When They Come for Us, We?ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle To Save Soviet Jewry By Gal Beckerman Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 608 pages, $30 It is easy enough to understand why Gal Beckerman chose the somewhat melodramatic title, ?When They Come for Us, We?ll be Gone,? for his masterful and highly readable history of the…
Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends By Tom Segev Doubleday, 448 pages, $32.50 When I was contributing to Simon Wiesenthal?s obituary in 2005 for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, I learned something that surprised me: The legendary Nazi-hunter didn?t personally hunt down a lot of Nazis. Sure, Wiesenthal helped capture some Nazis and their collaborators, and…
To the End of the Land By David Grossman. Alfred A. Knopf, 582 pages, $27.95 There is a moment in David Grossman?s novel, ?See Under: Love,? when an Israeli son of Holocaust survivors gazes at his own sleeping child and remarks to his beaming wife: ??It?s a good thing he can sleep through all the…
Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt By Robert Gottlieb Yale University Press, 233 pages, $25 Robert Gottlieb?s biography of Sarah Bernhardt is the first volume in ?Jewish Lives,? a ?major new series? being offered by Yale University Press. But in what sense did this most legendary of actresses live a Jewish life? Her mother was…
This fall marks the 55th anniversary of the publication of Herman Wouk?s ?Marjorie Morningstar,? the novel that at its height ? what The Nation called the ?Age of Wouk? ? sold more copies than any American novel since ?Gone With the Wind.? ” photo-credit=”Image by EVELYN ROTZ (9/19/1924 – 9/6/2010) B??H,? BARA SAPIR” src=”https://images.forwardcdn.com/image/675x/center/images/cropped/grandma2-091510-1425715955.jpg”] ?Marjorie,?…
Orthodox by design By Jeremy Stolow University of California Press, 288 pages, $41.95 Despite the much-touted death of the physical book, the Orthodox Jewish publishing industry is booming. Perhaps because of the prohibition against using electricity on holidays or on the Sabbath, the ?ArtScroll revolution? is well under way. ?Orthodox by Design? by Jeremy Stolow…
Crossposted From Under The Fig Tree For centuries, taking to the road has been the stuff of grand adventure and equally grand literature. From Benjamin of Tudela’s 12th century “Book of Travels” to Jack Kerouac’s 1957 “On the Road,” travel has been bound up with freedom and an enhanced sense of self. But what if…
It seems obvious to note that Jesus — like Don Juan, Oedipus and Count Dracula — has a cultural life having little to do with his original narrative. Although it is now widely believed that he did exist, Jesus is so buried in centuries of Christian tradition that in 1906 Albert Schweitzer declared the search…
Uri Fink, who 30 years ago created Israel’s first superhero, in the form of Sabraman, has a theory about why comic book superheroes have caught on only in America. “It’s naive just thinking people will go out and fight the bad guys out of the goodness of their hearts,” he told the Forward. “It’s Americans’…
Last night, Susan Shapiro’s latest novel, “Overexposed” (St. Martins, August 2010), was “Book Mitzvahed” in an elaborate and touching candle lighting ceremony at Greenwich Village’s Arte Restaurant. A hilarious book about the intertwined lives of two women who are battling big-city ambitions, “Overexposed” took 13 years to be published. In the interim, Shapiro published successful…
Today, the name of pioneering advertising executive Albert Lasker is mostly associated with the Lasker Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports medical research. But as a forthcoming biography by Jeffrey Cruikshank and Arthur Schultz points out, Lasker himself was more likely to self-identify as a “propagandist” than as a philanthropist. “The Man Who Sold America:…
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