Books, Poetry & Short Stories

Book Traces History and Humor of Jews and Christmas

Many Jewish fathers and mothers take their children to sit on Santa Claus’s lap—just like the author Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut did, when he was only seven years old. I laughed at the picture because I remember my father, Leo Israel Samuel—a Holocaust survivor from Auschwitz—did the same for me when I was about the same age [Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel]

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Antisemitism, Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Lifestyles, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, Opinion, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

Seven Stations on a Path to Jewish Wisdom

Rabbi Shira Milgrom has served as spiritual leader of Congregation Kol Ami in White Plains, New York, for 37 years and edited the widely used Reform prayerbook Mishkan T’filah. She is also the daughter of Jacob Milgrom, the towering 20th-century biblical scholar and author of the monumental Anchor Bible commentary on Leviticus—a man I was privileged to know personally and whose rigorous, humane scholarship continues to shape Jewish thought. [Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Today’s Jewish Birthday: Scott Berg

Scott Berg (December 4, 1949) is an American biographer. After graduating from Princeton University in 1971, Berg expanded his senior thesis on editor Maxwell Perkins into a full-length biography, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius (1978), which won a National Book Award. His second book Goldwyn: A Biography was published in 1989. [Wikipedia]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Today's Jewish Birthday, Wikipedia

A Plot Against Hitler Exposed by a Nazi Physician

A group of German nationals—all of whom were Gentile, mainly ladies of aristocratic background, but some of the gentlemen were, in pre-Hitlerian times, senior civil servants—met on September 10 for afternoon tea in Carmer Strasse. Being wartime, the fare was simple, the conversation defiantly anti-Hitler: “How to Stop the War?” [Paul Rose]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Holocaust, International, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Biographer of Carole King Lacked Access to Singer/ Songwriter

Author Jane Eisner wasn’t able to secure an interview with the reclusive King, nor with members of her family, so she had to rely on what was already published by other writers or said by King, herself, in her memoir and in preserved broadcast interviews. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, California, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Celebrities, Jewish History, Lifestyles, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

Did Jewry Abandon the Fight for Racial Justice?

Dollinger challenges the standard narrative that Jews were simply “kicked out” of the Civil Rights movement by radical Black activists. Instead, he argues that Jews actively made choices to prioritize their own newfound status and ethnic identity over the continued struggle for racial justice. [Barrett Holman Leak]

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Barrett Holman Leak, Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish History, Opinion, Philanthropy & Volunteerism, Science, Medicine, & Education, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

Jewish Short Story: ‘The Gatherer’

He took his walks by the river at dawn, when the fishermen were still flicking their lines to taste the mood of the current, and the first fruit sellers were bargaining with sleep. He liked the way mist lifted from the water as if the world were exhaling a secret it had no stake in keeping. [Sam Ben-Meir]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Fiction, Jewish Religion, Sam Ben-Meir, Staff and Bylined Contributors