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Our MAY 2012 Update

Welcome to MyJewishBooks.com

Welcome to MyJewishBooks.com, where we list new, diverse, and eclectic books of Jewish interest and sort them by publication date (we do not believe in segmenting by fiction and non-fiction). All net proceeds go to tzedaka. Look at the hyperlinks to the left for books by season.

Be sure to visit our FALL 2011, Winter 2012, and Spring 2012 Books pages; oFrah's Jewish Book Club page; and all the rest (Pesach, Hanukah, MLK books, Tu b'shvat books, etc).

Thank you for visiting. Watch for changes this Spring, as we become more Bloggish on this front page

I AM FORBIDDEN
A NOVEL
By Anouk Markovits
May 8, 2012
Hogarth/Crown
A family saga set among a group of Satmar Hasidic Jews, spanning seven decades from pre-WWII Transylvania to Paris in the 1960s and contemporary Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Tradition, love, commitment, and Torah law collide.
Josef Lichtenstein, 5, survives the murders of his family at the hand of the Romanian Iron Guard in 1939. He is saved by Florina, the family’s non-Jewish maid. He is taken and raised by her. Five year’s later, at age 10, Josef rescues a young girl, Mila Heller, after her parents are killed while running to the Satmar Rebbe, Yoel Teitelbaum, who is aboard the Kasztner train. Josef helps Mila reach the home of Zalman Stern, a community leader and scholar, where Mila is taken in and raised like a sister to Zalman’s daughter, Atara. (By the way, we first meet Zalman Stern as he struggles with an erotic dream.. fundamentalists have to overcome their body and their sub conscious thoughts)
After WWII, Zalman, Mila, and Atara flee to Paris, and Josef is sent to America to the newly planted Satmar community. As you would expect, Mila moves to Brooklyn to marry Josef, while Atara seeks independence. Alas, after a decade of marriage, Mila and Josef are childless and Mila, who is fervently pious, must try to get pregnant using another method. They must replace their families that were killed by the Nazis, Mila can live with her choices, but can Josef?) Hopefully her choice will remain a secret. (Did I mention that it is 1968, and Paris is aflame with student protests and the movement for personal freedom) This is just a taste, an appetizer of chopped liver, to the saga. The author, Anouk, is one of 15 children borne to a Hasidic Jewish family in France. She fled an arranged marriage and moved to NYC where she received a degree from Columbia, and then graduate degrees from Harvard and Cornell. Her first novel was in French, and this is her first novel in English
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Are you a fan of MAD MEN, the AMC series that was created and written Matthew Weiner? Read what the characters read. In Season One, Don was reading EXODUS by Leon Uris. In Season Two, he read MEDITATIONS IN AN EMERGENCY By Frank O’Hara. In Season Four, Don read THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE SWORD By Ruth Benedic.
Three other suggested reads are:
The Fashion File: Advice, Tips, and Inspiration from the Costume Designer of Mad Men — By Janie Bryant with Monica Corcoran Harel .
Analyzing Mad Men: Critical Essays on the Television Series — ed. Scott F. Stoddart
The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook: Inside the Kitchens, Bars, and Restaurants of Mad Men by Judy Gelman and Peter Zheutlin.

How can MyJewishBooks.com ride the LINtastic JEREMY LIN tidal wave in 2012? Well, he is number 17 and a devout Christian. The Harvard graduate might one day be a pastor. We wish him well. As you may know, “17” in Hebrew gematria is “TOV,” or GOOD; and Kabbalists would add +1 to TOV, to become CHAI, or Life; “17” also mean to be “on fire.” Also, “17” is a special number in Beresheet/Genesis. Joseph lived with Jacob for 17 years before being sold, and Jacob lived with Joseph for 17 years at the end of his life. We plan to send the following book to Mister LIN as a gift:

The Jewish Annotated New Testament
Edited By Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Z. Brettler
November 2011, Oxford
Although major New Testament figures--Jesus and Paul, Peter and James, Jesus' mother Mary and Mary Magdalene--were Jews, living in a culture steeped in Jewish history, beliefs, and practices, there has never been an edition of the New Testament that addresses its Jewish background and the culture from which it grew--until now.
In The Jewish Annotated New Testament, eminent experts under the general editorship of Amy-Jill Levine (Vanderbilt) and Marc Z. Brettler (Brandeis) put these writings back into the context of their original authors and audiences. And they explain how these writings have affected the relations of Jews and Christians over the past two thousand years.
An international team of scholars introduces and annotates the Gospels, Acts, Letters, and Revelation from Jewish perspectives, in the New Revised Standard Version translation. They show how Jewish practices and writings, particularly the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, influenced the New Testament writers. From this perspective, readers gain new insight into the New Testament's meaning and significance. In addition, thirty essays on historical and religious topics--Divine Beings, Jesus in Jewish thought, Parables and Midrash, Mysticism, Jewish Family Life, Messianic Movements, Dead Sea Scrolls, questions of the New Testament and anti-Judaism, and others--bring the Jewish context of the New Testament to the fore, enabling all readers to see these writings both in their original contexts and in the history of interpretation. For readers unfamiliar with Christian language and customs, there are explanations of such matters as the Eucharist, the significance of baptism, and "original sin."
For non-Jewish readers interested in the Jewish roots of Christianity and for Jewish readers who want a New Testament that neither proselytizes for Christianity nor denigrates Judaism, The Jewish Annotated New Testament is an essential volume that places these writings in a context that will enlighten students, professionals, and general readers.

We don’t know about you, but all around us, people are talking about and are addicted to the BBC Masterpiece Classic television series, DOWNTON ABBEY, on PBS station in the USA. We are in Season 2; UK residents are waiting for Season 3. As you know, it is the story of a family of British aristocrats during World War One, and the changes in their household, upstairs and downstairs, as a war is fought, women seek the right to vote and be heard, Irish desire independence, Communism rages in Russia, and more.

But very very few Americans know the back story on Cora, the Countess of Grantham, played by Elizabeth McGovern. In DOWNTON ABBEY, Cora is the beautiful daughter of Isidore Levinson, a dry goods multi millionaire from Cincinnati, Ohio. She arrived in England with her mother in 1888 at the age of 20, and was engaged to Robert, Earl of Grantham (played by High Bonneville) by the end of her first season. They now have, in Season 2, three daughters

So, this means that Cora most likely has a Jewish father in America, and maybe even a Jewish mother. I wonder if this will be part of a future plot? Is it far fetched? Well, Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, FRS was of Jewish heritage (Baptised Anglican at the age of 12) and a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, and statesman of the Conservative Party.

But here is a book that will make DOWNTON ABBEY fans squeal. The real Lady of the castle used in the show WAS of Jewish heritage. She was the illegitimate daughter of Alfred de Rothschild. Read more below:

Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey
The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle
(Downton Abbey)
By The Countess of Carnarvon
January 2012, Broadway Books
Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey tells the story behind Highclere Castle, the real-life inspiration and setting for Julian Fellowes’s Emmy Award-winning PBS show, and the life of one of its most famous inhabitants, Lady Almina, the 5th Countess of Carnarvon. Drawing on a rich store of materials from the archives of Highclere Castle, including diaries, letters, and photographs, the current Lady Carnarvon has written a transporting story of this fabled home on the brink of war.
Much like her Masterpiece Classic counterpart Lady Cora Crawley, Lady Almina was the biological daughter of a wealthy industrialist, Alfred de Rothschild, who married his daughter off at a young age, her dowry serving as the crucial link in the effort to preserve the Earl of Carnarvon's ancestral home. Throwing open the doors of Highclere Castle to tend to the wounded of World War I, Lady Almina distinguished herself as a brave and remarkable woman.
This rich tale contrasts the splendor of Edwardian life in a great house against the backdrop of the First World War and offers an inspiring and revealing picture of the woman at the center of the history of Highclere Castle.

JEWS AND BOOZE
Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition
By Marni Davis, Phd
January 2012, NYU Press
If you can’t wait til 2012, you can read Professor Davis’ earlier paper on Jews and Whisky: at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_jewish_history/summary/v094/94.3.davis.html (No Whisky Amazons in the Tents of Israel": American Jews and the Gilded Age Temperance Movement (September 2008))

At the turn of the century, American Jews and prohibitionists viewed one another with growing suspicion. Jews believed that all Americans had the right to sell and consume alcohol, while prohibitionists insisted that alcohol commerce and consumption posed a threat to the nation’s morality and security. The two groups possessed incompatible visions of what it meant to be a productive and patriotic American--and in 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution made alcohol commerce illegal, Jews discovered that anti-Semitic sentiments had mixed with anti-alcohol ideology, threatening their reputation and their standing in American society.
In Jews and Booze, Marni Davis (teaches at Georgia State, doctorate from Emory) examines American Jews’ long and complicated relationship to alcohol during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the years of the national prohibition movement’s rise and fall. Bringing to bear an extensive range of archival materials, Davis offers a novel perspective on a previously unstudied area of American Jewish economic activity--the making and selling of liquor, wine, and beer--and reveals that alcohol commerce played a crucial role in Jewish immigrant acculturation and the growth of Jewish communities in the United States. But prohibition’s triumph cast a pall on American Jews’ history in the alcohol trade, forcing them to revise, clarify, and defend their communal and civic identities, both to their fellow Americans and to themselves.

Hope
A Tragedy
A Novel
By Shalom Auslander
January 2012,
The rural town of Stockton, New York, is famous for nothing: No one was born there, no one died there, nothing of any historical import at all has ever happened there, which is why Solomon Kugel, like other urbanites fleeing their pasts and histories, decided to move his wife and young son there. To begin again. To start anew. But it isn't quite working out that way. His ailing mother stubbornly holds on to life, and won't stop reminiscing about the Nazi concentration camps she never actually suffered through. To complicate matters further, some lunatic is burning down farmhouses just like the one he bought. And when, one night, Kugel discovers history - a living, breathing, thought-to-be-dead specimen of history - hiding upstairs in his attic, bad quickly becomes worse.
It is a novel inspired by Kafka, by Beckett, and by the Book of Job (biblical Job, not Steve Job(s)). Sometimes HOPE makes things worse. Things are bad, you pray, and they get worse. There is also a thread of Holocaust humor in the novel, its use by some people, and its misuse by others.
The critically acclaimed writer Shalom Auslander's debut novel is a hilarious and disquieting examination of the burdens and abuse of history, propelled with unstoppable rhythm and filled with existential musings and mordant wit. It is a comic and compelling story of the hopeless longing to be free of those pasts that haunt our every present.
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PORTRAIT OF A SPY
A Suspense Thriller Mystery Novel
By Daniel Silva
July 19, 2011, Harper
Gabriel Allon is a spy, assassin, artist, angel of vengeance, and an international operative who will stop at nothing to see justice done. Sometimes he must journey far in search of evil. And sometimes evil comes to him. For Gabriel and his wife, Chiara, it was supposed to be the start of a pleasant weekend in London — a visit to a gallery in St. James’s to authenticate a newly discovered painting by Titian, followed by a quiet lunch. But a pair of deadly bombings in Paris and Copenhagen has already marred this autumn day. And while walking toward Covent Garden, Gabriel notices a man he believes is about to carry out a third attack. Before Gabriel can draw his weapon, he is knocked to the pavement and can only watch as the nightmare unfolds.
Haunted by his failure to stop the massacre of innocents, Gabriel returns to his isolated cottage on the cliffs of Cornwall, until a summons brings him to Washington and he is drawn into a confrontation with the new face of global terror. At the center of the threat is an American-born cleric in Yemen to whom Allah has granted “a beautiful and seductive tongue.” A gifted deceiver, who was once a paid CIA asset, the mastermind is plotting a new wave of attacks.
Gabriel and his team devise a daring plan to destroy the network of death from the inside, a gambit fraught with risk, both personal and professional. To succeed, Gabriel must reach into his violent past. A woman waits there—a reclusive heiress and art collector who can traverse the murky divide between Islam and the West. She is the daughter of an old enemy, a woman joined to Gabriel by a trail of blood
Set against the disparate worlds of art and intelligence, Portrait of a Spy moves swiftly from the corridors of power in Washington to the glamorous auction houses of New York and London to the unforgiving landscape of the Saudi desert. Featuring a climax that will leave readers haunted long after they turn the final page, this deeply entertaining story is also a breathtaking portrait of courage in the face of unspeakable evil—and Daniel Silva’s most extraordinary novel to date.
Click the cover to read more, or to read an excerpt

Feed Me Bubbe
Recipes and Wisdom from America's Favorite Online Grandmother
Bubbe and Avrom Honig
September 2011 Running Press
Feed Me Bubbe is all about taking you into Bubbe's kitchen. Based upon the popular online and televised kosher cooking show seen all over the world this book includes all of Bubbe's classic recipes, insights, and stories that are sure to touch the heart. Her voice and wisdom come across each page through a format that makes cooking fun and comfortable for any skill level. Discover Bubbe's favorite Yiddish songs and create menus that will be sure to please any palate. This is a must purchase for any fan of Feed Me Bubbe and anyone interested in experiencing the feelings, memories, and tastes of being a part of Bubbe's kitchen. So pull up a chair, sit down, have some chicken soup, and as Bubbe says at the end of every episode "Ess gezunterhait!" Eat in good health.
Picture sitting around the dining room table while your Bubbe, your grandmother, is in the kitchen cooking your absolute favorite treat. Be it the smell of chicken soup with matzo balls, the sounds of the sizzling oil as latkes are being prepared.
And the smile on her face as she would bring in that meal to the table for all to enjoy. Those memories, feelings, and moments are what the highlights of our childhood was made of. Bubbe wants you to feel that connection, revealing only need to know information, making you feel like Bubbe is adopting you into her family. This is not your typical book, yes it includes recipes but this book has a "Yiddish Word of the Day", stories, words of encouragement amongst other surprises that makes any human soul want to know more. We worked very hard to get the results that we knew the fans expected to see at the end of the day. In addition we wanted to make this book accessible to those that may not have seen the show online or on TV through JLTV in which the book is based upon. If you have not seen the show for yourself take a closer look at Bubbe's incredible world up close and personal through this book in what our fans affectionately know of as Feed Me Bubbe.

[book]

Above is the official blurb. Now, for mine. Avrom Honig is a nice Jewish grandson. A college graduate, he gives great nachas to his Worcester family. He wanted to get involved in the media business after college, and was trying to make a tape/dvd/reel to show his work to prospective employers. He wasn’t happy with his sample dvd, and his father, in a fit of angst, said, why don’t you video your bubbe. And that is how his octogenarian bubbe became a media star, and part of a PBS Frontline documentary. He taped her making homey meals and giving advice, and these became an online sensation, a cable TV show, annual Beyond Bubbe Cook-off at WGBH in Boston, and, now, a cookbook
The cookbook is filled with stories, recipes, and cooking advice. There are memories of growing up in New England, marrying, and raising a family. The recipes are kosher, basic, easy, and heimisch. Each page has a Yiddish word of the day. There are recipes for latkas, blintzes, bulkelach (cinnamon rolls), chopped chicken livers, mock faux chopped liver, chopped eggs and onions (she uses olive oil), salmon puffs, chopped herring, Israeli style herring (tomato paste and apples), and pickled salmon. There is a story about a neighbor’s first taste of nova lox, the Catskills, a Boston area snowstorm and its food requirements, balancing work (she worked) and family and a daily hot meal for her growing family. Oh, there is the story of a crock pot and a frankfurter sliced lengthwise. Then there are more recipes, such as ones for pickles, black radish salad, homemade horseradish (with a story), and lime laced fruit salad. Naturally there is a recipe for chicken soup, and a gogol mogol drink that can cure you. There is fish chowder (cuz she is in New England), yellow pea soup with frankfurters (or hot dogs), meatball stew, lots of soups, bubbe’s burgers, and lettuce and tomato and onion on toasted bread. There are old family pics from the album. These are the foods your bubbe would make for you. There is baked fish cakes, sole stuffed with salmon, roasted chicken, mock gefilte fish (made of… chicken!), turkey eggrolls, turkey cacciatore (which she once flew with on a jet to California to feed at least ten relatives, because that is what bubbes do). Her brisket is to LIVE for, as is her beef or vegetarian tzimis, pitcha, cholent, pepper steak, pot roast, spaghetti and meatballs, corned beef, beef tongue, as well as kugels and desserts.

THE E-BOOKS / KINDLE EDITION OF THIS BOOK IS AMONG THE TOP TEN NON FICTION BEST SELLING E-BOOKS IN THE UNITED STATES

Auschwitz
A Doctor's Eyewitness Account
By Miklos Nyiszli
Translated by Tibere Kremer and Richard Seaver
Introduction by Bruno Bettelheim
Spring 2011, Skyhorse
240 Pages
“The best brief account of the Auschwitz experience available.”—The New York Review of Books
When the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944, they sent virtually the entire Jewish population to Auschwitz. A Jew and a medical doctor, Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was spared from death for a grimmer fate: to perform “scientific research” on his fellow inmates under the supervision of the infamous “Angel of Death”: Dr. Josef Mengele. Nyiszli was named Mengele’s personal research pathologist. Miraculously, he survived to give this terrifying and sobering account.
Miklos Nyiszli was a Jewish prisoner/doctor along with his wife and young daughter, who was transported to Auschwitz in June 1944. He died in 1956.
Click the cover to read more, or to read an excerpt

EMPEROR OF LIES
A NOVEL
BY STEVE SEM-SANDBERG
August 2011. Farrar Straus Giroux
Winner of the August Prize, Sweden’s most important literary award
In February 1940, the Nazis established what would become the second-largest Jewish ghetto, in the Polish city of Lódz. The leader they appointed was Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, a sixty-three-year-old Jewish businessman and orphanage director—and the elusive, authoritarian power sustaining the ghetto’s very existence.
A haunting, profoundly challenging NOVEL, The Emperor of Lies chronicles the tale of Rumkowski’s monarchical rule over a quarter-million Jews for the next four and a half years. Driven by a titanic ambition, he sought to transform the ghetto into a productive industrial complex and strove to make it—and himself—indispensable to the Nazi regime.
These compromises would have extraordinary consequences not only for Rumkowski but for everyone living in the ghetto. Drawing on the detailed records of life in Lódz, Steve Sem-Sandberg, in a masterful feat of literary imagination and empathy, captures the full panorama of human resilience and probes deeply into the nature of evil.
Through the dramatic narrative, he asks the most difficult questions: Was Rumkowski a ruthless opportunist, an accessory to the Nazi regime motivated by a lust for power? Or was he a pragmatist who managed to save Jewish lives through his collaboration policies? How did the inhabitants of the ghetto survive in such extreme circumstances?
A critically acclaimed breakout bestseller in Sweden, The Emperor of Lies introduces a writer of great significance to American readers. The archives detail daily life in the Lodz ghetto, under the reign of Rumkowki, but it takes a writer with Sem-Sandberg’s singular talent to help us understand the truth of this chilling history.

I WOULD BUY THIS JUST FOR THE COVER.

FROM THE JEWISH HEARTland
Two Centuries of Midwest Foodways
(Heartland Foodways)
By Ellen F. Steinberg, Jack H. Prost (A
June 2011 University of Illinois Press
JOAN NATHAN writes that this is “a fascinating overview of historic Jewish foodways throughout the Midwest, with many examples of recipes brought to the Midwest by Jewish immigrants. I know of no other work on Jewish American food with this concentration and breadth."

Listen to the author on WBEZ RADIO in CHICAGO at http://www.wbez.org/episode-segments/2011-04-19/exploring-200-years-jewish-food-midwest-85381

Ginger? Ginger is Jewish cooking?? Yes!
Have you been to Kaufman's bakery in Skokie?
Foodways is like Folkways. It isnt just the food, but the way you eat it, prepare it, store it, buy it, personal interactions, etc.
The German Jews and others tried to domesticate and Americanize the Eastern European Jews who arrived in the late Nineteenth century in the Midwest. They tried to change everything about the new Jews, change their spices, change their kashrut, assimilate them. But most of the new Jews did not change. Although the environment changed, they adapted to the Midwestern foods that were available.
Professor Steinberg scored a Midwestern Jewish cookbook on eBay. It was from St. Louis is 1910, from the B'nai Emunah shul. So begins this story
From the Jewish Heartland: Two Centuries of Midwest Foodways reveals the distinctive flavor of Jewish foods in the Midwest and tracks regional culinary changes through time. Exploring Jewish culinary innovation in America's heartland, Ellen F. Steinberg and Jack H. Prost examine recipes from numerous midwestern sources, both kosher and non-kosher, including Jewish homemakers' handwritten manuscripts and notebooks, published journals and newspaper columns, and interviews with Jewish cooks, bakers, and delicatessen owners. Settling into the cities, towns, and farm communities of Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, Jewish immigrants incorporated local fruits, vegetables, and other comestibles into traditional recipes. Such incomparable gustatory delights include TZIZEL BAGELS and rye breads coated in Midwestern cornmeal, baklava studded with locally grown cranberries, tangy ketchup concocted from wild sour grapes, rich Chicago cheesecakes, and savory gefilte fish from Minnesota northern pike. Steinberg and Prost also consider the effect of improved preservation and transportation on rural and urban Jewish foodways and the efforts of social and culinary reformers to modify traditional Jewish food preparation and ingredients.
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Sarah's Key
(Movie Tie-in paperback edition)
Tatiana de Rosnay
July 5, 2011, St Martin’s Griffin
PW Starred Review. De Rosnay's U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself. Already translated into 15 languages, the novel is De Rosnay's 10th (but her first written in English, her first language). It beautifully conveys Julia's conflicting loyalties, and makes Sarah's trials so riveting, her innocence so absorbing, that the book is hard to put down.
Click the cover to read more, or to read an excerpt

SCENES FROM VILLAGE LIFE
By Amos Oz, Translated by Nicholas de Lange
October 2011 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
A portrait of a fictional village, by one of the world’s most admired writers, Amos Oz, 71. In the village of Tel Ilan, something is off kilter. An elderly man complains to his daughter that he hears the sound of digging under his house at night. Could it be his tenant, a young Arab? But then the tenant hears the mysterious digging sounds, too. The mayor receives a note from his wife: "Don’t worry about me." He looks all over; no sign of her. The veneer of new wealth around the village — gourmet restaurants and art galleries, a winery — cannot conceal abandoned outbuildings, disused air raid shelters, rusting farm tools, and trucks left wherever they stopped.
Amos Oz’s novel-in-stories is a brilliant, unsettling glimpse of what goes on beneath the surface of everyday life. Scenes from Village Life is a parable for Israel, and for all of us.
PW writes: There's something rotten in Tel Ilan, Israel, and in each of these eight finely wrought pieces of Oz's novel-in-stories, he skillfully delineates the looming forces threatening to fissure the serenity of this idyllic village. Founded 100 years before, the "pioneer village" has changed from a farming community of vineyards and almond trees into a place of boutiques and art galleries. In the first story, "Heirs," a stranger appears at the home of Arieh Zelnik claiming to be a relative who wants to convert the family land into a "health farm" for paying customers; while in "Singing," a Friday night communal choral group intent on the Sabbath is oblivious to the rumble of air force planes returning from bombing "enemy targets." Most chilling is "Digging," in which a young Arab student writing a book comparing Jewish and Arab village life comes to stay in a back shed belonging to the widow Rachel Franco, whose aged, bitter father, a former Member of the Knesset, becomes obsessed with digging sounds he hears at night. Is the Arab digging for some proof that the land really belongs to him? wonders the old man, who mourns the days when "there was still some fleeting affection between people." Oz (Rhyming Life and Death) writes characterizations that are subtle but surgically precise, rendering this work a powerfully understated treatment of an uneasy Israeli conscience.

Claire Messud, in The New York Times, wrote: these linked stories prove achingly melancholy, a cumulative vision of anomie and isolation in an apparently cozy Israeli village… Tel Ilan is a place of supposed community and mutual support in which each soul struggles privately with longing and disappointment. … It is like a symphony, its movement more impressive together than in isolation,

THE DRUGGIST OF AUSCHWITZ
A DOCUMENTARY NOVEL
BY DIETER SCHLESAK
Translated from German by John Hargraves
April 2011, FS&G
For those who don’t mind novels of the Holocaust:
A unique and haunting novel about the Holocaust and the nature of evil
In Dieter Schlesak’s novel The Druggist of Auschwitz, Adam—known as “the Last Jew of Schässburg”—recounts with disturbing clarity his imprisonment at the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. Through Adam’s testimony at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial of 1963–65, we come to learn of the true-life story of Dr. Victor Capesius, who, despite strong friendships with Jews before the war, quickly aided in and profited from their tragedy once the Nazis came to power. Interspersed with historical research and actual face-to-face interviews with survivors, the novel follows Capesius from his assignment as the “sorter” of new arrivals at Auschwitz—deciding who will go directly to the gas chamber and who will be used as labor—through his life of lavish wealth after the war to his arrest and eventual trial.
The Druggist of Auschwitz—beautifully translated from the German by John Hargraves—is a frighteningly vivid portrayal of the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of criminal and victim alike. Schlesak’s use of factual data and testimony—woven into Adam’s dreamlike remembrance of a world turned upside down—makes The Druggist of Auschwitz an essential addition to our understanding of the Holocaust.
Click the cover to read more, or to read an excerpt

QUESTION: Dear MyJewishBooks.com – I heard that the It Get’s Better campaign will be a book. Will it be a Jewish book?

ANSWER: I hear that Penguin USA/Dutton (Dan Savage’s publisher and editor) will issue a collection of essay on It Gets Better in Spring 2011. I am sure that several Jewish people will submit essay and be published. So I would answer that yes, it will be a Jewish book and a book of Jewish interest. While you are waiting for the book, may I suggest you check out YouTube for this growing collection of YouTube videos from NYC’s CBST synagogue leaders: Click here, or Click here, or Click here.

QUESTION: Dear MyJewishBooks.com – What can I read after hearing of a new ponzi scheme in Lakewood?

ANSWER: WE RECOMMEND:

Confronting Scandal
How Jews Can Respond When Jews Do Bad Things
Erica Brown
August 2010, Jewish Lights
Jews seem to be in the news today for all of the wrong reasons. Whether it is Bernie Madoff or money laundering by rabbinic leaders, faking appraisals so you can sell assets to friends, smuggling narcotics to benefit yeshivas, the Jewish community has yet to take stock of what these breaches of civil law and Jewish ethical teachings mean for us as a people.
How do we manage collective discomfort and shame?
Should we feel ghetto mentality shame, or be filled with Dershowitz like Chutzpah?
How do we explain rabbis (or cantors) who commit sex offenses (and then ask for ultra kosher food in prison) or other crimes yet stand at the pulpit week after week offering others moral guidance?
And most importantly, how do we restore honor and dignity to our community by raising the ethical bar and adherence to it? This book explores the difficult and thorny issues surrounding scandals: airing dirty laundry in public, coming to terms with criminality among Jews, examining painful stereotypes of Jews and the difficult position of being a minority in society. A call for us to answer to a higher authority, it also addresses practical ways to strengthen ethical behavior and "do good things" to bring pride back, and to engender greater self-respect and the respect of others.
Dr. Erica Brown, a leading voice on subjects of current Jewish interest, consults for Jewish federations and organizations across the country. She is author of Inspired Jewish Leadership: Practical Approaches to Building Strong Communities, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.
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Have a Little Faith
A True Story
By Mitch Albom
September 2009, Hyperion
First some background from the book. Mitch Albom was on track for Jewish scholarship. He studied Hebrew and Aramaic, Rashi and the RaMBaM. He knew Jewish texts and history. He went to Brandeis University and led Jewish youth groups. After graduation, his sports writing career began to blossom and he had a lack of need for Jewish study and practice. Then came marriage, and other events and he left his religious spirituality tucked away in a corner.
And now for the book
What if our beliefs were not what divided us, but what pulled us together? In “Have a Little Faith,” Mitch Albom offers a story of a remarkable eight-year journey between two worlds--two men, two faiths, two communities. The book opens with an unusual request: an 82 year old rabbi from Albom's old hometown asks him to deliver his eulogy. Feeling unworthy, Albom insists on understanding the man better, which throws him back into a world of faith he'd left years ago. Meanwhile, closer to his current home, Albom becomes involved with a Detroit pastor--a reformed drug dealer and convict--who preaches to the poor and homeless in a decaying church with a hole in its roof. Moving between their worlds, Christian and Jewish, African-American and white, impoverished and well-to-do, Albom observes how these very different men employ faith similarly in fighting for survival: the older, suburban rabbi embracing it as death approaches; the younger, inner-city pastor relying on it to keep himself and his church afloat. As America struggles with hard times and people turn more to their beliefs, Albom and the two men of God explore issues that perplex modern man: how to endure when difficult things happen; what heaven is; intermarriage; forgiveness; doubting God; and the importance of faith in trying times. Although the texts, prayers, and histories are different, Albom begins to recognize a striking unity between the two worlds--and indeed, between beliefs everywhere.
In the end, as the rabbi nears death and a harsh winter threatens the pastor's wobbly church, Albom sadly fulfills the rabbi's last request and writes the eulogy. And he finally understands what both men had been teaching all along: the profound comfort of believing in something bigger than yourself. The book is about a life's purpose; about losing belief and finding it again; about the divine spark inside us all. It is one man's journey, but it is everyone's story. Ten percent of the profits from this book will go to charity, including The Hole In The Roof Foundation, which helps refurbish places of worship that aid the homeless.

COME ON PEOPLE!!!
YOU GOTTA DO A JEWISH VERSION OF THIS! I LEGO THE JEWISH HOLIDAYS, or I LEGO ISRAEL, or I LEGO SHABBOS…

I LEGO NY
BY CHRISTOPH NIEMANN
March 2010, Abrams
I LEGO N.Y. is an imaginative look at life in New York City constructed entirely out of LEGOs. Designer and illustrator Christoph Niemann was inspired to create a series of miniature New York vignettes out of his sons' toys after a few cold and dark winter days in Berlin. The former New Yorker then posted photographs of his creations along with his handwritten captions on his New York Times blog. Resident and honorary New Yorkers around the world responded enthusiastically to the clever and minimalist inventions, which captured both the iconic (the Empire State Building) and the mundane (man standing on a subway platform) in fewer LEGO pieces than one might think possible. This book includes all of the original images, plus thirteen new creations. The resulting collection is delightful in its simplicity and moving in its ability to capture the spirit of life in New York in so few strokes. [book]

Christoph Niemann is an award-winning illustrator and children’s book author
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People ask us… how many copies does a best selling Jewish book sell?
Well, that is hard to say, but take a look at some 2009/2010 reported values
The Lost Symbol, a novel by Dan Brown: 5,500,000 copies in '09; 2,300,000 in 2010
Going Rogue by Sarah Palin 2,600,000 copies
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. 2,400,000 copies in 2010, 3,685,000 paperbacks in 2010
The Girl Who Played With Fire. 2,100,000 copies in 2010, 2,650,000 paperbacks in 2010
The Associate by John Grisham 2,100,000 copies
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. 1,900,000 in 2010
11/23/63 by Stephen King. 918,000 copies in 2011
Under the Dome by Stephen King 900,000 copies
True Compass by Edward Kennedy y 870,000 copies
Arguing With Idiots by Glenn Beck 860,000 copies
** Have A Little Faith. A True Story by Mitch Albom 855,000 in '09, 275,000 in 2010
Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton 850,000 copies
* Sh*T My Dad Says by Justin Halpern. 761,000 copies in 2010
U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton 700,000 copies
Bossypants by Tina Fey. 671,000 in 2011
Superfreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner 480,000 copies
** Sarah‘s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay 570,000 copies
Go The Fcck To Sleep by Adan Mansbach. 550,000 copies in 2011
* Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner. 467,000 in 2010
** City of Thieves by David Benioff 333,000 copies
** I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron. 210,000 copies in 2010
** The Defector by Daniel Silva 200,000 copies
** People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks 180,000 copies
* The Finkler Question. 155,000 copies in 2010
Too Big To Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin 150,000 copies
The Audacity to Win by David Plouffe 147,000 copies
* My Passion for Design by Barbra Streisand. 125,000 in 2010
Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer 125,000 in 2011
A Secret Kept. By Tatiana De Rosnay. 120,932 copies in 2010
** The Zookeeper‘s Wife by Diane Ackerman 105,000 copies
** The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman. 102,000 in 2011

PER LA VITA
A CD IN GERMANY BY
von Bejarano & Microphone Mafia (Künstler)
Featuring Esther Bejarano
2010
Esther Béjarano joins MICROPHONE MAFIA to spread the message of tolerance in Germany and Europe through hip-hop. Born in 1924, she is among the last survivors of the Girl orchestra of Auschwitz. Béjarano was born as Esther Loewy as a daughter of the Head Cantor of a Jewish municipality. The father encouraged his daughter to get interested in music and Esther learned to play the piano. At age 15 she had to separate from her parents, in order to prepare for emigration to Palestine. This emigration was thrwarted by the Nazis. She carried out two years of hard labour in Neuendorf Labour Camp close to Fürstenwalde/Spree. On April 20, 1943 all members of the labour camp were deported to Auschwitz. There she had to drag stones until she joined the Girl orchestra of Auschwitz. In the orchestra, she played the accordion. The orchestra had the task of playing for the daily march of the gangs by the camp gate. She survived Auschwitz after escaping in March, 1945. She emigrated to Palestine and returned later to Germany. At the beginning of the 1980s, with her daughter Edna and son Joram, she created the musical group Coincidence. They sing songs from the ghetto and Jewish as well as anti-fascist songs. Béjarano lives today in Hamburg. She is a co-founder and chairman of the Auschwitz Committee and was awarded the Carl-von-Ossietzky medal. She holds the Cross of Merit, First class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
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START-UP NATION
THE STORY OF ISRAEL'S ECONOMIC MIRACLE
BY DAN SENOR AND SAUL SINGER
A Council of Foreign Relations Book
November 2009, Twelve
START-UP NATION addresses the trillion dollar question: How is it that Israel-- a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources-- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK? With the savvy of foreign policy insiders, Senor and Singer examine the lessons of the country's adversity-driven culture, which flattens hierarchy and elevates informality-- all backed up by government policies focused on innovation. In a world where economies as diverse as Ireland, Singapore and Dubai have tried to re-create the "Israel effect", there are entrepreneurial lessons well worth noting. As America reboots its own economy and can-do spirit, there's never been a better time to look at this remarkable and resilient nation for some impressive, surprising clues.
Dan Senor, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, has been on the front lines of policy, politics, and business in the Middle East. As a senior foreign policy advisor to the U.S. Government , he was one of the longest-serving civilian officials in Iraq. He has also served in Qatar and studied in Israel. A foreign affairs analyst for Fox News, Senor's pieces are frequently published by The Wall Street Journal. Saul Singer is the editorial editor of The Jerusalem Post, for which he writes a weekly column, and the author of Confronting Jihad: Israel's Struggle and the World after 9/11. For ten years, he served as a foreign policy advisor on Capitol Hill
Click the book cover to read more.

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