Category Books

Celebrating two new years 

It would be fun to be a fly on the wall at Vancouver Talmud Torah on Feb. 14 as Richard Ho reads from his book Two New Years, illustrated by Lynn Scurfield, and discusses it with the children. Being that…

Pinsky pens family memoir

In his ambiguously titled book Ordinary, Extraordinary: My Father’s Life, Vancouver lawyer and community leader Bernard Pinsky shares the biography of Rubin Pinsky. As the pages turn, the reader realizes that ordinariness and extraordinariness really do describe the tale of…

What is life’s purpose?

image - In her graphic memoir, Artificial: A Love Story, Amy Kurzweil tackles many existential questions, framed around her father’s quest to resurrect his father using artificial intelligence. Kurzweil participates in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival Feb. 12

In her graphic memoir, Artificial: A Love Story, Amy Kurzweil tackles many existential questions, framed around her father’s quest to resurrect his father using artificial intelligence. Kurzweil participates in the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival Feb. 12. The purpose…

Canadian Jews’ first years

photo - Pierre Anctil, left, and Richard Menkis with a copy of their new book, In a “Land of Hope”: Documents on the Canadian Jewish Experience, 1627-1923

Pierre Anctil, left, and Richard Menkis with a copy of their new book, In a “Land of Hope”: Documents on the Canadian Jewish Experience, 1627-1923. (photo by Pat Johnson) The first Jew known to have set foot in what is…

A 1930s immigration story

photo - Author Norman Ravvin’s grandparents, Yehuda Yoseph and Chaya Dina Eisenstein, around the time of their marriage, in 1928

Author Norman Ravvin’s grandparents, Yehuda Yoseph and Chaya Dina Eisenstein, around the time of their engagement, in 1928. (photo from Who Gets In: An Immigration Story) Relentless perseverance, continual pressure on select politicians and some key allies are what helped…

Openings in wake of COVID

Inscribing what the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas might call espace vital (the space we can survive), Ouvert Oeuvre: Openings (2023) is an exploration of openings in a (never quite) post-COVID world. Written by poet, performer and cultural theorist Adeena Karasick and…

Mysteries to be solved

The past can consume you if you let it. And reality isn’t as easy to discern as you might think. Two recently published thrillers from Simon & Schuster share these themes in common, but their authors address them in completely…

Perfect gifts for holiday

image - She’s a Mensch! book cover

In 2019, NASA astronaut and scientist Jessica Meir was part of the first all-woman spacewalk. According to : Jewish Women who Rocked the World, she “celebrated Hanukkah in space by wearing festive holiday socks and sending a Happy Hanukkah message…