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Posts Tagged jewish authors
Lifting Spirits at LimmudPhilly
Posted by Jillian in Jewish Knowledge on March 15, 2010
Marc Brettler, JPS author, guest blogs about his LimmudPhilly experience.
Scholarship is a very lonely venture—just me and my books. I often wonder: Does anyone care? But whenever I go to Limmud, my spirits are buoyed.
http://www.limmudphilly.org/
I just returned from LimmudPhilly—my third Limmud experience, though my first in the US. (I earlier spoke at the first Limmud held in Cambridge, England, and at the big Limmud in the UK.) What a blast. Not only did I enjoy seeing old friends, colleagues, and former students, but I made new friends, and saw that people actually do care about the Bible, which I taught.
My first session was something new for Limmud—a class where knowledge of Hebrew was assumed, so we could look together at some of the Psalms traditionally recited on Friday night at synagogue, trying to figure out why there were chosen as Sabbath psalms. Given that Hebrew knowledge was expected, I thought I would have a handful of participants—but I had many more, and together we puzzled through parts of Psalms 92 an 93.
Sunday was even more of a surprise—Limmud has many simultaneous sessions, and I was talking about “How the Bible Became the Bible” opposite Ruth Messinger, who was discussing social justice. I would have gone to Ruth’s session! I had people sitting on the floor, asking the best questions I had ever been asked after I finished my talk. There certainly are demographic reasons to be worried about the American Jewish community. But my experiences at Limmud and other adult Jewish education venues, and the interest in my books The Jewish Study Bible, How to Read the Bible, and How to Read the Jewish Bible, have made me much more optimistic about the Jewish future in America. We may be decreasing numerically, but there is a solid and growing core who cares in a variety of serious ways about what it means to be Jewish, about who we are as Jews, and about continuing formal and informal Jewish education. It is this group, who was well-represented at LimmudPhilly, who sit before my mind’s eye as I continue to write on Jewish topics.
Marc Brettler is Dora Golding Professor of Biblical Studies at Brandeis University.
The 59th Annual Jewish Book Awards
Posted by Carol in Jewish Books on March 11, 2010
My goodness, what a week: first, the Oscars on Sunday night, and then the Jewish Oscars on Tuesday! The Jewish book Oscars, that is: the 2009 National Jewish Book Awards.
Jewish Book Council
Dozens of Jewish literary notables were there: Joseph Telushkin, James Kugel, Lawrence Schiffman, Ari Goldman, Alana Newhouse, Yitz and Blu Greenberg, just for starters. Lots of other familiar faces, too, including two former JPS interns Naomi Firestone and Miri Pomerantz Dauber, now with the Jewish Book Council, which hosted the event.
It was quite a night for JPS, with more award winners than any other publisher: Editor Emerita Ellen Frankel and Avi Katz took a prize for the best Illustrated Children’s Book, for their JPS Illustrated Children’s Bible; Paul Steinberg and Janet Greenstein Potter’s Celebrating the Jewish Year: The Spring and Summer Holidays won for best Jewish Family Literature, Judy Klitsner’s Subversive Sequel in the Bible took the award for Scholarship. Frauke von Rohden’s Meneket Rivkah: A Manual of Wisdom and Piety for Jewish Women was a finalist for in the Scholarship category, and Frankel and Katz also were finalists in Jewish Family Literature. Below you can view a slideshow of our winners at the event!
I’m a big fiction fan, so I’ve added Joseph Kertes’ Gratitude: A Novel, the fiction award winner, to my (50+ book!) reading list. If you want to add winners to your reading list, check out wwww.jewishbookcouncil.org and add your comments and suggested book list titles below in response to this posting.
-Carol Hupping, Interim Director
Think You Know Everything About Judaism? Think Again!
Posted by Sarah in JPS Books, Jewish Books, Jewish Knowledge on January 11, 2010
Mara W. Cohen Ioannides, author of the JPS book A Shout in the Sunshine, guest blogs for JPS about the many forgotten cultures within Judaism.
Jews often forget that we are a multi-cultural community. American Jews, I believe, are particularly guilty of this, which is quite amazing considering the quilt of cultures we wrap ourselves in. We view American Jewishness as Yiddishkeit, and forget about the other ethnic groups that make up the community of Jews, like Yemini, Sephardi, etc. Before you pooh-pooh this idea, list Jewish ethnic food. Did you list: matzah balls, bagels, pastrami, rye bread, mandel brot, challah, or honey cake? Then you are an Eastern European ethnic Jew. What ever happened to humus, lahana, or halvah?
I grew up at a time when Sephardic Jews were only mentioned in history books (and I lived an hour from Mikveh Israel in the historic district of Philadelphia) and the only books for children about American Jewish children were the All of a Kind Family series. I loved those books, mostly because I imagined my grandmothers and their sisters as those girls. However, as I grew up I really wondered about all those other Jews. I wanted to know what Jews all over the world were like and there weren’t really books about them.
When I became a mother of a daughter with a Greek father, I desperately wanted her to know all of her history. I could find nothing for children about Greek Jewry. This began my series of novels. We know that Jews lived throughout history in almost every part of the world, but we don’t really understand what their lives were like. Here’s my pick of books for young and old that should get you started on seeing another part of Jewish culture:
1. I Remember Rhodes by Rebecca Amato Levy is a wonderful book of the author’s reminiscences about her childhood in the pre-Holocaust Jewish quarter of Rhodes. It is filled with celebrations, sayings, and songs. You can read it in English or Ladino! This woman was a foundation of the Rhodalisi community in California and started me on my interest in Greek Jewry.
2. Zayda Was a Cowboy by June Levitt Nislick, who would have thought? No, I’m serious. One of my grandfathers was a factory worker and the other, a postal worker, both lived in Brooklyn. Who had Jewish grandfathers who were cowboys? Never underestimate a children’s book. They may be short, but the story is just as good.
3. The Book of Jewish Food: An odyssey from Samarkand to New York by Claudia Roden was another inspiration for me. Anyone who has read my book knows there is an incredible amount of food in it. Every Jewish holiday is about food, even the fast days. My rabbi says that every time she reads my book she gets hungry. If you want to try making the food in my novel, get this book! This cookbook is amazing! The stories about the recipes are just as yummy as the recipes themselves.
4. The Life of Glückel of Hameln is a classic in women’s and Jewish studies. I love reading this memoir begun in 1690 by Glückel, a widow and mother of 14. Yes, I know, it is about an Eastern European Jew, but how many memoirs by women of this period are there? And how often do you get to read about life in the early 18th century. This book is part of the canon and should be on everyone shelves, just like Sydney Taylor’s books.
5. Rashi’s Daughters: Rachel, the third in Maggie Anton’s series, is another powerful look at cultural diversity. In this finale, Rachel’s husband lives in both France and Spain and there are few books where the comparison between the golden ages of the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim are so dynamically paralleled. I was especially intrigued by the internal conflicts of husband and wife over the question of polygamy, which was practiced by the Sephardim and not the Ashkenazi.
Have I reached my five? There are so many good books out there. I could write for days about the books I have sitting on my shelves and those I wish I did. Whatever you do, don’t forget to get yourselves some excellent CDs of music. Sephardic music is much sought after by scholars of medieval Spanish. Did you know that the language still spoken which is closest to medieval Spanish is Ladino? No? All the more reason to take the opportunity to discover the hidden sides of Jewish culture!
The Super Cool, Mega-Awesome List of Jewish Comics
Posted by Sarah in JPS Books, Jewish Books, Publishing on December 16, 2009
Arie Kaplan, JPS author and comic guru, guest blogs for JPS with his recommendations for the best Jewish comics.
Okay. JPS asked me to compile a list of Jewish comics. But what makes a comic “Jewish”? Is it the fact that it was created by a Jewish writer and/or artist? Well, that doesn’t seem fair, does it? Because if you limit it to Jewish comics creators, you leave out so many talented non-Jewish comics creators, like Carl Barks or Alan Moore (Google them). Hmm. But what about a comic that features Jewish characters? Well…I dunno. Does that make the comic book itself somehow “Jewish”? That’s a little odd. Marvel’s X-Men titles feature characters of nearly every race, religion, and sexual orientation. Hmm…Eventually though, I have to make a choice here. So my choice is to NOT make a choice. (That sound you heard is me blowing your mind.) What I’ve done is, I’ve put together a list of either comics that are created by Jews or comics that feature Jewish content. That way, everyone’s happy. Also, I’ve stuck to trade paperbacks in my list, rather than the decidedly slimmer single-issue comics, because TPBs make better stocking stuffers (or, y’know, whatever the Hanukkah equivalent of a stocking stuffer is). Because I have limited space, I’ve picked a mere five books, but don’t think for a minute that these are the only “Jewish Comics” worth mentioning. (And yes, I know I’ve left out a ton of other contenders.) This should suffice as a good “recommended reading” list for the comic book fan on your holiday shopping list:
1. X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga, by Chris Claremont (writer) and John Byrne (penciler): I was a skinny, neurotic Jewish kid who got headaches all the time. So was she. Trouble was, I was real and she was fictional. But somehow we could make it work. Anyway, the “Dark Phoenix Saga” is the X-Men story arc that made me fall in love with Katherine “Kitty” Pryde. And before you laugh at me for lusting after a fictional character, ask yourself how many times you drooled over Wilma Flintstone. What? None of you? Well, uh…neither did I. Moving on…
2. The Sandman: The Wake, by Neil Gaiman (writer), Michael Zulli (artist), Jon J. Muth (artist), Charles Vess (artist): You’d be hard-pressed to find a better meditation on death, dying, and the mourning process than this final story arc in Gaiman’s acclaimed Sandman series. Everything comes full circle in “The Wake,” as the various supporting characters react to the title character’s demise. Perhaps my favorite chapter: “Sunday Mourning,” featuring the immortal Hob Gadling.
3. The New American Splendor Anthology, by Harvey Pekar (writer), Drew Friedman (artist), Frank Stack (artist), Gerry Shamray (artist), Robert Crumb (artist), Alan Moore (artist), and more: Pekar is the king of the autobiographical comics movement, and has been for well over thirty years. Many of the stories in this volume will show you why. In the story “Pa-ayper Reggs!!”, about Jewish rag peddlers in the 1920s, Pekar and artist Robert Crumb conjure up a New York of chocolate phosphates and horse-drawn wagons, a city with one foot firmly planted in the new world and one foot still languishing in the old. Good stuff.
4. The Essential Howard the Duck Volume 1, by Steve Gerber (writer), Gene Colan (artist), Frank Brunner (artist), Sal Buscema (artist), Val Mayerik (artist), and more: Oh sure, laugh. Laugh because the only version of Howard 
the Duck you’ve seen is that terrible 1986 movie. But really, the comic book series it’s based on is SO GOOD. It satirized everything; sex, religion, politics. And Howard was an interesting character; sarcastic, grumpy, always chomping on a cigar. He reminded me of my grandpa…and, I suspect, he probably reminded a lot of other Jewish kids of their grandpas. He really seemed like an anthropomorphic waterfowl version of a Borscht Belt comic. Was that intentional? Who knows. But we do know that this was one of the best-written comics of the ‘70s.
5. MAD About the Fifties, by Harvey Kurtzman (writer), Will Elder (artist), Jack Davis (artist), Wally Wood (artist), and more: Want to know what MAD looked like in the 1950s? When it was the sharpest, most dead-on humor comic (and later magazine) of the Eisenhower Era? This book is a heady sampler of the first eight years of MAD, including such classic stories as Kurtzman and Wood’s “Superduperman,” a parody of DC Comics’s Superman. In the late ‘50s, various celebrity contributors published work in MAD, among them Ernie Kovacs and Danny Kaye, and their work is included here as well. Also worthy of note: original MAD editor Kurtzman sprinkled his stories with a good dose of Yiddish, often to heighten the comedic effect. One can see evidence of this in the first issue of MAD, which opens on a story about two criminals. The title of the story? “Ganefs” (Yiddish for “thieves”).
Arie Kaplan, a comedian and author, is the writer behind the JPS title From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books – a 2008 National Jewish Book Award Finalist, a 2009 Sophie Brody Honor Book, and a 2009 National “Best Books 2009” Awards Finalist. He has also written numerous comic book scripts. Most recently, Kaplan wrote the short story “Man of Snow,” in which Superman battles a Snow Golem (appropriate, given the theme of “Jewish comics”). That story appears in the DC Comics anthology DC Holiday Special 2009, on sale now. Kaplan is currently writing the story and dialogue for the upcoming House M.D. videogame (based on the popular TV show) for Legacy Interactive. For more information, visit www.ariekaplan.com.
40% off All JPS Books for 3 days!
3-Day Blowout End-of-Year Sale!
40% off any JPS books Wednesday-Friday ONLY
On December 2, 3, and 4, 2009 ONLY — enjoy tremendous savings when you shop at www.jewishpub.org
Enter code 40off at checkout
* Excludes Etz Hayim Standard and Gift editions, books in our “Classic Backlist” section, gift certificates, and membership. Cannot be combined with any other offer including membership discounts and gift certificates that begin with the letter E.
Dr. Seuss and More Teach Hebrew!
Posted by Sarah in Jewish Knowledge, Publishing on November 25, 2009
Children have some of the best books! Think about it. They get cool illustrations and great stories, all in about twenty pages or less. Even better, children’s books have the best messages. Having taken a class in college on children’s literature, I’ve grown to really appreciate the wide variety of stories out there geared towards kids.
So, what could be better than a children’s book? A children’s book in Hebrew!
During a book fair held at my synagogue a few weeks ago, I noticed a copy of The Giving Tree for sale on a display table. Well, I love this book, so it should come as no surprise that I decided to go look at it. Upon arriving at the table, I was surprised to see that the book was entirely in Hebrew! The combination was unexpected (although it shouldn’t have been since it was a book fair at my synagogue!).
Leafing through the pages of the beloved classic, I started to wonder. Are there others like this? The answer is yes! While browsing the web, I came 
across a site that sells a bunch of famous children’s books in Hebrew. It had everything from Dr. Seuss to Curious George to Madeleine to Frog and Toad to Where the Wild Things Are to Goodnight Moon. The selection was awesome.
You might be thinking, why would I ever buy these books when I can go get them in English? I understand that not everyone has 
the same crazy passion for books that I have. And, I’m secretly a kid at heart, so children’s books really appeal to me. But, imagine how much you could learn from these books! What better way to learn some Hebrew than through your favorite stories. The dialogue is basic (it’s meant for kids), and since you know the story, you can get the gist of what’s being said.
So, if you’re looking for a way to spice up your reading life and learn something new, this is it! You can find most of these books through Amazon, so have fun exploring!
-Sarah
Foer’s Common Thread: Death and Accountability
Posted by Sarah in Jewish Books, Uncategorized on November 18, 2009
As you might remember from a while back, I think Jonathan Safran Foer is a great writer. His style is lyrical, emotionally-packed, subtle, and infused with a much-needed humor, making his writing something that people can sink into. So, it’s no surprise that I am of fan of Foer’s novels, but what will I think of his newest work – a nonfiction book called Eating Animals?
Oddly enough, I first heard of Foer’s new book in a public statement made by Natalie Portman a few weeks. Random, I know. At the time, I remember being really surprised. In my mind, I had cataloged Foer as a novelist, so to find out that he had written a nonfiction piece threw me off. While he’s named main characters after himself, this is the first time Foer has truly written as himself. The words are his and no longer protected by the veil of fiction.
In an attempt to understand, I tried to find some parallels between his works. In a nutshell, Eating Animals attempts to reveal the violence behind the use of animals as food, thereby discouraging the eating of animals. Surely a fictional piece about the Holocaust and its aftermath (Everything is Illuminated) has no relation to a work promoting vegetarianism, right?
Wrong.
Despite being nonfiction, Eating Animals addresses the same things as Foer’s previous novels – horror, violence, and accountability. Only this time, the subject is blunt, unclouded by fictional plot lines and characters, leaving readers with no doubts as to the author’s intentions. In his writing, Foer raises the point that we are accountable for the violence inflicted on animals. He explains,
Those alive today are the generations that came to know better. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?
His mode of communication may be different but his message is the same as some of those raised in his earlier works. We are accountable! The decisions we make have consequences, and whether discussing the Holocaust or the meat-eating people of the world, we cannot deny that human beings share responsibility for many of the horrors around us.
The real question is, will people switch to vegetarianism as a result of this book? Who knows? But, given the fact that I think Foer is an amazing Jewish writer, I recommend checking out Eating Animals. Once you’ve finished, see how it affects you!
If you want to find out more about Eating Animals, check out Keith Meatto’s review at The Forward!
-Sarah
The Tower of Babel and Crisis of Translation
Posted by Sarah in Jewish Books, Jewish Knowledge on October 27, 2009
Cross-posted from the Jewish Book Council Blog and MyJewishLearning.
In her last posts, Ellen Frankel looked at how to make the Bible PG and looked at “What is Jewish Literature?”. She has been guest-blogging all week for MyJewishLearning and JBC.
In this week’s parshah, Noah, we read about the Tower of Babel, constructed at a time when “everyone on earth had the same language and the same words” (Gen. 11:1). But because the Tower’s builders thought that they could storm the gates of heaven, their speech was “confounded…[so that they could] not understand one another’s speech” (Gen 11:7). The Bible puns on the Hebrew words, bavel, referring to ancient Babylonia, and balal, to mix up. And so the people had to stop building the tower and were “scattered over the face of the earth” (Gen 11:9). And so we remain to this day—dispersed, speaking a babble of languages, not understanding one another.
As I prepare to step down at The Jewish Publication Society after eighteen years, I am struck by how much of my work has been devoted to translation, not only from foreign languages, ancient and modern, into English, but also from foreign contexts into an idiom accessible to contemporary Americans. Whether it’s the Mekhilta, a second century rabbinic Midrash on Exodus, or the teachings of the Sefat Emet, a late 19th century Hasidic master, most of today’s Jews need interpreters to guide them through the unfamiliar terrain of Jewish texts, written is so many exotic dialects: philosophy, ethics, halakha, theology, feminist criticism, folklore, history, poetry, and prayer. Without translation, these languages remain opaque.
To read the entire post, visit the Jewish Book Council Blog!
Become Your Own Book Critic
Posted by Sarah in Jewish Books, Publishing on October 22, 2009
Imagine it. A place where social networking combines with books – creating one of the largest communal book groups in existence. When I heard that such a place existed, I was so excited. What better combination could there be 
for someone like me, who works with social media and books everyday? My only disappointment is that it took me almost three years to discover this place. So, for all of you out there who have yet to stumble upon this site and hear about it from friends, allow me to invite you into the world of Goodreads!
It all started a week or so ago when a friend of mine insisted that I join. When I asked her what it was all about, she told me about how members can indicate which books they are reading and have read in the past, and then review/rate their selections. The site includes millions of books for readers to rate, and even allows individuals to add books that the site may have missed. How cool is this?! You can make an entirely virtual library and share with other the greatest books you’ve ever read, along with the greatest duds. Delve into this site, and you’ll find books spanning numerous genres, allowing you to experience any type of writing you want!
Here’s the best part. You can find JPS books on Goodreads!
Have you been dying for a way to share with people your favorite JPS books? Or, maybe you wish you could’ve reviewed a JPS book, but you had no way of doing so. Well, now you do! Not to mention, we love seeing how the public feels about our books, so take this opportunity to share your opinions with us and the rest of the reading community. And, of course, relish in the chance to connect with others through similar reading interests! There’s nothing more exciting than finding someone who loves the same books you do.
Have fun!
-Sarah
What is Jewish Literature?
Posted by Sarah in Jewish Books, Jewish Knowledge, Publishing on October 21, 2009
Cross-posted from the Jewish Book Council Blog and MyJewishLearning.
In her last post, Ellen Frankel looked at how to make the Bible PG. She is guest-blogging all week for MJL and JBC.
What is Jewish literature?
What makes a book or its writer Jewish? What’s “in” and what’s “out” of the contemporary Jewish syllabus? Who gets to make such judgment calls? Should they even be made at all?
Some time ago, an Orthodox scholar I know suggested a different way of thinking about this issue. He pointed to a distinction between books that Jews “read” and those that they “study,” i.e., secular vs. sacred texts. In my mind, this distinction largely hinges on the question of the authority we invest in books. Those that we read—for pleasure, for a course, to make ourselves culturally conversant—exercise little authority over us. But those that we study—for moral instruction, for answers to ultimate questions, to inspire us and develop our character—guide our lives and matter profoundly to us. If a particular book is itself in conversation with other Jewish books, we then become part of that conversation as it becomes part of us. If a book is not in dialogue with other Jewish books, then our reading will lead us away into a different conversation. Whether or not we ever find our way back into the Jewish conversation is anyone’s guess.
To read the full post, visit The Jewish Book Council Blog!
