Book Reviews

It might still be two weeks to Pesach, but is never too early to start thinking about Afikomen presents.

A Chassidic Classic For Readers Of All Backgrounds

Reading Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein’s Essays On the Weekly Parsha Based on Nesivos Shalom I could not help thinking of the old warning that “a young man who wishes to remain an unbeliever cannot be too careful of his reading.”

Tevye in the Promised Land, Chapter Thirty: Waters of Eden

What was a man, Tevye thought, that one moment he could be so filled with power and seemingly invincible force, and the next moment a motionless pile of flesh?

Title: Without Red Strings Or Holy Water: Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah

Rabbi Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) was a halachist par excellence, philosopher, physician, and a political leader of the Jewish community at the ibn Ezra Synagogue of Egypt. Born in Cordovero, Spain and caused to flee a fanatical Muslim sect, the Rambam travelled to Morocco, Eretz Yisrael, Alexandria, and then served as a physician in the court of the Sultan in Cairo Fostat.

Title: In One Era, Out the Other A Memoir of 20th-21st Century Jewish Life

Each one of us finds ourselves at the center of six generations of history. We hear the echoes of our grandparents’ era and see the beginnings of that of our grandchildren and we hope and endeavor to be the fulfillment of the hopes of one and the inspiration of the other.

Tevye in the Promised Land, Chapter Twenty-Eight: Waiting for the Baron

When word arrived that Baron Edmond Rothschild was coming for a visit, with none other than the famous Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the colony turned into a frantic beehive of activity.

You Can Tell This Book By Its Covers

You can tell Rabbi Yossy Goldman’s book From Where I Stand: Life Messages from the Weekly Torah Reading by its covers. The front cover is a photograph of a rabbi in a shul that is full of light.

Title: A Neuropsychologist’s Journal: Interventions and “Judi-isms”

I was recently invited to review A Neuropsychologist's Journal: Interventions and “Judi-isms.” Normally this wouldn't take me long as I would get the gist of the book by quickly skimming through it. Instead I found myself engrossed in reading this book word by word, cover to cover. The short chapters had me hungrily turning the 459 pages for more, and at times, I just could not put it down.

Tevye in the Promised Land, Chapter Twenty-Six: Tevye Takes a Wife

  Both of Elisha's two grown daughters were golden-skinned, beautiful, devoutly religious, and nearly half Tevye's age. The eldest daughter, Carmel, was naturally the...

Tevye in the Promised Land, Chapter Twenty-Five: Tevye Cures the Muktar’s Daughter

     On the arranged date, the Jews set out to survey the land which their Arab neighbors wanted to sell. The Muktar Abdulla...

LGBT Jews Excited About Kids’ Purim Book With Two Dads

In honor of the upcoming Jewish holiday of Purim, gay news site Queerty is encouraging LGBT Jews to buy a new book featuring a Jewish boy with two fathers, the first of its kind to bring Judaism, children, and homosexuality together.

Tevye in the Promised Land, Chapter Twenty-Four: Morasha

The Jewish Colony Association had chosen the mountainous location not for its suitability as farmland, but because of its price. When more and more...

NY Book Takes Top 2012 National Jewish Book Award

A history of New York Jewry took Jewish book of the year honors in the 2012 National Jewish Book Awards.

Tevye in the Promised Land, Chapter Twenty-Three: A New Kind of Jew

All of Tevye's life, it seemed like he was always saying good-bye. Back in the old country, what now seemed like lifetimes ago, his...

Title: Harry Fischel: Pioneer of Jewish Philanthropy: Forty Years of Struggle for a Principle...

The Jewish people have been blessed with a plethora of biographies and memoirs about our rabbis, educators, philanthropists and community leaders. Unfortunately, many that were published in previous generations have been lost to history, and the impacts that many noteworthy individuals had on our people have been largely forgotten.

Tevye in the Promised Land, Chapter Twenty-Two: A Visit to the Yeshiva

 Not only was Tevye's family going to be together, they were going to be rich! The Baron's gift of 5000 francs would make...

Title: Lexical Studies in the Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Inscriptions: The Collected Essays...

This excellent, delightful and lucid collection represents some of the best in academic research. Philological, lexicographical, linguistic, epigraphical, cultural, mythological, ritualistic, and historical knowledge are informed by virtuosity in comparative ancient Semitic languages. These erudite studies by the high-powered academic scholarship of Hayim Tawil – a professor of Hebrew languages and literature at Yeshiva University – shed light on Biblical Hebrew, the whole field of Ancient Near Eastern studies, medieval exegetical traditions, and the reception history of the Biblical text from antiquity to the present day.

Title: The Rarest Blue

I’ve always had an interest in the intersect between halacha, history, and archaeology. It is this interest that led me to research and write about the status of Purim in modern-day Israeli cities that are adjacent to ancient cities that had a wall around them in the days of Yehoshua Bin Nun. I concluded, in regards to Beit Shemesh at least, that there is much merit in observing a second day of Purim, on the 15th of Adar.

Title: Between 10 and 5 with Dad – Keeping the Fifth Commandment

No one likes to dwell about loss, or delve into the nitty-gritty issues and emotions that come along with losing a loving parent to a horrible illness. However life happens, and the sad truth is that many people every day lose parents to illness or age. It's the facts of life.

Title: Lilmod Ulelamed

In my weekly Jewish Press column, “Dear Dr. Yael,” I occasionally recommend books that will enhance shalom bayis, parenting skills and the quality of the Shabbos table. Lilmod Ulelamed, eloquently written by Rabbi Mordechai Katz, is a newly revised and expanded version of the original that was published by Feldheim Publishers in 1978. It is a book that can truly improve your Shabbos table.

Tevye in the Promised Land, Chapter Twenty-One: Reunion

The journey from Zichron Yaacov to Jaffa took almost three days. For Tevye, it was a chance to see another part of the Land...

Tevye in the Promised Land, Chapter Twenty: Zichron Ya’acov

With the birth of Hodel's baby, the time had come for Tevye to journey onward. Family was a matter of tantamount importance, but a Jew had an even higher allegiance to God. Had not the Almighty warned that life in the Holy Land must be lived according to the commandments of the Torah? That meant observing the laws of the Sabbath and the holidays, eating kosher food, donning tallit and tefillin, guarding the treasures of marital purity, and observing all of the six-hundred and thirteen commandments – most of which were flagrantly ignored by the young pioneers on the kibbutz.

Tevye in the Promised Land, Chapter Nineteen: A Trail of Tomatoes

The indefatigable woodchopper, Goliath, provided the posts and slats for the fence which the settlers began erecting around the kibbutz. Ben Zion adamantly opposed the idea, claiming a fence would turn the settlement into a ghetto and curtail any further expansion.

Title: One Shot

ne Shot, authored by M. Wiseman, is an emotional drama that focuses on issues faced by some teens nowadays. In Suburbia, U.S.A., lived three extraordinary young men, Baruch, Nadav and Rafi. Nadav and Rafi have been friends forever, and Baruch joins the crew in his later teens. Pain is the bond that brings the threesome together. Baruch and Nadav have emotional pain and Rafi suffers from a physical pain; he discovered that he had advanced-stage cancer. The cancer was serious – too serious for the doctors, so they eventually stopped treating him.

Title: Not My Kind? I Don’t Mind!

When the Fine family (not related to the Feiners from Alone in Africa!) move into a new neighborhood, the twin siblings named Nesanel (again, not related to Nesanel Feiner) and Nechama set out on a very important mission – finding friends to rescue them from their boredom.

Title: Alone in Africa

Alone in Africa, by Avigail Sharer, is an original adventure story about three siblings named Nesanel, Penina and Chezky Feiner, who are, well, alone in Africa. Except they aren't entirely alone – they have animals and two battling African tribes to keep them company.

Tevye in the Promised Land, Chapter Eighteen: Peace in the Middle East

The emergency bell clanged throughout the valley of the Shoshana kibbutz. Workers who were building the first stone edifice on the settlement put down their chisels and masonry tools. Field hands set aside their scythes and their sickles and started back toward the compound of mud and wood dwellings. Within minutes, all of the settlers sat crowded together on the benches in the dining hall. With great indignation, Ben Zion related how the Arabs had ambushed them at the well and stolen his horse and two rifles. He demanded that a small force be organized immediately and set off in retaliation.

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Printed from: https://www.jewishpress.com/sections/books/the-book-shelf/tevye-in-the-promised-land-books/tevye-in-the-promised-land-chapter-thirty-one-hevedke-the-jew/2013/03/19/

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