Books, Poetry & Short Stories

Book chronicles and analyzes coercion and depravity

Theresienstadt 1941-1945: The Face of a Coerced Community  by H.G.Adler; Cambridge University Press, 2017 By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — This monumental monograph, to which no book review can hope to do justice, comprises more than 850 pages and constitutes a far-reaching and detailed account, or rather scientific analysis, of the concentration camp that was […]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Jewish History

The coach who rose from the Holocaust’s ashes to dominate European soccer

A new biography celebrates Béla Guttmann, the superstar coach who still has soccer’s greatest praying by his Vienna grave for a miracle By JP O’ Malley LONDON — On May 23, 1990, Eusébio da Silva Ferreira — considered by many to be one of the greatest soccer players of all time — took a short

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Sports & Competitions

World’s Largest Bookstore Opens in Iran

Bibliophiles in Iran, clear your weekend: The huge Book Garden center just opened in Tehran. Officials unveiled the Book Garden, a giant academic complex being called “the world’s largest bookstore,” on Wednesday. At roughly 65,000 square meters (about 700,000 square feet), the center has several movie theaters, science halls, classrooms, a restaurant, a prayer room

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Middle East

At 102, legendary author Herman Wouk has a new book out

Jewish novelist says his ‘main task’ has been depicting ‘what happened in World War II and the Holocaust’ By Benjamin Kerstein The Pulitzer Prize-winning Jewish author Herman Wouk has published his latest and what he indicated was likely his last book at the age of 102. Interviewed by “ CBS Sunday Morning” on Sunday, Wouk

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History

Bipolar disorder led to life as prostitute

Fast Girl: a Life Spent Running From Madness by Suzy Favor Hamilton; HarperCollins (c) 2015. By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — This book was recommended to me with the assurance that the story it contained was interesting and even enlightening. I’m not quite sure about that. I don’t happen to find copious detail about the

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

China’s jailed Nobel laureate is granted parole after terminal cancer diagnosis

BEIJING — Chinese authorities released detained dissident and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo on medical parole after he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, his lawyer said Monday. Liu, 61, is receiving treatment at a hospital in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, according to his lawyer Mo Shaoping. The Norway-based Nobel committee awarded Liu, a

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International

The personal peril of being a translator

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — One doesn’t normally think of translating and editing as a dangerous profession, but my experience of working in this field for the last fifty years has had a deleterious effect on me, leaving me seriously incapacitated. Reading literature of any kind, and especially if it has been translated

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

Emily Robbins turns her experience living in Syria into a stunning first novel on love, loss and language

Getting Emily Robbins on the phone is not an easy task. The writer and anthropology scholar is currently living in Jordan, researching her second book. Her first book, “A Word for Love,” is set in Syria. She was inspired to write it after living in the country for multiple years in the early 2000s. Robbins’

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Middle East

Rabbi Sacks essays on the Book of Numbers

Covenant & Conversation, Numbers: The Wilderness Years, A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Maggid Books and The Orthodox Union, Jerusalem, © 2017, ISBN 978-1-68025-294-1, p. 171, plus glossary, $14.95 By Fred Reiss, Ed.D. WINCHESTER, California –  World-renown rabbi and scholar Rabbi Jonathan Sacks begins with the assertion that the Book of

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

Stephen King more profound as author than coach

On Writing by Stephen King; Scribner, Simon and Schuster, 2000 By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — Not being a fan of the horror/fantasy genre of novels, I must confess at the outset that I have not read any of Stephen King’s other books. I do know, however, that he is a very successful and prolific author in

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

The debate about Bob Dylan’s faith is over

Nearly 40 years after Bob Dylan stunned the music world with the release of his overtly Christian album, “Slow Train Coming,” followed quickly with the unambiguously gospel “Saved,” people still don’t know what to make of America’s most enigmatic troubadour. The conventional wisdom is that Dylan took an intense dive into evangelical Christianity for a

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts

Freud biography heavy reading, yet interesting

Freud: An Intellectual Biography by Joel Whitebook; Cambridge University Press (c) 2017; 496 pages. By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D. SAN DIEGO — When Don Harrison asked if I’d review a new book about Schlomo Sigismund Freud, known to most as Sigmund Freud, I gladly accepted the opportunity. Why? I’m not sure. Not that I’d spend

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Michael Mantell, Science, Medicine, & Education