Books

The Finger Lakes region of upstate New York is known for Watkins Glen International, a race car venue that permits ordinary citizens to take three laps around the track in their personal cars for...

Try to picture the words in this book’s title: “Giraffes on Horseback Salad.”  Can you picture it?  A giraffe astride a horse; two legs on one side of the horse’s midsection, two legs on...

This year, 2023, was declared in Lodz, Poland, to be the year of Chava Rosenfarb, one of its most famous Yiddish writers. In Lethbridge, Canada, meanwhile Goldie Morgentaler, daughter and translator of Rosenfarb from...

TO DESTROY JERUSALEM, Kaplan’s fifth gripping Middle East thriller, is his longest and most ambitious to date. A historical novel set in 1990, the action races around the globe from Jerusalem, to Rio de...

On hearing that I had recently written a book about Leonard Cohen, someone asked me why I thought Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature rather than Cohen. Not being a Nobel prize adjudicator...

Essentials of Jewish History: Jewish Leadership Across 4,000 years, Brandon Marlon, Vallentine Mitchell, London © 2020, ISBN 978-1-912676-18-7, p. 514 plus bibliography and index, $89.95. Jewish presence across the last four thousand years of recorded...

Duets on Psalms: Drawing New Meaning From Ancient Words, Jack Riemer and Elie Spitz, Ben Yehuda Press, Teaneck, NJ, ©2023, ISBN 978-1-953829-62-7, p. 222, plus endnotes, $24.95. There is a story told of a southern...

The first mention of Jews in Ireland dates from the Annals of Innisfallen in 1079; according to an entry for that year . “Coicer Iudaide do thichtain dar muir agus aisceda leo do Thairdelbach, & a n-díchor...

The letters BDS, an acronym for the words boycott, divestment, and sanctions, is a movement encouraging individuals, corporations, states, and countries to economically, politically, and socially isolate Israel until, for example, Israel withdraws from...

The Passover Mouse by Joy Nelkin Wieder, illustrated by Shahar Kober; Doubleday Books for Young Readers, 2020;ISBN 9781984-895530; 24 pages including author’s note and glossary; $17.99 Somewhere in Eastern Europe, in a little Jewish village, a...