Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
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When most people think of the shtetl, images reminiscent of “Fiddler in the Roof” pop into their heads: small villages filled with poor Jews, struggling to make a living in an almost exclusively Jewish world. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth in the heyday of the shtetl. At one point, these thriving areas – whose size ranged from 2,000 to 20,000 people – were not only populated by Jews, but by a variety of ethnicities and religions. In “The Golden Age Shtetl: A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe” (Princeton University Press),...
The recent survey by the Anti-Defamation League has been making headlines in the Jewish and non-Jewish media. Some articles see the research as flawed, and one rabbi, Jay Michaelson, claims that according to the survey, he, too, could be considered anti-Semitic. Michaelson’s column is a bit disingenuous, since at times he deliberately twists the questions, but he does make a good point: Why does agreeing with these statements, which could be taken neutrally, equal anti-Semitism? The answer seems clear in one way: Many are the same canards u...
When someone asks me Judaism’s position on a particular subject, I usually answer, “Which Jewish tradition do you want to hear?” I’m not just talking about the differences between contemporary religious movements, but the fact that Judaism—from biblical times to the present day—offers contradictory ideas about a variety of topics. For example, as Rabbi Elaine Rose Glickman notes in “The Messiah and the Jews: Three Thousand Years of Tradition, Belief and Hope” (Jewish Lights Publishing), there is no one idea concerning the Jewish messiah....
When immigrants move to a new country, they often find it necessary to reinvent themselves. Some transform their lives in order to survive in a different environment. Others seek a fresh start so they can forget the past. Still others disguise their identities, for example, using a new name to mask their innermost self. The theme of re-invention serves as the core of Nancy Richler’s moving novel, “The Imposter Bride” (St. Martin’s Press). Richler’s insight into her characters shows just how difficult it is to make connections, while still off...
The summer heat can become so enervating that it’s too hot to move; fortunately, though, it’s never too hot to read. In fact, reading is a great way to escape the heat. “Jo Joe” When 13-year-old Judith Ormond moves to a small town in Pennsylvania to live with her white, Christian grandparents, she faces true prejudice for the first time. The problem? Not only is she Jewish, but biracial. After finishing high school, Judith promises never to return. However, she breaks that vow 17 years later when an anonymous message arrives saying her grandmo...
Recent outbreaks of salmonella and other instances of food contamination and poisoning have left people questioning the safety of our food supply. Critics of the food industry are also concerned about misleading labels, particularly the use of such words as “natural” or “healthy” to describe processed food. Could these problems be solved by stricter governmental regulation? Can private certification prevent fraud or increase food safety? In order to answer these questions, Timothy D. Lytton, the Albert and Angela Farone Distinguished Profess...
The IRS’s targeting of organizations connected to the Tea Party reminded me of the 1960s and ’70s, only in reverse. This time, the IRS was investigating right-wing groups. During the Nixon presidency, left-wing groups—particularly those who opposed the war in Vietnam—were deliberately selected for audits. Even worse, the FBI spied on those who marched in protests or signed petitions against the war. The reason behind the IRS and FBI selections is the same in all these cases: The people or groups oppose the current government’s stance on an iss...
In the past, the major literary distinction was between prose (defined as ordinary speech or language) and poetry. The recent boom in graphic works offers yet another literary possibility. Although graphic novels and memoirs were once dismissed by some critics as high-brow comic books, authors and illustrators currently aspire to something far greater. Three recent books show just how far the genre has expanded: the works being reviewed offer a family portrait of Jerusalem in the 1940s, a...
Remember the opening of the “Mission Impossible” TV show? The assignment was recorded on a tape that self-destructed so no record of the conversation would exist. That gave everyone deniability if the mission went awry. It’s far more difficult, though, to make a thing disappear in contemporary society. Between email, text messages, online stores, GPS trackers and reward cards, it’s possible to track our movements and purchases. I’ve joked that if you want to keep a purchase secret, go to a store and pay for the object in cash without using the...
Herman Wouk dreamed of writing a novel about the biblical Moses since the 1950s. In 2000, he noted that “‘The Lawgiver’ remains unwritten. I never found the way to do it.” When trying to work on the manuscript, he was never able to answer some basic questions: From whose point of view should it be told? How can anyone portray not only the greatest leader in Jewish history, but the miracles performed by him under God’s command? Yet, even in his 90s, Wouk never stopped thinking about the novel. That led him to finally write a version of “The L...
It’s difficult for me to imagine anyone taking lifestyle advice from episodes of “Sex and the City,” but the TV show and its heroine, Carrie Bradshaw, served as a major influence for Rebecca Dana. As she notes in her memoir, “Jujitsu Rabbi and the Godless Blonde” (Amy Einhorn Books), the show is what made the Pittsburgh native dream of “someday being a fancy New York City lady.” At first, her life in New York seems perfect. She has a job writing about fashion, parties and pop culture; a ha...
Was Judaism the first religion of the early Israelites? Based on archeological evidence, scholars believe our ancestors worshiped more than one deity. According to Avigdor Shinan and Yair Zakovitch, the biblical text was written to promote a different idea: that the Israelites were to worship only one God. In “From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends” (The Jewish Publication Society), Shinan and Zakovitch show how, before the Bible appeared in written form, numerous oral traditions pre...
Self-help books encourage us to be optimists. If we don’t actually try new challenges, we’ll never know if it’s possible to accomplish something new or different. The writers of these works assume that the results of our actions will be positive. Of course, there is another point of view, one that sees change and hope as dangerous. This idea can be found in a philosophy offered by a character in Shalom Auslander’s latest novel “Hope: A Tragedy.” Auslander makes a profound statement that intrigued me because it was the opposite of what one mi...
When reading a novel, I focus more on plot and character analysis than the author’s writing style. Yet, when considering two recent works by Israeli writers, the differences in their prose was impossible to ignore. In her first novel, “The People of Forever Are Not Afraid” (Hogarth), Shani Boianjiu, who wrote in English, employs very blunt language in order to portray a young, disaffected generation of Israelis. A.B. Yehoshua, in his latest work, “The Retrospective” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), offers very lush writing and complex sentences...
Becoming a reviewer has made me a better reader. Instead of dismissing works I don’t enjoy, I now analyze why they didn’t appeal to me: Is it something personal, for example, did a character or plot line trouble me? Does the author’s prose or writing style enhance the telling of the story for me or distract from it? Would other readers relish the book even if I didn’t find it to my taste? Two recent novels—“The Middlesteins” by Jami Attenberg (Grand Central Publishing) and “A Town of Empty Rooms...
Newspaper and magazine articles note how, although most Americans own far more material goods than their ancestors, they’re less content than former generations. The idea that our possessions do not bring happiness is commonly found in religious tracts; those writers suggest the key to contentment is focusing less on the material and more on the spiritual. Rabbi Edwin Goldberg, D.H.L., explores this idea from a Jewish point of view in “Saying No and Letting Go: Jewish Wisdom on Making Room for What Matters Most” (Jewish Lights Publi...
Although her book “Tradition and Equality in Jewish Marriage: Beyond the Sanctification of Subordination” (Continuum International Publishing Group) focuses on Jewish marriage laws and tradition, Melanie Landau is really considering a much larger question: Is halacha (the rabbinic legal rulings of the past) binding for eternity or should sociological factors be taken into consideration in order to acknowledge contemporary sensibilities and ethics? Landau notes her own conflict with these iss...
Can Broadway musicals teach us about changing American attitudes to the Holocaust? In “Echoes of the Holocaust on the American Musical Stage” (McFarland and Co., Inc, Publishers), Jessica Hillman, an assistant professor of theater and dance at the State University of New York at Fredonia, uses eight Broadway shows to examine how this “unique American art form” has served as a “venue for playing out our cultural obsession with Nazism and the Holocaust.” Her focus is on the public perceptions of the Holocaust and how, as popular opinion changed,...
Sometimes the right book appears at just the right time. That was the case with Anne Lamott’s “Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.” The past few months have been difficult for a variety of reasons and I’ve been seeking ways to handle the stress. When writing about asking God for help, the Christian Lamott offers suggestions for dealing with difficult times. Her advice made me look closer at my Jewish thoughts and practices. Lamott believes in order to survive our hardest moments, we must release our problems and hand them over to...
Why would someone risk their life to save a stranger? There’s no easy answer to that question. However, it’s one authors love exploring, especially when writing about Germany during the Nazi era. In his wonderful “City of Women” (Amy Eihorn Books/G. P. Putnam’s Sons), David R. Gillham examines the life of Sigrid Schröder, who, at first glance, seems to be a model German citizen. Not only does she have a soldier husband serving on the Russian front, she works as a stenographer in the patent office in Berlin. Although she is not fond of her mot...
