01/07/2022 12:42:56 PM
By Robin Jacobson, Library & Literary Programs Director
When it comes to Passover children’s books, you could cover a Seder table many times over with wonderful choices. Here are five favorites, a mix of new and older titles, starting with ones for the youngest Pesach celebrants.
Dayenu! A Favorite Passover Song by Miriam Latimer (age 1 and up, 2012)This exuberant sing-along board book presents four...Read more...
01/07/2022 12:42:19 PM
By Robin Jacobson, Library & Literary Programs Director
Inhabited for millennia, Israel sits atop layers upon layers of a rich, buried past – long irresistible to archeologists. For a lively, colorful history of archeological expeditions, read Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City by Andrew Lawler, an acclaimed science...Read more...
01/07/2022 12:35:09 PM
By Robin Jacobson, Library & Literary Programs Director
The Jewish book world is celebrating a bumper crop of excellent nonfiction picture books for children. My three personal favorites are: Dear Mr. Dickens by Nancy Churnin, The Singer and the Scientist by Lisa Rose (both for ages 5-10), and No Steps Behind: Beate Sirota Gordon’s Battle for Women’s Rights in Japan by Jeff Gottesfeld...Read more...
12/06/2021 12:13:26 PM
By Robin Jacobson, Library & Literary Programs Director
On Bloody Sunday – March 7, 1965 – Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel watched in horror as violent...Read more...
11/11/2021 01:47:48 PM
By Robin Jacobson, Library & Literary Programs Director
Two painted Japanese vases rest atop bookcases in my living room. According to family lore, my...Read more...
11/11/2021 01:17:24 PM
By Robin Jacobson, Library & Literary Programs Director
Two new novels, Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick and The Vixen by Francine Prose, are well worth reading, even if they leave you shaking your head. Antiquities is a charming comedy-drama, but it is hard to make sense of it. In contrast, Vixen is easy to understand, but the novel is an eclectic mash-up of genres and styles: a coming-of-age story, historical novel,...Read more...
08/19/2021 10:50:04 AM
By Robin Jacobson, Library & Literary Programs Director
In 1953, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg went to their deaths in New York’s infamous Sing Sing prison, convicted of...Read more...
08/19/2021 10:44:41 AM
By Robin Jacobson, Library & Literary Programs Director
To Edmund de Waal, world-renowned ceramic artist and award-winning author, art objects are never just objects. They carry...Read more...
07/06/2021 10:00:57 AM
By Robin Jacobson, Library & Literary Programs Director
If you catch yourself or see your child obsessively checking devices for texts or emails, or living much...Read more...
04/14/2021 01:29:33 PM
Anyone Out There?
By Robin Jacobson
The bestselling new science memoir, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth by Avi Loeb, probes a thrilling...Read more...
04/13/2021 02:54:30 PM
Shtetl Stories of Danger and Suspense
By Robin Jacobson
Tevye the Dairyman would fit right in among the rabbis, matchmakers, candlemakers, tailors, and other shtetl types...Read more...
03/02/2021 10:51:29 AM
Reading Geraldine Brooks in 2021
By Robin Jacobson
Like many, I’m a longtime fan of the historical novels of Geraldine Brooks – Year of Wonders, March, Caleb’s Crossing, People of...Read more...
01/27/2021 05:15:40 PM
The House We Inherit
By Robin Jacobson
As a child, learning in school about the American Civil War, I felt relieved that my family bore no guilt for...Read more...
12/30/2020 12:49:49 PM
Out of Egypt
By Robin Jacobson
To many Jewish families with memories of hard times, Meyerland in the 1970s was the Promised Land. This Jewish neighborhood in Houston, Texas, was home...Read more...
12/15/2020 10:32:51 AM
Reading Leviticus With Henry VIII
By Robin Jacobson
Soon the Torah cycle will come around again to Leviticus (Vayikra). After the dramatic stories of Genesis and Exodus, the litany of...Read more...
Read more... 11/11/2020 02:45:51 PM
Discovering a Lost World: The Cairo Genizah
By Robin Jacobson
While traveling in the Middle East in 1896, two wealthy, erudite Scottish sisters bought some antique manuscripts....Read more...
11/03/2020 01:05:25 PM
The Jewish Dynasties of Shanghai
By Robin Jacobson
The intertwined history of two Baghdadi Jewish families in China – the Sassoon and Kadoorie families – is the stuff of epic...Read more...
10/05/2020 03:05:32 PM
Mystery, Suspense, & Troublesome Texts
By Robin Jacobson
A fun suspense novel topped with a generous scoop of Jewish history is a winning combination, even if the history relates to the origins of dark anti-Jewish tropes. Here are two entertaining and informative reads: The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols by Nicholas Meyer...Read more...
09/04/2020 03:41:13 PM
Masada Backstories
By Robin Jacobson
Two thousand years ago, on a mountaintop overlooking the Dead Sea, 967 Jewish men, women, and children faced down the military might of the Roman empire. When defeat became certain, they chose to take their own lives rather than die at enemy hands or be enslaved. This is the defiant story of...Read more...
08/25/2020 10:40:56 AM
Building a Bridge
By Robin Jacobson
Goldie Goldbloom’s novel On Division is a rarity among books about the Hasidic world. Unlike many books on Hasidic life, it is not a bitter exposé by an ex-community member. Nor is it an admiring outsider’s romanticized view of an exotic culture. Instead Goldbloom, a Hasidic Jew writing from...Read more...
08/18/2020 11:20:09 AM
Finding Truth in Fiction: Recovering Lives Lost to History
By Robin Jacobson
The inspiration for Rachel Kadish’s captivating novel, The Weight of Ink, was a famous essay by Virginia Woolf. If William Shakespeare had an equally brilliant sister, Woolf claimed, she would have died without writing a word, a victim of severe social...Read more...
08/07/2020 01:13:21 PM
Novel Experiments
By Robin Jacobson
Every book browser knows that libraries and bookstores typically separate books broadly into fiction and non-fiction – fiction in these bookcases and non-fiction in the bookcases over there. But some adventurous authors, experimenting with new forms of narration and storytelling, write books that...Read more...
07/28/2020 01:40:18 PM
By Robin Jacobson
A perennial source of fascination to physicists, philosophers, and...Read more...
07/21/2020 03:20:11 PM
By Robin Jacobson
One day, anthropologist Maggie Paxson suddenly snapped. In the words of the classic American spiritual, she vowed to “study war no more.” Weary of...Read more...
07/15/2020 10:19:21 AM
A Salute to Adas Authors
By Robin Jacobson
At a time when stories of hope and fortitude feel essential, we are proud to present four inspiring new memoirs by Adas Israel members Judith Heumann, Esther Safran Foer, Sanford Greenberg, and Ron Hoffer (listed in order of publication). Read...Read more...
07/14/2020 05:15:23 PM
By Robin Jacobson
What to read during a pandemic? Since the Book of Psalms (Sefer Tehilim) is a traditional...Read more...
07/07/2020 05:23:10 PM
Always an Immigrant
By Robin Jacobson
As Moses might have said, “You can take the Jews out of Egypt, but you can’t take Egypt out of the Jews.” It is hard to shed a past life and homeland, even one of misery and persecution. This is the theme of two outstanding books by Jewish émigrés from the former Soviet Union: Savage...Read more...
06/23/2020 01:26:47 PM
By Robin Jacobson
Historical fiction inhabits the sweet spot between history and fiction. It lets us imagine living in a past historical moment and then returns us to our own time with new insights. For young readers (and for adventurous parents who are game for a “family book...Read more...
