May Jewish Book Carnival

Siddur, Exploring Exodus, Dissolving Illusions books watercolor by Leora Wenger

The Jewish Book Carnival is a monthly event for bloggers to share Jewish books. The illustration for the carnival post is a watercolor of a siddur, Exploring Exodus, and Dissolving Illusions.

Book Review with Sleep, Names, and Separation

A book review of The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping by Aharon Appelfeld This review explores important themes of the book, such as sleep, names, separation, literary explorations within a book, connections to the past, and healing. Basic plot: The main character along with a group of teenage boys is a Holocaust survivor. He and […]

Book Review: Growing Up Jewish in Alexandria by Lucienne Carasso

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Have you ever heard someone speak, and felt you have become part of history? Last week I had the pleasure of hearing Lucienne Carasso, author of Growing Up Jewish in Alexandria: The Story of a Sephardic Family’s Exodus from Egypt tell us about her book at Congregation Etz Ahaim in Highland Park, New Jersey. After […]

Book Review: Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust

You might think a book called Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust would make you incredibly sad. Perhaps. Well, most probably. But perhaps also it will give strength, hope, inspiration. In the forward to the book, Yaffa Eliach explains how she gathered these tales. They are based on interviews and oral histories, compiled with the help […]

Book Review: Out of the Depths (story of Rabbi Lau)

Holocaust books can range from only brushes the surface to difficult to read to powerfully upsetting. There was one book I read in part and never finished because I found it so upsetting. In that book, everyone Jewish died (each a gruesome, slow death) – the narrator himself was a prisoner in the camp but […]