momentous account of a thrilling historic and political victory for gay rights. Kaplan, known in legal circles as a powerhouse corporate litigator, is one of a handful of attorneys who over the past decade have decisively shaped and driven the legal fight for same-sex marriage nationally.
She lost her first major case, a suit filed by 13 couples in New York State, including a woman awaiting a liver transplant who wanted to make sure her partner of 24 years could visit her in the hospital. She majored in Russian at Harvard. She spent time in Moscow and met Jewish Refuseniks. Windsor met Spyer, who was born in Amsterdam but who fled the Holocaust with her family and eventually came to the United States as a refugee, at a Greenwich Village restaurant called Portofino in , six years before the gay rights movement was born at the Stonewall Inn, a few blocks away.
Windsor was 77; Spyer was The wedding was announced in the New York Times. They have a fairly typical childhood, other than that around the corner Mr. Katz is trying to recreate the Biblical Tree of Knowledge out of plucked leaves, toilet paper rolls, and dental floss. When their father, a professor of Jewish mysticism, is diagnosed with an unusual heart murmur, he becomes convinced that his heart is whispering divine secrets.
It falls to next-door neighbor and Holocaust survivor Chaim Glassman to shatter the silence that divides the members of the Meyer family. But can he break through to them in time? Shapiro once again pens the art world into vivid, sensual life. Set during World War II and the dawn of Abstract Expressionism, The Muralist is an intriguing story masterfully imagined about art, war, family, truth, and freedom.
No one knows what happened to her. Not her Jewish family living in German-occupied France. Not her artistic patron and political compatriot, Eleanor Roosevelt. And, some seventy years later, not her great-niece, Danielle Abrams, who while working at an auction house uncovers enigmatic paintings hidden behind recently found works by those now famous Abstract Expressionist artists. Do they hold answers to the questions surrounding her missing aunt? Entwining the lives of both historical and fictional characters, and moving between the past and the present, The Muralist plunges readers into the divisiveness of prewar politics and the largely forgotten plight of European refugees refused entrance to the United States.
Shapiro is a master at telling a riveting story while exploring provocative themes. Does great art have the power to change the world? And to what lengths should a person go to thwart evil? She spent her teenage years outwardly conforming to but secretly rebelling against the rules that tell you what and when to eat, how to dress, whom you can befriend, and what you must believe. Loving her parents, grandparents, and extended family, Chaya struggled to fit in but instead felt angry, stifled, and frustrated. Upon receiving permission from her bewildered but supportive parents to attend Barnard College, she discovered a wider world in which she could establish an independent identity and fulfill her dream of an unconfined life that would be filled with the secular knowledge and culture that were largely foreign to her friends and relatives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
As she gradually shed the physical and spiritual trappings of Hasidic life, Chaya found herself torn between her desire to be honest with her parents about who she now was and her need to maintain a loving relationship with the family that she still very much wanted to be part of. Eventually, Chaya and her parents came to an understanding that was based on unqualified love and a hard-won but fragile form of acceptance. With honesty, sensitivity, and intelligence, Chaya Deitsch movingly shows us that lives lived differently do not have to be lives lived apart.
Peeling away the myth to bring David to life in Second Iron Age Israel, Brooks traces the arc of his journey from obscurity to fame, from shepherd to soldier, from hero to traitor, from beloved king to murderous despot and into his remorseful and diminished dotage. Brooks has an uncanny ability to hear and transform characters from history, and this beautifully written, unvarnished saga of faith, desire, family, ambition, betrayal, and power will enthrall her many fans.
In the Talmud, God wriggles his toes to make thunder and takes human form to shave the king of Assyria. In the New Testament, God is made flesh and dwells among humans. For religious thinkers trained in Greek philosophy and its deep distaste for matter, sacred scripture can be distressing. A philosophically respectable God should be untainted by sensuality, yet the God of sacred texts is often embarrassingly sensual. Setting experts' minds at ease was neither easy nor simple, and often faith and logic were stretched to their limits.
Focusing on examples from both Christian and Jewish sources, from the Bible to sources from the Late Middle Ages, Aviad Kleinberg examines the way Christian and Jewish philosophers, exegetes, and theologians attempted to reconcile God's supposed ineffability with numerous biblical and postbiblical accounts of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and even tasting the almighty. The conceptual entanglements ensnaring religious thinkers, and the strange, ingenious solutions they used to extricate themselves, tell us something profound about human needs and divine attributes, about faith, hope, and cognitive dissonance.
But when Zach falls for Cleo, an African American activist grappling with her own inherited trauma, he must reconcile the family he loves with the woman who might be his soul mate. A New York love story complicated by the legacies and modern tension of Jewish American and African American history, SJM Seeking explores what happens when the heart runs into the reality of politics, history, and the weight of family promises.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a leading figure in Jewish and feminist activism. She is a founding editor and writer for Ms. She is also the editor for the anthology Stories for Free Children , and a co-creator of Free to Be. You and Me and Free to Be. Her articles, op-eds, and columns have been published frequently in a wide variety of magazines and publications, including the New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, and the Ladies Home Journal.
It was when three plane crashes ended in deaths. Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events in the early s, when airline travel was new and exciting and everyone dreamed of going somewhere, Judy Blume imagines and weaves together a haunting story of three generations of families, friends, and strangers, whose lives are profoundly changed by these disasters.
And a young journalist who makes his name reporting tragedy. Through it all, one generation reminds another that life goes on. We learn of the events from several perspectives.
Her single mother Rusty. Her best friend Natalie. Christina, a Greek girl in a secret dating relationship with an Irish boy. Passengers on a plane. A loyal Party member might be imprisoned or executed as quickly as a traitor; innocence means nothing for a person caught in a government trap. But there are larger terrors, too. Nearly lost to censorship, this rediscovered gem of Czech literature depicts a chilling moment in history, redolent with the stifling atmosphere of political and personal oppression of the early days of Communist Czechoslovakia.
As a reporter for the Village Voice in the s, she chronicled the politics of the feminist movement through her own conversion to the cause. In her essays, she pushed herself to understand how her commitment to the movement had changed her daily life. Her account of her relationship with her mother, Fierce Attachments, brought analytic insight to bear on the struggle to assert oneself. Recently, Gornick has turned her attention to the radicalism of others. Her two biographies, of Emma Goldman and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, both ask a question to which she has turned throughout her work: In this new book, a memoir, she creates a contentious, deeply moving ode to friendship, love, and urban life in the spirit of Fierce Attachments.
A memoir of self-discovery and the dilemma of connection in our time, The O dd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman who has lived out her conflicts, not her fantasies, in a city New York that has done the same.
In Leonard she sees herself reflected plain; out on the street she makes sense of what she sees. Lucette's children would like a kinder, warmer home, but what they have is a government-issued concrete box, out in the thorns and sand on the outskirts of Tel Aviv; and their mother, hard-worn and hardscrabble, who cleans homes by night and makes school lunches by day. Lucette quarrels with everybody, speaks only Arabic and French, is scared only of snakes, and is as likely to lock her children out as to take in a stray dog.
The child recounts her years in Lucette's house, where Israel's wars do not intrude and hold no interest. She puzzles at the mysteries of her home, why Maurice, her father, a bitter revolutionary, makes only rare appearances. And why her mother rebuffs the kind rabbi whose home she cleans in his desire to adopt her. Always watching, the child comes to fill the holes with conjecture and story. In a masterful accumulation of short, dense scenes, by turns sensual, violent, and darkly humorous, The Sound of Our Steps questions the virtue of a family bound only by necessity, and suggests that displacement may not lead to a better life, but perhaps to art.
Holland is a Penn grad where she majored in BBB. So you know this book will be good. You prolly recall her book, Weekends at Bellevue: Some say it is a milestone book and is the new Our Bodies Our Selves. As women, we learn from an early age that our moods are a problem. To succeed in life, we are told, we must have it all under control.
We have to tamp down our inherent shifts in favor of a more static way of being. But our bodies are wiser than we imagine. Moods are not an annoyance to be stuffed away. They are a finely-tuned feedback system that, if heeded, can tell us how best to manage our lives. Our changing moods let us know when our bodies are primed to tackle different challenges and when we should be alert to developing problems. They help us select the right tool for each of our many jobs. If we deny our emotionality, we deny the breadth of our talents. With the right care of our inherently dynamic bodies, we can master our moods to avail ourselves of this great natural strength.
Yet millions of American women are medicating away their emotions because our culture says that moodiness is a problem to be fixed. One in four of us takes a psychiatric drug. If you add sleeping pills to the mix, the statistics become considerably higher. Over-prescribed medications can have devastating consequences for women in many areas of our lives: Julie Holland knows there is a better way.
Click the book cover or title to read more or to purchase the book at discount. Dahlia Abraham-Klein, pulls from Jewish texts a book that enhances women's spiritual growth via the tradition of challah baking while meditating upon the Jewish theme of the month. The book gives an extensive history of Rosh Chodesh and why it's traditionally been a woman's holiday. The book covers all twelve months of the Jewish year, with specific Torah text for each month as well as a specific challah that relates the Torah theme to that month.
In essence Spiritual Kneading is palatable Torah. Each Jewish month includes a meditation guided through the kneading of the challah dough. The kneading is an action meditation, best understood as the performance of commandments and rituals. The inner essence of the dough elucidates divines in the challah and becomes a springboard to reach God. This conversation in turn is kneaded into the dough and becomes part of the spiritual wisdom transmitted to your loved ones.
When commandments are seen in this light, particularly baking challah, the challah takes on a greater spiritual significance. Each chapter then goes on to give sources, ideas, and questions to be discussed by the group while the challah dough is rising. The purpose of baking challah in this particular way is to develop ones own personal spiritual growth within the context of a Rosh Chodesh group. Recipes and Shapes include: Crossing borders and often oceans, they followed paths paved by intrepid peddlers who preceded them.
This book is the first to tell the remarkable story of the Jewish men who put packs on their backs and traveled forth, house to house, farm to farm, mining camp to mining camp, to sell their goods to peoples across the world. Persistent and resourceful, these peddlers propelled a mass migration of Jewish families out of central and eastern Europe, north Africa, and the Ottoman Empire to destinations as far-flung as the United States, Great Britain, South Africa, and Latin America. Hasia Diner tells the story of millions of discontented young Jewish men who sought opportunity abroad, leaving parents, wives, and sweethearts behind.
Wherever they went, they learned unfamiliar languages and customs, endured loneliness, battled the elements, and proffered goods from the metropolis to people of the hinterlands. Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love.
They revealed a woman desparate to escape and clinging to the memory of a love that defined her years of freedom. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Bliss by June Day. If there had been less space between songs and sets, things may have been different. It was my life, and it was a beautiful mess. Paperback , pages. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Bliss , please sign up.
Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Jun 24, Jalina Mhyana rated it it was amazing. Death and Resurrection in a Chinatown Stripclub is a love story carved in the handle of an axe. It sits on my shelf like a charged object. Though I read it over a month ago, it still makes me shudder when I glance its way. Their tragedies are my tragedies, and they're just lined up along my shelf with all the other books, as if they're benign.
Take the tit Bliss: