Family memoir a work of art
Karen Bermann’s The Art of Being a Stranger: A Family Memoir, published by New Jewish Press, an imprint of University of Toronto Press, is a work of art. It is moving in ways hard to describe. It might not capture…
Books
A little holiday romance
One of my guilty pleasures is Hallmark-style holiday movies. Fine, they’re Christmas movies mainly. But, whenever there is a Jewish character, plotline or, in rare instances, it’s a Hanukkah movie, I am even more a fan. Comfortable in their predictability,…
Life, beginning to end
Love is at the heart of three new children’s books that would make great Hanukkah gifts. Many different types of families welcome their newborns in Mazel Toes!, written by Dr. Audrey Barbakoff and illustrated by Annita Soble. Each set of…
Reminder of humanity’s light
The passage across the Øresund, the body of water that separates the Danish peninsula from Sweden, is, at its narrowest, about the same distance as Horseshoe Bay to Bowen Island. But the waters can be treacherous – especially when it’s…
Etgar Keret comes to Vancouver
(PR photos) Israeli author and filmmaker Etgar Keret will be at the Rothstein Theatre Oct. 30, 7 p.m., in conversation with author and columnist Marsha Lederman. The JCC Jewish Book Festival event is sponsored by the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation.…
New bio gives Vrba his due
Rudolf Vrba, left, and author Alan Twigg at the University of British Columbia in 2001. Twigg’s new book on Vrba, Holocaust Hero: The Life & Times of Rudolf Vrba, breaks much new ground. (photo by Beverly Cramp) Celebrated German factory…
Seeking middle ground
At the local launch for her new book, October 7th: Searching for the Humanitarian Middle, Globe & Mail columnist Marsha Lederman admitted she’s “not doing great.” “A lot of us in this room can say that,” she said in…
Survival in the forest
The harrowing new memoir by Vancouver’s Evelyn Kahn, They Never Left Me: A Holocaust Memoir of Maternal Courage and Triumph, written with her daughter Hodie Kahn, tells of a family’s survival while hiding in the forests of Eastern Europe. They…
Writers fest starts soon
he 38th annual Vancouver Writers Festival takes place on Granville Island Oct. 20-26. Among the 130-plus local and international authors at 87 events are several members of the Jewish community. A glance through the lineup finds, in order of appearance,…
Shoah’s generational impacts
Robert Krell did not identify as a Holocaust survivor until the age of 41. His evolving realization about his own experience mirrors a larger trend in the understanding of child Holocaust survivors. As a psychiatrist, academic and leading Holocaust educator,…
