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Sandee Brawarsky

Sandee Brawarsky

The Bible for dummies — and experts

In \”How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now\” (Free Press, $35) — which recently won the 2007 Jewish book of the year prize of the National Jewish Book Awards — Kugel\’s interest is not only in what the text says, but in what a modern reader is to make of it.

Book captures before and after of Israel’s Ethiopian Jews

A woman of biblical beauty, a dark-eyed Ethiopian gazing directly at the camera, appears on the cover of a new book of photographs, \”Transformations: From Ethiopia to Israel\” by Ricki Rosen (Reality Check Productions, $45). She\’s wearing white embroidered robes, her hair covered with a kerchief. Flip to the back cover and fast forward 13 years, and the woman, with the hint of a smile, is dressed fashionably in an orange sweater, her hair falling loosely in tiny braids.

An Orthodox ‘cast-off’ holds God accountable

Dressed in black, Shalom Auslander wears three tiny silver blocks on a chain that falls close to his neck, with Hebrew letters spelling out the word \”Acher,\” or other. This was a gift from his wife when he completed his memoir, \”Foreskin\’s Lament.\” Acher was the name given to Elisha ben Abuya, a learned second-century rabbi, after he adopted heretical opinions.

Books: A stranger on a journey

In Amy Bloom\’s novel \”Away,\” Lillian Leyb makes her way from the Lower East Side to Seattle and then Alaska, hoping to get to Siberia to find her daughter.

Books: Exile from Egypt through a daughter’s eyes

Lucette Lagnado, an award-winning investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, portrays her father and the cosmopolitan Cairo he loved and had to flee in 1963 when life became exceedingly difficult for the Jews, in the decade after King Farouk\’s fall and Gamal Abdel Nasser\’s ascent to power.

Author’s advice on sex and intimacy makes her hot stuff

I open Esther Perel\’s new book on the bus, and I know that my seatmate is staring at the cover photo of a man and woman in bed not touching beneath the red sheets. \”Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic & the Domestic\” (HarperCollins) has caught the man\’s attention, but he maintains the bus rider\’s code and doesn\’t ask about it. Perel\’s book has also captured the attention of large numbers of readers, journalists and producers.

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