Jewish Heritage Month

Kramer invites everyone, regardless of religious background, to honor the tradition of Shabbat every Friday evening. Her modern recipes encourage readers to connect or reconnect with Jewish culture. She highlights the wide range of ingredients and flavors that have influenced Jewish cooking for centuries, and includes essays that examine the significance of the Shabbat meal--Adapted from back cover.

3 stars

"A ... history of how Jewish women maintained their identity and influenced social activism as they wrote themselves into American history."--

"A long ago accident. An isolated girl named Aviva. A community that wants to help, but doesn't know how. And a ghostly dybbuk, that no one but Aviva can see, causing mayhem and mischief that everyone blames on her. That is the setting for this suspenseful novel of a girl who seems to have lost everything, including her best friend Kayla, and a mother who was once vibrant and popular, but who now can't always get out of bed in the morning. As tensions...

"A little girl and her grandmother spend Friday afternoon preparing for Shabbat by making challah. In hours full of laughter and love, they mix the ingredients, braid the dough, let it rise, and set the table, and finally, enjoy a scrumptious family dinner and the bread they made together. A challah recipe is included in the back for those who want to bake along"--

As an orphaned survivor and witness to the horrors of Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) compelled the world to confront the Holocaust with his searing memoir Night. How did this soft-spoken man from a small Carpathian town become such an influential figure on the world stage? Drawing on Wiesel's prodigious literary output and interviews with his family, friends, scholars, and critics, Joseph Berger seeks to answer this question.

"In the ruins of postwar Europe, the world's leading expert on the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism goes on a hair-raising journey to recover sacred books stolen by the Nazis... At the end of the Second World War Gershom Scholem, the magisterial scholar of Jewish mysticism, is commissioned by the Hebrew University in what was then British-ruled Palestine to retrieve a lost world. He is sent to sift through the rubble of Europe in search of precious Jewish...

In this "holiday hybrid story, ... children's author and editor Arthur A. Levine pairs with ... illustrator Kevin Hawkes to offer a mythical, magical take on the way Jewish families came to give and receive gifts over Hanukkah, just as their Christian neighbors do at Christmas, thanks to a loving spirit named Nate Gadol working behind the scenes--together with a certain jolly old soul"--Publisher marketing.

"How identity politics failed one particular identity. Jews Don't Count is a book for people who consider themselves on the right side of history. People fighting the good fight against homophobia, disablism, transphobia and, particularly, racism. People, possibly, like you. It is the comedian and writer David Baddiel's contention that one type of racism has been left out of this fight. In his unique combination of close reasoning, polemic, personal...

2.3 stars

"A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family's displacement across four countries, Kantika--"song" in Ladino--follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way-a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure and motherhood....

"Get ready for Passover and introduce little ones to the Seder ritual with this festive shaped board book!"--