Primarily, I learned, as a writer, that if you live with a crime long enough, it seeps into you. You cry at the trials. You hug the siblings of the victim, and they hug you. You keep your distance. You know that the best thing most of the time is just to keep your trap shut and let people talk when they feel it is safe for them to talk — or when they feel they can do nothing but talk.
Children experience the loss of family members in many ways, depending on their age and maturity. For some, a chance to say goodbye is very important; others find comfort in memories, rituals, or tangible reminders of the love they shared. When a child is feeling sad, good books may be especially comforting, and James Howe, the skilled author of \”Kaddish for Grandpa: in Jesus\’ name amen,\” knows how to provide that needed comfort. (By the way, this is the same James Howe who has authored three popular series for children: \”Bunnicula,\” \”Pinky and Rex\” and \”Horace and Morris,\” so your child may already be a fan.)
Anne-Marie Baila Asner decided that she was going to reinvigorate Yiddish by writing and illustrating cute, brightly colored children\’s books that would help people develop an affinity for the language.
What does it mean to \”resist history\”? What is \”historicism,\” and why would there be \”discontents\” toward historicism in German Jewish thought, or in any intellectual society?
\”Revenge\” revolves around a 1998 staging of Stephen Fife\’s acclaimed adaptation of Sholem Asch\’s Yiddish classic, \”God of Vengeance,\” directed by his idol, the legendary Joseph Chaikin. The book recounts Fife\’s misadventures during that Atlanta production — such as his frantic attempts to find free places to crash — between astute insights into the play, the American theater and his colorful past.
The new book \”Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism\” (Metropolitan Books), by writer and social critic Susan Jacoby, is a historical work but it is also an unabashed polemic on an acutely topical issue: the role of religion in public life in modern-day America. I
Furniture, vital in everyday life, hardly ever plays a large role in art. Henry James\’ \”The Spoils of Poynton\” comes to mind, in which the characters\’ inner lives are manifested in their dreadful fight over inherited furnishings, as do stories by Anzia Yezierska, in which the meager possessions of immigrant Jews on the Lower East Side come to symbolize both their survival and their salvation. But for the most part, as in much of our lives, tables, chairs, sofas, bureaus, cabinets and the like are taken for granted in art, imbued with little meaning.
\”Like peeling an onion,\” Rabbi Steven Greenberg said, about the process of coming out.
\”Sort of Jewish\”,\”Jewish and something else\” \”might as well be Jewish\” are some of the ways people describe their Jewish identity in Sylvia Barack Fishman\’s significant new book probing the religious character of mixed-marriage households, \”Double or Nothing: Jewish Families and Mixed Marriage.\”
\”To write or not to write,\” Eva Gossman ponders in the first chapter of her Holocaust memoir, recounting the internal debate she had about whether to write this book. She asked many deep and tough questions: about whether it made sense, given all that has been written about the period, to write one more account; whether a personal narrative would add to historians\’ understanding; whether memory is reliable after so many years.
