A Tel Aviv shopkeeper visits his parents’ Polish birthplace in an attempt to come to terms with their complex legacy—and is completely unprepared for what he finds there.
Yaakov Fine’s practical wife and daughters are baffled by his decision to leave his flourishing dress shop for a ten-day trip to his family’s ancestral village in Poland. Struggling to emerge from a midlife depression, Yaakov is drawn to Szydowce, intrigued by the stories he'd heard as a child from his parents and their friends, who would wax nostalgic about their pastoral, verdant hometown in the decades before 1939. The horrific years that followed were relegated to the nightmares that shattered sleep and were not discussed during waking hours.
When he arrives in Krakow, Yaakov enjoys the charming sidewalk cafes and relaxed European atmosphere, so different from the hurly burly of Tel Aviv. And his landlady in Szydowce—beautiful, sensual Magda, with a tragic past of her own—enchants him with her recollections of his family. But when Yaakov attempts to purchase from the townspeople the desecrated tombstones that had been stolen from Szydowce’s plowed-under Jewish cemetery, a very different Poland emerges, one that shatters Yaakov’s idyllic view of the town and its people, and casts into sharp relief the tragic reality of Jewish life in Poland—past, present, and future.
In this novel of revelation and reconciliation, Aharon Appelfeld once again mines lived experience to create fiction of powerful, universal resonance.
A Tel Aviv shopkeeper visits his parents’ Polish birthplace in an attempt to come to terms with their complex legacy—and is completely unprepared for what he finds there.…
Beautifully translated for a new generation of devotees of delicious and healthy eating: a groundbreaking, mouthwatering vegetarian cookbook originally published in Yiddish in pre–World War II Vilna and miraculously rediscovered more than half a century later.
In 1938, Fania Lewando, the proprietor of a popular vegetarian restaurant in Vilna, Lithuania, published a Yiddish vegetarian cookbook unlike any that had come before. Its 400 recipes ranged from traditional Jewish dishes (kugel, blintzes, fruit compote, borscht) to vegetarian versions of Jewish holiday staples (cholent, kishke, schnitzel) to appetizers, soups, main courses, and desserts that introduced vegetables and fruits that had not traditionally been part of the repertoire of the Jewish homemaker (Chickpea Cutlets, Jerusalem Artichoke Soup; Leek Frittata; Apple Charlotte with Whole Wheat Breadcrumbs). Also included were impassioned essays by Lewando and by a physician about the benefits of vegetarianism. Accompanying the recipes were lush full-color drawings of vegetables and fruit that had originally appeared on bilingual (Yiddish and English) seed packets. Lewando's cookbook was sold throughout Europe.
Lewando and her husband died during World War II, and it was assumed that all but a few family-owned and archival copies of her cookbook vanished along with most of European Jewry. But in 1995 a couple attending an antiquarian book fair in England came upon a copy of Lewando's cookbook. Recognizing its historical value, they purchased it and donated it to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City, the premier repository for books and artifacts relating to prewar European Jewry. Enchanted by the book's contents and by its backstory, YIVO commissioned a translation of the book that will make Lewando's charming, delicious, and practical recipes available to an audience beyond the wildest dreams of the visionary woman who created them.
With a foreword by Joan Nathan. Full-color illustrations throughout. Translated from the Yiddish by Eve Jochnowitz.
Beautifully translated for a new generation of devotees of delicious and healthy eating: a groundbreaking, mouthwatering vegetarian cookbook originally published in Yiddish in…
The personalities who appear in the pages of The Early Prophets, and the political and moral dilemmas their stories illuminate, are part of the living consciousness of the Western world. From Joshua and the tumbling walls of Jericho to Samson and Delilah, the prophet Samuel and the tragic King Saul, David and Goliath, Bathsheba and Absalom, King Solomon's temple, Elijah and the chariot of fire, Ahab and Jezebel--the stories of these men and women are deeply etched into Western culture because of their ability to beautifully encapsulate the human experience. The four books that comprise The Early Prophets look at tribal rivalries, dramatic changes in leadership, and the intrusions of neighboring empires through the prism of a Divine-human relationship. Over the centuries, the faithful have read these narratives as demonstrations of the perils of disobeying God's will, and time and again the Jews in exile found that they spoke to their own situations of cultural assimilation, destruction, and the reformulation of identity. They have had an equally indelible impact on generations of Christians, who have seen in many of the stories foreshadowings of the life and death of Jesus, as well as models for their own lives and the careers of their leaders. But beyond its importance as a foundational religious document, The Early Prophets is a great work of literature, a powerful and distinctive narrative history that seeks meaning in the midst of national catastrophe. Accompanied by illuminating commentary, notes, and maps, Everett Fox's masterly translation re-creates the echoes, allusions, alliterations, and wordplays of the Hebrew original that rhetorically underscore its meaning and are intrinsic to a timeless text meant to be both studied and read aloud.
The personalities who appear in the pages of The Early Prophets, and the political and moral dilemmas their stories illuminate, are part of the living consciousness of the Western…
Over thousands of years, Jews all over the world developed cuisines suited to their needs (kashrut, holidays, Shabbat) but also reflecting the influences of their neighbors and carrying memories from their past wanderings. These cuisines may now be on the verge of extinction, however, because practically none the Jewish communities in which these cuisines developed and thrived exist anymore. The only place all of these cuisines are still functional is Israel, where there are still a few first-generation cooks that know and love these dishes. Israel is, in a sense, a living laboratory of this beloved and endangered Jewish food; the 100 diversely flavored recipes here--from Jerusalem's surprising, sweet kugel flavored with pepper to Bukharan's hearty Ushapualau, a wondrous stew of beef, chickpeas, and carrots--were not chosen by an editor or a chef so much as by what Janna Gur calls "natural selection." These are the dishes that, though rooted in their original provenance, have been embraced by Israelis from throughout the Diaspora and have become part of Israel's culinary landscape. Aimed to educate and delight the grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of those who carried their cuisines on journeys far from their orginal homes, Jewish Soul Food proceeds from the premise that the only way to preserve traditional cuisine is to cook it. The book offers all cooks the "greatest hits" from a fascinating food culture--a chance to enrich their cooking repertoire and at the same time help to preserve a valuable part of Jewish heritage and its collective "soul."
Over thousands of years, Jews all over the world developed cuisines suited to their needs (kashrut, holidays, Shabbat) but also reflecting the influences of their neighbors and…
From one of our most trusted spiritual advisers, a thoughtful, illuminating guide to that most fascinating of biblical texts, the book of Job, and what it can teach us about living in a troubled world.
The story of Job is one of unjust things happening to a good man. Yet after losing everything, Job—though confused, angry, and questioning God—refuses to reject his faith, although he challenges some central aspects of it. Rabbi Harold S. Kushner examines the questions raised by Job’s experience, questions that have challenged wisdom seekers and worshippers for centuries. What kind of God permits such bad things to happen to good people? Why does God test loyal followers? Can a truly good God be all-powerful?
Rooted in the text, the critical tradition that surrounds it, and the author’s own profoundly moral thinking, Kushner’s study gives us the book of Job as a touchstone for our time. Taking lessons from historical and personal tragedy, Kushner teaches us about what can and cannot be controlled, about the power of faith when all seems dark, and about our ability to find God.
Rigorous and insightful yet deeply affecting, The Book of Job is balm for a distressed age—and Rabbi Kushner’s most important book since When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
From one of our most trusted spiritual advisers, a thoughtful, illuminating guide to that most fascinating of biblical texts, the book of Job, and what it can teach us about…
For the Eichmann trial's 50th anniversary, Emory Holocaust studies professor Lipstadt (History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving) trains her gaze on this watershed event in Jewish history. Israeli attorney general Gideon Hausner, a commercial lawyer, lacked criminal or courtroom expertise, but Lipstadt contends that despite a couple of courtroom blunders, Hausner presented overwhelming incriminating evidence to prove that Eichmann's claim that he was just a low-level bureaucrat was a lie. Moreover, Hausner's decision to place victims' testimony center stage gave survivors an iconic authority. Lipstadt discounts critics who say Hausner failed to elicit an admission of guilt from Eichmann, believing it didn't matter because a confession from a brazen liar is worthless. In Eichmann's memoirs, contrary to claims made by Hannah Arendt, Lipstadt finds that he expresses himself as an inveterate Nazi and anti-Semite fully committed to his leaders' goals. Lipstadt also finds Arendt's famous New Yorker reportage on the trial disturbing because Arendt failed to reveal that she was absent for much of the trial, writing from transcripts that cannot convey subtleties of demeanor witnessed in court. This is a penetrating and authoritative dissection of a landmark case and its after effects. (Mar.)
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For the Eichmann trial's 50th anniversary, Emory Holocaust studies professor Lipstadt (History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving) trains her gaze on this watershed event…
On August 12, 1952, Russia's greatest Jewish writers were secretly executed by Stalin. In this remarkable blend of history and imagination, Paltiel Kossover meets the same fate but, unlike his real-life counterparts, he is permitted to leave a written testament. From a Jewish boyhood in pre-revolutionary Russia, Paltiel traveled down a road that embraced Communism, only to return to Russia and discover a Communist Party that had become his mortal enemy. Two decades later, Paltiel's son, Grisha, reads this precious record of his father's life and finds that it illuminates the shadowed planes of his own.
Passionate and fierce, this story of a father's legacy to his son revisits some of the most dramatic events of our century, and confirms yet again Elie Wiesel's stature as "a writer of the highest moral imagination" (San Francisco Chronicle).
On August 12, 1952, Russia's greatest Jewish writers were secretly executed by Stalin. In this remarkable blend of history and imagination, Paltiel Kossover meets the same fate…
The capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina in May of 1960 and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem by an Israeli court electrified the world. The public debate it sparked on where, how, and by whom Nazi war criminals should be brought to justice, and the international media coverage of the trial itself, was a watershed moment in how the civilized world in general and Holocaust survivors in particular found the means to deal with the legacy of genocide on a scale that had never been seen before.
Award-winning historian Deborah E. Lipstadt gives us an overview of the trial and analyzes the dramatic effect that the survivors’ courtroom testimony — which was itself not without controversy — had on a world that had until then regularly commemorated the Holocaust but never fully understood what the millions who died and the hundreds of thousands who managed to survive had actually experienced.
As the world continues to confront the ongoing reality of genocide and ponder the fate of those who survive it, this trial of the century, which has become a touchstone for judicial proceedings throughout the world, offers a legal, moral, and political framework for coming to terms with unfathomable evil. Lipstadt infuses a gripping narrative with historical perspective and contemporary urgency.
The capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina in May of 1960 and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem by an Israeli court electrified the world.…
Reading the Women of the Bible takes up two of the most significant intellectual and religious issues of our day: the experiences of women in a patriarchal society and the relevance of the Bible to modern life.
Reading the Women of the Bible takes up two of the most significant intellectual and religious issues of our day: the experiences of women in a patriarchal society and the…
Every year, poet and novelist Marge Piercy creates her own Passover seder with a group of family and friends. Babies have been born and grown up, friends have moved or divorced, but the principals continue to gather in her rustic Cape Cod home to participate in a seder that Piercy takes joy in tweaking each spring to make it more meaningful. In this journey through the ritual, Piercy coaxes us toward "a significant contemporary interpretation, rather than an emphasis on what is strictly 'correct' or traditional". She reminisces about her grandmother, who thought herself unworthy to lead a seder because of her limited Hebrew but presided "morally" at the table; she urges adding an orange to the seder plate; she even describes her heroic efforts to make her own gefilte fish (an experiment not to be repeated).
Piercy offers her distinct slant on each element of the feast and provides dozens of her own wonderful recipes, which she delivers in the same warm, commanding voice as is heard in her poems and prose: "When I told Ira that I was going to explain how to cook matzoh brei, he thought I was crazy. Everybody knows how to make matzoh brei, he said. But I am of the opinion that there is no longer anything that everybody knows how to cook".
It is in that spirit-no question too simple-that Piercy welcomes readers to her kind of seder: a homemade and personal affair, the kind we all wish we could attend. This charming and instructive book of Passover wisdom, brimming with favorite dishes and Marge Piercy's own moving Passover poems and blessings, invites us to look at an important Jewish ritual in a whole new way.
Every year, poet and novelist Marge Piercy creates her own Passover seder with a group of family and friends. Babies have been born and grown up, friends have moved or divorced,…
The Los Angeles Times said of Ludmila Ulitskaya’s The Funeral Party, “In America we have friends, family, lovers, and parents–four kinds of love. Could it really be that in Russia they have more? Ludmila Ulitskaya makes it seem so.” In Sonechka: A Novella and Stories, Ulitskaya brings us tales of these other loves in her richly lyrical prose, populated with captivating and unusual characters.
In “Queen of Spades,” Anna, a successful ophthalmologic surgeon in her sixties; her daughter, Katya; and Katya’s teenage daughter and young son live in constant terror of Anna’s mother, a domineering, autocratic, aging former beauty queen. In “Angel,” a closeted middle-aged professor marries an uneducated charwoman for love of her young son, raising the child in his image. In “The Orlov-Sokolovs,” perfectly matched young lovers are pulled apart by the Soviet academic bureaucracy. And in the stunning novella “Sonechka,” the heroine, a bookworm turned muse turned mother, reveals a love and loyalty at once astounding in its generosity and grotesque in its pathos.
In these stories, love and life are lived under the radar of oppression, in want of material comfort, in obeisance to or matter-of-fact rejection of the pervasive restrictions of Soviet rule. If living well is the best revenge, then Ludmila Ulitskaya’s characters, in choosing to embrace the unique gifts that their lives bring them, are small heroes of the quotidian, their stories as funny and tender as they are brilliantly told.
The Los Angeles Times said of Ludmila Ulitskaya’s The Funeral Party, “In America we have friends, family, lovers, and parents–four kinds of love. Could it really be that in Russia…
Suppressed by the Communists for nearly forty years and never before published in English, Nine Suitcases is one of the first—and greatest—memoirs of the Holocaust ever written. Originally published in Hungary in weekly installments starting in 1946, it tells the harrowing story of Béla Zsolt’s experiences in the ghetto and as a forced laborer in the Ukraine. It gives not only a rare insight into Hungarian fascism, but also a shocking exposure to the cruelty, indifference, selfishness, cowardice and betrayal of which human beings—the victims no less than the perpetrators—are capable in extreme circumstances.
Apart from being one of the earliest writers on the Holocaust, Zsolt is also one of the most powerful. He bears comparison with Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, or Imre Kertész. Both an accomplished novelist and a highly skilled journalist, he was reporting and analyzing these appalling events soon after they occurred with exceptional clarity and a devastating blend of angry despair and cool detachment.
Zsolt was spared Auschwitz, but he witnessed and suffered some of the worst atrocities of the Holocaust elsewhere; his nightmarish but meticulously realistic chronicle of smaller and larger crimes against humanity is as riveting as it is horrifying. The rediscovery and publication of Nine Suitcases is an event of great historical importance.
Suppressed by the Communists for nearly forty years and never before published in English, Nine Suitcases is one of the first—and greatest—memoirs of the Holocaust ever written.…
The capture, trial, and execution of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was a seminal event in the life of the young State of Israel. The world watched with fascination as Israel asserted its right to avenge the murder of European Jewry in the Holocaust, and Jews around the world took pride in the power of the state to legally redress the wrongs of the Holocaust. Nowhere was the trial more influential than within Israel itself. How did Israel's diverse society - European Jews and those from the Middle East, Jews who came before the establishment of the state and those who came after, Holocaust survivors and Arabs, young and old - react to the spectacle of the trial and the graphic testimony that recounted the horrors of the Holocaust? How was the trial constructed? How did the leaders of Israel's government and legal establishment view its purpose?
The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann is a comprehensive examination of the Eichmann trial - hailed as a landmark study when it was published in Israel in 2001 - that reveals how the trial marked a turning point in Israel's national consciousness. Hanna Yablonka, one of Israel's leading historians, begins her narrative with the dramatic capture of Eichmann in Argentina in 1960 and describes the controversies that surrounded his abduction - the UN condemned it, and it strained Israel's new and profitable relationship with West Germany - and the emotionally wrought trial itself. She delineates the impact of the trial on the many disparate factions of Israeli society and makes clear how, in the unexpected and penetrating light of the trial, Israelis changed their notions not only about their country's own society, but about their place in the world as an independent state.
The capture, trial, and execution of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was a seminal event in the life of the young State of Israel. The world watched with fascination as Israel…
What can parents do to help their youngest children in their task of self-formation? How does the Montessori method of hands-on learning and self-discovery relate to the youngest infants? This authoritative and accessible book answers these and many other questions. Based on Dr. Maria Montessori's instructions for raising infants, its comprehensive exploration of the first three years incorporates the furnishings and tools she created for the care and comfort of babies. From the design of the baby's bedroom to the child-sized kitchen table, from diet and food preparation to clothing and movement, the authors provide guidance for the establishment of a beautiful and serviceable environment for babies and very young children. They introduce concepts and tasks, taking into account childrens' ''sensitive periods'' for learning such skills as dressing themselves, food preparation, and toilet training. Brimming with anecdote and encouragement, and written in a clear, engaging style, Montessori from the Start is a practical and useful guide to raising calm, competent, and confident children.
What can parents do to help their youngest children in their task of self-formation? How does the Montessori method of hands-on learning and self-discovery relate to the youngest…
August 1991. In a sweltering New York City apartment, a group of Russian émigrés gathers round the deathbed of an artist named Alik, a charismatic character beloved by them all, especially the women who take turns nursing him as he fades from this world. Their reminiscences of the dying man and of their lives in Russia are punctuated by debates and squabbles: Whom did Alik love most? Should he be baptized before he dies, as his alcoholic wife, Nina, desperately wishes, or be reconciled to the faith of his birth by a rabbi who happens to be on hand? And what will be the meaning for them of the Yeltsin putsch, which is happening across the world in their long-lost Moscow but also right before their eyes on CNN?
This marvelous group of individuals inhabits the first novel by Ludmila Ulitskaya to be published in English, a book that was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize and has been praised wherever translated editions have appeared. Simultaneously funny and sad, lyrical in its Russian sorrow and devastatingly keen in its observation of character, The Funeral Party introduces to our shores a wonderful writer who captures, wryly and tenderly, our complex thoughts and emotions confronting life and death, love and loss, homeland and exile.
August 1991. In a sweltering New York City apartment, a group of Russian émigrés gathers round the deathbed of an artist named Alik, a charismatic character beloved by them all,…
How does one live after surviving injustice? What satisfaction comes from revenge? Can the past ever be left behind?
Masterfully composed and imbued with extraordinary feeling and understanding, The Iron Tracks is a riveting tale of survival and revenge by the writer whom Irving Howe called "one of the best novelists alive today."
Ever since he was released from a concentration camp forty years earlier, Erwin Siegelbaum has been obsessively riding the trains of postwar Austria. His days are filled with drink, his nights with brief love affairs and the torments of his nightmares. What keeps him sane is his mission to collect the menorahs, kiddush cups, and holy books that have survived their vanished owners. And the hope that one day he will find the Nazi officer who murdered his parents--and have the strength to kill him.
A haunting exploration of one survivor's complex, wrenching, inner world, The Iron Tracks is distinguished by the depth of insight and the distinctively stark, elegant style that have won Aharon Appelfeld recognition as one of the world's great writers.
How does one live after surviving injustice? What satisfaction comes from revenge? Can the past ever be left behind?
Masterfully composed and imbued with extraordinary feeling…
Writing with rare power and insight, one of England's most distinguished thinkers and scholars takes readers on an extraordinary journey through the soul, plumbing her own life in an attempt to illuminate the deepest issues of all human life: love, family, friendship, sexuality, illness, and death.
Writing with rare power and insight, one of England's most distinguished thinkers and scholars takes readers on an extraordinary journey through the soul, plumbing her own life in…
Of all the characters in modern Jewish fiction, the most beloved is Tevye, the compassionate, irrepressible, Bible-quoting dairyman from Anatevka, who has been immortalized in the writings of Sholem Aleichem and in acclaimed and award-winning theatrical and film adaptations.
And no Yiddish writer was more beloved than Tevye’s creator, Sholem Rabinovich (1859–1916), the “Jewish Mark Twain,” who wrote under the pen name of Sholem Aleichem. Beautifully translated by Hillel Halkin, here is Sholem Aleichem’s heartwarming and poignant account of Tevye and his daughters, together with the “Railroad Stories,” twenty-one tales that examine human nature and modernity as they are perceived by men and women riding the trains from shtetl to shtetl.
Of all the characters in modern Jewish fiction, the most beloved is Tevye, the compassionate, irrepressible, Bible-quoting dairyman from Anatevka, who has been immortalized in the…
On Judaism is a collection of lectures by Martin Buber that had a profound influence on European Judaism in the early 20th century. The most interesting parts of this book are the lectures Buber delivered between 1909 and 1918, whose achievement was to convince intellectuals once again to take seriously the mystical elements of Judaism, such as kaballah. Assimilationism, secularism, and materialist skepticism had convinced many European Jews that religious Judaism demanded mindless allegiance to outmoded laws--a situation, as Rodger Kamenetz notes in his introduction to this volume, that bears a striking resemblance to the mindset of many young Jews today. Buber's involvement with Theodore Herzl's Zionist movement (which led to the creation of the state of Israel) gave him credibility with Jewish intellectuals, however. He used this credibility to persuade his listeners that there is an essential difference between rigid, legalistic "religion" and the vital, world-engaging "religiosity" that, he contended, is the prevailing character of Torah. As Kamenetz writes, "Buber's enduring insight is that Judaism is a process, not a conclusion: a religion of presence, and not simply an historical religion." Obviously, much has changed since Buber delivered these early lectures--the two World Wars, the Holocaust, and the rise of Reformed Judaism have forever altered the context in which young Jews define their religious identity. But Buber's driving question--"I must ask myself again and again: Is this particular law addressed to me and rightly so?"--is still the most important one for Jews who seek to understand themselves as people of the book. Martin Buber asked that question with unremitting intensity and intellectual rigor, and On Judaism will help its readers to do so as well. --Michael Joseph Gross
On Judaism is a collection of lectures by Martin Buber that had a profound influence on European Judaism in the early 20th century. The most interesting parts of this book are the…
"A thorough and highly sophisticated reflection on the biblical text." --Brevard S. Childs, Yale University "An excellent companion volume to the biblical book of Exodus itself." --Baruch A. Levine, New York University "Sheds a
"A thorough and highly sophisticated reflection on the biblical text." --Brevard S. Childs, Yale University "An excellent companion volume to the biblical book of Exodus itself."…
