Download or read book The Frozen Rabbi written by Steve Stern and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2011-06-14 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning novelist Steve Stern’s exhilarating epic recounts the story of how a nineteenth-century rabbi from a small Polish town ends up in a basement freezer in a suburban Memphis home at the end of the twentieth century. What happens when an impressionable teenage boy inadvertently thaws out the ancient man and brings him back to life is nothing short of miraculous.
Download or read book The Book of Mischief written by Steve Stern and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the 25 years since [Stern] published his first book, younger Jewish writers have run with a similar shtick . . . But Stern was there first." —The Toronto Globe and Mail The Book of Mischief triumphantly showcases twenty-five years of outstanding work by one of our true masters of the short story. Steve Stern's stories take us from the unlikely old Jewish quarter of the Pinch in Memphis to a turn-of-thecentury immigrant community in New York; from the market towns of Eastern Europe to a down-at-the-heels Catskills resort. Along the way we meet a motley assortment of characters: Mendy Dreyfus, whose bungee jump goes uncannily awry; Elijah the prophet turned voyeur; and the misfit Zelik Rifkin, who discovers the tree of dreams. Perhaps it's no surprise that Kafka's cockroach also makes an appearance in these pages, animated as they are by instances of bewildering transformation. The earthbound take flight, the meek turn incendiary, the powerless find unwonted fame. Weaving his particular brand of mischief from the wondrous and the macabre, Stern transforms us all through the power of his brilliant imagination.
Download or read book A Rabbi s Northern Adventure written by Yisrael Haber and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rabbi Haber recounts his extraordinary experiences, from his service in the USA as Air Force Chaplain stationed in Alaska, through his current position as Chabad Rabbi on the Golan Heights. With humor and good wit, Haber relates the challenges of keeping Yiddishkeit alive in the frozen wilderness, and of keeping the morale high in the Golan Heights, making for an exceptional, inspirational story for all.
Download or read book The Pinch written by Steve Stern and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last Jewish tenant on North Main Street in Memphis, Lenny Sklarew, makes the startling discovery that he's a character in a book about his neighborhood, and the stories he finds within the book transform both himself and the fate of the Pinch.
Download or read book The Rabbi of Lud written by Stanley Elkin and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2010-10-26 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIV DIVDIVA small-town Rabbi’s quiet life is turned upside down when his only daughter drops a bombshell/divDIV /div/divDIVThe only long-term occupants of Lud, New Jersey, reside in its cemeteries,a fact that suits Rabbi Jerry Goldkorn just fine. Never particularly passionate about his religious calling, Rabbi Goldkorn spends his days officiating funerals and burying the dead in the local cemetery. His life is simple by design—until one day his daughter’s scandalous rebellion threatens to send his world spinning wildly out of control./divDIV /divDIVSpiked with Elkin’s characteristic wit, The Rabbi of Lud is a poignant satire of religious culture—and the story of one man’s struggle with morality, mortality, and the meaning of life./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate and from the Stanley Elkin archives at Washington University in St. Louis./div /div
Download or read book The Angel of Forgetfulness written by Steve Stern and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 2005 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This time-defying odyssey from the 1960s to the Lower East Side of New York at the turn of the 20th century features a detour through heaven on the wings of a derelict angel.
Download or read book The Wedding Jester written by Steve Stern and published by . This book was released on 1999-04 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of Jewish stories, set in Europe and America, some presented with magic realism. Subjects include relations with Christians and conflict between religion and the secular.
Download or read book The North of God written by Steve Stern and published by Melville House Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a boxcar crammed with Jews headed for a concentration camp, one man attempts to tell a story vital enough to displace the horror.
Download or read book From Enemy to Friend written by Rabbi Amy Eilberg and published by Orbis Books. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first female Conservative rabbi in the U.S. reflects on ancient Jewish traditions as a guide to reconciliation and peacebuilding in our lives, our communities, and our world.
Download or read book Chance written by Uri Shulevitz and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Illustrated Books for Older Readers A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2020 A New York Times Best Children's Book of 2020 Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2020 Booklist Best Books of 2020 Horn Book Fanfare 2020 Booklist Chicago Public Library Best of the Best 2020 Jewish Journal Twenty of the Best 2020 (Non-Holiday) Jewish Books for Kids A National Jewish Book Award 2020 Finalist for Middle Grade Fiction A 2021 Golden Dome Book Award Selection “Harrowing, engaging and utterly honest.” —Elizabeth Wein, The New York Times Book Review “A captivating chronicle of eight turbulent years.” —The Wall Street Journal From a beloved voice in children’s literature comes this landmark memoir of hope amid harrowing times and an engaging and unusual Holocaust story. With backlist sales of over 2.3 million copies, Uri Shulevitz, one of Farrar, Straus and Grioux’s most acclaimed picture-book creators, details the eight-year odyssey of how he and his Jewish family escaped the terrors of the Nazis by fleeing Warsaw for the Soviet Union in Chance. It was during those years, with threats at every turn, that the young Uri experienced his awakening as an artist, an experience that played a key role during this difficult time. By turns dreamlike and nightmarish, this heavily illustrated account of determination, courage, family loyalty, and the luck of coincidence is a true publishing event.
Download or read book A Time To Mourn a Time To Comfort 2nd Edition written by Dr. Ron Wolfson and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2012-08-20 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Step-by-Step Guide for Honoring the Dead and Empowering the Living When someone dies, there are so many questions—from what to do in the moment of grief, to dealing with the practical details of the funeral, to spiritual concerns about the meaning of life and death. This indispensable guide to Jewish mourning and comfort provides traditional and modern insights into every aspect of loss. In a new, easy-to-use format, this classic resource is full of wise advice to help you cope with death and comfort others when they are bereaved. Dr. Ron Wolfson takes you step by step through the mourning process, including the specifics of funeral preparations, preparing the home and family to sit shiva, and visiting the grave. Special sections deal with helping young children grieve, mourning the death of an infant or child, and more. Wolfson captures the poignant stories of people in all stages of grieving—children, spouses, parents, rabbis, friends, non-Jews—and provides new strategies for reinvigorating and transforming the Jewish ways we mourn, grieve, remember, and carry on with our lives after the death of a loved one.
Download or read book When We Were Bad written by Charlotte Mendelson and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2007 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critics in Britain are already raving about Charlotte Mendelson’s excoriatingly funny yet deeply humane novel about a glamorous London family that happens to be falling apart. The Rubins are the perfect family. They’re wonderfully happy and very glamorous. The mother, Claudia, is the ultimate Jewish matriarch: a powerful rabbi known for her charm, brains, and determination. Now this dynastic Jewish family is getting ready to marry off the perfect eldest son. History, community, and even gastronomy unite the guests lucky enough to attend this joyous occasion. But when the groom -- one minute before exchanging vows -- bolts with the wrong woman, the myths that have defined this family take on darker overtones. Mendelson’s astonishing eye for detail, as well as her just-right balance of plot and character, makes the unfolding of this story an uncommon treat. In a marvelously compressed style that also bursts with life, she reveals how all four adult Rubin children, and their parents, struggle with huge secrets, sexual frustration and sexual experimentation, and many betrayals. Charlotte Mendelson opens a window on a realm rarely explored in British society: the complicated world of English Jewry. But to watch this seemingly blessed family drastically, disastrously fall apart before regaining balance is to understand that their struggles -- like all of ours -- are universal ones.
Download or read book On the Landing written by Yenta Mash and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-28 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these sixteen stories, available in English for the first time, prize-winning author Yenta Mash traces an arc across continents, across upheavals and regime changes, and across the phases of a woman's life. Mash's protagonists are often in transit, poised "on the landing" on their way to or from somewhere else. In imaginative, poignant, and relentlessly honest prose, translated from the Yiddish by Ellen Cassedy, Mash documents the lost world of Jewish Bessarabia, the texture of daily life behind the Iron Curtain in Soviet Moldova, and the challenges of assimilation in Israel. On the Landing opens by inviting us to join a woman making her way through her ruined hometown, recalling the colorful customs of yesteryear—and the night when everything changed. We then travel into the Soviet gulag, accompanying women prisoners into the fearsome forests of Siberia. In postwar Soviet Moldova, we see how the Jewish community rebuilds itself. On the move once more, we join refugees struggling to find their place in Israel. Finally, a late-life romance brings a blossoming of joy. Drawing on a lifetime of repeated uprooting, Mash offers an intimate perch from which to explore little-known corners of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A master chronicler of exile, she makes a major contribution to the literature of immigration and resilience, adding her voice to those of Jhumpa Lahiri, W. G. Sebald, André Aciman, and Viet Thanh Nguyen. Mash's literary oeuvre is a brave achievement, and her work is urgently relevant today as displaced people seek refuge across the globe.
Download or read book People Love Dead Jews Reports from a Haunted Present written by Dara Horn and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living. Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture—and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks—Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present. Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life—trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study—to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past—making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.
Download or read book Hillel written by Joseph Telushkin and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2010-09-14 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the Jewish Encounter series “What is hateful unto you, do not do unto your neighbor. That is the whole Torah, all the rest is commentary. Now, go and study.” This is the most famous teaching of Hillel, one of the greatest rabbis of the Talmudic era. What makes it so extraordinary is that it was offered to a gentile seeking conversion. Joseph Telushkin feels that this Talmudic story has great relevance for us today. At a time when religiosity is equated with ritual observance alone, when few Jews seem concerned with bringing Jewish teachings into the world, and when more than 40 percent of Jews intermarry, Judaism is in need of more of the openness that Hillel possessed two thousand years ago. Hillel’s teachings, stories, and legal rulings can be found throughout the Talmud; many of them share his emphasis on ethical and moral living as an essential element in Jewish religious practice, including his citing the concept of tikkun olam (repairing the world) as a basis for modifying Jewish law. Perhaps the most prominent rabbi and teacher in the Land of Israel during the reign of Herod, Hillel may well have influenced Jesus, his junior by several decades. In a provocative analysis of both Judaism and Christianity, Telushkin reveals why Hillel’s teachings about ethics as God’s central demand and his willingness to encourage the process of conversion began to be ignored in favor of the stricter and less inclusive teachings of his rabbinic adversary, Shammai. Here is a bold new look at an iconic religious leader.
Download or read book What You Will See Inside a Synagogue written by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2013-01-17 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A colorful, fun-to-read introduction that explains the ways and whys of Jewish worship, faith, and religious life. What You Will See Inside a Synagogue will: Satisfy kids’ curiosity about what goes on in synagogues attended by their friends, broadening awareness of other faiths at an important age when opinions and prejudices can first form. Provide Jewish children with a deeper understanding of the practices of their own religious tradition. Give children the opportunity to ask questions, making them more active participants. Colorful full-page photographs set the scene for concise but informative descriptions of what is happening, the objects used, the clergy and laypeople who have specific roles, the spiritual intent of the believers, and more. The What You Will See Inside... series is designed to show children ages 6–10 the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of traditional houses of worship, liturgical celebrations, and rituals of different world faiths, empowering them to respect and understand their own religious traditions—and those of their friends and neighbors.
Download or read book Relational Judaism written by Ron Wolfson and published by Jewish Lights Publishing. This book was released on 2013 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noted educator and community revitalization pioneer Dr. Ron Wolfson presents practical strategies and case studies to guide Jewish leaders in turning institutions into engaging communities that connect members to Judaism in meaningful and lasting ways.
