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ACQUISITIONS
December 2001
- Behold the trees / by Sue Alexander ; illustrated by Leonid
Gore
- A land once protected by all sorts of wonderful trees is reduced
over time by war and environmental neglect to desert, until new
inhabitants plant trees and slowly make Israel bloom again.
- Snow in Jerusalem / by Deborah da Costa ; illustrated by Cornelius
Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu
- Although they live in different quarters of Jerusalem, a Jewish
boy and a Muslim boy are surprised to discover they have been caring
for the same stray cat.
- Understanding Buddy / Marc Kornblatt
- When a new classmate stops speaking because of the sudden death
of his mother, fifth grader Sam tries to befriend him and risks
destroying his relationship with his best friend Alex.
- Pharaoh's daughter : a novel of ancient Egypt / Julius Lester
- A fictionalized account of the Biblical tale in which a Hebrew
infant, rescued by the daughter of the Pharaoh, passes through a
turbulent adolescence to eventually become a prophet of his people
while his sister finds her true self as a priestess to the Egyptian
gods.
- Daughters of fire : heroines of the Bible / Fran Manushkin
; illustrated by Uri Shulevitz
- Eleven stories about women of the Hebrew Bible who influenced
the course of Jewish history through their courageous actions.
- On Purim / by Cathy Goldberg Fishman ; illustrated by Melanie
W. Hall
- Uses the story of a family's preparations for the Jewish holiday
of Purim to explain the traditions connected with this celebration.
- Common prayers : faith, family, and a Christian's journey
through the Jewish year / Harvey Cox
- Harvey Cox, the distinguished Christian theologian and scholar
of religion, has a Jewish wife and son. From the Passover meal to
the weekly Sabbath candles, from the marriage chuppah to the walls
of old Jerusalem, he has shared in the joys and responsibilities
of the Jewish faith. Celebrating the Jewish holidays, he has had
the opportunity to reflect on the essence of Judaism and its complex
relationship to Christianity, an experience that continues to deepen
his understanding of his own faith. Back to the
top
- Balancing work & love : Jewish women facing the family-career
challenge / Elaine Grudin Denholtz
- This is a pathbreaking book of true stories about American Jewish
working women coping with the triple stress of jobs, families, and
maintaining a Jewish outlook. Elaine Grudin Denholtz talks to single
women, married women, lesbians, single moms, divorced women, workaholics,
volunteers, feminists, and deeply religious women who discuss deadlines
and dating, carpools and commissions. Raised to be good Jewish mothers,
these women describe the enormous difficulty of doing justice to
both family and job. They speak candidly of compromises and accommodations,
but also of strategies to get the best out of a 24-hour day. Back
to the top
- Ketubbah : the art of Jewish marriage contract / Shalom Sabar
- The custom of illuminating the traditional Jewish marriage contract,
the kettubah, developed over the last four centuries into a rich
and varied form of Jewish folk art. This book offers a broad selection
from one of the outstanding collections of kettubot, representing
Jewish communities from the Near East to Northern Europe. It focuses
particularly on the kettubot of Italy, where the art of illuminated
kettubah, founds its most beautiful expression during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, under the influence of Renaissance of
Baroque art.
Co-produced with the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, home to one of
the largest collections of kettubot, this book also offers a fascinating
account of Jewish marriage customs and a vivid picture of diverse
Jewish communities. Back to the top
- Home lands : portrait of the new Jewish diaspora / Larry Tye
- A fascinating look at Jewish identity today, told through the
stories of seven Jewish communities around the world. In his travels
overseas as a reporter for The Boston Globe, Larry Tye found a Jewish
world that was being revitalized in ways that were not reflected
in what he was reading about the disappearing diaspora and the vanishing
Jews of America. His discoveries led him to write Home Lands, a
compelling narrative that tells the story of a renewed Jewish diaspora.
Tye picked seven Jewish communities around the world, and in
each he zeroes in on a single family or congregation whose tale
reflects the wider community's history and current situation. The
first impression that emerges from his travels are the cities'
differences. Far more striking, however, is what they share --
Jews everywhere still have enough customs and rituals in common
for outsiders to see them as part of the same people.
In this engrossing book, readers' eyes will be opened to how
Germany, just a generation or two after the Holocaust, has the
world's fastest-growing Jewish population; how the Jews of Buenos
Aires have found a home in a land that also gave refuge to Nazi
henchmen like Adolf Eichmann; and how Ireland is home to a tight-knit
Jewish community that has produced Lord Mayors in Belfast, Cork,
and, twice, in Dublin. Tye also tells the story of his own family,
whose roots run deep in the Jewish community of Boston. Back
to the top
- The Jew store / Stella Suberman
- The Bronsons were the first Jews to ever live in the small town
of Concordia, Tennessee-a town consisting of one main street, one
bank, one drugstore, one picture show, one feed and seed, one hardware
store, one beauty parlor, one barber shop, one blacksmith, and many
Christian churches. That didn't stop Aaron Bronson, a Russian immigrant,
from moving his young family out of New York by horse and wagon
and journeying to this remote corner of the South to open a small
dry goods store, Bronson's Low-Priced Store.
Never mind that he was greeted with "Danged if I ever heard
tell of a Jew storekeeper afore." Never mind that all the townspeople
were suspicious of any strangers. Never mind that the Klan actively
discouraged the presence of outsiders. Aaron Bronson bravely established
a business and proved in the process that his family could make
a home, and a life, anywhere. With great fondness and a fine dry
wit, Stella Suberman tells the story of her family in an account
that Kirkus Reviews, in a starred review, described as "a gem...Vividly
told and captivating in its humanity." Back to
the top
- The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel / Michael
Chabon
- Joe Kavalier, a young Jewish artist who has also been trained
in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just smuggled himself out
of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City. His Brooklyn
cousin Sammy Clay is looking for a partner to create heroes, stories,
and art for the latest novelty to hit America - the comic book.
Drawing on their own fears and dreams, Kavalier and Clay create
the Escapist, the Monitor, and Luna Moth, inspired by the beautiful
Rosa Saks, who will become linked by powerful ties to both men.
With exhilarating style and grace, Michael Chabon tells an unforgettable
story about American romance and possibility.
See review of this book in the Significant
Jewish Books column in November 2001 issue of Reform Judaism
magazine.
- Back to the top
- Bee season : a novel / Myla Goldberg
- Eliza Naumann, a seemingly unremarkable nine-year-old, expects
never to fit into her gifted family: her autodidact father, Saul,
absorbed in his study of Jewish mysticism; her brother, Aaron, the
vessel of his father's spiritual ambitions; and her brilliant but
distant lawyer-mom, Miriam. But when Eliza sweeps her school and
district spelling bees in quick succession, Saul takes it as a sign
that she is destined for greatness. In this altered reality, Saul
inducts her into his hallowed study and lavishes upon her the attention
previously reserved for Aaron, who in his displacement embarks upon
a lone quest for spiritual fulfillment. When Miriam's secret life
triggers a familial explosion, it is Eliza who must order the chaos.
Myla Goldberg's keen eye for detail brings Eliza's journey to
three-dimensional life. As she rises from classroom obscurity to
the blinding lights and outsized expectations of the National Bee,
Eliza's small pains and large joys are finely wrought and deeply
felt.
Not merely a coming-of-age story, Goldberg's first novel delicately
examines the unraveling fabric of one family. The outcome of this
tale is as startling and unconventional as her prose, which wields
its metaphors sharply and rings with maturity. Back
to the top
- Thirst : the desert trilogy / Shulamith Hareven
- Biblical fiction is often plethoric, but here is a trilogy set
in the time of Exodus, Joshua, and Judges that is shorter and much
more thoughtful and poetic than the average novel. Its three parts
offer marginal perspectives on the fortunes of a people--the ancient
Hebrews--usually considered a unified nation but whom Hareven presents
as a collection of semi-nomadic bands linked by belief in a single,
invisible god (Mosaic law is a much less important binder, since
many groups don't know much about it). "The Miracle Hater" regards
the events of Exodus from the vantage of a shepherd who stays on
the farthest outskirts of the wandering Israelites because of a
fixed distrust of prophets and elders. "Prophet" concerns a failed
seer from Gibeon (a Canaanite village that Joshua's armies--marauders,
really--do not attack) who spends years as a servant in a Hebrew
desert community. In "After Childhood," a desert man who blinks
perpetually marries a mountain village woman who is unusually self-possessed;
they live out their lives on the fringes of the chaos of pre-monarchical
Israel.
See review of this book in the Significant
Jewish Books column in November 2001 issue of Reform Judaism
magazine.
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