Hebrew
Exuberant is the right word for A.B. Yehoshua’s new novel, not only because of the story’s pile up of characters and events, but also for its prose.
I cannot recall reading any book about Jewish history that contains so many “Aha!” moments.
This canny writer is concerned with the kind of complicated family relationships that engaged his Jewish literary forebears.
Israeli Stage has opened its sixth season, which is dedicated exclusively to female playwrights, with a haunting work that examines the complicity of an ordinary German in the Holocaust.
This study is an attempt to “enter” a foreign way of thought and to study the “possibilities” and, by extension, “potential mindsets” of the human mind.
In his novel, Sayed Kashua paints such a vivid picture of modern Jerusalem that I found myself longing to see that city again; he also portrays a whole spectrum of Arab life in Israel — from the poor families visited by the social workers to the ambitious Arab mothers and their sometimes feckless sons — with empathy and humor.
As the year nears its end, time is running out to write at length about some of the new books that gave me pleasure. Thus this quick list of favorites. As usual, my taste runs to prose that’s off-the-beaten-path.
“Palaces of Time” is a exquisitely illustrated, elegantly written account of the history of Jewish calendars in early modern Europe, as well as a meditation on what they represented — profound reflections of the Jewish experience as it passed through time.
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