By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist
Fiction
Heaven’s Witness
Joseph Telushkin and Allen Estrin
Toby, cloth, $19.95
Telushkin may be familiar to some as the author of Jewish Literacy and other scholarly works, but he and his screen writing partner, Estrin, are Emmy-award-winning writers of television’s “The Practice,” “Boston Public” and “Touched by an Angel.” Telushkin is also the author of the Rabbi Winter mystery series.
Now he and Estrin have penned a riveting page-turner in which a young, good-looking Jewish psychiatrist, Jordan Geller, stumbles into the thick of a murder mystery because of a series of events that can only be explained by reincarnation. Determined to prevent another murder, he risks his career by following his instincts.
Bad Jews and Other Stories
Gerald Shapiro
University of Nebraska, paper
Shapiro’s stories, some of which are connected, all have protagonists in crisis, spiritual, existential, marital or career. Most of these Jewish men work in advertising or public relations and are often (but not always) stereotypically nebbishy. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, they manage to get themselves into the most peculiar, and sometimes comic situations.
The author is a professor of English at the University of Nebraska. Some of these stories have appeared in the country’s finer literary journals such as Ploughshares and The Missouri Review.
Dancing with Einstein
Kate Wenner
Scribner, cloth, $24
A beautifully written, often poetic tale of a young woman trying to come to terms with the premature death of her father when she was 12, and her strained relationship with her mother. Returning home after seven years of travel abroad, Marea Hoffman engages the services of four different psychotherapists. Each one challenges her perspectives and memories of growing up during the Cold War – with its threat of nuclear annihilation – in their own way.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
and Siblings
The centennial of Singer’s birth is being celebrated by the release by The Library of America of three volumes of his short fiction, Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories, (cloth, $35 per volume) and the accompanying illustrated biography, Isaac Bashevis Singer: An Album, (paper, $12.95). There is also a Web site, www.singer100.org, dedicated to exploring the prolific Yiddish author’s life and works.
The Singer collection has received much notice in the media. Of additional note is the re-release of a work by Singer’s sister, Esther Singer Kreitman, known to her family as Hinde. Most people know that I.B. Singer’s brother, I.J., was also a writer. Fewer know that his sister was an author, too, who produced three works of fiction between 1936 and 1949. Now, The Feminist Press of City University of New York has re-issued her 1936 novel, Deborah, (cloth, $24.95).
Kreitman suffered greatly in her life. Her mother was said to be disappointed that she was not a boy, and treated her poorly. Her literary talents were not recognized or encouraged. She also apparently suffered from seizures and mental illness, as well as suffering through a bad marriage. Her one son, Maurice Kreitman – later Maurice Carr – became a literary critic in England and translated Deborah. Despite these limitations, she wrote fiction and translated English works into Yiddish. Her character’s story closely parallels her own.
Memoir
Do You Remember Me? A Father,
a Daughter, and a Search for the Self
Judith Levine
Free Press, cloth, $26)
Levine’s father’s descent into Alzheimer’s becomes a catalyst for this gifted writer to explore their mostly difficult relationship and to try to heal from its pain. Levine explores family relationships and friendships, and looks intently at how our society treats the elderly and what we expect from aging and the aged.
The Emperor of Ice Cream:
The True Story of Häagen-Dazs
Rose Vesel Mattus with Jeannette Friedman
Wordsmithy, cloth
Further subtitled A Love Story, this is a sophisticated self-published book telling a family history of bootstrap-pulling, self-made, only-in-America success in the ice-cream business. It includes lots of pictures, perhaps the most novel being the one of Frank Zappa in a Häagen-Dazs t-shirt, holding a serving-bowl size portion of his favorite treat. An entertaining story by the family matriarch who is still chair of the company.
Judaism
How the Bible Became a Book: Textualization in Ancient Israel
William M. Schniedewind
Cambridge, cloth, $27
The author cautions us not to be concerned with who wrote the Bible. Anxiety about authorship is a bad habit we picked up from the ancient Greeks, he says. Instead, he examines how the Bible came to be a book, the importance of writing as a part of ritual in ancient times, and how ancient Israel made the transition from a pre-literate to a literate society.
The Complete Idiot’s Guide
to Jerusalem
H. Paul Jeffers
Alpha, paper, $18.95
The fact that the author is Christian lends a distinctly un-Jewish tone to this concise look at one of the world’s most complicated cities. Jeffers does offer a brief history lesson on Jerusalem, a look at the three world religions who compete for it, as well as examining past and present politics. The Jewish reader is clearly not the intended audience.
Reference
The Creative Jewish Wedding Book: A Hands-On Guide to New and Old Traditions, Ceremonies
and Celebrations
Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer
Jewish Lights, paper, $19.95
The title of this large-format paperback really explains it all.
The Student’s Encyclopedia
of Judaism
Editor-in-chief Geoffrey Wigoder with Fred Skolnik and Shmuel Himelstein
New York University Press, cloth
A version of the New Encyclopedia of Judaism, edited for the 7th- to 12th- grade audience, comes in one large volume with plenty of illustrations.