Books, Poetry & Short Stories

Rabbi tells rationale for accepting Torah as divine

Reason to Believe: Rational Explanations of Orthodox Jewish Faith by Chaim Jachter, Menorah Books, New Milford, CT, © 2017,ISBN 978-1-940516-71-4, p. 234 plus appendices, $24.95 By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.  WINCHESTER, California – If believing is having faith in the evidence, then one might suspect that religion and reason share no common ground, but this is not the […]

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

Got a Jewish novel in your drawer? Now might be the time to pull it out

Although it’s still tough to find an interested publisher, several new outfits offer increased opportunities — online and on shelves By Renee Ghert-Zand Author Sharon Hart-Green spent nearly a decade writing her debut novel, “Come Back For Me,” about the the lives of first and second generation WWII refugees and Holocaust survivors in Canada and

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International

Why Marilyn Monroe Is Still So Famous

Newsweek published this story under the headline “Marilyn: The 24-Year Itch” on November 10, 1986. In light of the 55th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death, Newsweek is republishing the story. Marilyn. No one ever asks, Marilyn who? From the breathy, near-sighted Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to the screen-worn Reno divorcee in The Misfits,

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

‘Fiddler’ actress keeps the story going with debut novel

Alexandra Silber’s ‘After Anatevka’ follows characters Hodel and Perchik in a journey that often mirrors her own By Cathryn J. Prince NEW YORK — For two years Alexandra Silber played Hodel in a London production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” But with the last performance, the last curtain call and the last round of applause,

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

The author’s joke, alas, is on the reader

A Horse Walks Into a Bar by David Grossman (published in Hebrew by Hasifriya Hahadasha) By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson DOMEYROT, France —   I am proud to announce that I have completed my first vacation task, namely, to read the Hebrew version of David Grossman’s book, the English translation of which was awarded the prestigious Man Booker

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

U.S. realism and idealism in the Middle East

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — Elliott Abrams’ Realism and Democracy: American Foreign Police after the Arab Spring (A Council on Foreign Relations Book, Cambridge University Press, 2017) is both a useful assessment of Arab Spring and what came next, and an insightful commentary on the nature of a world power and those who serve it.

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Ira Sharkansky, Middle East, USA

Three plots make ‘Karolina’s Twins’ exciting reading

Karolina’s Twins by Ronald H. Balson; © 2016 St. Martin’s Press; ISBN 9781250-089045; 306 pages; $15.99. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO – Author Balson skillfully weaves three plots together.  There’s the story of a Holocaust survivor and the twin girls she hopes are still alive; a court drama prompted by that elderly woman’s son

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison

Author Gaines recalls his mental illness treatment

One of These Things First by Steven Gaines; © 2016 Delphinium Books; ISBN 9781883-285715; 196 pages; $14.95. By Donald H. Harrison SAN DIEGO – If you like a story well told, with perhaps a smidgen of name-dropping, you’ll be entertained by author/ columnist Steven Gaines’ recollections of his tumultuous adolescence. It was a period when

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison

‘We are Jews Again’ tells of Refuseniks’ progress

“We Are Jews Again,” Jewish Activism in the Soviet Union by Yuli Kosharovsky, translated by Stefani Hoffman, edited by Ann Komaromi, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY, © 2017, ISBN 978-0-8156-3519-2, p. 319, plus appendices, notes, bibliography, and index, $37.95 By Fred Reiss, Ed.D. WINCHESTER, California –  Many Jews participated in the 1917 Russian Revolution, ousting

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History