Books, Poetry & Short Stories

Rabbi Drazin’s Speculations Generate an Eclectic Book

Our regular readers will not be surprised that in this book he poses answerless questions intended to make us think. He speculates about the sacred and the mundane, inquiring in chapter 30 “What do we know about God?” and in chapter 26 about “Ethical behaviors concerning shoes.” [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Trivia, Humor & Satire

‘Sol’s Journey’ Contains Good Advice for American Jews

By Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin PIKESVILLE, Maryland — I have been reading and reviewing the inspiring, fascinating books by the brilliant writer Rabbi Dr. Charles H. Freundlich for over ten years and have enjoyed them all. Sol’s Journey, his eleventh fiction book since he started writing them at age eighty, is no exception. It is

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

Novel Explores an Immigrant Jewish Family’s Life in Louisville Before World War II

This novel is a collection of sequential short stories about the Toplansky family, whose patriarch Shlomo immigrated in 1920 from Bialystok, Poland, to Louisville, Kentucky. He changed his first name to Sol and eked a living from his tailoring shop supplemented by singing and gambling.  He served as the chazzan at the Orthodox synagogue. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Fiction, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

Biblical Imagery Brightens Poet’s Bleak Account of Life in the Arizona Desert

Poet Allisa Cherry is entranced by Hebrew Scriptures, turning to them to express her anguish over the tragic lives of the members of a Mormon family. A grandmother had a double mastectomy; a father died of radiation poisoning caused by nuclear testing in the desert; a brother died in a car accident before he was 20; and a wife, caught in a loveless marriage, divorces her ne’er-do-well husband. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

Frances Perkins, Nation’s First ‘Madam Secretary’ Tried to Help European Jewish Refugees

Struggling against American xenophobia, racism, and antisemitism in the 1930s, Labor Secretary Frances Perkins—the first woman to serve in a President’s Cabinet – sought in several ways to spare German Jewish refugees from annihilation by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Antisemitism, Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

Good Deeds, Even Little Ones, Change the World for the Better

In a big city, a little girl notices that a swing has become unhooked on one side so that it hangs limply.  Another swing has some off both hooks and is lying on the ground. She wants to fix them. With the help of her grandmother, she rehooks the swings. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Lifestyles, Philanthropy & Volunteerism, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Jan. 21 Jewish Poets-Jewish Voices Program Features Stark, Rodney & Moskowitz

Guri Stark, Alecia Rodney and Michael Moskowitz are the three poets to be featured in the Jewish Poets—Jewish Voices at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 21, program in the Astor Judaica Library of the Lawrence Family JCC. [Eileen Wingard]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eileen Wingard, San Diego County, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Nazi Hunter Lewkowicz Identified Amon Göth, Infamous Commandant of Plaszow Concentration Camp

He identified Amon Göth, the commandant of Plaszow, whose brutality was graphically depicted in the movie Schindler’s List.  Göth used to shoot inmates for target practice from a vantage point overlooking the concentration camp.  Touring the camp, Göth would abruptly murder inmates on a whim.  He reveled in making Jews quake. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Holocaust, International, Israel, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Sephardic Prayer Songs Found in Church Records of Mexican Inquisition

When Jews were expelled from Portugal, many moved East to form the Sephardic community we all know, but as many Jews, perhaps 100,000, moved West to the Americas in the 16th century.  Today it is estimated that a quarter of Hispanic Catholics in the Americas derive from Jewish stock, with many now awakening to their heritage. [Mark A. Schneegurt, Ph.D.]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Novel Depicts a Man’s Metamorphosis from a Hare to a Tortoise

The title of this book, referencing “tortoise” and “hair,” immediately brings to mind Aesop’s Fable about the race between the tortoise and the hare in which the slow and steady tortoise defeats the brilliantly fast but overly distracted hare. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Staff and Bylined Contributors

How a Neighborhood Rallied to Save a Library’s Collection Unavoidably Soaked by Firefighters

In 1966, a fire that started on a top floor of the 10-story Jewish Theological Seminary building in New York City destroyed 70,000 books and other written items.  Many were extra copies of the books stored below; others were irreplaceable items such as the Torah scrolls sent for safekeeping from Danzig during the Holocaust. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Philanthropy & Volunteerism, San Diego County, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA