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      • November 2018

        It's burning. Mordechai Gebirtig, the father of Yiddish Song

        Es brennt. Mordechai Gebirtig, Vater des jiddischen Liedes

        by Uwe von Seltmann

        This is the first biography of Yiddish poet and songwriter Mordechai Gebirtig (1877–1942) in the past twenty years, in addition, the first in German and, in the case of a translation, the very first in English. It’s burning is a comprehensive book based on the latest knowledge about this icon of Yiddish culture and chronicler of the Shoah, full of important new discoveries. In addition to Gebirtig’s life and work, this biography covers a wide range of topics – from the Yiddish language to the city of Krakow and East Jewish music, culture and history. It is richly illustrated with more than 200 photographs, facsimiles and time-related documents.

      • February 2018

        The White Crucifixion - A novel about Marc Chagall

        by Michael Dean

        The White Crucifixion starts with Chagall’s difficult birth in Vitebsk 1887, in the present-day Belarus, and tells the surprising story of how the eldest son of a herring schlepper became enrolled in art school where he quickly gained a reputation as ‘Moyshe, the painting wonder’. The novel paints a vivid picture of a Russian town divided by belief and wealth, rumours of pogroms never far away, yet bustling with talented young artists.   In 1913 Chagall relished the opportunity to move to Paris to take up residence in the artist colony ‘The Hive’ (La Ruche). The Yiddish-speaking artists (École Juive) living there were all poor. The Hive had no electric light or running water and yet many of its artists were to become famous, among them Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine and Osip Zadkine. The novel vividly portrays the dynamics of an artist colony, its pettiness, friendships and the constant battle to find the peace and quiet to work.   In 1914 Chagall and his wife Bella made what was supposed to be a fleeting visit to his beloved Vitebsk, only to be trapped there by the outbreak of the First World War, the subsequent Russian revolution and the establishment of the communist regime, which was increasingly hostile towards artists like Chagall. Yet Chagall kept on painting, and the novel provides a fascinating account of what inspired some of his greatest work. He eventually managed to return to France, only to be thwarted by another world war, which proved disastrous for the people he knew in Vitebsk, the people in his paintings, including his uncle Neuch, the original ‘fiddler on the roof’. The White Crucifixion is a fictionalised account of the rollercoaster life in terrible times of one of the most enigmatic artists of the twentieth century.

      • January 2021

        Chasia's Enchantment

        Guided Meditation and Spoken Word Inspirations

        by Hilda Chasia Smith

        Drawing upon wisdom and teachings of the Torah, Pranayama yoga, and her own virtuosity for living a peaceful life, Hilda Chasia Smith's guided meditations and inspirational words take us on journeys of calmness and joy. From Pranayama come essences of breath, mindfulness, and inner peace. From teachings of the Torah and Kabbala come kindness, compassion, humility, and self-respect. These motifs work together with love to immerse us into the enchanted world of Hilda Chasia Smith. Follow links to a guided meditation at https://durvile.com/books/Chasias_Enchantment.html

      • Fiction

        Pathological States - a novel

        by Daniel Melnick

        Dr. Morris Weisberg is a distinguished sixty-year-old pathologist as well as an amateur violinist and classical music lover. The quixotic and troubled doctor discovers a disastrous instance of malpractice and a cover-up reaching to the office of the Director of his California hospital. During this year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Eichmann’s execution, and above-ground nuclear testing, Doctor Weisberg struggles to find a way to confront his own crisis. Morris and his wife, Sandra, were born in Europe near the start of the twentieth century, and each was brought to America at an early age. In 1962, the couple is living in suburbia, in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. They have two sons. Both are aspiring artists in their twenties, and one is straight, the other gay. As they test limits and act out their resentments, the household begins to fill with excesses, revelations, and rebellion. At work and at home, communication fails, brutal buried truths erupt, and Morris begins to descend into maddening depression. He seeks refuge in his love of classical music and in his California garden. His glassed-in lanai there offers him solace, a place – like Los Angeles itself – of pleasure and escape, which ends up being a haunted, alienated space. As Morris plummets, his struggle to keep affirming his faith in both science and music wavers. Dr. Weisberg becomes a powerfully moving, larger-than-life character – noble, destructive, and terrifying.

      • October 2020

        Leonard Cohen, The Untold Stories

        The Early Years, Volume One

        by Michael Posner

        Artist, poet, novelist, singer-songwriter, icon – there has never been a figure like Leonard Cohen. He was a truly international sensation, entertaining and inspiring the world with his art. From his groundbreaking and bestselling novels, Beautiful Losers and The Favourite Game, to timeless songs such as “Suzanne” and “Hallelujah,” Cohen is one of the world’s most cherished artists. His death in 2016 was felt around the world by the legion of fans and fellow artists who would miss his warmth, humor, intellect, and piercing insights.   Leonard Cohen, The Untold Stories follows the great man as he travels the globe developing his style and enigmatic character. This is the story of his early years, from boyhood in Montreal, university, and his growing career in to the 60s that took him to the world’s stage. It probes his public and private life, through the words of those who knew him best: his family and friends, colleagues and contemporaries, rivals, business partners, and his many lovers. From Montreal to Greece, London to Paris and New York, Cohen touched lives everywhere. It's also a snapshot of a golden era – the times that helped foster his talents and successes. In this revealing and entertaining first of three planned volumes, bestselling author and biographer Michael Posner draws on dozens of interviews to present a uniquely true and compelling portrait of Cohen – as if we’re right there beside him, overhearing a private conversation in a New York café.

      • December 2020

        Wild Visionary

        Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context

        by Golan Y. Moskowitz

        Wild Visionary reconsiders Maurice Sendak's life and work in the context of his experience as a Jewish gay man. Maurice (Moishe) Bernard Sendak (1928–2012) was a fierce, romantic, and shockingly funny truth seeker who intervened in modern literature and culture. Raising the stakes of children's books, Sendak painted childhood with the dark realism and wild imagination of his own sensitive "inner child," drawing on the queer and Yiddish sensibilities that shaped his singular voice.  Interweaving literary biography and cultural history, Golan Y. Moskowitz follows Sendak from his parents' Brooklyn home to spaces of creative growth and artistic vision—from neighborhood movie palaces to Hell's Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Fire Island, and the Connecticut country home he shared with Eugene Glynn, his partner of more than fifty years. Further, he analyzes Sendak's investment in the figure of the endangered child in symbolic relation to collective touchstones that impacted the artist's perspective—the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the AIDS crisis. Through a deep exploration of Sendak's picture books, interviews, and previously unstudied personal correspondence, Wild Visionary offers a sensitive portrait of the most beloved and enchanting picture-book artist of our time.

      • Literature & Literary Studies

        Meksikaner Temes/Temas Mexicanos

        Y nos convertimos en migrantes

        by Moises Rubinstein Badash

        MEKSIKANER TEMES.Admiration and attachment for the new homeland, receptive and poetical, isMeksikaner Temes –Temas mexicanos-- text of Moisés Rubinstein Badash .Written no long after his arrival to the new land, from the now a days Bielorus, theautor absorbes with a Sharp and loving look, the contrasts of the country. Hediscovers the Mexico of the 30’s and the 40’s of past century, as a caressing andsimultaneously agressive; he signalizes the paradox of its enormous wealth andits luxuriant and desastrous poverty. A new homeland powerful andsimultaneously miserable.Rubinstein Badash writes in yiddish, the milenarist lenguage of the askenazi jews,the lenguaje close to their feelings. In yiddish he describes the fascination of thenew comers, dazzles by the “splendor of a pair of beatiful black eyes, of a heartfull of kindness, and infinite desires to live”. With talent and humor, the autorshares variable anecdotes about the streets of Mexico city, its colorfulness, itsmusic, about its inhabitants and its polititian. He even shows deep admiration forPresident Cárdenas.Now a days, in the whole world we witness waves of massive migration, rejectedand vexation, is enriching to witness the gratefullness of the migrants of the past,which arrived to Mexico, and being respected their desires and believes. Thelanguage barrier caused of the scarcity of publication, who may show theimpression of the first generations of mexican jews.. Today, thanks the acurrateand precise translation from yiddish tu spanish, yhe multi- awarded poet, writer andjournalist Becky Rubinstein , we can access this fascinating text, published byEdiciones del Lirio. Shulamit Goldsmit   MEKSIKANER TEMES. Admiración y amor por la nueva patria es lo que destila, de manera abierta ypoética, el texto de Moisés Rubinstein Badash en su libro Meksikaner Temes(Temas mexicanos). Escrito a poco tiempo de haber arribado a esta nueva tierra,desde la hoy Bielorrusia, el autor absorbe con mirada aguda y amorosa loscontrastes del país. Percibe al México de los años 30 y 40 del siglo xx como una nación acariciadora y agresiva; señala la paradoja de sus enormes riquezas y suapabullante pobreza. Una nueva patria poderosa y miserable a la vez.Rubinstein Badash escribe en idish, el idioma milenario de los judiosashkenazis; lalengua que le es cercana y en la que se siente capaz de volcar sus sentimientos. Enidish describe la fascinación de muchos de los recién llegados, deslumbrados por elfulgor esplendoroso de unos ojazos negros, de un corazón colmado de bondades ycon infinitas ganas de vivir. Con talento y humor, el autor relata anécdotas diversassobre las calles de la Ciudad de México, su colorido, su música, sobre sus habitantesy sus gobernantes. Muestra abiertamente su admiración por el presidente Cárdenas.Actualmente, que en el mundo entero se vive una oleada de migraciones masivas,rechazadas y vejadas, resulta enriquecedor escuchar el reconocimiento de aquellosque llegaron a un México receptor y respetuoso de sus anhelos y creencias. Labarrera del idioma ha sido causante de la escasez de publicaciones de muestren allector mexicano la impresión que aquel país en ciernes causó a las primerasgeneraciones de judíos mexicanos. Hoy, gracias a la atinada y feliz traducción quehace del idish al español la multipremiada poeta, escritora y periodista BeckyRubinstein, tenemos a nuestro alcance este entrañable texto, publicado porEdiciones del Lirio. Shulamit Goldsmit

      • December 2012

        Yip Harburg

        Legendary Lyricist and Human Rights Activist

        by Harriet Hyman Alonso

        A new interview-based biography of The Wizard of Oz lyricist

      • Biography & True Stories
        July 2012

        Lunch with Charlotte

        by Leon Berger

        NEW 2ND EDITION WITH PHOTO ARCHIVETHE TRUE SAGA OF AN EXTRAORDINARY WOMAN, SET AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF HISTORYEvery Friday for the last 25 years of her life, I had lunch with Charlotte and each week she told me more of her extraordinary story. To all appearances, she was a strong and dignified survivor, with old-world courtesies, a twinkling sense of humor, and a lilting Austrian syntax.Yet deep within, she'd been scarred by a profound personal trauma. Finally, just before she died at the age of 91, she chose to entrust me with this profound secret and all at once I understood how it had affected her entire adult life.

      • Biography & True Stories
        February 2024

        Those Absent

        On the Great Hungarian Plain

        by Jill Culiner

        A Hungarian village on the Great Plain: a microcosm reflecting this country's history from early tribal invasion to Soviet subordination to European Community membership. Here, peasants, herders, party girls, former Nazis and lapsed communists share gossip as well as love stories; and unscrupulous leaders, totalitarian or freely elected, decide behaviour.   Like a fly in amber, this is a moment captured of a time and a place under peaceful upheaval. The old ways are vanishing. But what is being lost and what is remaining only slowly comes clear.   Celebrated photographer and author, Jill Culiner, spends years of her life there, chronicling these changes, learning the language and buying property. She is as committed as any. She weaves her own story with the story of that community and the history of living on the edge of the Great Hungarian Plain.   It's a raw story, honestly told, of a people crisscrossed with violence and hatreds, loves and escapes. There remains one constant: hatred of the long-vanished rural Jew.

      • May 2012

        Always in Trouble

        An Oral History of ESP-Disk, the Most Outrageous Record Label in America

        by Jason Weiss

        You never heard such sounds in your life

      • Fiction

        Stealing

        A Novel in Dreams

        by Shelly Brivic

        Two Jewish brothers growing up in the 1950s Bronx navigate a toxic home environment headed by an emotionally abusive father and an unhappy mother. One brother eventually finds escape through academic achievement and a new life on the west coast, while the other brother remains entangled in the darkness of his existence, his life and mind slowly unraveling. By presenting the conscious and unconscious connections between family members, this experimental novel explores the concept of individuality, the psychological influences of family, and the very nature of reality.

      • Fiction
        April 2011

        Acts of Terror and Contrition

        a nuclear fable and eight stories

        by Daniel Melnick

        ACTS OF TERROR AND CONTRITION) is both a political novella about Israel and a literary thriller telling the unofficial story of Israeli responses to Saddam Hussein’s missile attacks during the 1990-1 Iraq War – and the possibility that his missiles might carry nuclear warheads “to burn Israel to the ground,” as Tarik Aziz said then. This “nuclear fable” presents the secret history of the Mossad Special Operations Chief’s covert threats to force world governments to face what is at stake should Iraq have launched a nuclear attack. Desperate and unyielding in the face of Saddam’s threat, the Chief, Arie Schneider, puts a renegade plan into place, even as he confronts the machinations of the deeply-divided Israeli government. Shadowing all this is the presence of the first Intifada, an Arab mother, and particularly her Islamist son, who plots his own act of terror. Enmeshed in the nuclear crisis, Arie must yet face his troubled wife, their two children, and above all his father, Rami, a holocaust survivor and retired diplomat. In opposition to the extremity of Arie’s plan, the old man summonses all his wisdom and his wily, struggling will to confront his son (in an echo of the biblical sacrifice of Isaac). Accompanying the novella are 8 STORIES OF THE EIGHTIES: In “Einstein’s Sorrow,” the first story after the novella, a wry secular Jewish owner of a New York toy company is visited one night in 1980 (the great physicist’s centennial year) by the spirit of the genius, and together the two Jews mourn the development of the nuclear bomb. In “Your Name is Hiroshima,” set in the mid-eighties, a young professor creates a haunted poem in response to the film “Hiroshima, Mon Amour,” as he faces the needs of wife, mentor, department chair, during a visit to campus by a famed Russian poet. The third and fourth stories are told by two elderly characters – an Armenian-American in “Taste of the Sun” and, in “Contrapuntal Piece,” the Greek widow of the eminent German-Jewish expatriate pianist from Hungry Generations; each character seeks the clarity to go on in the face of maddening infirmities and the incomprehension of others. In the fifth story “Before the Revolution,” a former political activist takes his family on a European vacation in 1984, and on an Italian train he faces his youthful double, a fiery student anarchist. The final three stories in Terror and Contrition chronicle the life of Joe Mubar, a Syrian-Italian American artist. “Triptych” tells his story over 30 years from his abused childhood, through his youthful wildness, to his struggle to find his balance in marriage. The second story – “Odalisque” – presents Joe, after divorce, in his sexual collision with a woman in the college town where he teaches art. “The Fall of the Berlin Wall” – the third story in the trilogy – portrays a last chance Mubar has to break the cycle of failed communication and to right himself as a father to his teen-aged son in the America of 1989.

      • Children's & YA
        October 2020

        Maurice and His Dictionary

        A True Story

        by Cary Fagan, Enzo Lord Mariano

        This is the story of one refugee family’s harrowing journey, based on author Cary Fagan’s own family history. The graphic novel follows a young Jewish boy, Maurice, and his family as they flee their home in Belgium during the Second World War. They travel by train to Paris, through Spain to Portugal, and finally across the ocean to Jamaica, where they settle in an internment camp. All the while, Maurice is intent on continuing his education and growing up to be a lawyer. He overcomes obstacles to find a professor to study with, works toward a high school diploma while in the camp, and is ultimately accepted to university in Canada. His English dictionary becomes a beloved tool and beacon of hope through the danger and turmoil of the family’s migration. Moments of lightness and humor balance the darkness in this powerful story of one refugee family’s courage and resilience, and of the dictionary that came to represent their freedom.

      • How I saved Einstein's Life

        by Cornelia Franz and Petra Baan (ill)

        It’s shortly before midnight on February 28, 2020, and Emily is on board the Queen Mary 2, sailing toward New York.  Tomorrow is her 12th birthday and the ocean crossing is her birthday present. Suddenly, she finds herself in an entirely new place and time -- on board a refugee ship in the year 1913! The same happens to Lorenzo and Malik, who have made this trip before.  They relate the news that after the ship arrives in New York,  a fire will break out, killing and injuring many on board.  They must prevent this catastrophe!  Somehow they have to find a way to travel back in time.  If there’s anyone that can help, it’s Albert Einstein. A suspenseful  adventure story that looks back in time to 1913, when many German citizens left everything behind to start a new life in a foreign land.

      • Health & Personal Development
        October 2020

        BINGE AND SPRINT: AN ORTHODOX JEW’S JOURNEY FROM ENDLESS CAKE TO RECOVERY

        by Naomi Joseph

        Binge eating affects 2.8 million people in America alone… and that is just the people not in hiding! As the author of Binge and Sprint: An Orthodox Jew's Journey from Endless Cake to Recovery, Joseph suffered for many decades with this affliction and until now, no one has written THE book that sheds a highly reflective, personal and honest view on this troubling addiction.  She is also the first Orthodox Jewish Woman to talk about this topic in how it is interwoven in positive  and negative ways for the binge eater.  Readers will enjoy entry into a world that they know little about, while also commiserating no matter what their faith in this war with food. The interest in the Orthodox community is evident by the success of  Unorthodox on Netflix.   Joseph is committed to serving her audience with speaking around the world on this topic, and has an extensive book proposal as well as a completed manuscript. She has potential audiences that number over 7 million in reach with my professional, education, religious and MLM affiliations.

      • January 2014

        Endarkenment

        Selected Poems

        by Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, edited by Eugene Ostashevsky, Lyn Hejinian

        Major collection by a contemporary Russian avant-garde master

      • The Holocaust
        October 2017

        The Vél d'Hiv Raid

        The French Police at the Service of the Gestapo

        by Maurice Rajsfus; translated by Levi Laub; foreword by Michel Warschawski

        With passion and indignation, Maurice Rajsfus recounts the worst single crime of the Vichy regime in France: the pre-dawn arrest by French police, at German instigation, on July 16-17, 1942, of 13,152 Jewish men, women, and children, and their ordeal on the way to extermination. Rajsfus brings this terrible experience to life with contemporary texts – high-level Franco-German haggling, detailed police instructions, eye-witness testimony, and press commentary. – Robert O. Paxton, author of Vichy France and the Jews   This uniquely detailed study of the July 16, 1942 roundup offers the only contemporary analysis of both the precursors and the aftermath of the Vél d’Hiv Raid. Rajsfus details the internal organization of the police, showing the mechanisms of this raid particularly and of raids in general, making the book an indispensable micro-history of the Holocaust. Notably, as the author points out, the French police went beyond Nazi ordinances and took it upon themselves to arrest and imprison more than 13,000 Jews at the Vélodrome d’Hiver. This book flies in the face of right-wing politicians who today continue to deny the crime was a French one.

      • Food & Drink
        September 2018

        Brick Lane Cookbook

        by Dina Begum

        Brick Lane is famous for many things: for being home to the biggest Bangladeshi community in the UK, for its curry houses and Bengali sweet shops, for its graffiti, its long-running market and its beigel shops. Now, its also increasingly well known for its thriving art and fashion scene and the incredible street food available there. Dina Begum has been a regular visitor since she was a little girl eating lamb kofta rolls with her dad at the Sweet & Spicy cafe. In her first book, she celebrates Brick Lane's diverse food cultures: from the homestyle Bangladeshi curries she grew up eating to her own luscious and indulgent cakes, from Chinese-style burgers to classic Buffalo wings, from smoothie bowls to raw coffee brownies. With contributions from street food traders and restaurants including Gram Bangla, Beigel Bake, Blanchette, Chez Elles, St Sugar of London, Cafe 1001 and Moo Cantina, the Brick Lane Cookbook is a culinary map of the East End's tastiest street and a snapshot of London at its authentic, multi-cultural best.

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