Books, Poetry & Short Stories

Editor’s E-Mail Box: December 20, 2018 (5 items)

Protection against Iran and Hezbollah needed after U.S. withdraws from Syria — AIPAC The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Thursday issued the following statement concerning President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. “With the decision announced yesterday to immediately withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, it is imperative that Iran and Hezbollah […]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, John McCormick, Middle East, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Book review: ‘Memories, Miracles & Meaning’

Memories, Miracles & Meaning: Insights of a Holocaust Survivor by Fanny Krasner Lebovits (with Selwyn Isakow and Sid Shapira); Mascot Books (c) 2019; ISBN 9781643-071909; 199 pages plus family tree, photos and glossary; $22.95. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO – At 96, Fanny Krasner Lebovits is still going strong.  I saw her as recently

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Middle East, San Diego County, USA

New Orthodox siddur provides modern translations

Siddur Avodat Halev by Rabbi Basil Herring, Editor-in-Chief, Toby Press, New Milford, CT © 2018, ISBN 978-965-301-936-2, p. 1346, plus an introduction and essay section, $34.95. By Fred Reiss, Ed.D. WINCHESTER, California – Siddur Avodat Halev, the newest prayer book from the Rabbinical Council of America, one of the largest Orthodox Jewish rabbinical associations in the world,

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

From the ashes of the Shoah, a Talmudic Encyclopedia

By Toby Klein Greenwald EFRAT, Israel — The recent marking of 80 years from Kristallnacht, and the approaching 10th of the Hebrew month of Tevet, which the Israeli chief rabbinate designated as the day of Kaddish for those who perished in the Holocaust, brings to mind a ground-breaking project that grew out of the ashes

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Religion, Toby Klein Greenwald

Michelle Obama’s ‘Becoming’ also about belonging

Becoming by Michelle Obama; © 2018; Crown Publishing; ISBN 9781524-763138; 421 pages plus acknowledgments and photo credits; $32.50 By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO —  If one theme predominates throughout former First Lady Michelle Obama’s memoir, it is that, notwithstanding the fact that she and her husband had risen to the very pinnacle of power

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

Weighing the ‘Tattooist’ controversy

By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Do novels about the Holocaust have to be vetted before publication? It’s a good question and one that literary critics and Holocaust historians and educators have been grappling with since 1945. Now in 2018, the question remains as important as ever, and new novels about the Nazi concentration camps under

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History

Debate intensifies over ‘Tattooist of Auschwitz’ novel

By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — As readers around the world are finding out now, the Holocaust sex-and-romance novel by the non-Jewish Australian screenwriter Heather Morris titled The Tattooist of Auschwitz is not all that the feel-good, based-on-a-true story that it says it is. Sure, the memoir published as a novel tells the alleged

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History

You’ll gladly pay the ‘price’ for this Chanukah book

By Mark D. Zimmerman MELVILLE, New York — “What?,” you say? “A Chanukah trivia book? I don’t get it. I mean sure, RASHI, RAMBAM and HAGGADAH-LAMADINGDONG, the Passover trivia book, makes sense. It’s a holiday that’s totally based on asking four questions. So why not ask 25 more? But Chanukah? No point in asking questions

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Religion, Mark D. Zimmerman

Stan Lee’s heroes, like our patriarchs, overcame flaws

By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel CHULA VISTA, California — Whenever we talk about the protagonists of the Bible, we must remember that every biblical actor’s character evolves in the course of a lifetime. What each person starts out differs from what each one ultimately becomes. In the latter half of Genesis, the ancient storyteller lavished

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi

More doubt cast on Auschwitz tattooist novel

By Dan Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — A bestselling novel about the Holocaust has generated a strong backlash from readers around the world, and most importantly, from the Auschwitz Museum in Poland, which maintains an internet and Twitter presence online. After many people, Jewish and non-Jewish, sent in messages to the museum concerning the veracity

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History

Redefining who can become a Jew

The Jewish American Paradox: Embracing Choice in a Changing World by Robert H. Mnookin; © 2018; Public Affairs, Hachette Book Group; ISBN 9781610-397513; 228 pages plus 80 pages of notes, acknowledgments and index; $28 By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO –Author Robert Mnookin, a Harvard Law professor, argues that Jewish peoplehood should have permeable boundaries.

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

Is it India or is it Gehenna?

Mother India by Tova Reich; ©2018; Syracuse University Press, ISBN 9780815-611066; 253 pages. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO – If you walk through ankle-deep sewage overflow while batting away flies and choking on ashes of incinerated human remains, you’ll experience the India of author Tova Reich’s description.  You probably would prefer to visit Dante’s

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison