Arts Preview: Books

by Sandee Brawarsky
Jewish Week Book Critic

Philip Roth is back this season with his 30th book, again visiting themes of aging and mortality. “The Humbling” (Houghton Mifflin, November), a short novel, is the story of a leading stage actor now in his 60s, who is losing his confidence and his talent. He has already lost his wife, and he’s contemplating suicide. A counterplot explores another Roth theme: desire.

Set in Israel, “Day After Night” by Anita Diamant (Simon & Shuster, September) is a novel based on the true story of the rescue of a group of women from the Atlit internment camp in 1945. Diamant, author of “The Red Tent” follows the lives of four young women, survivors of the Holocaust who had entered Palestine illegally and were jailed by

the British.

When Michelle Cameron was researching her family history, she came to learn about an ancestor, the 13th century scholar Rabbi Meir ben Baruch of Rothenberg. Trying to find a way to write about his life, she invented his wife, a pious woman with a streak of rebelliousness. “The Fruit of Her Hands: The Story of Shira of Ashkenaz” (Pocket, September) is a multi-generational novel, set in medieval Europe, as anti-Semitism is rising. Cameron, who moved to Israel with her family when she was a teenager, served in the Israeli Army and now lives in New Jersey.

As far back as she could remember, Ellen, the heroine of Debra Spark’s new novel, understood that there were two categories of things in the world: “what was good for the Jews and what wasn’t.” This story of Midwestern Jews, “Good for the Jews” (University of Michigan, October) is a loose retelling of the Book of Esther. Ellen’s uncle Mose is a teacher, whose job in a progressive high school is one of those things that’s considered very good for the Jews.

In Katherine Weber’s humorous new novel, “True Confections” (Shaye Areheart, December), an 85-year old family candy business, “Zip’s Candies,” is having some bittersweet times, as younger generations struggle to take charge. The company is known for its Little Sammies, Tiger Melts and Mumbo Jumbos — names inspired by books the immigrant founder stole from the library in order to learn English. Weber is the author of several previous novels, including “Triangle.”

A collection of stories, by Maxim Shrayer, “Yom Kippur in Amsterdam” (Syracuse University Press, October) follows the efforts of Russian Jewish immigrants to come to terms with their pasts as they try to build new lives in America. One man, who left Russia at age 19, recalls that he “carried with him on the plane baggage so heavy that it took him years to unload it and so lofty that there were still times he couldn’t stand solidly on American ground.” Some of the stories are set in the author’s native Russia, the United States and Western Europe, as the characters reconnect with fellow émigrés, or form relationships with Americans, always glancing back as they look forward. In the title story, a young Jewish man finds Amsterdam “a beautiful place for a Jew to atone.” The author chairs the department of Slavic and Eastern Languages at Boston College. He has published books on Jewish-Russian literature, and a memoir, “Waiting for America.” Shrayer spent almost nine years as a refusenik before he was able to leave the Soviet Union, along with his parents. His writing has qualities of humor, soulfulness and insight.

“Sex, Drugs, & Gefilte Fish” edited by Shana Liebman, foreword by A.J. Jacobs (Grand Central, October) is the first book publishing effort from Heeb Magazine. The selections are drawn from their onstage literary series, where writers and performers — including Andy Borowitz, Lisa Kron and Ben Greenman — tell seven-minute stories.

Judaica
Three new books find new
language to talk about God,
new angles to look at Judaism.
Oneness is the subject of “Everything is God: The Path of Nondual Judaism” by Jay Michaelson (Trumpeter, October), who upholds the belief that God is not separate from us, that everyone and everything manifests God. Michaelson, author of “God in Your Body” and the chief editor of the online journal “Zeek,” teaches Kabbalah and spiritual practice in many venues. He writes with clarity, passion and a poetic sensibility, opening up sacred subjects.

Rabbi Harold S. Kushner quotes Mark Twain in the epigraph to his new book, “Courage is not the absence of fear but the mastery of fear.” In “Conquering Fear: Living Boldly in an Uncertain World” (Knopf, October), he acknowledges that fear — of many things — is inescapable, but shouldn’t be life defining. He guides readers in his classic, comforting, life-affirming style. Rabbi Kushner, author of “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” and ten other books, is Rabbi Laureate of Temple Israel in Natick, Mass.

“What is it about Judaism that is transfixing enough to have kept a brilliant, fractious, bickering, relentlessly skeptical people alive for three thousand years, made them the senior nation of the Western world, and turned them into a marvel and (too often) an obsession for so many of their fellow human beings?” scholar David Gelernter asks in the opening of his new book, “Judaism: A Way of Being” (Yale, November).
In answering this question and facing what he sees as a shrinking American Jewish community, Gelernter looks at Judaism as a way of life and explores its spiritual and intellectual structure. A professor of computer science at Yale and the author of several books who has been published widely in Commentary magazine, Gelernter raises and discusses questions about Jewish beliefs on the sanctity of everyday life, man and God, the meaning of sexuality and family, and good, evil and the nature of God’s justice. For the author, Judaism is a most profound and beautiful achievement. The book is illustrated with images he painted and assembled, that are central to his text. This is his most personal book.

Non-fiction

Novelists Michael Chabon and Jonathan Safran Foer delve into non-fiction narrative this season, and other writers
explores intriguing moments
of American Jewish history.
Michael Chabon, in a series of interlinked autobiographical essays, “Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son” (Harper, October), reflects on sexuality, nostalgia, innocence, hypocrisy, regret, love, divorce and more. He captures small moments in all their possibility, in his own childhood as well as his present life. He writes of hanging out with his grandmother as a child, the pleasures of cooking as an adult, and his ongoing love of comic books. The author of “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” and “The Amazing Adventure of Cavalier and Clay” lives in Berkeley, California.

In “Eating Animals” (Little, Brown, November), Jonathan Safran Foer looks into the way we eat, what we eat and where it comes from, and why we may want to shift around what’s on our dinner plates. When he was nine, he was first inspired to become a vegetarian by a babysitter who didn’t eat chicken because she didn’t “want to hurt anything.” Since then, he has shifted back and forth between eating meat and not, and now is a vegetarian again. When he and his wife had their first child, he began trying to find out more about the foods we consume, particularly about meat and the way animals are raised. He says that he didn’t begin this story as a book, but simply wanted to know “what meat is.” In researching, he visited factory farms, revisited the meals of his childhood and looked at history, myth, science and politics. This is the first work of non-fiction by the Brooklyn-based author, following his bestselling novels, “Everything is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.”

Another passionate book about meat, “Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen” by David Sax (Houghton Mifflin, October) is an account of the author’s extensive search for authentic deli food. Along the way, he examines deli history, folklore, and the nuances of corned beef — and where to go for the best sandwiches. He also looks toward the future of this cuisine, sour pickles and all. Sax, who has loved deli since he was a child in Toronto, worked for one night at Katz’s on the Lower East Side. He now live in Brooklyn. This is his first book.

“Louis D. Brandeis: A Life” by Melvin I. Urofsky (Pantheon, September) is the first full-scale biography in 25 years of the Supreme Court Justice. Drawing on newly-available material and family papers, the author documents Justice Brandeis’s personal life as well as the complexities of his legal positions, his work developing the idea of pro bono legal work, and his contributions as an economist, moralist and also a Zionist. The author is professor emeritus of history at Virginia Commonwealth University.
“It’s there in the plaintiff undertow, the feeling that yearning is eternal and sorrow not very far from the moment’s joy,” David Lehman writes, explaining the distinctively Jewish character of American popular songs written by the likes of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Howard Arlin. He might have been talking about Jewish writing, in general.

In “A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs” (Nextbook/Schocken, October), Lehman, a poet and critic, looks at the American Songbook, and the stories behind songs like “Love Walked In” and “Someone to Watch Over Me,” and “Stormy Weather” — all written by Jews. With wit and style, Lehman draws connections between these songs of love and their creators’ sensibilities.

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