Company’s Coming and Company’s Going by Arthur Yorinks. Illustrated by David Small. Hyperion Books for Children, 1988 and 2001. Have you heard of Arthur Yorinks? If you don’t have children, perhaps not. In any case, let me take this opportunity to introduce you. Yorinks was born in 1953 ...
A Jewish Bestiary: A Book of Fabulous Creatures Drawn from Hebraic Legend and Lore, by Mark Podwal. Penn State University Press, 2021. In 1992, just before moving down to Murfreesboro to begin my tenure at MTSU, I happen to peruse a used bookstore and came upon Mark Podwal’s A Jewish Bestiary. ...
Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew, by Jeremy Dauber. Yale University Press, 2023. I have lost track of the number of times I’ve watched Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. I can recite numerous scenes verbatim, and my best friend from high school and I still have competitive quote-offs. I got ...
David Baddiel, Jews Don’t Count: How Identity Politics Failed One Particular Identity. HarperCollins, 2021. Last month, I reviewed Deborah Lipstadt’s Antisemitism: Here and Now, praising its accessibility and care for its audience’s sensibilities and commitments. This month, I take ...
Deborah Lipstadt, Antisemitism: Here and Now. Schocken, 2019. For the past few months, I’ve been sharing some enjoyable summer reads in my reviews, even as I have been playing catch-up on more serious tomes. As we head into a new year as Jews, I’ve been particularly seeking to deepen my understanding ...
Sara Berman’s Closet, by Maira Kalman and Alex Kalman. HarperCollins, 2018. Before discovering the short, poignant book of art and photographs entitled Sara Berman’s Closet, I’d never heard of Sara Berman. A quick internet search led me to two living Sara Bermans, one a British ...
Galford, Ellen. The Dyke and the Dybbuk (Seal Press, 1994) and Yiddish Lost and Found: Eavesdropping on the Ancestors (Amazon, 2015) Summer Reading means different things to different folks. As a university professor, I see summer as a time for both relaxation and research, for light and heavy reading ...