Reflecting on New York
Raised by American parents in Montreal, Adam Gopnik moved, with his Canadian wife Martha, to New York City in the 1980s. There, he began a career as an art critic, editor and writer for such publications as GQ and The…
Books
Isaac shaped Vatican II
Jewish Conscience of the Church: Jules Isaac and the Second Vatican Council by Norman C. Tobias (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) is an extraordinary book about the volte face that the Catholic Church executed at Vatican II in 1963 when, as a…
Recipes from the world over
Cookbook author Joan Nathan, left, with journalist Sybil Kaplan. (photo from Barry A. Kaplan) Before I review King Solomon’s Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking around the World by Joan Nathan (Knopf, 2017), I have to admit, I am…
Drawing on identity, Judaism
Artist and graphic novelist Miriam Libicki is currently Vancouver Public Library’s writer-in-residence. (photo from VPL) “I think that a lot of my stuff does end up having to do with identity, through both the books I’ve published and the one…
Granirer exhibit, book linked
Pnina Granirer’s current art exhibit, which is at the Zack Gallery until Dec. 12, features work highlighted in her memoir, Light Within the Shadows. (photo by Olga Livshin) Pnina Granirer has always been an experimenter. She enjoys trying new artistic…
The gift of innocence?
The Innocence Treatment by Ari Goelman is a psychological thriller set in 2031 America. Looking for a smart, tense, psychological thriller for your teenage reader? Ari Goelman’s The Innocence Treatment (Roaring Brook Press, 2017) would fit the bill. Though, if…
Step aside fried latkes
My younger brother has one main rule for my nieces, who are 6 and 4 years old – “No head injuries.” Sounds simple enough, until you see one of them launch themselves off the back of the couch. I could…
Resettling Eretz Yisrael
Alison Pick discusses her new novel, Strangers with the Same Dream, at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival Nov. 25. (photo by Emma Lee) “Here they were, she thought, in this remote land of Palestine, far from their homes…
Retribution and restoration
Hidden in the spine of a 1947 edition of Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, in its original Dutch, is a piece of paper with the German words, “Die Vergeltung,” or retribution. (photo by Shula Klinger) I ran…
Imagining a different future
ChiZine Publications is preparing to publish a new book: Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People, the first-ever anthology of Jewish alternate history stories, to be edited by Mark Shainblum and Andrea D. Lobel. Contributors already confirmed include science…
