\”Everything Is Illuminated\” by Jonathan Safran Foer (Houghton Mifflin, $24).
Jonathan Safran Foer\’s new book, \”Everything Is Illuminated\” has garnered rave reviews everywhere, from The New York Times to Esquire, with front jacket quotes by Russell Banks, Nathan Englander and mentor Joyce Carol Oates; it has even been optioned for a movie by actor Liev Schrieber\’s prodction company.
Sylvia Rouss, who teaches at Stephen S. Wise Temple, is the author of the popular \”Sammy Spider\” series, which are widely used in Jewish schools around the country.
At a time when many people are writing and publishing memoirs, Sternburg\’s \”Phantom Limb\” is uncommon.
Growing up in a Jewish home filled with books, I knew early on I wanted to be a writer like P.G. Wodehouse, Sam Levenson or my all-time favorite — Agatha Christie.
In recent years, there have been a number of modest volumes that are aimed at presenting a representative selection of readings from the mystical classic, the Zohar.
n the lushly lit opening sequence of Sandra Goldbacher\’s new film, "Me Without You," two 11-year-old girls, one Jewish, one not, make a pact to be friends forever.
\nThey solemnly scribble a note, Holly and Marina equals Harina; now we two are one, then stuff it in an empty Charlie perfume bottle and bury it in the garden. The buoyant comedy-drama traces their overly intense, ultimately suffocating best-friendship from 1973 to the present.\nIt\’s a loosely autobiographical film for Goldbacher, who says she wanted to explore the kind of intoxicating, mercurial, almost addictive friendshipcommon among young girls.I myself had a furiously intense best friendship from 11 to 17, the 41-year-old Jewish Brit says by telephone from London. It\’s haunted me like a specter. I dreamt of Tasha constantly though I hadn\’t seen her in 20 years. I was hoping the movie might exorcise a few ghosts.
Until recently, it seemed you could find Yiddish books only in obscure libraries or in the attic of the house of someone\’s grandparents.
\”Hitler\’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and the Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military\” by Bryan Mark Rigg (University Press of Kansas, $29.95).
Bryan Mark Rigg\’s most controversial assertion is \”Hitler\’s Jewish Soldiers\’\” least relevant matter. In a complicated opening chapter, he claims that 150,000 individuals (almost exclusively male) served in the German military who were, by Nazi racial standards and laws, Jews of some quantity. By his calculations, perhaps as many as 6,000 \”full\” Jews (with four Jewish grandparents) were in the Wehrmacht — but the greater number comes, of course, from the highly assimilated, aggressively nationalistic, and thoroughly acculturated \”quarter\” and \”half\” Jews, those with one or two Jewish grandparents, respectively. (The mathematics is darkly amusing: two half-Jewish parents make up one half-Jewish child.)
A few months ago, I asked my father, now happily retired, what profession he would choose if he were starting over again.
\”Oh, I\’d do the same thing,\” Dad said. \”I\’d be a salesman.\”
\”A salesman?\”
\”Yes. I\’m good at it.\”
It\’s Father\’s Day, and I am so glad that Dad is around to read this: Dad, I had you wrong.
In his introduction to Esther\’s Children,\” (Jewish Publication Society, $110) editor Houman Sarshar speaks of a time when, at 6 years old and about to start elementary school, he discovered his legacy as an Iranian Jew. Over breakfast in their apartment in Tehran, Houman\’s father, a top planning commissioner in the Shah\’s Iran, notices the Star of David pendant — a recent gift from a grandmother — hanging from his son\’s neck. He reaches over and slips the necklace under Houman\’s shirt.
\”If anyone in school asks about your religion,\” he instructs his son, \”lie. Tell them you\’re Muslim.\”
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