Books, Poetry & Short Stories

Three Stories for Young Children from PJ Library

Jennifer Wolf Kam wrote and Sally Walker illustrated Until the Blueberries Grow about a young boy named Ben who successfully delays his grandfather for a year from selling his home and moving to a retirement community (hopefully like our Seacrest Village in Encinitas).  During the year of delay, Ben and his zayde have many adventures such as picking and eating blueberries together; eating jelly sandwiches in the sukkah; drinking hot chocolate by the light of the chanukiah; and secreting and finding afikomen outside in the lilac bushes.  But after the year delay, zayde tells Ben he just doesn’t want to keep climbing the stairs to his second-floor bedroom.  So, he moves to a retirement community, and when Ben visits him there, he brings a gift.  Blueberries! [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Fiction

Single Mom Stokes Her Son’s and Her Own Jewish Faith

After her divorce from her cantor husband, author Zark wanted to make certain that the small son whose custody they shared would be brought up Jewishly in both homes.  She wanted to make Shabbats and the full range of Jewish holidays interesting and accessible to her son, and in the process, she reflected upon the meanings of the holidays, Torah passages, and various Jewish customs. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion, Lifestyles

Surveying the Full Range of Jewish Life

The Book of Jewish Knowledge, Rabbi Yanki Tauber, ed., The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute, Brooklyn, NY, ©2022, ISBN 978-1-63668-012-5 p. 432, plus Appendices, $69.75. By Fred Reiss, Ed.D. WINCHESTER, California – Is it feasible to adequately convey the skills, information, and wisdom acquired by the Jewish people who, after nearly 4,000 years of living in

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, Jewish History, Jewish Religion

‘B.C.’; ‘New’ Testament and Other Historic Mistakes

The concept of BC and AD was apparently invented by a monk around the year 533 who thought Jesus was born 533 years before the day he invented the system. BC stood for “before Christ” and AD for the Latin “anno domini.” the year of our Lord. He was mistaken. [Rabbi Israel Drazin]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion

Crime, Estranged Lovers Themes of Mystery Novel

Argentine mystery writer Sergio Olguín has conjured a hard-hitting Jewish investigative journalist Verónica Rosenthal as his protagonist in a mystery that begins with a traffic accident victim’s missing wife and child and eventuates into an investigation into illegal adoptions and sales of human body parts. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison

Originally Named for Charles Lindbergh, Airport Downplays Connection with the Nazi Sympathizer.

There was a time the San Diego International Airport was known by everyone as Lindbergh Field after the aviator Charles Lindbergh, who spent a lot of time in town overseeing the construction of his airplane, “The Spirit of St. Louis,” by Ryan Aircraft. After the job was completed, Lindbergh made several stops across country en route to New York, including in St. Louis.  This was where donors lived who had financed his plane. Then, on May 21, 1927, Lindbergh, the 25-year-old pilot, completed the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, in the process becoming an international celebrity. If he had simply retired on his laurels at that point in his life, the name “Lindbergh Field” today might still be emblazoned across the airport entrance. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Travel and Food, USA

H’nai Matov: Brothers Working and Surviving Together

Here is a Holocaust memoir that is so well told that you feel like you are sitting in the room with Harry Lenga, listening to him as he relates the meaningful episodes of his life.  His narrative, as transcribed and edited by his son Scott, is at times folksy, other times philosophical, and always interesting. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Holocaust, International, Jewish History

A German Catholic Girl Learned of Life as a Persecuted Jew

Sabine Fröhlich grew up a Catholic in Breslau, Germany, but her ancestry was Jewish.  Along with her parents and her older brother Andreas, she was declared to be a Jew according to the Nazis’ bizarre racial classifications.  Like self-identified Jews in Germany, she was systematically excluded from normal life—even the Catholic school which she had attended.  Her parents wisely decided to send her to England, but after they made it across the border to the Netherlands, the family reunited. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Holocaust, International, Jewish History

Book Review: ‘The Plot to Save America’

The book contains two main plots. Most startling and fascinating is the idea that followers of President Trump were able to turn the 2020 election results so that President Trump won a second four year term and changed America into a kind of Nazi country, doing things to the president’s enemies that equaled if not exceeded what the Nazis did. [Rabbi Israel Drazin]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., USA

A Prescient Account of Life in Pre-War France

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel —The novel Silbermann by Jacques de Lacretelle, which I read in French, was first published in 1922 It describes the life of a French schoolboy and his relations with a Jewish classmate. The general atmosphere in the school is one of rigid discipline and, as is often the case

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

Screening American Jewish Diversity

Helene Meyer’s book Movie-Made Jews explores how films mirror and shape the diverse identities embraced by contemporary American Jewry.  Readers of the Jewish feminist magazine Lilith and the Jewish Women’s Archive Blog will be familiar with Meyers’ insightful movie reviews. Here on a bigger canvas, she analyzes documentaries and feature films that venture beyond common cinematic stereotypes of American Jews to dramatize their attitudes towards antisemitism, assimilation, feminism, gender orientation, the Holocaust, Jewish assertiveness, and race relations. [Laurie Baron, Ph.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History, Lawrence Baron, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Novel Incorporates Vignettes about Patrons of a Jerusalem Café

Ehrlich’s Café Shira is an imaginative series of vignettes that take place in an establishment much like Café Tmol Shilshom, wherein the regulars at each table have their own stories. Sometimes they are interwoven with the stories of waitresses Rutha and Rona and café owner Avigdor; other times, they are in a world of their own, made known to us only by the remarkable insight and intuition of the hard-working, extremely empathetic Rutha. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Middle East