Books, Poetry & Short Stories

Short Story Focuses on IBM’s Business With the Nazis

Short story writer Clive Aaron Gill presents the discovery of the connection between IBM and the Holocaust in a pair of moral dilemmas, faced first by a grandfather and much later by his granddaughter Rebecca, whom we first meet as a school girl and later as a public relations executive for a charitable organization. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Edwin Black, USA

Juvenile Fiction: Elephant Helps a Boy Find God

El, the elephant, offers to help the boy find God.  So off they go, the boy on El’s back, and they see a flower and a meadow; feel the effects of the wind and the sun; and the coolness of river water.  The boy asks when they will find God, and El explains that the boy already had met God in the beauty of the flower; the peacefulness of the meadow; the strong winds; the warmth of the sun; and the life-giving, thirst-quenching water of the river. [Donald H. Harrison]

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

Novel Portrays Catskill’s Post-Borscht Belt Era

This is an American Jewish novel about two families coming to terms with the fact that the fictional resort that best friends Benny Goldman and Amos Weingold founded in the Catskill Mountains has long passed its prime. The Golden Hotel no longer is booked to capacity, nor even near capacity, and the once famous Borscht Belt resort has quite obvious wear and tear to show its decline. [Donald H. Harrison]

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

Antisemitism and the Courts Probed in New Book

In Courtroom Trials in Jewish History, attorney and Jewish-community activist Esther Zaretsky offers an eclectic collection of stories about Jews who, in a broad sense, have had their day in court, courts representing justice at its worst, verdicts driven by antisemitism and anti-Israeli hatred. The title is somewhat of a misnomer, as there are no depositions or testimonies; no exhibits or closing arguments. Rather, Zaretsky provides the backstory leading up to the trial, the verdict, emphasizing how the “courts fail to affirm society’s most precious values of justice, equality, morality, and the preservation of human rights,” and its aftermath—we get to hear the rest of the story. [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, International, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Middle East, USA

An American Jewish Memoir of Food and Travel

In her zany account of her travels out west from her home in Plantation, Florida, Shari Wallack never got to San Diego, so I didn’t get the chance to see how her impressions of my hometown might match up with my own experiences.  If the two jibed, then I’d probably put utmost faith into her accounts of other places.  As it was, I simply had to enjoy her impressions of diverse locales between New York and Utah. Also, I was astonished by her reliance on serendipity and good Jewish cooking to turn even prosaic locales into adventures. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Travel and Food, USA

Dual Tragedies of a Patient with a Brain Hemorrhage and Her Caregiver Husband

Attorney Daniel P. Shapiro deeply loved his wife Susan and their three children.  He and Susan had enjoyed special moments together; places, songs, meals that ignited memories; meaningful yet  unspoken understandings typical of the happily married.  And then disaster in the form of a brain hemorrhage happened.  Susan slurred her speech, lost her mobility, and seemed unable to relate with the rest of her family. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Lifestyles

The Importance of Plants in Religious Art

What is the message conveyed by the representation of plants in religious text? What do the images that these references bring to our minds tell us about a people and a society? These are questions posed by award-winning artist and author Gloria Abella Ballen, whose book Garden of Eden: Plants of the Hebrew Bible was the subject of a recent webinar sponsored by the American Sephardic Federation. [Ellen Hernandez]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts

One-of-a-Kind Biography about Author of ‘All-of-a-Kind Family’ Books

When the Association of Jewish Libraries evaluates a book with Jewish content that it finds particularly good, it awards the author its Sydney Taylor Book Award after the author of the All-of-a-Kind series of books that introduced a Jewish family, with siblings who dressed alike, to America’s non-Jewish children and to their parents.  The Jewish series was the first put on the market by a general publisher, thus breaking a barrier in children’s literature. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History, USA

If Only She Had Remained in Pre-State Israel

I read this in ebook form as I was told it dealt with Chortkow, the town in Poland (now Ukraine) from which my in-laws came. As I read on I found many similarities between the two stories – both Syma, the heroine of the book, and my in-laws came from a medium-sized town with a large Jewish population, many of whom were assimilated and prosperous. The crux of the story takes place in the port town of Haifa in pre-State Israel, which is also where my in-laws lived. But they fortunately remained there, whereas the heroine of this (real-life) story returned to Chortkow, where the Holocaust caught up with her, leading to her tragic death. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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

Yoni Netanyahu Proved Himself a Hero Before Entebbe

It is not widely known that Yoni Netanyahu was a hero long before he commanded the Entebbe operation. He played a key role in many other crucial Israeli security operations exhibiting courage and valor in the most dangerous of circumstances. He was a living example to the world’s statesman that terrorism can be beaten – if the nations of the world have the will to fight back. [Moshe Phillips]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Middle East

Jews in ‘The Decameron’

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) authored The Decameron around 1348, a word meaning “ten days,” referring to the activities described in the book. The book’s subtitle Prencipe Galeotto refers to the legendary friend of Lancelot, an enemy of King Arthur. He helped Lancelot seduce and bed Arthur’s wife Guinevere. The subtitle catches the theme found frequently in the book of tricks played on unworthy men, usually husbands, and of lonely women who were confined in their homes in the 14th century by their spouse and fathers while longing for sex, while men engaged in a fun-filled life which included bouts of drinking and forbidden sex. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr.

Extricating Oneself from the Muddy Middle

Each of us hears an internal voice, it talks to us every day. For some, this voice repeats the harmful and disheartening comments made by parents, teachers, siblings, and friends. It reminds us of our failures and insecurities. This voice, according to Rabbi Shimshon Frankel, a clinical psychologist with more than a quarter century of experience, and author of The Wisdom of Getting Unstuck, is your Antagonist, and “when we start to identify ourselves with the negative messages that it delivers, we’re bound to start experiencing a heightened degree of discomfort, emptiness, pain, and tension.” [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]

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

LFJCC Summer Reading Program Features Jewish Authors and Topics

I introduced Judy Bloom, Elizabeth Enright and Norton Juster to my summer hangouts, and they in turn,  took me to places I’d never visited. The experience of gobbling up all of the library’s offerings seemed limitless and thrilling. And now, thanks to the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, summer reading is back! [Eva Trieger]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eva Trieger, San Diego County

Book Review: The Wisdom of Getting Unstuck

Written by Rabbi Shimshon Meir Frankel, a clinical psychologist living in Zichron Yaakov, Israel, who also practices as a marriage and family therapist, with more than 25 years of experience, his book stands out with its Torah-driven, short-term, solution-oriented focus anchored in ancient wisdom. It puts the reader in the driver’s seat with very concentrated tools to live free of foreign, unhelpful thoughts, “antagonists,” and unhealthy behaviors – it is soul focused and value grounded. [Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Religion, Lifestyles, Michael Mantell