Jews’ Winning Words
November 7, 2002
Nobody remembers whether the Torah has ever won a book award before.
Sandee Brawarsky
Out on a Limb
August 1, 2002
At a time when many people are writing and publishing memoirs, Sternburg\’s \”Phantom Limb\” is uncommon.
Beyond Revenge
April 25, 2002
\”Revenge: A Story of Hope\” is Laura Blumenfeld\’s account of her journey to understand the concept of revenge and ultimately act on it.
When bad Things Turns 20
October 25, 2001
In 1981, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a 150-page book, published with little fanfare, that changed the lives of the more than 4 million people who read it and made its title, \”When Bad Things Happen to Good People,\” part of the vernacular.
Afterlife Rabbi
February 15, 2001
When Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz delivered a sermon about survival of the soul to a group of rabbis in Los Angeles in 1996, a charged discussion followed, and an Orthodox rabbi remarked that he had never before heard rabbis publicly discuss the supernatural.
Competing Good
October 19, 2000
\”Good vs. evil is boring,\” Samuel G. Freedman likes to tell his students at Columbia University\’s Graduate School of Journalism. \”The real drama is in competing visions of good.\”
The Fires This Time
September 21, 2000
This is a story of rebuilding family, of returning to Judaism.
Rose’s Quest
August 31, 2000
The hiding places in the title of Daniel Asa Rose\’s new memoir refer to the haylofts and cellars where his relatives hid from the Nazis during the war years, and also to the suburban tool sheds and coat closets where the author crawled into during his childhood in a mostly gentile Connecticut town. The title also alludes to the author\’s efforts to avoid his Judaism. Traveling to Europe to find his family\’s hiding places in Belgium and France with his two young sons, Rose comes to see that hiding places are \”not merely dark holes of concealment\” but also \”places of revelation.\” The trip leads him to understand the links between present and past, his own connections to his family\’s past and to the Jewish future.
The Lost Bird
September 9, 1999
Yvette Melanson is a woman who might say the Sh\’ma before going to sleep, and in the morning light whisper the Navajo prayer, \”May I walk happily and lightly on the earth.\” Both are deeply felt, authentic expressions of her soul. As she explains, \”I know that I\’m Jewish. I feel Jewish. I\’ve been raised Jewish. I\’m also Navajo.\”
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