Books, Poetry & Short Stories

Timeless Chanukah story set in 1912 New York City

All-Of-A-Kind Family Hanukkah by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky; Schartz & Wade Random House Children’s Books; © 2018, ISBN 9780399-554193, 40 pages, $17.99.  Publication date: September 11, 2018 By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO – My mother Alice was born in 1912, the same year in which is set this timeless Chanukah story […]

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

Is your Settlement House Cook Book inscribed?

By Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California. — The New York Times Book Review section used to carry “Author Queries” where working researchers and authors would reach out to readers for information. This use of the press has served well. I am now working on a project that will be based on evidence standing on reader’s

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak, Travel and Food

Novel shines a light on Soviet WWII decison- making

Red Sky at Noon by Simon Sebag-Montefiore; Penguin, Random House, UK, 2017 By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel —  This novel gives a detailed account of the days leading up to the German attempt to take Stalingrad in the summer of 1942, doing so by tracing the exploits of a group of former prisoners, taken

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, International

Rabbi Samuel introduces Philo to the modern world

By Donald H. Harrison CHULA VISTA, California  – The 1st Century Jewish philosopher and religious scholar, Philo, was very familiar with the Torah, commenting here and there on different portions of the Five Books of Moses in writings that were spread over approximately 40 publications in the native Greek language that he spoke in his

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, Middle East

Humor, or should we say levi-tea, in pottery

“One piece of log creates a small fire, adequate to warm you up, add just a few more pieces to blast an immense bonfire, large enough to warm up your entire circle of friends; needless to say that individuality counts but teamwork dynamites.”  Jin Kwon By Eva Trieger MAMARONECK, New York — Mamaroneck Library is

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eva Trieger, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, USA

Recently published ‘The Israel Bible’ tells in over 2,000 pages the Jewish connections to Israel

The Israel Bible (Hebrew and English Edition) by Rabbi Tuly Weisz; Hardcover: 2212 pages;  Publisher: Menorah Books; Bilingual edition (July 10, 2018);  Language: Hebrew, English; ISBN-10: 1940516803;  Cost: $44.00 By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel CHULA VISTA, California — In today’s world, there are all sorts of different types of commentaries on the Scriptures on a variety

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

Pondering in ‘Librarian’ where truth ends, fiction begins

The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe, translated by Lilit Thwaites,Godwin Books, Henry Holt and Co., New York, $19.99, 424 pages. By Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California — This story, set in Prague, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Hamburg, and Tel Aviv, is creative non-fiction. It appeared in Spanish in 2012 and was translated into English in 2017.

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History, Oliver Pollak

Chesler’s memoir insightful into feminist movement

A Politically Incorrect Feminist by Phyllis Chesler; St. Martin’s Press; © 2018; ISBN 9781250-094421; 304 pages including acknowledgments. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO – Possibly before, but especially after publication of Women and Madness, which exposed the practice of falsely committing women to insane asylums and the abuse of women within those institutions, author

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

30 gathered to salute Jerry Joe Seller on his 90th

  By Oliver B. Pollak ENCINITAS, California — Jerry Joe Seller was born in St. Louis in 1928. Life expectancy in 1930 was 58 for men and 62 for women. We celebrated his 90th birthday on August 19 at Vigilucci’s Trattoria Italiana on Pacific Coast Highway in Encinitas. Birthdays come and go. They last a

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak, San Diego County

What a Jewish teacher learns in United Arab Emirates

My Pashtun Rabbi: A Jew’s Search for Truth, Meaning, and Hope in the Muslim World by David Eden, BookBaby, (c) 2018, ISBN 9780692-086155. NEW YORK (Press Release) — A Jewish American working in the United Arab Emirates fears hostility but finds humanity in this debut memoir. Fleeing divorce and midlife crisis, journalist Eden left Ohio in

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Middle East, Science, Medicine, & Education

‘Black Diamond Fall’ a Utah and Vermont whodunnit

Black Diamond Fall by Joseph Olshan; Polis Books, © 2018,263  ISBN 9781947-9933410; 263 pages. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO – Sam Solomon, a gay Jewish man, is accused in the disappearance and possible homicide of a lover young enough to be his son.  When he awakens in a hospital in Utah, following a skiing

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison

Baudy ‘Decameron’ told a story of a Jew’s conversion

By Oliver B. Pollak RICHMOND, California. –Some sixty or more years ago my parents facilitated my sex education by leaving Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, illustrated in 1949 by Rockwell Kent, on the coffee table. Adolescent curiosity took care of the rest. Kent introduced me to pornography or erotica before Playboy. From the late 1950s the Book

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver Pollak, Travel and Food

Two children’s books for Jewish holidays

Bitter and Sweet by Sandra V. Feder, illustrations by Krysten Brooker, Groundwood Books, (c) 2018, ISBN 9781554-989959; 30 pages, $17.95. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO — Author Sandra Feder notes that Judaism acknowledges a duality in life: with the bitter often will come the sweet, and vice versa.  “Sweet wine or grape juice is

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