Category Archives: Jewish Literature

Ein junger Mann trifft in seinem Stammlokal in Berlin einen Unbekannten, der sich ihm als ungewöhnliches Geburtstagsgeschenk für seine Frau aufdrängt: Jeden Dienstagabend wird er ihnen eine Geschichte in Fortsetzungen erzählen - Bezahlung: eine Flasche Wodka. Mit seinen wundersamen Geschichten entführt er die Zuhörer von Berlin nach Prag und Budapest und durch das gesamte 20. Jahrhundert. In ihnen geht es um himmlische Paläste und unterirdische Städte, um Engel und Propheten, es wird geliebt, gehasst, verflucht, gestorben und gemordet. Während die Männer noch nach Liebe oder Erkenntnis suchen, haben die Frauen bereits gewählt - und bleiben am Ende doch allein. Und im Hintergrund zieht der Hohe Rabbi Löw von Prag samt Golem die Strippen und führt Regie.

Benjamin Stein verknüpft geschickt die einzelnen Stränge der Geschichte und führt in die Welt des Erzählens und der Buchstaben, auf denen die Welt beruht, ein - bis Wirklichkeit und Erzählung nicht mehr zu unterscheiden sind. Mit »Das Alphabet des Rabbi Löw« liegt jetzt eine Komplettüberarbeitung des Debütromans von Benjamin Stein vor. Ein großartiges Leseerlebnis!

Als jüngste von fünf Schwestern wächst die 1914 geborene Anna vaterlos in der Nähe eines deutsch-belgischen Grenzbahnhofs auf. Ihr Heimatdorf wird zum Spielball der Geschichte: Seine Bewohner werden mehrfach zwischen Deutschland und Belgien hin- und hergeschoben. Vom belgischen Nachbardorf ist es nur durch die Magistrale getrennt und eigentlich eint die gemeinsame Sprache und Kultur die Menschen der Region.
Fini, Annas Mutter, hält die Familie mit Flickarbeiten über Wasser. Sie ist die Erste im Dorf, die eine Nähmaschine erwirbt und damit ein neues Zeitalter in der Frauenheimarbeit einläutet. Anna, die von klein auf ihrer Mutter zur Hand geht, träumt davon, eine richtige Schneiderin zu werden. Sie kommt als Flickschneiderin in einen jüdischen Haushalt in der deutschen Eifel, wo sie 1934 auf ihre große Liebe, einen jungen Berliner Juden aus reichem Hause trifft. Die Liebe steht unter keinem guten Stern. Anna begreift, dass sie Angst und Ungewissheit überwinden und die Wahrheit um jeden Preis für sich behalten muss.
Eine dramatische Liebesgeschichte vor dem Hintergrund des wechselvollen Schicksals Ostbelgiens und der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft.

Winner of the 2014 Jordan Schnitzer booklet Award offered by way of the organization for Jewish Studies

the 2 males got here at dinnertime on Friday evening to homicide a tender rabbi and his kin. they did not say why. they did not say who despatched them. thankfully, Gidon Aronson was once on the correct position on the correct time. Gidon, a former member of an elite Israeli precise operations unit, mustn't ever merely guard the clergyman, but additionally peel again the layers of the man's own lives to get at a mystery now not even the objective is familiar with, or admits. Gidon's inquiries quickly position him within the crosshairs besides, and lead him from the USA to Israel and the Gaza Strip. In his seek, Gidon not just uncovers extra questions, yet within the strategy also needs to face his personal demons from previous Israeli operations.

Sixty lively younger women and men, marching around the face of an explosive 1904 Europe, overtly flying an "enemy" flag via 1500 miles of decidedly opposed territory. Why are they requesting sure difficulty? Why cannot they move quietly, just like the thousands of others, at the hours of darkness of evening, clandestinely crossing borders, hoping to make it alive to the good ports the place steamships will ferry them to the golden land....America. Why? simply because they're sworn to make their exodus a strong statement....a loud and transparent protest opposed to the inhumane, deplorable stipulations , the government-planned alternate boycotts and resultant impoverishment, the expanding variety of lethal pogroms, and above all of it, the sheer hopelessness.

those indefatigable emigrants will come upon alongside the best way each achievable barrier and intervention: the army forces of Romania, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the recent Germany; small-town magistrates, xenophobic police and roving outlaw gangs of the main unsavory style. upload to this bold combine, Carpathian snow storms, impassable passes, episodes of compelled hard work, imprisonment and get away, unexpected impacts from their very own humans, then attending to ports at the North Sea is much from a romantic excitement trek. Their braveness, one-mindedness, resourcefulness, and the management of younger Mordecai Anieloff and his selected cadre, are all that they could rely on to get them via.

These have been the "Wayfarers of Birlad", the fusgeyers, those that glided by foot, and their tale is your tale. It rightfully belongs to we all whose plucky ancestors from all elements of the realm skilled the great fight to get to a greater position, whereas ever-reluctant to speak about it. We and the generations forward are the lucky beneficiaries

Focusing on japanese and valuable Europe ahead of WWII, this assortment explores a variety of genres of "ethnoliterature" throughout temporal, geographical, and ideological borders as websites of Jewish identification formation and dissemination. not easy the belief of cultural uniformity between Ashkenazi Jews, the participants give some thought to how ethnographic literature defines Jews and Jewishness, the political context of Jewish ethnography, and the query of viewers, readers, and listeners. With contributions from best students and an appendix of translated historic ethnographies, this quantity provides vibrant case reviews throughout linguistic and disciplinary divides, revealing a wealthy textual historical past that throws the complexity and variety of a humans into sharp relief.

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel, most sensible recognized for his writings at the Holocaust, is usually the finished writer of novels, essays, stories, and performs in addition to pics of seminal figures in Jewish existence and event. during this quantity, best students within the fields of Biblical, Rabbinic, Hasidic, Holocaust, and literary experiences provide interesting and leading edge analyses of Wiesel's texts in addition to illuminating commentaries on his significant effect as a instructor and as an ethical voice for human rights. via exploring the numerous facets of Wiesel's multifaceted career—his texts at the Bible, the Talmud, and Hasidism in addition to his literary works, his instructing, and his testimony—this thought-provoking quantity provides intensity to our realizing of the effect of this significant guy of letters and towering overseas figure.

Orality has been relevant to the transmission of Sephardic customs, knowledge, and values for hundreds of years. during the heart a while, Spanish Jews have been recognized for his or her linguistic abilities, and as translators and storytellers they have been the most transmitters of Eastern/Islamic tradition to the Christian global. Derived from a special historical past, Judeo-Spanish storytelling has developed over a five-hundred-year ancient trip. consistent touch with the encompassing societies of the previous and with glossy Israeli impacts, making it extra common than different Sephardic oral genres. advised so as to entertain but additionally to coach, Judeo-Spanish folktales show undying knowledge and a colourful depiction of Sephardic groups as much as the 1st half the 20 th century.

King Solomon and the Golden Fish is a variety of fifty-four folktales taken from Matilda Koén-Sarano’s number of tales recorded in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) and translated through Reginetta Haboucha into fluent and idiomatic English that preserves the flavour and oral nuances of every textual content. Haboucha offers remark and annotations to the folktales that enlighten either the educational and the lay reader, making this publication immediately attractive to students and stress-free for most people. King Solomon and the Golden Fish is split into six major thematic sections: Supernatural stories, stories of destiny, stories of the Prophet Elijah, Romantic stories, stories of Cleverness and knowledge, and Jokes and Anecdotes. those folktales stay a robust hyperlink among modern day Spanish Jews and the Hispano-Jewish legacy—this assortment passes alongside that legacy and offers a resource of the customs and values of Sephardic Jews.

input the picturesque global of Regency England.

It is the summer time of 1810. The Lyon kinfolk of London is eagerly getting ready for the marriage in their eldest daughter Hannah. yet because the girls bustle from the fashion designer to the haberdasher, Mr. Samuel Lyon, a well-respected clockmaker and member of London's Jewish elite, suffers a crushing blow.

In the blink of an eye fixed Mr. Lyon's whole fortune is misplaced. not just has his financial institution long past bankrupt, yet somebody has stolen the final of his money...

Len Harris, the recent editor of a Baltimore-based ethnic ebook, Haskala, the genesis of that's pre-WW II, struggles with an id problem as does his magazine. The writer, Bernie expense, son of the overdue founder, Sidney fee, is decided to brush off Haskala’s ethnic slant and switch mostly secular, a movement to extend the advert base and readership.

Meanwhile, Harris perspectives his task as a pulpit of varieties and refuses to just accept his publisher's reduced editorial place on spirituality. A conflict for area is on.

Harris, suffering to view the area during the eyes of a Jewish journalist, in the meantime faces a messy divorce from an imported Scottish decorator, enterprise within the trust that her fortune depends upon her lawyer's skill to nail her discarded wife in divorce court.

Harris, at the recommendation of a rabbi good friend, hires his personal lawyer, a daunting personality with duel American/Israeli citizenship who moonlights for Mossad. He crushes his opponent in court docket, as his offended ex-wife vows revenge by way of recruiting her soccer-playing Irish cousin, within the united states, fund-raising for his reason, the Irish Republican Army.

No slouch, the cousin has to date gathered 4 million cash. purely he wishes the way to get it via airport safeguard and in a foreign country. in the meantime, Harris' lawyer convinces his customer the I.R.A. fundraising ex-wife’s cousin trains Palestinians, is a probability to Israel and, he, Harris, needs to support cease him.

Back at Haskala, writer Bernie expense, approximately to fireside his long-time printers and exchange them with a automatic publishing set-up, underestimates them badly. Injured African American WW II vets, they're employed in 1945 through Haskala founder and publishing icon, the past due Sid fee, father of Bernie. They dwell in a basement residence adjoining to the Haskala print shop.

Len Harris, on studying the printers should be fired and evicted from their residence, vows to save lots of them. in basic terms they've got plans to avoid wasting themselves by means of bringing down Haskala. Their goal is to submit their very own weekly model, an all-bigot factor, which they do and distribute.

Price convinces himself Harris did it and places out a freelance on him while the printers' factor hits the streets and Haskala crashes.

Harris, at the run with the 4 million in I.R.A. cash, stolen from the I.R.A. fund-raiser in a rip-off utilizing him to get the money overseas, needs to care for the wrath of Bernie cost whereas being pursued unknowingly by means of the IRA agent. not anything is because it turns out. Pursued by means of a freelance killer and an Irish progressive, how Len Harris survives is on the center of this "dark" comedian thriller.