The stirring sound of the shofar, munching on a bagel and cream cheese sandwich, passing windows with lit menorahs, and spotting a kippah in an unexpected place... There are so many reasons to celebrate Jewish life.The popular Instagram series, That Jewish Moment, has earned the affection of thousands of Jews of all ages, backgrounds, and parts of the globe. They unite by the vivid and heartfelt images of moments in Jewish life. As the readers turn the bright pages in this book, feelings of nostalgia, excitement, and pride will fill their hearts.This collection contains over 250 original illustrations and captions featuring the special Jewish moments in life, along with behind the scenes stories, interactive activities, and a bunch of never-been-seen-before drawings. Welcome to That Jewish Moment.
Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living. Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture—and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks—Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present. Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life—trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study—to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past—making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD AND THE JEWISH FICTION AWARD FROM THE ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH LIBRARIES GOOD MORNING AMERICA MUST READ NEW BOOKS * NEW YORK POST BUZZ BOOKS * THE MILLIONS MOST ANTICIPATED A remarkable debut novel—written with the fearless imagination of Michael Chabon and the piercing humor of Gary Shteyngart—about a small Jewish village in the Polish forest that is so secluded no one knows it exists . . . until now. What if there was a town that history missed? For decades, the tiny Jewish shtetl of Kreskol existed in happy isolation, virtually untouched and unchanged. Spared by the Holocaust and the Cold War, its residents enjoyed remarkable peace. It missed out on cars, and electricity, and the internet, and indoor plumbing. But when a marriage dispute spins out of control, the whole town comes crashing into the twenty-first century. Pesha Lindauer, who has just suffered an ugly, acrimonious divorce, suddenly disappears. A day later, her husband goes after her, setting off a panic among the town elders. They send a woefully unprepared outcast named Yankel Lewinkopf out into the wider world to alert the Polish authorities. Venturing beyond the remote safety of Kreskol, Yankel is confronted by the beauty and the ravages of the modern-day outside world – and his reception is met with a confusing mix of disbelief, condescension, and unexpected kindness. When the truth eventually surfaces, his story and the existence of Kreskol make headlines nationwide. Returning Yankel to Kreskol, the Polish government plans to reintegrate the town that time forgot. Yet in doing so, the devious origins of its disappearance come to the light. And what has become of the mystery of Pesha and her former husband? Divided between those embracing change and those clinging to its old world ways, the people of Kreskol will have to find a way to come together . . . or risk their village disappearing for good.
Bob Mankoff grew up Jewish in Queens, NY in the 1950s and 1960s. As a kid, he visited the Borscht Belt and reveled in the hilarious performances of some of the best Jewish comedians such as Jerry Lewis, Buddy Hackett, and Rodney Dangerfield, among others. These early experiences helped shape Mankoff's view of life and led him to become a creative master practitioner of humor and cartoons. He started his career unexpectedly by quitting a Ph.D. program in experimental psychology at The City University of New York in 1974 and submitting his cartoons to the New Yorker. Three years and over 2,000 cartoons later, he finally made the magazine and has since published over 950 cartoons. He has devoted his life to discovering just what makes us laugh and seeks every outlet to do so, from developing The New Yorker's web presence to founding The Cartoon Bank, a business devoted to licensing cartoons for use in newsletters, textbooks, magazines and other media. In this new book, Have I Got a Cartoon for You! this successful cartoonist, speaker and author, presents his favorite Jewish cartoons. In his foreword to this entertaining collection, Mankoff shows how his Jewish heritage helped him to become a successful cartoonist, examines the place of cartoons in the vibrant history of Jewish humor, and plumbs Jewish thought, wisdom and shtik for humorous insights. Mankoff has written: "I always think that it's strange that the Jews, The People of the Book, eventually became much better known as The People of the Joke. Strange because laughter in the Old Testament is not a good thing: When God laughs, you're toast. If you say, 'Stop me if you've heard this one, ' he does for good." A major influence on his cartoons about religion derives from Jewish culture's disputatiousness, the questioning everything just for the hell of it and then the questioning of the questioning to be even more annoying. He recalls: "When, I was first dating my wife, who is not Jewish, we once were having what I thought was an ordinary conversation and she said, 'Why are you arguing with me?' I replied, 'I'm not arguing, I'm Jewish.' I thought that was clever. She didn't. Some humor scholars claim this stems from the practice in the Talmud of pilpul, which Leo Rosten has described as 'unproductive hair-splitting that is employed not so much to radiate clarity ... as to display one's own cleverness.' I go along with that except I like to think that some clarity and cleverness are not mutually exclusive. Anyway, that's my aim in cartoons like these. Now, am I worried that these jokes will bring His wrath down upon me down with a bolt from the blue. Not really, but every time there's a thunderstorm, I hide in the cellar."
"Freedman's final book is a tour de force that examines the history of Jewish involvement in the decadent art movement. While decadent art's most notorious practitioner was Oscar Wilde, as a movement it spread through western Europe and even included a few adherents in Russia. Jewish writers and artists such as Catulle Mèndes, Gustav Kahn, and Simeon Solomon would portray non-stereotyped characters and produce highly influential works. After decadent art's peak, Walter Benjamin, Marcel Proust, and Sigmund Freud would take up the idiom of decadence and carry it with them during the cultural transition to modernism. Freedman expertly and elegantly takes readers through this transition and beyond, showing the lineage of Jewish decadence all the way through to the end of the twentieth century"--
In our frantic, fast paced society, we need constant guidance to remind us that we can only find the peace of mind we sorely lack by looking inward. Judaism, like many other spiritual traditions, offers a unique path to cultivating fulfillment and presence of mind. In cultivating peace of mind, we do not aim to achieve transcendence. Rather, our goal is to enter fully into whatever is occurring in our lives and meet it with full presence. But being a better Jew and a happier person are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they are mutually interdependent. From the moment we wake to the moment we fall asleep, biblical commandments provide us with guidelines that encourage us to be aware of the present moment. A Guide to Jewish Mindfulness provides concise and clear instructions on how to cultivate peace of mind in order to attain a life of greater commitment and inspiration for the present moment.
From the comic genius behind Curb Your Enthusiasm—a play with “a perfect second-act twist, and a solid last-minute kicker” (Vulture). Fish in the Dark marked Seinfeld co-creator Larry David’s playwriting debut, his Broadway debut—and his first time acting on stage since eighth grade. David starred as Norman Drexel, a man in his fifties who is average in most respects, except for his hyperactive libido. As Norman, his more successful brother Arthur, their elderly mother, and a host of other characters try to navigate the death of a loved one, old acquaintances and unsettled arguments resurface—with hilarious consequences.
