The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt

The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt
Author: Ruth Andrew Ellenson
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2006-07-25
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 1101099453

Twenty-eight of today’s top Jewish women writers tell the truth about all the things their rabbis warned them never to discuss in public in this hilarious and provocative collection. Includes original essays on: • Finding (and Divorcing) the Perfect Jewish Man • Not Calling Your Mother • Marrying a German • Failing to Supply Enough Grandchildren • Learning to RSVP No • And many other guilty pleasures... Includes pieces by: Elisa Albert, Aimee Bender, Jennifer Bleyer, Kera Bolonik, Rabbi Sharon Brous, Baz Dreisinger, Pearl Gluck, Rebecca Goldstein, Lori Gottlieb, Lauren Grodstein, Dara Horn, Molly Jong-Fast, Rachel Kadish, Jenna Kalinsky, Cynthia Kaplan, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Amy Klein, Daphne Merkin, Tova Mirvis, Gina Nahai, Katie Rophie, Francesca Segré, Wendy Shanker, Laurie Gwen Shapiro, Susan Shapiro, Ayelet Waldman, Rebecca Walker, Sheryl Zohn

The Girl on the Fridge

The Girl on the Fridge
Author: Etgar Keret
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780374531058

Collects early short stories by the Israeli author, on various topics including war, relationships, and aging.

Daughter of the Bride

Daughter of the Bride
Author: Francesca Segrè
Publisher:
Total Pages: 472
Release: 2006
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780786285945

When her mom calls to say she's getting married Daniella is both thrilled and devastated.

The Boston Girl

The Boston Girl
Author: Anita Diamant
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2014-12-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 143919937X

New York Times bestseller! An unforgettable novel about a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century, told “with humor and optimism…through the eyes of an irresistible heroine” (People)—from the acclaimed author of The Red Tent. Anita Diamant’s “vivid, affectionate portrait of American womanhood” (Los Angeles Times), follows the life of one woman, Addie Baum, through a period of dramatic change. Addie is The Boston Girl, the spirited daughter of an immigrant Jewish family, born in 1900 to parents who were unprepared for America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End of Boston, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie’s intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can’t imagine—a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, to finding the love of her life, eighty-five-year-old Addie recounts her adventures with humor and compassion for the naïve girl she once was. Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Diamant’s previous novels bestsellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman’s complicated life in twentieth century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world. “Diamant brings to life a piece of feminism’s forgotten history” (Good Housekeeping) in this “inspirational…page-turning portrait of immigrant life in the early twentieth century” (Booklist).

Russ & Daughters

Russ & Daughters
Author: Mark Russ Federman
Publisher: Schocken
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0805243119

The former owner/proprietor of the beloved appetizing store on Manhattan’s Lower East Side tells the delightful, mouthwatering story of an immigrant family’s journey from a pushcart in 1907 to “New York’s most hallowed shrine to the miracle of caviar, smoked salmon, ethereal herring, and silken chopped liver” (The New York Times Magazine). When Joel Russ started peddling herring from a barrel shortly after his arrival in America from Poland, he could not have imagined that he was giving birth to a gastronomic legend. Here is the story of this “Louvre of lox” (The Sunday Times, London): its humble beginnings, the struggle to keep it going during the Great Depression, the food rationing of World War II, the passing of the torch to the next generation as the flight from the Lower East Side was beginning, the heartbreaking years of neighborhood blight, and the almost miraculous renaissance of an area from which hundreds of other family-owned stores had fled. Filled with delightful anecdotes about how a ferociously hardworking family turned a passion for selling perfectly smoked and pickled fish into an institution with a devoted national clientele, Mark Russ Federman’s reminiscences combine a heartwarming and triumphant immigrant saga with a panoramic history of twentieth-century New York, a meditation on the creation and selling of gourmet food by a family that has mastered this art, and an enchanting behind-the-scenes look at four generations of people who are just a little bit crazy on the subject of fish. Color photographs © Matthew Hranek

The Book of Jewish Values

The Book of Jewish Values
Author: Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
Publisher: Harmony
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2011-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0307794458

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin combed the Bible, the Talmud, and the whole spectrum of Judaism's sacred writings to give us a manual on how to lead a decent, kind, and honest life in a morally complicated world. "An absolutely superb book: the most practical, most comprehensive guide to Jewish values I know." —Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People Telushkin speaks to the major ethical issues of our time, issues that have, of course, been around since the beginning. He offers one or two pages a day of pithy, wise, and easily accessible teachings designed to be put into immediate practice. The range of the book is as broad as life itself: • The first trait to seek in a spouse (Day 17) • When, if ever, lying is permitted (Days 71-73) • Why acting cheerfully is a requirement, not a choice (Day 39) • What children don't owe their parents (Day 128) • Whether Jews should donate their organs (Day 290) • An effective but expensive technique for curbing your anger (Day 156) • How to raise truthful children (Day 298) • What purchases are always forbidden (Day 3) In addition, Telushkin raises issues with ethical implications that may surprise you, such as the need to tip those whom you don't see (Day 109), the right thing to do when you hear an ambulance siren (Day 1), and why wasting time is a sin (Day 15). Whether he is telling us what Jewish tradition has to say about insider trading or about the relationship between employers and employees, he provides fresh inspiration and clear guidance for every day of our lives.

Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul Mate

Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul Mate
Author: Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2015-05-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1558618937

This novel “unflinchingly confronts the issue of Jewish continuity in a diverse and changing America” (Anne Roiphe, author and journalist). Feminist icon Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s second novel is the story of Zach Levy, the left-leaning son of Holocaust survivors who promises his mother on her deathbed that he will marry within the tribe and raise Jewish children. When he falls for Cleo Scott, an African American activist grappling with her own inherited trauma, he must reconcile his old vow to the family he loves with the present reality of the woman who may be his soul mate. A New York love story complicated by the legacies and modern tensions of Jewish American and African American history, Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul Mate explores what happens when the heart runs counter to politics, history, and the compelling weight of tradition. “A beautifully written and heartwarming masterpiece.” —Menachem Z. Rosensaft, founding chair of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors “Cleareyed, courageous.” —Kirkus Reviews

The New Jewish Wedding

The New Jewish Wedding
Author: Anita Diamant
Publisher: Scribner
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1985
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 9780671628826

Complete, authoritative, and indispensable, The New Jewish Wedding provides the couple with options--some new, some old--to create a wedding combining spiritual meaning and joyous celebration. Step-by-step, Diamant guides readers through planning the cermony and the party that follows--from finding a rabbi and wording the invitations to hiring a caterer.

The Jewish Daughter Diaries

The Jewish Daughter Diaries
Author: Rachel Ament
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2014-05-06
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 1402292600

Moms who impersonate their daughters on JDate. Moms who try to set their daughters up with celebrities. Moms who can't stop taking selfies with their dogs. Moms who make their daughters' beds while their daughters are still sleeping in the other half. This collection of 28 essays is a heartfelt, hilarious tribute to mom and daughterhood, exploring the often complex, colorful and (at times) claustrophobic relationship. The Jewish Daughter Diaries features stories from some of the most compelling Jewish female voices today, who sound off on what it is like to be loved and adored by a modern-day Jewish mom. Mayim Bialik: "My mother met my bewilderment with a sympathetic glance and a modest recounting of my assets as she saw them.... if Barbra Streisand could be so famous and amazing and wonderful with her nose, why should mine be any problem?" lliza Shlesinger: "I knew my mom was special because once I asked her, "If a witch turned me into a bug, what would you do? Without missing a beat, she said, "I'd put you in my pocket to keep you with me always." Also featuring: Lauren Greenberg, Sari Botton, Abby Sher, Kerry Cohen, Meredith Hoffa, Anna Breslaw, Chaya Kurtz, Iris Bahr, Jena Friedman, Rachel Shukert, Leonara Ariella Nonni Epstein, Jenny Jaffe, Lauren Yapalater, Rebecca Drysdale, Emmy Blotnik, Arianna Stern, Almie Rose, Nadine Friedman, Deb Margolin, Gaby Dunn, Wendy Liebman, Mireille Silcoff, Dylan Joffe, and Mara Altman. The stories in this collection will make you laugh, cry, panic—and finally, pick up the phone. For anyone who has ever been overloved, overprotected or overmothered, this collection will feel like home.