Honouring community
In her recently published book, Shalom Uganda: A Jewish Community on the Equator, Vancouverite Janice Masur writes about her life in Kampala, Uganda, where she moved as a child of 5 and stayed until the age of 17 in 1961,…
Books
Poet writes of world events
Lillian Boraks-Nemetz has a new poetry compilation, called Out of the Dark, which will be released by Ronsdale Press in the fall. (photo from Lillian Boraks-Nemetz) The death in late May of George Floyd, while he was pinned down on the…
Goosefeather book set to launch
Storyteller Naomi Eliana Pommier Steinberg’s years-long Goosefeather journey has taken her around the world. This photo was taken in Paris in 2015. (photo © lineka) A travelogue of observations and experiences from the unique to the mundane, the personal to…
Surviving the Gulag
Dressed for a Dance in the Snow: Women’s Voices from the Gulag by Monika Zgustova (Other Press, 2020) is the first book to focus exclusively on women who lived in the Gulag. It is an intimate look at nine women,…
Illustrating Holocaust stories
Gilad Seliktar, left, and Rolf Kamp in Amsterdam. They are drawing the last hiding place of Nico and Rolf Kamp in Achterveld, which was liberated in April 1945 by Canadian troops. (photo from UVic) A University of Victoria professor is…
Nieces enjoy new kids books
I review a lot of books for the Jewish Independent. Over the years, that has included many children’s books. I do my best in these instances but, as much as I like to let my inner child run free occasionally…
Among Canada’s best books
In the play Birds of a Kind by Wajdi Mouawad, the character of Eitan, injured in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, lies in a coma. As his estranged parents and his grandmother hope for his recovery, they bitterly dig ever…
Dealing with anxieties
Deborah Grayson Riegel, left, and Sophie Riegel co-wrote the book Overcoming Overthinking. Sophie also authored Don’t Tell Me to Relax! (photo from Riegels) Many people experience one or more kinds of anxiety disorder, yet fewer than half seek professional help,…
Heart-felt and pain-filled memoir
From the page before the opening of Moishe Rozenbaumas’s incisive, heart-felt memoir, we already feel the pain that will inhere in much of his story. Even before we begin reading this autobiography, we see a photocopy of the author’s dedication,…
Shalev’s latest not her best
In an interview with the Jewish Independent in 2014, after her book The Remains of Love came out in English, Israeli writer Zeruya Shalev said that, until that novel, she had been avoiding writing directly about what she called “the…
