Israeli publishers seek U.S. niche by turning to local authors

by Abigail Klein Leichman

From Bibles to novels, English-language Judaica from Israel accounts for much of the inventory on American Jewish bookstore shelves.

A case in point: For the first time in his 27-book run, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has chosen to work with an Israeli publisher: Gefen will produce the Englewood writer’s forthcoming book, “Kosher Jesus.”

Shoppers at the Feb. 5-26 Seforim Sale at Yeshiva University, the largest Jewish book sale in North America, will find Israeli publishers well represented.

Rabbi Yaacov Haber, a former Monsey pulpit rabbi and co-founder of the year-old Mosaica Press in Jerusalem, says there are practical and emotional reasons for this trend.

“Israel has become like the Jewish India: If you want to get something done professionally for much less money, you go to Israel, where everything is more reasonable from printers to editors to writers,” he said.

“A consumer will pay 20-30 percent less for a book published in Israel, and the level of scholarship, from research to proofreading, is very high. So if somebody in the U.S. has written a book, the right thing for him to do is look for a publisher in Israel. That’s the business side of the issue. The spiritual side is that Torah should come from Israel.”

In addition to “Kosher Jesus,” due out next week, the newest books by North Jersey notables rolling off Israeli presses include

Bus-stop books – Israel’s newest public library

by Karin Kloosterman

Imagine a library where there are no due dates and no librarians telling you to be quiet. Israeli artists have developed a new model for the urban library: a free bus-stop library for commuters and travelers of all ages.

Daniel Shoshan, an installation artist and lecturer at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, along with Technion graduate Amit Matalon, started this new public library concept figuring that people sometimes have long wait times for buses.

Their motto: You may take, you may return, you may add.

The duo built a series of bookshelves at bus stops throughout Israeli cities. The idea is that anyone may take a book from the shelf, read it at the station or take it on the bus and return it when done.

No due dates, no late fees, no rules.

At first they did an experiment to see if the dynamics would work. Would the shelves refill? Would people participate?

Jewish Book & Art Festival Dec. 4-11 Calgary JCC

Robert Rubinstein, author of An Italian Renaissance: Choosing Life in Canada, winner of the 2011 Canadian Jewish Book Award in the category of Holocaust Literature, will be at the Jewish Book & Art Festival, Dec. 4-11, 4:30 PM, Calgary JCC.

Shlomo Katz and The Torah Commentary of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach at Pomeranz

JOIN POMERANZ BOOKSELLER for an evening with:

Shlomo Katz featuring his new book:
“The Torah Commentary of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach”
When? Monday evening November 21, 2011 7:00 pm
Where? M. Pomeranz Bookseller Be’eri 5, Jerusalem

The Torah Commentary of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach
Carlebach Beresheit
Beresheit – Genesis Part I
Beresheit * Noach*
Lech Lecha * Vayera *
Chayei Sarah * Toldos *

Edited by: Rabbi Shlomo Katz

Hardcover, 263 pp.

With purchase of book receive a full Sefer Hakiddush! 150 pages! Artistic! and useful!

Description: The Torah Commentary of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach provides a glimpse into the unusual way in which the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach received and transmitted Torah. It also aids the reader in bridging “Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach the great composer/singer” and “Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach the great scholar/teacher.” Those who sing his songs, but do not learn his Torah, only sing half a song. When Reb Shlomo speaks of Abraham and Sara, you are sure he is speaking about his own grandparents. When delving into the lives of Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, Rachel and Leah, it is as if he is speaking of his own parents.

The teachings in this book of commentary are not just meant to be read – they are intended to be enjoyed and experienced as “holy music.” Ultimately, they are intended as a lesson in living a “holy life.” Wherever Reb Shlomo traveled in the world, he brought several suitcases of holy books with him. This book makes Reb Shlomo’s teachings accessible to help us carry on our journey through life.

About the Editor: Rabbi Shlomo Katz is a world renowned musician. In the summer of 2006, Shlomo received his rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Chaim Brovender and Rabbi Shlomo Riskin at Yeshivat Hamivtar. Shlomo has been an integral part of building the Shlomo Carlebach Legacy Trust, which has been working to preserve, to publish, and to distribute the legacy of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach ztz”l as a Jewish national treasure.

Mea She’arim bookstore hit again by extremist ‘mafia’

By Melanie Lidman

Jerusalem 15/Sept/2011 – A bookstore in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea She’arim, which has been struggling with violence from a mafia-style “Purity Committee” that objects to their English and Zionist books, was attacked once again early on Wednesday morning.

Marlene Samuels, the manager of Or Hachaim/Manny’s Bookstore, found the outer windows of the shop smashed for the fifth time since the store’s opening in March 2010, and the second time in less than a week.

Radicals from the fringe anti-Zionist Sikrikim group have also glued its locks shut, thrown tar and fish oil at it and dumped bags of human

Mea She’arim ‘mafia’ harasses, vandalizes businesses

by Melanie Lidman

Jerusalem 08/Sept/2011 – ‘Sicarii’ break windows, throw human excrement at stores they deem to promote immodesty, including bookstore popular with Anglo residents.

A bookstore in the capital’s ultra-Orthodox Mea She’arim neighborhood is struggling against a wave of attacks by a haredi group called Sikrikim (“Sicarii”) that other business-owners have called the “mafia of Mea Sha’arim.”

Since the bookstore, known as Or Hachaim/Manny’s, opened in March 2010, men have smashed its windows several times, glued its locks shut, thrown tar and fish oil, and dumped bags of human excrement inside.

Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger was harassed and had stones thrown at him while leaving the store last year.

The bookstore, located on Mea She’arim Street, is popular with Anglo residents and tourists and carries many English- language holy books and Judaica items in addition to Hebrew books. The harassment stems from the bookstore’s refusal to accept demands made by the neighborhood extremist group, which would require all businesses to observe specific “modesty standards.”

At Or Hachaim, the Sikrikim’s demands include putting up a sign asking customers to dress modestly, removing all English-language books, signs and advertisements, and closing its website, which is in English, all so as not to attract tourists, who are not dressed modestly, said Marlene Samuels, one of the three managers of the bookstore, along with her husband, Manny, and Meir Dombey. Manny Samuels previously ran Manny’s Bookstore, which was well-known in the Anglo community.

“These people are very extreme; they terrorize lots of people here, and they are a very insular group,” Marlene Samuels said. She added that despite filing four complaints with the police and providing surveillance footage that clearly identified four of the men who have been vandalizing their shop, the police has

Heschel for a new generation

by Jack Riemer

Abraham Joshua Heschel:
Essential Writings
Selected with an introduction by
Susannah Heschel
Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 189 pages, $20

Orbis Books is a Catholic publishing house, which is now publishing a series of short books of the essential writings of the outstanding religious thinkers of the 20th century. Among those it has chosen to include in this series so far are Mahatma Ghandi, Thomas Merton, Mother Theresa, The Dalai Lama, Leo Tolstoy – and Abraham Joshua Heschel. When he died, the Catholic magazine America devoted an issue to his thought because they sensed that he was a teacher to Christians as well as to Jews.

To those who know of Heschel’s profound influence on Christian thought, his selection is obviously appropriate. But to those who know Heschel’s upbringing, the selection is mind-boggling. He grew up in the sheltered and isolated world of the Chassidic community. That someone who grew up in this world could become Judaism’s spokesman to the Vatican and its major spiritual voice to the Western World is simply astonishing.

Susannah Heschel, his daughter, has written a loving and informative introduction to Dr. Heschel’s writings that describe Heschel the parent, who could play games, enjoy Chinese Checkers, listen to classical music, and host people from many different worlds at their table on the Sabbath. And she has selected many of the most profound of her father’s writings, the ones that help to explain why, nearly 40 years after his death, he continues to be a guide to Christians as well as Jews into the meaning of the spiritual.

There is no one to this day who writes like Heschel did. His work

NU Press to buy titles from Jewish book society

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The University of Nebraska Press will purchase the nearly 250-title inventory of the Jewish Publication Society, which bills itself as the oldest publisher of Jewish books in the United States.

The Nebraska board of regents approved the $610,000 purchase at its Friday meeting, clearing the way for Nebraska Press to publish and market all current and future books by the Philadelphia-based society, the Lincoln Journal Star reported (bit.ly/qOgkFN).

Nebraska Press director Donna Shear said the deal will allow the society to continue to find and develop new titles but with the Nebraska Press taking over publication.

“We’re basically going to be taking over the process from manuscript publication through distribution and sales,” she said. “They will develop the content, but we will handle the rest of the process.”

Rabbi Barry Schwartz, the society’s chief executive officer, said it, like many small independent publishers, has struggled in recent years to continue to publish its inventory of titles and has been looking to partner with a university press.

“We primarily looked at university partnerships because we’re an academically oriented press dedicated to scholarship,” he said.

Schwartz said Nebraska Press was selected because of its already-strong inventory of Jewish books.

Nebraska Press owns nearly 3,000 titles and publishes about 150 a year. It owns about 50 Jewish studies titles and publishes four a year.

“We really feel that the University of Nebraska Press, which has had award-winning volumes in Judaic Studies, will benefit from this association,” Schwartz said. “It will make the University of Nebraska Press a leader in the field.”

The 123-year-old Jewish Publication Society sells more than 50,000 copies of the Jewish Bible each year, accounting for about half its sales, Schwartz said. That Bible is among the titles being acquired by Nebraska Press.

Shear said the society’s annual revenue is between $1 million and $1.5 million.

Original Greenwichtime.com online article.

2011 Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards

Congratulations to all the winners!

The writeup in The Canadian Jewish News on pages 1 and 18 can be found here, and a blog post on June 7, 2011 with pictures from the Awards ceremony can be found here.

2011 Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards: Citations

FICTION Alison Pick, Far to Go Published by House of Anansi Press Inc.

The magic of good storytelling brings into sharp relief the steady deterioration of Jewish daily life in Czechoslovakia under the influence Nazism just before the onset of World War II in Allison Pick’s novel Far to Go. Woven into the historical setting of the Czech Jewish experience is an exploration of the relationship of a contemporary historian of the Holocaust to her subject, upon the discovery of a set of letters that bring the past to life. The Jury was impressed with the crisp and elegant writing, and the novel’s subtle probing of the inner life of both Jews and non-Jews as Nazi racial ideology takes hold. The double narrative – past and present – examines the ways that the stories we uncover and tell shape our lives, our values, our sense of meaningfulness and possibilities.

POLITICS & HISTORY Tarek Fatah, The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism Published by McClelland & Stewart

It took courage for Tarek Fatah to write The Jew is Not My Enemy. It also takes courage for its Jewish and non-Jewish readers to follow the history of Muslim hate towards the Jews as the political activist and broadcaster depicts it, and the harsh but hopeful conclusion that there is no black and white resolution. The Jury noted the diligent scholarly and journalistic research examining the historical, political and theological ideas. In the end the book is a personal history of a journey towards tolerance and reconciliation.

HOLOCAUST LITERATURE Robert Eli Rubinstein, An Italian Renaissance: Choosing Life In Canada Published by Urim Publications

The author, a businessman and community leader in Toronto has written a remarkable memoir of the physical and spiritual rejuvenation of his parents, Hungarian survivors of the Holocaust, after the unspeakable horrors they had experienced. With most of their immediate families murdered and the Russians imposing a new tyranny in Hungary, they decided to leave. Early in 1946, they and a few of their surviving relatives escaped to Italy. There, in a Displaced Persons camp located on the grounds of a former psychiatric hospital near Turin, birthplace of the author, they found the healing conditions to revive their hope in the future and their commitment to their faith.

By a fortunate, almost accidental chance, that future led them to Toronto, where the Rubinsteins and their cousins became leading real estate developers and benefactors of the community. This work, however, is not just the record of a remarkable family’s survival in the Holocaust and re-establishment in Canada; it is above all a sensitive tribute by a loving son of the debt he feels to his parents for the character and values they have imbued in him by their actions and example. Beautifully expressed, this memoir is a wonderful contribution to the hitherto largely ignored area of Holocaust survivors’ re-establishment of their shattered lives.

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR Charles Foran, Mordecai: The Life and Times Published by Random House Canada

A decade after his death at 71, Mordecai Richler has found the biographer he deserves. The jury declared that Charles Foran has written the definitive biography – generous, thoroughly researched, psychologically nuanced, highly readable. They lauded him for uncovering the demons that drove Richler to create. Foran shows how the novelist’s gritty early life in working-class Jewish Montreal and his experience as a child born of a poisoned marriage shaped his prickly personality, which remained unchanged throughout his life. Foran skillfully contrasts Richler, the tender father and husband, with the hard-drinking Richler who made people angry and uncomfortable. He reveals Richler as deeply moral, using his sharp wit to expose snobbery, hypocrisy, inauthenticity, lies, anti-Semitism, and cant of all kinds.

SCHOLARSHIP Harold Troper, The Defining Decade: Identity, Politics, and the Canadian Jewish Community in the 1960s Published by University of Toronto Press

While Jews were present in Canada almost from the birth of the country, their community always remained at the edge and separate from mainstream society. They were kept apart by internal and external contingencies. In the dramatic years after the Second World War, a new conscience emerged as the place Jews should occupy as individuals and as a community. In the 1960s, the blooming of the Jewish community reaches its maturity when it confronted and accepted inside dissident voices and fully engaged in the national community at all levels. Several events but mainly the Six Day war became moments of conscience when all members of the community took stand, realizing their place and role as Jews and as Canadian.

With great insight, Harold Troper offers us in The Defining Decade, a sensible analysis of the crucial years of transformation of the community, which parallels the one of the country. With great expertise and detailed documentation, he clearly exposes the many and deep changes and the dynamic of the process.

YOUTH LITERATURE Judie Oron, Cry of the Giraffe Published by Annick Press

Cry of the Giraffe is a powerful novel that skillfully achieves what characterizes the best of historical fiction: a seamless blending of the personal story of the main characters with the forces that alter the course of their lives. The story of young Wuditu is set against the ugly backdrop of government persecution of the Jews of Ethiopia, where they are demonized as a despised minority. The book provides an inside view of the daily lives of Ethiopia’s Jews, even offering a peek at their Passover customs and their schooling. Oron masterfully captures the drama of the Ethiopian story, tracing the difficult trek to the refugee camp in Sudan and the perilous situation of women left alone in a male-dominated world. The reader’s interest is gripped by the heroine’s courageous struggle, against unimaginable odds, to find her sister, protect herself, and flee to the Promised Land, “Yerusalem.” Cry of the Giraffe is a fitting celebration of the rescue of one family as we celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Operation Solomon, the airlift of 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in May, 1991.

Journey to Heaven Book Launch

Journey to Heaven

The Simon Wiesenthal Center Library and Archives and the Museum of Tolerance invite you to a special program in the Distinguished Author Series

The book launch of Journey to Heaven: Exploring Jewish Views of the Afterlife (Urim Publications, 2011) by noted scholar and author Professor Leila Leah Bronner,  Sunday, May 15, 2011, 5:00-7:00 PM

Museum of Tolerance
9786 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90035

museumoftolerance.com

Click  Journey To Heaven Book Launch for full pdf.