Book Club Reading Lists, 2003-2004


		Join AJL - Support AJL - Contact Us

Book Club Reading Lists, 2003-2004

Share your book club choices with other AJL members. To add your book club's list, please contact Rachel Kamin.

ALBERT & TEMMY LATNER JEWISH PUBLIC LIBRARY OF TORONTO
Submitted by Steven M. Bergson

Chabon, Michael. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. New York: Random House, 2000. ISBN: 0312282990. $15.00
In 1939 New York City, Joe Kavalier, a refugee from Hitler's Prague, joins forces with his Brooklyn-born cousin, Sammy Clay, to create comic-book superheroes inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams.

Kushner, Tony. A Dybbuk and Other Tales of the Supernatural. Theatre Communications Group, 1998. ISBN: 1559361379. $13.95
The stories in this collection, none of which has been translated before, illuminate the different aspects of the Jewish mystical world, including possessions, transmigration, fairy tales, parables and miracles.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus I. New York Pantheon Books, 1986. ISBN: 0394747232. $14.00
Spiegelman, Art. Maus II. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991. ISBN: 0679729771. $14.00
A son struggles to come to terms with the horrific story of his parents and their experiences during the Holocaust and in postwar America, in an omnibus edition of Spiegelman's two-part, Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller.

CENTRAL SYNAGOGUE OF NASSAU COUNTY (ROCKVILLE CENTRE, NY)
Submitted by Barbara Elish

Berger, Joseph. Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust. New York: Scribner, 2001. ISBN: 0671027530. $14.00
The New York Times reporter vividly recreates his parents' journey to the U.S. as Jewish-Polish immigrants fleeing the war and their subsequent struggle to survive in New York during the 1950s and 1960s.

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Everything Is Illuminated. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. ISBN: 0060529709. $13.95
In the summer after his junior year of college, a writer - also named Jonathan Safran Foer - journeys to the farmlands of Eastern Europe. Armed with only a yellowing photograph, he sets out to find Augustine, the woman who might or might not be a link to the grandfather he never knew - the woman who, he has been told, saved his grandfather from the Nazis.

Frankl, Viktor. Man's Search for Meaning. New York: Pocket Books, 1997. ISBN: 0671023373. $6.99 (revised and updated)
A prominent Viennese psychiatrist recounts his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp that led to the development of his existentialist approach to psychotherapy.

Goldstein, Rebecca. Mazel. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. ISBN: 0299181243. $19.95 (reprint)
A flamboyant Yiddish actress, her professor of classics daughter, and her mathematician granddaughter are the three generations of women whose lives are deftly portrayed with wit, humor and insight.

Goodman, Allegra. The Family Markowitz. New York: Washington Square Press, 1996. ISBN: 0671013882. $14.00
Told through weddings, deaths, holiday dinners, and dreams, the story of three generations of the Markowitzes is revealed.

Gordon, Mary. Shadow Man. New York: Random House, 1997. ISBN: 0679749314. $13.00
The author shares her memories of the father who died when she was a child and her discovery of the truth about his life and death and the secrets he hid.

Nuland, Sherwin B. Lost in America: A Journey with My Father. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. ISBN: 0375727221. $12.00 (March 2004)
In his late 30s and early 40s, National Book Award winner Nuland was gripped by a depression so unyielding to treatment he almost underwent a lobotomy. But as haunting as this beginning of Nuland's memoir is, it's eclipsed in power by the story he tells of his relationship with his father, an aging Jewish immigrant whose life was a series of family tragedies and illness.

Steinberg, Milton. As A Driven Leaf. New York: Behrman House, 1996. ISBN: 0874411033 (reprint edition). $15.95
This magnificent work of modern fiction brings the age of the Talmud to life. The characters include the well-known historical figures: Akiba, Yohanan, Joshua, Eleazar, Beruriah, and Elisha ben Abuyah.

Roberts, Sam. The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case. New York : Random House, 2001. ISBN: 0375761241. $16.95
So here at last is the mesmerizing inside story of the Rosenberg case: What were their lives like growing up on the Lower East Side? How was David Greenglass enlisted in a plot to hand over to the Soviets our greatest national secret? And how, finally, did the whole thing unravel?

CONGREGATION BETH AMI, SANTA ROSA, CA
Submitted by Susanne M. Batzdorff

Blumenfeld, Laura. Revenge. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. ISBN: 0743463390. $14.00
The "Washington Post" reporter who went undercover to seek out the Palestinian terrorist who had shot her father travels the globe collecting tales of personal vengeance while probing the psychology of this primal emotion.

Canin, Ethan. Carry Me Across the Water. New York: Random House, 2001. ISBN: 037575993X. $12.95
Follows the life and fortunes of August Kleinman, a man who shapes his destiny in the fires of World War II and its aftermath.

Delman, Carmit. Burnt Bread & Chutney. New York: One World, 2002. ISBN: 0345445945. $13.95
Carmit Delman's memories of the sometimes painful, sometimes pleasurable, often awkward moments of her adolescence juxtapose strikingly with mythic tales of her female ancestors living in the Indian-Jewish community. Her mother is a direct descendant of the Bene Israel, a tiny, ancient community of Jews thriving amidst the rich cultural tableau of Western India. Her father is American, a Jewish man of Eastern European descent.

Gordon, Noah. The Last Jew. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. ISBN: 0312300530. $13.95
The Great Expulsion of 1492 and a subsequent holocaust provides the backdrop for this terrifying novel that follows a thirteen-year-old Spanish Jew named Jonah, the son of a Toledo silversmith, as he zigzags across the Spanish countryside to avoid the Inquisition.

Kertzer, David I. The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. ISBN: 0679768173. $15.00
The extraordinary story of how the Vatican's imprisonment of a six-year-old Jewish boy in 1858 helped bring about the collapse of the Pope's worldly power in Italy.

Maimon, Solomon. Solomon Maimon: An Autobiography. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2001. ISBN: 0252069773. $18.95
Brilliant and bedraggled, the picaresque Jewish philosopher Solomon Maimon was one of the great thinkers of the eighteenth century. Now the definitive English version of Maimon's remarkable Autobiography, the 1888 translation by J. Clark Murray, is available for the first time in paperback, enhanced with a new introduction by Jewish studies scholar Michael Shapiro.

McCullough, David. John Adams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. ISBN: 0743223136. $18.95
Chronicles the life of America's second president, including his youth, his career as a Massachusetts farmer and lawyer, his marriage to Abigail, his rivalry with Thomas Jefferson, and his influence on the birth of the United States.

Tademy, Lalita. Cane River. New York: Thorndike, 2001. ISBN: ISBN: 0446678457. $13.95
Follows four generations of African American women, from slavery to the early twentieth century, as they struggle for economic security and the future of their families along the Cane River in rural Louisiana.

Vreeland, Susan. Girl in Hyacinth Blue. New York: Penguin USA, 1999. ISBN: 014029628X. $13.00
Chronicles the history of a painting and the lives with which it intersects, from the artist's inspiration to its admiration by two art scholars three hundred years later.

CONGREGATION BETH ISRAEL, WEST HARTFORD, CT
Submitted by Jane Zande

Leegant, Joan. An Hour in Paradise: Stories. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003. ISBN: 0393325849. $13.95 (August 2004)
A debut collection of stories focuses on "seekers" in search of spiritual bliss, from an American on the trail of Kabbalistic mysticism to an aging resident of Jerusalem chronicling the disasters that have befallen his city.

Mendelson, Cheryl. Morningside Heights. New York: Random House, 2003. ISBN: 0375508368. $24.95
Long-time residents of Morningside Heights are faced with dramatic changes to their community as increasing prices and a rising cost of living begin to force this group of artists, musicians, and intellectuals out of the area.

Ravel, Edeet. Ten Thousand Lovers. New York: Perennial Press, 2003. ISBN: 0060565624. $12.95
A recent immigrant to Israel, Lily, a young student, finds her life turned upside down when she falls in love with Ami, a handsome former actor and Israeli army interrogator, as the horrors of his work affect their relationship.

Rosenbaum, Thane. Golems of Gotham. New York: Harpercollins, 2002. ISBN: 0060959452. $13.95
A contemporary ghost story set in Manhattan, drawn from Jewish mysticism and folklore, follows Oliver Levin, a best-selling gothic mystery writer, and his teenage daughter Ariel, a gifted klezmer violinist and novice kabbalist who summons the spirit of his late parents, both Holocaust survivors and suicide victims, to help her father overcome writer's block.

Rosenstone, Robert. King of Odessa. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2003. ISBN: 0810119927. $24.95
The author imagines a final unpublished novel written by world-renowned writer Isaac Babel and returns to his hometown of Odessa hoping to complete a final homage to his Russian past.

Steinberg, Milton. As A Driven Leaf. New York: Behrman House, 1996. ISBN: 0874411033 (reprint edition). $15.95
This magnificent work of modern fiction brings the age of the Talmud to life. The characters include the well-known historical figures: Akiba, Yohanan, Joshua, Eleazar, Beruriah, and Elisha ben Abuyah.

Wilson, Jonathan. Palestine Affair. New York: Random House, 2003. ISBN: 1400031222. $13.00 (July 2004)
A disillusioned London painter, Mark Bloomberg takes on a commission in British-ruled Palestine of the 1920s, where he and his wife become witnesses to the murder of a prominent Orthodox Jew near their home, a crime that tests their ideals and marriage.

INDIANAPOLIS HEBREW CONGREGATION TEMPLE LIBRARY
Submitted by Evelyn Pockrass

Abraham, Pearl. The Romance Reader. New York: Riverhead, 1995. ISBN: 1573225487. $13.00
The eldest daughter of a Hasidic family yearns to be part of the secular world in this debut novel that probes the inner world of an ultra-orthodox family.

Apple, Max. Roommates. New York: Warner, 1994. ISBN: 0446602000. $5.99
In a sad and joyful intergenerational biography, the author's feisty 93 year old grandfather is his unlikely college roommate and ten years later plays a pivotal role in taking care of a family crisis.

Buck, Pearl. Peony. Wakefield, RI: Moyer Bell, 1948. ISBN: 0819705934. $12.95
The life of a bondservant is inextricably related to the Jewish family she serves in this historic novel of K'aifeng Jews in the early 1800s.

Calisher, Hortense. Sunday Jews. New York: Harvest, 2002. ISBN: 0156027453. $15.00
The saga of the Duffy family is a story of secular Jews in America and the issues that confront them during the 20th century.

Canin, Ethan. Carry Me Across the River. New York: Random House, 2001. ISBN: 037575993X. $12.95
Cameos of the life of an aging, successful businessman reveal his relationships with his family and his decision to visit Japan and meet the family of a man he killed during World War II.

Goldstein, Rebecca. Mazel. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001. ISBN: 0140239057. $19.95
A flamboyant Yiddish actress, her professor of classics daughter and her mathematician granddaughter are the three generations of women whose lives are deftly portrayed with wit, humor and insight.

Kluger, Steve. Last Days of Summer. New York: Perennial, 1998. ISBN: 0380797631. $13.00
In a sentimental and funny novel mainly told through letters, evoking current events and family life during the 1930s and early 1940s, a 12 year old Brooklyn boy starts a friendship with a major league baseball player.

Maurensig, Paolo. The Lüneberg Variation. New York: Henry Holt, 1997. ISBN: 0805060286. $11.00
Chess is a symbol of the game of life in this intriguing mystery of two European chess players, one Jewish and one German, set in the days before, during and after the Holocaust.

Pogrebin, Letty Cottin. Three Daughters. New York: Penguin, 2002. ISBN: 0142003484. $14.00
Three sisters come to grips with themselves, each other, and their relationship to their father in this debut novel which contains discussions of Jewish law and practices.

Ragen, Naomi. Jephte's Daughter. New Milford, CT: The Toby Press, 2001. ISBN: 1902881508. $14.95
An intelligent, wealthy Hasidic girl is betrothed to an Israeli scholar and her life takes dramatic changes.

Suberman, Stella. The Jew Store. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin, 1998. ISBN: 1565123301. $13.95
In a memoir of her family who owned a dry goods store, the author relates their experiences as the first Jews to live in a small town in Tennessee in the 1920s.

Zimmler, Richard. Hunting Midnight. New York: Delta, 2003. ISBN: 0385336470. $15.00
A young marrano's life filled with violence in 19th-century Portugal includes advice from Midnight, a freed slave, and an eventual voyage to the United States and antebellum South Carolina.

KOOPMAN LIBRARY, WEST HARTFORD, CT
Submitted by Bea Brodie

Goldman, Ari. The Search for God at Harvard. New York: Random House, 1991. ISBN: 0345377060. $12.95
Provides a study of Harvard Divinity School, its diverse students, the meaning of religion in today's secular society, and a revaluation of the author's own Jewish faith.

Goldsmith, Martin. The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000. ISBN: 0471078646. $15.95
Set amid the growing tyranny of Germany's Third Reich, here is the riveting and emotional tale of Gunther Goldschmidt and Rosemarie Gumpert, two courageous Jewish musicians who struggled to perform under unimaginable circumstances - and found themselves falling in love in a country bent on destroying them.

Liss, David. The Coffee Trader. New York: Random House, 2003. ISBN: 037576090. $14.95
In seventeenth-century Amsterdam, Miguel Lienzo, a Portuguese-Jewish trader desperate to recover his lost fortune, enters into a partnership with seductive Geertruid Damhuis to introduce coffee to the city, and confronts a ruthless adversary.

Pogrebin, Letty Cottin. Three Daughters. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. ISBN: 0142003484. $14.00
Driven by a legacy of lies, the shame of their own imperfections, and impending chaos in each of their well-ordered married lives, the three Wasserman daughters struggle with themselves and one another to break their parents' silence and understand their past.

Rosner, Elizabeth. The Speed of Light. New York: Ballentine Books, 2003. ISBN: 0345442253. $12.95
The adult children of a Holocaust survivor learn about grief, forgiveness and the power of bearing witness from a Latina housekeeper who has also been victimized by government-sponsored genocide.

MOUNT SCOPUS CHAPTER OF HADASSAH, ATLANTA, GA
Submitted by Paula Sandfelder

Calof, Rachel. Rachel Calof's Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains. Ed. J. Sanford Rikoon. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. ISBN: 0253209862. $11.58
The memoirs of an 18-year-old girl who left her Russian shtetl in 1894 to begin a new life homesteading in North Dakota.

Cohen, Paula. Jane Austen in Boca. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002. ISBN: 0312319754. $12.95
A witty send-up of Pride and Prejudice set in a Florida retirement village follows a circle of retirees on a hilarious voyage of love and manners.

Faber, Michael. The Crimson Petal and the White. New York: Harcourt, 2002. ISBN: 0156028778. $15.00
Yearning to escape her life of prostitution in 1870s London, Sugar finds her fate entangled in the complicated family life of patron William, an egotistical perfume magnate.

Fried, Stephen. The New Rabbi. New York: Bantam Books, 2002. ISBN: 0553380753. $14.95
A vividly intimate portrait of American Judaism today in which faith, family, and community are explored through the dramatic life of a landmark congregation as it seeks to replace its legendary retiring rabbi — and reinvent itself for the next generation.

Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. $30.00
Chronicles the founding father's life and his multiple careers as a shopkeeper, writer, inventor, media baron, scientist, diplomat, business strategist, and political leader, while showing how his faith in the wisdom of the common citizen helped to forge an American national identity based on the virtues of its middle class.

Rosenberg, Joel. The Last Jihad. New York: Forge, 2002. ISBN: 0765346435. $7.99
When Iraqi terrorists wreak havoc on the world, White House advisor Jon Bennett must complete a billion-dollar oil deal — the basis for a historic Arab-Israeli peace treaty — or the world will face the threat of nuclear devastation.

Wasserstein, Wendy. Shiksa Goddess, or, How I Spent My Forties. New York: Knopf, 2001. ISBN: 0375726039. $13.00
A collection of thirty-five humorous essays by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright explores issues of food, theater, Chekhov, and religion, among other topics.

Wiesenthal, Simon. The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness (newly expanded). New York: Schocken Books, 1998. ISBN: 0805210601. $13.00
While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, Simon Wiesenthal was taken to the bedside of a dying member of the SS. Haunted by the crimes in which he had participated, the soldier wanted to confess to — and obtain absolution from — a Jew. At the time Wiesenthal said nothing. Now he wonders: Had he done the right thing? What would you have done in his place? In this important book, fifty-three distinguished men and women respond to Wiesenthal's questions.

SINAI TEMPLE, LOS ANGELES
Submitted by Lisa Silverman

Begley, Louis. Wartime Lies. New York: Ballentine Books, 1992. ISBN: 0804109907. $6.50
As the Nazi war machine smashes into Poland, a young Jewish boy living near Warsaw is forced to flee with his aunt, Tania, and the two enter into a secret life of forged papers, false identities, and constant movement.

Englander, Nathan. For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1999. ISBN: 0375704434. $12.00
Rooted in Jewish history and the customs of Orthodox life, an anthology of ten stories includes "The Twenty-Seventh Man" about an unpublished writer who mistakenly lands in a Stalinist prison, and "The Gilgul of Park Avenue" about a Protestant who wakes up to discover he has become a Jew.

Horn, Dara. In the Image. New York: Norton, 2002. ISBN: 0393325261. $13.95
Follows Leora through the death of a friend in high school and on to college, career, and falling in love, while simultaneously tracing the story of Bill Landsmann, her lost friend's grandfather, back to Amsterdam, Austria, and New York's Lower East Side.

The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln. Trans. Marvin Lowenthal. New York: Schoken Books, 1977. ISBN: 0805205721. $15.00
The memoirs of a Jewish women living in seventeenth-century Germany.

Nahai, Gina. Sunday's Silence. New York: Harcourt, 2001. ISBN: 0743459458. $14.00
Returning to Appalachia to investigate the murder of his father, who was a notorious holy roller, Adam Watkins finds himself powerfully drawn to the suspect, a beautiful woman named Blue, who is rumored to be immune to earthly harm.

Pye, Michael. Pieces from Berlin. New York: Knopf, 2003. ISBN: 0375714162. $14.00
Lucia Muller-Rossi, a respected, ninety-year-old antiques dealer in Zurich, finds her reputation on the line when Sarah Freeman discovers a table in her shop that Sarah and her husband had owned before the war.

Sherwood, Frances. The Book of Splendor. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002. ISBN: 0393324583. $14.95
Rochel, an illegitimate seamstress, escapes the travails of poverty through an arranged marriage to the tailor Zev, but finds herself falling in love with Yossel, the Golem created by Rabbi Loew to protect the Jewish community of Prague.

TEMPLE EMANUEL, TEMPE, AZ
Submitted by Sue Ochs

Eve, Nomi. The Family Orchard. New York: Random House, 2000. ISBN: 0375724575. $13.00
A novel chronicling nearly two hundred years in the lives of a family of immigrants in Jerusalem captures the love affairs, legends, family secrets, triumphs, and tragedies of six generations.

Goodman, Allegra. Kaaterskill Falls. New York: Dial Press, 1998. ISBN: 0385323905. $13.95
The story of a devout Orthodox Jewish woman, a mother of five spending the summer in a tiny town in upstate New York, who feels the need to a project of her own . . . a secular project.

McBride, James. The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996. ISBN: 1573225789. $14.00
Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve children. James McBride, journalist, musician and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful memoir.

Nattel, Lilian. The River Midnight. New York: Scribner, 1999. ISBN: 0684853043. $14.00
An engrossing and moving story of what happens when the town midwife becomes pregnant and will not reveal the identity of the father.

Ragen, Naomi. Jephte's Daughter. New York: Warner Books, 1989. ISBN: 1902881508. $14.95
In an effort to honor his Orthodox Jewish religion, Abraham Ha-Levi forces his daughter to marry a Torah scholar, whose wickedness is hidden by his supposed religious devotion.

Suberman, Stella. The Jew Store. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1998. ISBN: 1565121988. $19.95
The author describes her family's life in a small town in Tennessee before World War II, where, as the first Jews in town, they owned a dry goods store and struggled to prosper in a place where Jews were treated as outsiders.

Wilentz, Amy. Martyrs' Crossing. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. ISBN: 0345449835. $14.00
Israeli lieutenant Ari Doron falls in love with the wife of a jailed Palestinian militant in the midst of a wave of terrorism; violence that he may have set into motion because of following orders to refuse to allow passage to a young mother and her ailing child.

TEMPLE ISAIAH OF CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, LAFAYETTE, CA
Submitted by Val Morehouse

Adler, Warren. Never Too Late for Love. Homestead Publications, 1999. ISBN: 0943972450. $14.95
Fifteen stories focus on the lives of individuals in a Florida retirement community.

Bloom, Stephen G. Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America. New York: Harcourt, 2000. ISBN: 0156013363. $14.00
The history of a small town in Iowa where in 1987 a group of Lubavitcher Jews opened a kosher slaughterhouse.

Carroll, James. Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2001. ISBN: 0618219080. $16.00
Traces two thousand years of struggle between Christianity and Judaism, also discussing contemporary Christian-Jewish relations, the particular challenges faced in the Western world, and how the author's understanding of history has impacted his own faith failure to protest the Holocaust during World War II.

Michaels, Anne. Fugitive Pieces. New York: Random House, 1997. ISBN: 0679776591. $13.00
This fiercely concentrated and beautifully written novel tells the story of a Polish Jew who, at the age of seven, after seeing his parents murdered by the Nazis, is resurrected by a Greek scientist, and transformed from a half-wild survivor into a scholar and translator who extracts meaning from the unfathomable horror of our time.

Miller, Arthur. Focus. New York: Arbor House, 1945. ISBN: 0815604378. $19.95 (reprint)
As World War II draws to a close, anti-Semitism is alive and well in Brooklyn, New York. Here, Newman, an American of English descent, floats through a world of multiethnic neighborhoods indifferent to the racism around him. That is, until he begins wearing glasses that render him "Jewish" in the eyes of others, making him the target of anti-Semitic persecution. As he and his wife find friendship and support from a Jewish immigrant, Newman slowly begins to understand the racial hatreds that surround him.

Ragen, Naomi. The Ghost of Hannah Mendes. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998. ISBN: 0312281250. $14.95
The ghost of a real-life historical figure helps elderly Catherine da Costa convince her granddaughters to travel across Europe with her and helps them find a link between past and present by leaving mysterious journal entries along their travel route.

Walker, Rebecca. Black, White, and Jewish. New York: Riverhead Books, 2001. ISBN: 1573229075. $14.00
In a memoir about the power of race to shape one's personal identity, the daughter of a Jewish father and African-American mother recalls her confusing but ultimately rewarding life lived between two conflicting ethnic identities.

Yezierska, Anzia. Bread Givers. New York: Persea Books, 1999. ISBN: 0892550147 (reprint edition). $8.95
A 25th anniversary edition of this classic of twentieth-century American novel set on New York's Lower East Side during the 1920s. It is the moving story of a young woman's struggle to free herself from the traditional female role in an Orthodox Jewish family and society.

TEMPLE ISRAEL (WEST BLOOMFIELD, MI)
Submitted by Rachel Kamin

Chefitz, Mitchell. The Seventh Telling. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001. ISBN: 0312289227. $14.95
A love story based on the mysticism of the Cabala follows Stephanie and Sidney on their exploration of the "four worlds" of Jewish mysticism.

Miller, Risa. Welcome to Heavenly Heights. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003. ISBN: 0312326157. $12.95
Chronicles the lives of a group of Americans, newly immigrated to Israel with a variety of baggage-emotional as well as material. Religiously observant Jews, they have come to settle not in Jerusalem proper but in a West Bank settlement called Heavenly Heights.

Newman, Leslea. A Letter to Harvey Milk: Short Stories. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1988. ISBN: 0932379435. $9.95
These nine stories focus on an array of Jewish and lesbian concerns with a refreshing candor and lack of self-consciousness.

Shapiro, Dani. Family History. New York: Knopf, 2003. ISBN: 1400032113. $13.00 (August 2004)
A baby is accidentally injured while being held by his sister, and the ensuing cover-up eventually tears the family apart.

Smith, Zadie. The Autograph Man. New York: Random House, 2002. ISBN: 037570387X. $14.00
Autograph trader Alex-Li Tandem embarks on an odyssey that takes him from London to New York in pursuit of the only autograph that has ever really mattered to him, dealing with con men and fellow collectors who would hinder his quest.

THE TEMPLE-TIFERETH ISRAEL, CLEVELAND, OH
Submitted by Andi Davidson

Goldberg, Myla. Bee Season. New York: Doubleday, 2000. ISBN: 0385498802. $13.00
An ordinary girl with an exceptional gift for spelling, young Eliza Naumann embarks on the rough-and-tumble "spelling bee" circuit, where her quirky family will collide with the harsh realities of life.

Gorenberg, Gershom. The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount. New York: Free Press, 2000. ISBN: 0195152050. $15.95
Focuses on the religious passions that make fundamentalists of three major religions — Judaism, Christianity, and Islam — battle over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and why this sacred site has become a catalyst for potential conflict.

Hellman, Lillian. Pentimento. Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1973. ISBN: 0316352888. $14.95 (reissue)
The autobiographical novel by the writer and actor explores the men and women who influenced Hellman throughout her life and career.

Weinstein, Miriam. Yiddish: A Nation of Words. South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press, 2001. ISBN: 0345447301. $14.95
A history of Yiddish takes readers deep into Eastern Europe to explore the origins of this unique and enduring language.

VALLEY BETH SHALOM (ENCINO, CA)
Submitted by Phyllis Beim

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Everything Is Illuminated. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. ISBN: 0060529709. $13.95
In the summer after his junior year of college, a writer - also named Jonathan Safran Foer — journeys to the farmlands of Eastern Europe. Armed with only a yellowing photograph, he sets out to find Augustine, the woman who might or might not be a link to the grandfather he never knew — the woman who, he has been told, saved his grandfather from the Nazis.

Lewis, Bernard. What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0060516054. $12.95
Explores the historical relationship between Europe and the Middle East, examining how the Islamic world came to be dominated by the West and discussing the differences between the two cultures from the 18th century to the 20th century.

Potok, Chaim. Davita's Harp. New York: Knopf, 1985. ISBN: 0449911837. $14.95
The daughter of a non-believing Jewish mother and a non-believing gentile father — dedicated Communists both — Davita Chandal, growing up as the world suffers through the Spanish Civil War and World War II, turns to Judaism for consolation and spiritual sustenance.

Roiphe, Anne Richardson. 1185 Park Avenue: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. ISBN: 0684857324. $13.00
The author describes growing up in a family marked by her parents' troubled marriage, its impact on her and her brother, and life on New York's Park Avenue during the 1940s and 1950s.

Scliar, Moacyr. The Centaur in the Garden. New York: Available Press, 1985. ISBN: 0299187845. $15.95 (reprint)
A masterpiece of magical realism by one of Brazil's most celebrated novelists.

Sebald, W.G. Austerlitz. New York: Random House, 2001. ISBN: 0375756566. $13.95
Jacques Austerlitz, an orphan refugee child who arrived in London in 1939 and was raised by a Methodist minister, struggles to understand who he is as he moves through his life.

Search by Google
Menu by