Reviving Jewish Bibliophiles

Anyone interested in reviving this group and making it a place of discussion of Jewish books and bibliography?

Yes!

I’m in, except that I have had a rough year emotionally and don’t know I can handle any holocaust books right now even if beautifully written. I wonder if we could focus on other events. It seems that so many books about Jewish life are traumatic - with good reason! The challenge for me will be to find the others.

I am just reading Bad Rabbi:and Other Strange But True Stories from the Yiddish Press by Eddy Portnoy. Each chapter tells a story of bad behaviour written about in the Yiddish press in either New York or Warsaw. The chapters were originally in Tablet -the online magazine and they have been rewritten. The author wanted to show that Jewish life was more than the "Fiddler on the Roof" view- there were scoundrels and some very sad situations. And some are very funny when we read them today.

Yes! Returning to LT after 2 year hiatus...

I have three Christmas (okay - Channuka!) books en route to me, and guess what? They’re all by Jewish authors. Possibly two of the very finest: Shai Agnon and Amos Oz. They are Shira (Agnon’s final, unfinished, work); A Book That Was Lost; and Judas. I’m very excited to read them all. I’m an (almost) completist when it comes to Oz, and I was completely blown away by Agnon’s opus Only Yesterday when I read it a few years back. My 2011 review is posted on LT at the book’s page.) I hope to eventually review the new ones over in my Club Read 2018 thread.

Here’s to great Jewish reading in 2018! לחיים!!

>4 torontoc:

I've heard good things about that book. I do enjoy reading Tablet, so if the chapters were there originally, that's a good sign.

Let me also recommend Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books, by Aaron Lansky, founder of the Yiddish Book Center.

And in a "the more things change" vein, try A Bintel brief : sixty years of letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward, by Isaac Metzker.

> 6 I read both- I also heard Aaron Lansky speak in Toronto a number of years ago- loved the book.
A Bintel Brief is very touching

I read it as soon as it came out, it's a fun book, I was blown away by the Imber chapter

Thanks. I will try it.

I just started Archive Thief - talk about mixed emotions. Also, After Tigay's book on Moses Wilhelm Shapira, I learned there was an earlier one by Allegro - now there was an interesting character.