I usually prefer novels to short stories. It’s extremely difficult to create interesting characters and an absorbing plot in just a few pages. I often find myself feeling dissatisfied – wanting to know more or wishing the stories had a real beginning and ending. Fortunately, some writers…
The range of books about World War II and the Holocaust allows readers with very different interests to learn something new about what occurred before, during and after the war. Take two recent books: “A Bookshop in Berlin” by Francoise Frenkel (Atria Books) and “Citizen 865: The Hunt …
It was a dream of visiting his childhood home in Mexico that started Ilan Stavans on his journey through Latin America – a journey that included visits to the U.S. and Israel to learn more about Latino Jews. In his book “The Seventh Heaven: Travels Through Jewish Latin America” (Univer…
The Oral Torah (which contains the Mishnah and Talmud) is said to have been given to Moses at Sinai with the Written Torah. The actual process was far more complicated as David C. Kraemer, a professor of Talmud and rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary, notes in “A History of the Ta…
