JEWISH READING – A Journey from OY to JOY – frequently in the same book!

OY!  Is suffering part of the Jewish Experience? – You betcha!

JOY! Is joy part of the Jewish Experience? – You betcha!

What better way to capture all the Oy and Joy than through reading a diverse selection of Jewish books? The Fauquier Jewish Congregation, my congregation, has an active book club. Some people cycle in and out depending on how busy their lives are.  We’ve shared friendship, many meals and LOTS of books over the past five years. This summer, (and the rest of the year) why not sample books on Jewish themes, Jewish experiences, Jewish history, or Jewish love stories? There are novels that read like history and history books that read like fiction.  Memoirs of Jews in far away places like India, Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Hungary, Argentina, England, Maine, Germany, France, Spain and Virginia tell stories that couldn’t be made up!

How can you up your Jewish I.Q.?  Literature and history are two of the easiest and most satisfying ways.  I hope you will take a look at some of what we have read.  There is only one “stinker” in the list: “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean,” but we should have seen that one coming! Some of our favorite fun reads were “SAVE THE DELI” and “OUTWITTING HISTORY” and some of the most poignant, “THE INVISIBLE WALL”, “THE GIRL FROM FOREIGN” and “MY FATHER’S PARADISE.”  “START UP NATION,” about Israel’s economic ingenuity, was a big hit, as was “THE GREAT ESCAPE,” a story of nine Hungarian scientists who escaped to the US and changed the face of American physics and science. “THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION” was FABULOUS and INNOVATIVE… and best “read” as an audio book due to the fine characterizations of the reader.

Our next two reads for July and August are: “RAQUELA: A WOMAN OF ISRAEL” by Ruth Gruber and “THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE” by Julie Orringer.

RAQUELA: A WOMAN OF ISRAEL - A National Jewish Book Award–winning biography: A fascinating look at the early years of Israel’s statehood, experienced through the life of a pioneering nurse. During her extraordinary career, nurse Raquela Prywes was a witness to history. She delivered babies in a Holocaust refugee camp and on the Israeli frontier. She crossed minefields to aid injured soldiers in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, and organized hospitals to save the lives of those fighting the 1967 Six-Day War. Along the way her own life was a series of triumphs and tragedies mirroring those of the newly formed Jewish state.

THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE - Paris 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian-Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he promised to deliver. But when he falls into a complicated relationship with the letter's recipient, he becomes privy to a secret that will alter the course of his—and his family’s history.

Here is a partial list of our reading from the past five  years. Enjoy your summer reading, and don’t forget the sunblock!

1.    A Woman in Jerusalem – A.B. Yehoshua

2.    Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People – Jon Entine

3.    Betraying Spinoza – Rebecca Goldstein

4.     Everything is Illuminated: A Novel - Jonathan Safron Foer

5.    In the Garden of the Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin – Erik Larson

6.    Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved out an Empire in the New World – Edward Kritzler

7.    Leeway Cottage: A novel – Beth Gutcheon

8.    Lest Innocent Blood be Shed – Philip Hallie

9.    Miriam’s Kitchen – Elizabeth Ehrlich

10. My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Family’s Past – Ariel Sabar

11. Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout

12. Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books – Aaron Lansky

13. Raquela: A Woman of Israel – Ruth Gruber

14. Rashi’s Daughter: A Novel of Love and the Talmud in Medieval France – Maggie Anton

15. Sarah’s Key – Tatiana de Rosnay

16. Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen - David Sax

17. Saving Monticello: The Levy Family’s Epic Quest to Rescue the House that Jefferson Built – Marc Leepson

18. Start Up Nation: The History of Israel’s Economic Miracle – Dan Senor and Saul Singer

19. The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible – Matti Friedman

20. The Bee Season – Myla Goldberg

21. The Book Thief – Markus Zisak

22. The Girl from Foreign: A Memoir - Sadia Shepard

23. The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler & Changed the World – Kati Marton

24. The Hare with the Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance – Edmund de Waal

25. The Invisible Bridge – Julie Orringer

26. The Invisible Wall: A Love Story that Broke Barriers – Harry Bernstein

27. The Jew Store – Stella Suberman

28. The Last Jew – by Noah Gordan

29. The Last Secret of the Temple – Paul Sussman

30. The Man in the While Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World – Lucette Lagnado

31. The Ministry of Special Cases – Nathan Englander

32. The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life – Tom Reiss

33. The Seventh Telling: The Kabbalah of Moshe Katan – Mitchell Chefitz

34. The Virginia Plan: William Thalhimer and a Rescue from Nazi Germany -Robert Gillette

35. The World to Come – Dara Horn

36. The Year of Living Biblically – A.J. Jacobs

37. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Michael Chabon

38. This is My God – Herman Wouk

39. Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport & Growing Up English  - Edith Milton

     Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Rose