No comments about China Dreams: Growing Up Jewish in Tientsin (Singular Lives).

1 comments about When Courage Was Stronger Than Fear: Remarkable Stories of Christians Who Saved Jews from the Holocaust.

1. As a teacher of European History, I must recommend this book whole-heartily to all students of the Holocaust. Peter Hellman does an outstanding job in portraying the unsung heroes of World War II. That not all Christians turned their backs on the Jews of Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. Especially good for students in areas of low concentration of Jews, because it looks at the acts of bravery from an aspect of people helping people, and that can be relayed to all peoples and races.

5 comments about Living a Year of Kaddish: A Memoir.

1. The other reviewers have all given this excellent book the only reasonable rating -- five stars. I concur with their judgment and also with their descriptions of what the book is about.
   
   My take is just a bit different, however. I found the book inspirational and consoling, as they did, but I was struck mainly by how unusually informative it is, and in several ways.
   
   The author is a seasoned reporter (now a professor of journalism at Columbia), and, perhaps without specifically intending to, it is this craft that gives his book its very specific value. As someone who is not a stranger to synagogue life in New York City, I found the description of modern Jewish Orthodoxy (Manhattan style) eye-opening. Goldman writes with great sympathy about this social milieu, but (and you sometimes have to read carefully and slowly) he does not shrink from telling it as it is. Very much unlike the usual in-house sentimentality that is found in synagogue bulletins, there is hard-headed, incisive reporting here. Read carefully, keep your eyes open ! (I will not spoil your enjoyment by giving away just what it is that I found so hard-headed and unsentimental).



2. Living a Year of Kaddish lets us look in on a man's search to come to grips with the devastating loss of his father, something I recently experienced. Reading this book gave me great comfort and I thank Ari Goldman for baring his soul in a way that helps others.



3. This is a lovely book which shows how the Jewish ritual of Kaddish helped the author come to grips with his father's life and death, as well as his own life. Being an Episcopalian married to someone whose Mother was Jewish (but did not attend temple), I found the author's description of his shul, the life within it, and the practice of prayer to be extremely powerful and informative. And the spiritual journey that the author embarked upon in the process was engaging. I had read his early book about his sabbatical at Harvard Divinity School, and was inspired by that work as well. The sharing of personal stories helps all of us live. Thanks to this author for again helping us on our own journeys.



4. Living a Year of Kaddish portrays one man's search to come to terms with the loss of his father. But it does more than that: it shows, with vivid and stirring vignettes, how the most painful pages of a life (divorce, estrangement, and death are some of the ones Goldman grapples with) need not be turned with the bitterness of a victim, but can be read with the openness of a student who is willing to learn, and to grow. Goldman is an Orthodox Jew, and as the title of his book makes clear, he draws first and foremost on the religious and cultural traditions that have shaped his family for generations. But he does not write for fellow believers alone. A keen-eyed observer with a gift for distilling the universal from the particular, he speaks in terms that will resonate with a wide and varied readership.



5. When Ari Goldman was six, his parents divorced. They were as different as the North and South poles. Goldman remained part of each of their lives through his commitment to 1950's-style Orthodox Judaism. In September 1999, Ari Goldman turned fifty. He had a party. The next morning he got a call. His father, 77, was dead in Jerusalem. The funeral would be in a few hours, since Shabbat would soon begin in Israel. Goldman tore his shirt and began to mourn. He sat shiva for his father only one day, since Sukkot started the next day. He went on to mourn for his father for the required 30 days, and then the full 11 months. Ari inherited his father's tallit (which he wore and made his own). In this memoir, he tells the reader about the people he touched and those who touched him during his year of saying kaddish. He writes that while the kaddish will not bring back the dead, it will bind one to the community horizontally, and redeem a death vertically. Ari finds that so many people have their own kaddish stories to share with him, and he shares some with us. In this book, he knits a story being an "avel", of mourning, of loss (loss of parents, loss of one's regular seat in the synagogue). He writes about mentoring, on modeling an upright life to his kids, and his brand of Fifties-style Judaism. There are also asides on the various people he meets when he seeks out shuls in which to say kaddish on the road. He explores his daughter's conflicts when she is forced to move to the women's side of the mechiza at the age 12. He reflects upon the power of the kaddish and how the passage of time changes his approach to the prayer and the process. He honestly asks himself why he tells people he is mourning. Is it a badge on his lapel? Is he seeking some sort of status? Comfort? Honor? It is a story of loss, of growth, as well as the fascinating story of how his neighborhood shul became resurrected.

5 comments about Chosen By God: A Brother's Journey.

1. Like most books written about a family member, this book in the end is at least as much about the author than his brother. While discovering his estranged brother's newly religious life, the author inadvertently (advertently?) really tells you a bunch about himself. And he does not come across as a particularly nice guy, at least as a younger man. As someone else mentions, the first half the book is inferior to the second, full of his whining.
   Another intersting facet is how rarely the authors of such books relfect on their own lives. The author's father comes across as rigid and intolerant (typical of those on the left who preach tolerance for everything but are intolerant for those who disagree with them), a sometimes financial and marital failure. The author comes across at times as selfish and self-absorbed, lacking any roots of his own. Only the mother seems to be a decent person where her children are involved. In the end, who has the better life - Tuvia or Joshua or Joshua's father?



2. Hammer's book felt like a letter to a friend, describing in detail his cross section of feelings toward his brother's dramatic changes into the extreme world of Hasidic Judaism. Hammer's emotions change throughout the book - confusion, anger, amazement, and to a lesser degree, understanding. The distance between the brothers also seemed due to the religious brother's poor social skills and identity that had nothing to do with religious observant. Although this wasn't a "wow" book, it was a very touching story.



3. Having walked at least part of Hammer's brother's journey into Orthodox Judaism, I wasn't sure what to expect from "Chosen by God," but was braced for scathing "objective" journalistic condemnation of the religious and particularly Chassidic lifestyle. Surprisingly, though, there was none of that here. Instead, this book tells the heartfelt story of Hammer's quest to understand not only his brother but his own Jewish spiritual leanings.

   There are no cheap epiphanies in this book: Hammer doesn't come away a "convert", and neither can he bring his brother Tuvia back from the edge of extremism where even his wife Ahuvah feels he may get hurt. Rather, they find common ground: with hard work and compromise on both sides, they manage to cultivate a vocabulary that bridges their two very different worlds.

   Neither brother, it becomes clear through Hammer's sensitive narrative, is "right" -- but they manage to speak to each other with love and come to respect each other's journeys.

   A book like this will certainly have many fans among those who seek to denigrate "ultra-Orthodox" Judaism -- it is scathingly honest about the poverty and even criminal activity of a few of its adherents. But if that's all you're looking for, you will hate this book for its honest, truthful portrayal of the beauty and excitement of traditional Jewish spirituality.

   Though Hammer initially suspected he'd lost his brother to a cult, he comes away from his journey accepting that this IS who his brother was all along: an extremist, perhaps, but one for whom Judaism is a good fit after all. The conclusions of this book aren't the usual trite condemnations of one lifestyle or another, but they are satisfying and real, which makes this book's contribution truly meaningful, rather than merely sensationalistic.




4. This was an educating book regarding the journey of one brother into spiritual enlightenment while the older brother made a journey to human understanding. While we may not all agree that Fundamentalism (regardless of whether it is Jewish, Christian, or Islamic) is the answer, this book may help each of us to understand our relatives and friends that take that road. Worth the read, although the author is a little too close to some of the subject matter to be completely objective.



5. This book is a testiment to the power of brotherly love and acceptance. Josh Hammer has opened his eyes and heart to the transformation of his younger brother, Tony, from a directionless, lost soul to a devoted Hasidic Jew. Josh's apparent objectivity is never far removed from his personal feelings. He struggles with learning much about himself as he struggles to understand his brother and the life Tony has chosen sequestered in a world of faith and devotion to G-d. While not universal to all Baalei T'shuva (Returners to the faith), the book does give a realistic portrayal of the difficulties of the family in dealing Tony's transformation.

No comments about Ordinary Heroes: The Life and Death of Chana Szenes, Israel's National Heroine.

5 comments about Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968.

1. I read this about 6 years ago when it was assigned in one of my undergrad classes. There are enough online reviews for you to read about the plot and like. Rather I want to tell you how her voice has stuck with me. I think of her ability to see the slivering when everything is just gray, and her amazing capacity to keep going. Whenever I think I can't go on, this death/or lost/ or series of unfortunate events as shattered the very last of my will I remember her words. I highly recommend it. I regally give this as a gift, I know I'm not just giving someone a powerful story, but really I'm giving someone a packet of extra strength for when they need it most in life.



2. This is a well-written, quick read. Heda's 27 years of suffering - first at the hands of the Nazis & then under the communist regime in Czechoslovakia - is heart rending. It's a book that should be part of high school curriculums to raise awareness of what too many people had to endure in the middle of the last century. It would be much more effective than relying on a history textbook that deals only with the 'facts.'



3. I would recommend this book to anyone. Even if you think you don't like reading about history, you'll like this book. In fact, it is books like these that are the reason I love history so much, and why I'm majoring in it. It isn't about the politics or the wars or whatever else (although those are certainly important), it is the story of a woman trying to survive through a hell most of us cannot even imagine has existed on this earth, especially not in the last 50 years. Peoples' lives are what connect us to the past, and what make it relevant to the future. It gives a little meaning and heart behind all the dates and events that you have to memorize in class...make them more personal. And furthermore, you will be inspired by this woman. Her strength and character is admirable, to say the very least. Actually, I don't think even a fictional writer could invent a heroine more honorable than this one.
   
   So please, read it. stories like these deserve to be shared.



4. it is a great book use in my world civ class, and highly recommmand by my professor and TAs.



5. Clive James, in "Cultural Amnsia' - his magesterial review of literature and totalitarianism - said: "Given thirty seconds to recommend a single book that might start a serious young student on the hard road to understanding of the political tragedies of the twentieth century, I would choose this one". It tells a remarkable personal tale of a Jewish girl in Prague caught up by the Nazis and going to Auschwitz, then her escape and return to her beloved Prague, and subsequent worse sufferings under the communist government in the 1950s and 1960s. Her husband was a high ranking government official but later was put on a show trial and killed.
   
   "Under a Cruel Star" (also called "Prague Farewell" in some editions) is not as bleak as the story sounds. It is a slim volume of hope and understanding, written elegantly by a woman who later in life worked as a translator from English and finished her working life in the Harvard Law School library.

No comments about Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California.

No comments about The Two Zions: Reminiscences of Jerusalem and Ethiopia.

No comments about Jewish Lists.

1 comments about Waiting for America: A Story of Emigration.

1. "Waiting for America" captures the excitement, drama, and at times, turmoil, of Maxim D. Shrayer and his family as they journey from the Former Soviet Union via Austria and Italy to their new home in America.
   
   Through the lenses of a passionate, 20 year old young man as he first experiences the West after his Refusenik family waited years to leave the FSU, "Waiting for America" presents Maxim's personal insights as his family partook in what became a modern day Exodus involving thousands of Jewish emigres who left the FSU en route to the U.S., Israel, and elsewhere during the final 25 years of the 20th century.