29 Best Books on Jewish History
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Bad Jews
- By: Emily Tamkin
- Narrator: Kendra Hoffman
- Length: 10 hours 8 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: October 18, 2022
- Language: English
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4.09(103 ratings)
4.09(103 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDA journalist and author of The Influence of Soros examines the history of Jewish people in America and explores their ever-evolving relationship to the nation’s culture and identity–and each other. What does it mean to be a Bad Jew? ManyA journalist and author of The Influence of Soros examines the history of Jewish people in America and explores their ever-evolving relationship to the nation’s culture and identity–and each other.
What does it mean to be a Bad Jew?
Many Jews use the term “Bad Jew” as a weapon against other members of the community or even against themselves. You can be called a Bad Jew if you don’t keep kosher; if you only go to temple on Yom Kippur; if you don’t attend or send your children to Hebrew school; if you enjoy Christmas music; if your partner isn’t Jewish; if you don’t call your mother often enough. The list is endless.
In Bad Jews, Emily Tamkin argues that perhaps there is no answer to this timeless question at all. Throughout American history, Jewish identities have evolved and transformed in a variety of ways. The issue of what it means, or doesn’t, to be a Good Jew or a Bad Jew is particularly fraught at this moment, American Jews feel and fear antisemitism is on the rise. There are several million people who identify as American Jews–but that doesn’t mean they all identify with one another. American Jewish history is full of discussions and debates and hand wringing over who is Jewish, how to be Jewish, and what it means to be Jewish.
In Bad Jews, Emily Tamkin examines the last 100 years of American Jewish politics, culture, identities, and arguments. Drawing on over 150 interviews, she tracks the evolution of Jewishness throughout American history, and explores many of the evolving and conflicting Jewish positions on assimilation; race; Zionism and Israel; affluence and poverty, philanthropy, finance, politics; and social justice. From this complex and nuanced history, Tamkin pinpoints perhaps the one truth about American Jewish identity: It is always changing.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
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The Postmistress of Paris
- By: Meg Waite Clayton
- Narrator: Imani Jade Powers
- Length: 13 hours 11 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: November 30, 2021
- Language: English
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3.78(5740 ratings)
3.78(5740 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.009.99 USDA GMA BUZZ PICK * AN INDIE NEXT PICK* AN AMAZON BEST OF THE MONTH PICK, LITERATURE AND FICTION*A PEOPLE MAGAZINE PICK The New York Times bestselling author of The Last Train to London revisits the dark early days of the German occupation in FranceA GMA BUZZ PICK * AN INDIE NEXT PICK* AN AMAZON BEST OF THE MONTH PICK, LITERATURE AND FICTION*A PEOPLE MAGAZINE PICK
The New York Times bestselling author of The Last Train to London revisits the dark early days of the German occupation in France in this haunting novel–a love story and a tale of high-stakes danger and incomparable courage–about a young American heiress who helps artists hunted by the Nazis escape from war-torn Europe.
Wealthy, beautiful Nanee was born with a spirit of adventure. For her, learning to fly is freedom. When German tanks roll across the border and into Paris, this woman with an adorable dog and a generous heart joins the resistance. Known as the Postmistress because she delivers information to those in hiding, Nanee uses her charms and skill to house the hunted and deliver them to safety.
Photographer Edouard Moss has escaped Germany with his young daughter only to be interned in a French labor camp. His life collides with Nanee’s in this sweeping tale of romance and danger set in a world aflame with personal and political passion.
Inspired by the real life Chicago heiress Mary Jayne Gold, who worked with American journalist Varian Fry to smuggle artists and intellectuals out of France, The Postmistress of Paris is the haunting story of an indomitable woman whose strength, bravery, and love is a beacon of hope in a time of terror.
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The Ritual Bath
- By: Faye Kellerman
- Narrator: Mitchell Greenberg
- Length: 8 hours 9 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: December 26, 2007
- Language: English
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3.94(13647 ratings)
3.94(13647 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDDetective Peter Decker of the LAPD is stunned when he gets the report. Someone has shattered the sanctuary of a remote yeshiva community in the California hills with an unimaginable crime. One of the women was brutally raped as she returned from theDetective Peter Decker of the LAPD is stunned when he gets the report. Someone has shattered the sanctuary of a remote yeshiva community in the California hills with an unimaginable crime. One of the women was brutally raped as she returned from the mikvah, the bathhouse where the cleansing ritual is performed.
The crime was called in by Rina Lazarus, and Decker is relieved to discover that she is a calm and intelligent witness. She is also the only one in the sheltered community willing to speak of this unspeakable violation. As Rina tries to steer Decker through the maze of religious laws the two grow closer. But before they get to the bottom of this horrendous crime, revelations come to light that are so shocking they threaten to come between the hard-nosed cop and the deeply religious woman with whom he has become irrevocably linked.
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Our Darkest Night
- By: Jennifer Robson
- Narrator: Marisa Calin
- Length: 9 hours 56 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: January 05, 2021
- Language: English
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4.11(13879 ratings)
4.11(13879 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.006.99 USDTo survive the Holocaust, a young Jewish woman must pose as a Christian farmer’s wife in this unforgettable novel from USA Today bestselling author Jennifer Robson–a story of terror, hope, love, and sacrifice, inspired by true events,To survive the Holocaust, a young Jewish woman must pose as a Christian farmer’s wife in this unforgettable novel from USA Today bestselling author Jennifer Robson–a story of terror, hope, love, and sacrifice, inspired by true events, that vividly evokes the most perilous days of World War II.
It is the autumn of 1943, and life is becoming increasingly perilous for Italian Jews like the Mazin family. With Nazi Germany now occupying most of her beloved homeland, and the threat of imprisonment and deportation growing ever more certain, Antonina Mazin has but one hope to survive–to leave Venice and her beloved parents and hide in the countryside with a man she has only just met.
Nico Gerardi was studying for the priesthood until circumstances forced him to leave the seminary to run his family’s farm. A moral and just man, he could not stand by when the fascists and Nazis began taking innocent lives. Rather than risk a perilous escape across the mountains, Nina will pose as his new bride. And to keep her safe and protect secrets of his own, Nico and Nina must convince prying eyes they are happily married and in love.
But farm life is not easy for a cultured city girl who dreams of becoming a doctor like her father, and Nico’s provincial neighbors are wary of this soft and educated woman they do not know. Even worse, their distrust is shared by a local Nazi official with a vendetta against Nico. The more he learns of Nina, the more his suspicions grow–and with them his determination to exact revenge.
As Nina and Nico come to know each other, their feelings deepen, transforming their relationship into much more than a charade. Yet both fear that every passing day brings them closer to being torn apart . . .
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The Nesting Dolls
- By: Alina Adams
- Narrator: Nancy Peterson
- Length: 12 hours 29 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: July 14, 2020
- Language: English
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3.81(785 ratings)
3.81(785 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USDSpanning nearly a century, from 1930s Siberia to contemporary Brighton Beach, a page turning, epic family saga centering on three generations of women in one Russian Jewish family–each striving to break free of fate and history, each yearningSpanning nearly a century, from 1930s Siberia to contemporary Brighton Beach, a page turning, epic family saga centering on three generations of women in one Russian Jewish family–each striving to break free of fate and history, each yearning for love and personal fulfillment–and how the consequences of their choices ripple through time.
Odessa, 1931. Marrying the handsome, wealthy Edward Gordon, Daria–born Dvora Kaganovitch–has fulfilled her mother’s dreams. But a woman’s plans are no match for the crushing power of Stalin’s repressive Soviet state. To survive, Daria is forced to rely on the kindness of a man who takes pride in his own coarseness.
Odessa, 1970. Brilliant young Natasha Crystal is determined to study mathematics. But the Soviets do not allow Jewish students–even those as brilliant as Natasha–to attend an institute as prestigious as Odessa University. With her hopes for the future dashed, Natasha must find a new purpose–one that leads her into the path of a dangerous young man.
Brighton Beach, 2019. Zoe Venakovsky, known to her family as Zoya, has worked hard to leave the suffocating streets and small minds of Brighton Beach behind her–only to find that what she’s tried to outrun might just hold her true happiness.
Moving from a Siberian gulag to the underground world of Soviet refuseniks to oceanside Brooklyn, The Nesting Dolls is a heartbreaking yet ultimately redemptive story of circumstance, choice, and consequence–and three dynamic unforgettable women, all who will face hardships that force them to compromise their dreams as they fight to fulfill their destinies.
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My Name Is Selma
- By: Selma van de Perre
- Narrator: Rachel Bavidge
- Length: 6 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.15(815 ratings)
4.15(815 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDAn international bestseller, this powerful memoir by a ninety-eight-year-old Jewish Resistance fighter and Holocaust survivor “shows us how to find hope in hopelessness and light in the darkness” (Edith Eger, author of The Choice and TheAn international bestseller, this powerful memoir by a ninety-eight-year-old Jewish Resistance fighter and Holocaust survivor “shows us how to find hope in hopelessness and light in the darkness” (Edith Eger, author of The Choice and The Gift).
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Selma van de Perre was seventeen when World War II began. Until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had not been an issue. But by 1941 it had become a matter of life or death. On several occasions, Selma barely avoided being rounded up by the Nazis. While her father was summoned to a work camp and eventually hospitalized in a Dutch transition camp, her mother and sister went into hiding–until they were betrayed in June 1943 and sent to Auschwitz. In an act of defiance and with nowhere else to turn, Selma took on an assumed identity, dyed her hair blond, and joined the Resistance movement, using the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit. For two years “Marga” risked it all. Using a fake ID, and passing as Aryan, she traveled around the country and even to Nazi headquarters in Paris, sharing information and delivering papers–doing, as she later explained, what “had to be done.”
In July 1944 her luck ran out. She was transported to Ravensbruck women’s concentration camp as a political prisoner. Unlike her parents and sister who she later found out died in other camps–Selma survived by using her alias, pretending to be someone else. It was only after the war ended that she could reclaim her identity and dared to say once again: My name is Selma.
“We were ordinary people plunged into extraordinary circumstances,” she writes in this “astonishing, inspirational, and important” memoir (Ariana Neumann, author of When Time Stopped). Full of hope and courage, this is Selma’s story in her own words. -
A Reunion Of Ghosts
- By: Judith Claire Mitchell
- Narrator: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hours 57 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: March 24, 2015
- Language: English
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3.43(3061 ratings)
3.43(3061 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDA NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST “The Alter sisters are mordant, wry, and crystalline in wit and vision; it is a tremendous pleasure to rocket through generations of their family histories with them.” –Lauren Groff, New YorkA NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST
“The Alter sisters are mordant, wry, and crystalline in wit and vision; it is a tremendous pleasure to rocket through generations of their family histories with them.” –Lauren Groff, New York Timesbestselling author of Fates and Furies, The Monsters of Templeton, and Arcadia
In the waning days of 1999, the last of the Alters–three damaged but wisecracking sisters who share an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side–decide it’s time to close the circle of the family curse by taking their own lives. But first, Lady, Vee, and Delph must explain the origins of that curse and how it has manifested throughout the preceding generations. Unspooling threads of history, personal memory, and family lore, they weave a mesmerizing account that stretches back a century to their great-grandfather, a brilliant scientist whose professional triumph became the terrible legacy that defines them. A suicide note crafted by three bright, funny women, A Reunion of Ghosts is the final chapter of a saga lifetimes in the making–one that is inexorably intertwined with the story of the twentieth century itself.
“Mitchell explores the mixed-blessing bonds of family with wry wit. This original tale is black comedy at its best.”–People Book of the Week
“A rich portrait of a complicated family, at turns violent and hilarious.”–Emma Straub, New York Timesbestselling author
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The Last Train to London
- By: Meg Waite Clayton
- Narrator: John Lee
- Length: 11 hours 56 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: September 10, 2019
- Language: English
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4.14(8314 ratings)
4.14(8314 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USDThe New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Exiles conjures her best novel yet, a pre-World War II-era story with the emotional resonance of Orphan Train and All the Light We Cannot See, centering on the Kindertransports that carriedThe New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Exiles conjures her best novel yet, a pre-World War II-era story with the emotional resonance of Orphan Train and All the Light We Cannot See, centering on the Kindertransports that carried thousands of children out of Nazi-occupied Europe–and one brave woman who helped them escape to safety.
In 1936, the Nazi are little more than loud, brutish bores to fifteen-year old Stephan Neuman, the son of a wealthy and influential Jewish family and budding playwright whose playground extends from Vienna’s streets to its intricate underground tunnels. Stephan’s best friend and companion is the brilliant Zofie-Helene, a Christian girl whose mother edits a progressive, anti-Nazi newspaper. But the two adolescents’ carefree innocence is shattered when the Nazis’ take control.
There is hope in the darkness, though. Truus Wijsmuller, a member of the Dutch resistance, risks her life smuggling Jewish children out of Nazi Germany to the nations that will take them. It is a mission that becomes even more dangerous after the Anschluss–Hitler’s annexation of Austria–as, across Europe, countries close their borders to the growing number of refugees desperate to escape.
Tante Truus, as she is known, is determined to save as many children as she can. After Britain passes a measure to take in at-risk child refugees from the German Reich, she dares to approach Adolf Eichmann, the man who would later help devise the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” in a race against time to bring children like Stephan, his young brother Walter, and Zofie-Helene on a perilous journey to an uncertain future abroad.
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The Daughter of Auschwitz
- By: Tova Friedman
- Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 7 hours 53 minutes
- Publisher: Harlequin Audio
- Publish date: September 06, 2022
- Language: English
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4.55(1588 ratings)
4.55(1588 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USD*INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* WITH A FOREWORD BY SIR BEN KINGSLEY A powerful memoir by one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving a string of near-death*INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*
WITH A FOREWORD BY SIR BEN KINGSLEY
A powerful memoir by one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving a string of near-death experiences in a Jewish ghetto, a Nazi labor camp, and Auschwitz.
“I am a survivor. That comes with a survivor’s obligation to represent one and a half million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. They cannot speak. So I must speak on their behalf.”
Tova Friedman was one of the youngest people to emerge from Auschwitz. After surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland where she lived as a toddler, Tova was four when she and her parents were sent to a Nazi labour camp, and almost six when she and her mother were forced into a packed cattle truck and sent to Auschwitz II, also known as the Birkenau extermination camp, while her father was transported to Dachau.
During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death. She is one of a handful of Jews to have entered a gas chamber and lived to tell the tale.
As Nazi killing squads roamed Birkenau before abandoning the camp in January 1945, Tova and her mother hid among corpses. After being liberated by the Russians they made their way back to their hometown in Poland. Eventually Tova’s father tracked them down and the family was reunited.
In The Daughter of Auschwitz, Tova immortalizes what she saw, to keep the story of the Holocaust alive, at a time when it’s in danger of fading from memory. She has used those memories that have shaped her life to honour the victims. Written with award-winning former war reporter Malcolm Brabant, this is an extremely important book. Brabant’s meticulous research has helped Tova recall her experiences in searing detail. Together they have painstakingly recreated Tova’s extraordinary story about the world’s worst ever crime.
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The Tenth Muse
- By: Catherine Chung
- Narrator: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 9 hours 13 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: June 18, 2019
- Language: English
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4.04(4296 ratings)
4.04(4296 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USDA RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2019 FROM:Buzzfeed * The Rumpus * Entertainment Weekly The first thing I remember being said of me with any consistency was that I was intelligent–and I recognized even then that it was a comment leveled at me with asA RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2019 FROM:
Buzzfeed * The Rumpus * Entertainment WeeklyThe first thing I remember being said of me with any consistency was that I was intelligent–and I recognized even then that it was a comment leveled at me with as much disapproval as admiration. Still, I never tried to hide or suppress my mind as some girls do, and thank God, because that would have been the beginning of the end.
From childhood, Katherine knows she is different, and that her parents are not who they seem to be. But in becoming a mathematician, she must face the most human of problems–who is she? What is the cost of love, and what is the cost of ambition?
On her quest to conquer the Riemann hypothesis, the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of her time, she turns to a theorem with a mysterious history that holds both the lock and key to her identity, and to secrets long buried during World War II in Germany. Forced to confront some of the most consequential events of the twentieth century and rethink everything she knows of herself, she strives to take her place in the world of higher mathematics and finds kinship in the stories of the women who came before her–their love of the language of numbers connecting them across generations.
In The Tenth Muse, Catherine Chung offers a gorgeous, sweeping tale about legacy, identity, and the beautiful ways the mind can make us free.
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The Golem and the Jinni
- By: Helene Wecker
- Narrator: George Guidall
- Length: 19 hours 42 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: April 23, 2013
- Language: English
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4.12(95000 ratings)
4.12(95000 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0036.99 USD“An intoxicating fusion of fantasy and historical fiction. . . . Wecker’s storytelling skills dazzle.” —Entertainment Weekly A marvelous and absorbing debut novel about a chance meeting between two supernatural creatures in“An intoxicating fusion of fantasy and historical fiction. . . . Wecker’s storytelling skills dazzle.” —Entertainment Weekly
A marvelous and absorbing debut novel about a chance meeting between two supernatural creatures in turn-of-the-century immigrant New York.
Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay by a disgraced rabbi knowledgeable in the ways of dark Kabbalistic magic. She serves as the wife to a Polish merchant who dies at sea on the voyage to America. As the ship arrives in New York in 1899, Chava is unmoored and adrift until a rabbi on the Lower East Side recognizes her for the creature she is and takes her in.
Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert and trapped centuries ago in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard. Released by a Syrian tinsmith in a Manhattan shop, Ahmad appears in human form but is still not free. An iron band around his wrist binds him to the wizard and to the physical world.
Chava and Ahmad meet accidentally and become friends and soul mates despite their opposing natures. But when the golem’s violent nature overtakes her one evening, their bond is challenged. An even more powerful threat will emerge, however, and bring Chava and Ahmad together again, challenging their very existence and forcing them to make a fateful choice.
Compulsively readable, The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction and magical fable, in a wondrously inventive tale that is mesmerizing and unforgettable.
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The Dispossessed
- By: Ursula K. Le Guin
- Narrator: Don Leslie
- Length: 13 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: September 14, 2010
- Language: English
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4.24(87374 ratings)
4.24(87374 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.99 USD“One of the greats….Not just a science fiction writer; a literary icon.” – Stephen King From the brilliant and award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin comes a classic tale of two planets torn apart by conflict and mistrust“One of the greats….Not just a science fiction writer; a literary icon.” – Stephen King
From the brilliant and award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin comes a classic tale of two planets torn apart by conflict and mistrust — and the man who risks everything to reunite them.
A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras–a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Now Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is determined to reunite the two planets, which have been divided by centuries of distrust. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart.
To visit Urras–to learn, to teach, to share–will require great sacrifice and risks, which Shevek willingly accepts. But the ambitious scientist’s gift is soon seen as a threat, and in the profound conflict that ensues, he must reexamine his beliefs even as he ignites the fires of change.
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Maybe Esther
- By: Katja Petrowskaja
- Narrator: Emma Gregory
- Length: 7 hours 28 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: January 30, 2018
- Language: English
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3.84(225 ratings)
3.84(225 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0020.99 USDAn inventive, unique, and extraordinarily moving literary debut that pieces together the fascinating story of one woman’s family across twentieth-century Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Germany. Katja Petrowskaja wanted to create a kind of familyAn inventive, unique, and extraordinarily moving literary debut that pieces together the fascinating story of one woman’s family across twentieth-century Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Germany.
Katja Petrowskaja wanted to create a kind of family tree, charting relatives who had scattered across multiple countries and continents. Her idea blossomed into this striking and highly original work of narrative nonfiction, an account of her search for meaning within the stories of her ancestors.
In a series of short meditations, Petrowskaja delves into family legends, introducing a remarkable cast of characters: Judas Stern, her great-uncle, who shot a German diplomatic attache in 1932 and was sentenced to death; her grandfather Semyon, who went underground with a new name during the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, forever splitting their branch of the family from the rest; her grandmother Rosa, who ran an orphanage in the Urals for deaf-mute Jewish children; her Ukrainian grandfather Vasily, who disappeared during World War II and reappeared without explanation forty-one years later–and settled back into the family as if he’d never been gone; and her great-grandmother, whose name may have been Esther, who alone remained in Kiev and was killed by the Nazis.
How do you talk about what you can’t know, how do you bring the past to life? To answer this complex question, Petrowskaja visits the scenes of these events, reflecting on a fragmented and traumatized century and bringing to light family figures who threaten to drift into obscurity. A true search for the past reminiscent of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost, and Michael Chabon’s Moonglow, Maybe Esther is a poignant, haunting investigation of the effects of history on one family.
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Saint Mazie
- By: Jami Attenberg
- Narrator: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hours 38 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: June 02, 2015
- Language: English
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3.65(5834 ratings)
3.65(5834 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.98 USDMeet Mazie Phillips: big-hearted and bawdy, she’s the truth-telling proprietress of The Venice, the famed New York City movie theater. It’s the Jazz Age, with romance and booze aplenty–even when Prohibition kicks in–and MazieMeet Mazie Phillips: big-hearted and bawdy, she’s the truth-telling proprietress of The Venice, the famed New York City movie theater. It’s the Jazz Age, with romance and booze aplenty–even when Prohibition kicks in–and Mazie never turns down a night on the town. But her high spirits mask a childhood rooted in poverty, and her diary, always close at hand, holds her dearest secrets.
When the Great Depression hits, Mazie’s life is on the brink of transformation. Addicts and bums roam the Bowery; homelessness is rampant. If Mazie won’t help them, then who? When she opens the doors of The Venice to those in need, this ticket taking, fun-time girl becomes the beating heart of the Lower East Side, and in defining one neighborhood helps define the city.
Then, more than ninety years after Mazie began her diary, it’s discovered by a documentarian in search of a good story. Who was Mazie Phillips, really? A chorus of voices from the past and present fill in some of the mysterious blanks of her adventurous life.
Inspired by the life of a woman who was profiled in Joseph Mitchell’s classic Up in the Old Hotel, Saint Mazie is infused with Jami Attenberg’s signature wit, bravery, and heart. Mazie’s rise to “sainthood”–and her irrepressible spirit–is unforgettable.
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Orphan #8
- By: Kim Van Alkemade
- Narrator: Andi Arndt
- Length: 11 hours 1 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: August 04, 2015
- Language: English
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3.71(14990 ratings)
3.71(14990 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDNew York Times and USA Today Bestseller In this stunning new historical novel inspired by true events, Kim van Alkemade tells the fascinating story of a woman who must choose between revenge and mercy when she encounters the doctor who subjected herNew York Times and USA Today Bestseller
In this stunning new historical novel inspired by true events, Kim van Alkemade tells the fascinating story of a woman who must choose between revenge and mercy when she encounters the doctor who subjected her to dangerous medical experiments in a New York City Jewish orphanage years before.
In 1919, Rachel Rabinowitz is a vivacious four-year-old living with her family in a crowded tenement on New York City’s Lower Eastside. When tragedy strikes, Rachel is separated from her brother Sam and sent to a Jewish orphanage where Dr. Mildred Solomon is conducting medical research. Subjected to X-ray treatments that leave her disfigured, Rachel suffers years of cruel harassment from the other orphans. But when she turns fifteen, she runs away to Colorado hoping to find the brother she lost and discovers a family she never knew she had.
Though Rachel believes she’s shut out her painful childhood memories, years later she is confronted with her dark past when she becomes a nurse at Manhattan’s Old Hebrews Home and her patient is none other than the elderly, cancer-stricken Dr. Solomon. Rachel becomes obsessed with making Dr. Solomon acknowledge, and pay for, her wrongdoing. But each passing hour Rachel spends with the old doctor reveal to Rachel the complexities of her own nature. She realizes that a person’s fate–to be one who inflicts harm or one who heals–is not always set in stone.
Lush in historical detail, rich in atmosphere and based on true events, Orphan #8 is a powerful, affecting novel of the unexpected choices we are compelled to make that can shape our destinies.
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The Tattooist of Auschwitz
- By: Heather Morris
- Narrator: Richard Armitage
- Length: 7 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: September 04, 2018
- Language: English
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4.29(508123 ratings)
4.29(508123 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0021.99 USDThis beautiful, illuminating tale of hope and courage is based on interviews that were conducted with Holocaust survivor and Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov–an unforgettable love story in the midst of atrocity. “TheThis beautiful, illuminating tale of hope and courage is based on interviews that were conducted with Holocaust survivor and Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov–an unforgettable love story in the midst of atrocity.
“The Tattooist of Auschwitz is an extraordinary document, a story about the extremes of human behavior existing side by side: calculated brutality alongside impulsive and selfless acts of love. I find it hard to imagine anyone who would not be drawn in, confronted and moved. I would recommend it unreservedly to anyone, whether they’d read a hundred Holocaust stories or none.”–Graeme Simsion, internationally-bestselling author of The Rosie Project
In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tatowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.
Imprisoned for over two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism–but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.
One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.
A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov’s experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.
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An Unorthodox Match
- By: Naomi Ragen
- Narrator: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 12 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: September 24, 2019
- Language: English
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3.94(2054 ratings)
3.94(2054 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.99 USDAn Unorthodox Match is a powerful and moving novel of faith, love, and acceptance, from author Naomi Ragen, the international bestselling author of The Devil in Jerusalem. California girl Lola has her life all set up: business degree, handsomeAn Unorthodox Match is a powerful and moving novel of faith, love, and acceptance, from author Naomi Ragen, the international bestselling author of The Devil in Jerusalem.
California girl Lola has her life all set up: business degree, handsome fiance, fast track career, when suddenly, without warning, everything tragically implodes. After years fruitlessly searching for love, marriage, and children, she decides to take the radical step of seeking spirituality and meaning far outside the parameters of modern life in the insular, ultraorthodox enclave of Boro Park, Brooklyn. There, fate brings her to the dysfunctional home of newly-widowed Jacob, a devout Torah scholar, whose life is also in turmoil, and whose small children are aching for the kindness of a womanly touch.While her mother direly predicts she is ruining her life, enslaving herself to a community that is a misogynistic religious cult, Lola’s heart tells her something far more complicated. But it is the shocking and unexpected messages of her new community itself which will finally force her into a deeper understanding of the real choices she now faces and which will ultimately decide her fate.
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The Secrets of Flight
- By: Maggie Leffler
- Narrator: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 10 hours 33 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: May 03, 2016
- Language: English
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3.92(1900 ratings)
3.92(1900 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USDThis captivating, breakout novel–told in alternating viewpoints–brings readers from the skies of World War II to the present day, where a woman is prepared to tell her secrets at last. Estranged from her family since just after World WarThis captivating, breakout novel–told in alternating viewpoints–brings readers from the skies of World War II to the present day, where a woman is prepared to tell her secrets at last.
Estranged from her family since just after World War II, Mary Browning has spent her entire adult life hiding from her past. Now eighty-seven years old and a widow, she is still haunted by secrets and fading memories of the family she left behind. Her one outlet is the writing group she’s presided over for a decade, though she’s never written a word herself. When a new member walks in–a fifteen-year-old girl who reminds her so much of her beloved sister Sarah–Mary is certain fate delivered Elyse Strickler to her for a reason.
Mary hires the serious-eyed teenager to type her story about a daring female pilot who, during World War II, left home for the sky and gambled everything for her dreams–including her own identity.
As they begin to unravel the web of Mary’s past, Mary and Elyse form an unlikely friendship. Together they discover it’s never too late for second chances and that sometimes forgiveness is all it takes for life to take flight in the most unexpected ways.
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The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit
- By: Lucette Lagnado
- Narrator: Joyce Bean
- Length: 12 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: May 19, 2020
- Language: English
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4.02(3156 ratings)
4.02(3156 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0026.99 USD“Poignant . . . deeply personal . . . an indelible history of the largely forgotten Jews of Egypt . . . “–Miami Herald In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado re-creates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the“Poignant . . . deeply personal . . . an indelible history of the largely forgotten Jews of Egypt . . . “–Miami Herald
In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado re-creates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years before Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power. With Nasser’s nationalization of Egyptian industry, her father, Leon, a boulevardier who conducted business in his white sharkskin suit, loses everything, and departs with the family for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxtaposed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind.
An inversion of the American dream set against the stunning portraits of three world cities, Lucette Lagnado’s memoir offers a grand and sweeping story of faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph.
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The Song of the Jade Lily
- By: Kirsty Manning
- Narrator: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 12 hours 10 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: May 14, 2019
- Language: English
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4.17(3416 ratings)
4.17(3416 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USD“Kirsty Manning weaves together little-known threads of World War II history, family secrets, the past and the present into a page-turning, beautiful novel.”– Heather Morris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Tattooist of“Kirsty Manning weaves together little-known threads of World War II history, family secrets, the past and the present into a page-turning, beautiful novel.”– Heather Morris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz
A gripping historical novel that tells the little-known story of Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai during WWII.
1939: Two young girls meet in Shanghai, also known as the “Paris of the East”. Beautiful local Li and Jewish refugee Romy form a fierce friendship, but the deepening shadows of World War II fall over the women as they slip between the city’s glamorous French Concession district and the teeming streets of the Shanghai Ghetto. Yet soon the realities of war prove to be too much for these close friends as they are torn apart.
2016: Fleeing London with a broken heart, Alexandra returns to Australia to be with her grandparents, Romy and Wilhelm. Her grandfather is dying, and over the coming weeks Romy and Wilhelm begin to reveal the family mysteries they have kept secret for more than half a century. As fragments of her mother’s history finally become clear, Alexandra struggles with what she learns while more is also revealed about her grandmother’s own past in Shanghai.
After Wilhelm dies, Alexandra flies to Shanghai, determined to trace her grandparents’ past. Peeling back the layers of their hidden lives, she is forced to question what she knows about her family–and herself.
The Song of the Jade Lily is a lush, provocative, and beautiful story of friendship, motherhood, the price of love, and the power of hardship and courage that can shape us all.
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How To Find Your Way In The Dark
- By: Derek B. Miller
- Narrator: Michael Crouch
- Length: 12 hours 23 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: July 27, 2021
- Language: English
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4.18(1010 ratings)
4.18(1010 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER OF THE JEWISH FICTION AWARD FROM THE ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH LIBRARIES “[Miller‚Äôs] character portraits are indelible, often heartbreaking. At times this novel moved me to tears, theFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD
WINNER OF THE JEWISH FICTION AWARD FROM THE ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH LIBRARIES
“[Miller‚Äôs] character portraits are indelible, often heartbreaking. At times this novel moved me to tears, the highest possible compliment.‚Äù
—New York Times Book Review
With the wit and scope of Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Derek B. Miller tackles his most ambitious epic yet. At its heart is the return of Sheldon Horowitz, the protagonist from Miller’s award-winning first novel, Norwegian by Night, who was lauded by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Richard Russo as “one of the most memorable characters . . . that I’ve encountered in years.”
MEET SHELDON IN THE MORNING OF HIS LIFE
Twelve-year old Sheldon Horowitz is still recovering from the tragic loss of his mother only a year ago when a suspicious traffic accident steals the life of his father near their home in rural Massachusetts. It is 1938, and Sheldon, who was in the truck, emerges from the crash an orphan hell-bent on revenge. He takes that fire with him to Hartford, where he embarks on a new life under the roof of his buttoned-up Uncle Nate. Sheldon, his teenage cousins Abe and Mirabelle, and his best friend, Lenny, will contend with tradition and orthodoxy, appeasement and patriotism, mafia hitmen and angry accordion players, all while World War II takes center stage alongside a hurricane in New England and comedians in the Catskills. With his eye always on vengeance for his father’s murder, Sheldon stakes out his place in a world he now understands is comprised largely of crimes: right and wrong, big and small.
‚ÄúFor me‚Äîas I‚Äôm certain it will be for every reader of the wonderful Norwegian By Night‚ÄîDerek B. Miller‚Äôs new novel is a genuine literary event (Sheldon Horowitz is back!). Miller has long deserved to be a household name. How to Find Your Way in the Dark should finally make him one.”
‚ÄîRichard Russo, author of Empire Falls and Chances Are…
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The Escape Artist
- By: Jonathan Freedland
- Narrator: Jonathan Freedland
- Length: 11 hours 47 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: October 18, 2022
- Language: English
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4.5(2538 ratings)
4.5(2538 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USD“A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information—and misinformation. Is it possible to stop mass murder by telling the truth?” — Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of“A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information—and misinformation. Is it possible to stop mass murder by telling the truth?” — Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
A complex hero. A forgotten story. The first witness to reveal the full truth of the Holocaust . . .
Award-winning journalist and bestselling novelist Jonathan Freedland tells the astonishing true story of Rudolf Vrba, the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world of a truth too few were willing to hear.
In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became one of the very first Jews to escape from Auschwitz and make his way to freedom–among only a tiny handful who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world–and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. Against all odds, Vrba and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen–a forensically detailed report that eventually reached Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the Pope.
And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba had risked everything to deliver. Though Vrba helped save two hundred thousand Jewish lives, he never stopped believing it could have been so many more.
This is the story of a brilliant yet troubled man–a gifted “escape artist” who, even as a teenager, understood that the difference between truth and lies can be the difference between life and death. Rudolf Vrba deserves to take his place alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler, and Primo Levi as one of the handful of individuals whose stories define our understanding of the Holocaust.
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The School for German Brides
- By: Aimie K. Runyan
- Narrator: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hours 29 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: April 26, 2022
- Language: English
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4.06(2623 ratings)
4.06(2623 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USDIn this intriguing historical novel, a young woman who is sent to a horrific “bride school” to be molded into the perfect Nazi wife finds her life forever intertwined with a young Jewish woman about to give birth. Germany, 1939 As theIn this intriguing historical novel, a young woman who is sent to a horrific “bride school” to be molded into the perfect Nazi wife finds her life forever intertwined with a young Jewish woman about to give birth.
Germany, 1939
As the war begins, Hanna Rombauer, a young German woman, is sent to live with her aunt and uncle after her mother’s death. Thrown into a life of luxury she never expected, Hanna soon finds herself unwillingly matched with an SS officer twenty years her senior. The independence that her mother lovingly fostered in her is considered highly inappropriate as the future wife of an up-and-coming officer and she is sent to a “bride school.” There, in a posh villa on the outskirts of town, Hanna is taught how to be a “proper” German wife. The lessons of hatred, prejudice, and misogyny disturb her and she finds herself desperate to escape.
For Mathilde Altman, a German Jewish woman, the war has brought more devastation than she ever thought possible. Torn from her work, her family, and her new husband, she fights to keep her unborn baby safe. But when the unthinkable happens, Tilde realizes she must hide. The risk of discovery grows greater with each passing day, but she has no other options.
When Hanna discovers Tilde hiding near the school, she knows she must help her however she can. For Tilde, fear wars with desperation when Hanna proposes a risky plan.
Will they both be able to escape with their lives and if they do, what kind of future can they possibly hope for?
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The Fortunate Ones
- By: Ellen Umansky
- Narrator: Karen White
- Length: 12 hours 34 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: February 14, 2017
- Language: English
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3.54(1612 ratings)
3.54(1612 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0031.99 USDOne very special work of art–a Chaim Soutine painting–will connect the lives and fates of two different women, generations apart, in this enthralling and transporting debut novel that moves from World War II Vienna to contemporary LosOne very special work of art–a Chaim Soutine painting–will connect the lives and fates of two different women, generations apart, in this enthralling and transporting debut novel that moves from World War II Vienna to contemporary Los Angeles.
It is 1939 in Vienna, and as the specter of war darkens Europe, Rose Zimmer’s parents are desperate. Unable to get out of Austria, they manage to secure passage for their young daughter on a kindertransport, and send her to live with strangers in England.
Six years later, the war finally over, a grief-stricken Rose attempts to build a life for herself. Alone in London, devastated, she cannot help but try to search out one piece of her childhood: the Chaim Soutine painting her mother had cherished.
Many years later, the painting finds its way to America. In modern-day Los Angeles, Lizzie Goldstein has returned home for her father’s funeral. Newly single and unsure of her path, she also carries a burden of guilt that cannot be displaced. Years ago, as a teenager, Lizzie threw a party at her father’s house with unexpected but far-reaching consequences. The Soutine painting that she loved and had provided lasting comfort to her after her own mother had died was stolen, and has never been recovered.
This painting will bring Lizzie and Rose together and ignite an unexpected friendship, eventually revealing long-held secrets that hold painful truths. Spanning decades and unfolding in crystalline, atmospheric prose, The Fortunate Ones is a haunting story of longing, devastation, and forgiveness, and a deep examination of the bonds and desires that map our private histories.
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Israel
- By: Daniel Gordis
- Narrator: Fred Sanders
- Length: 16 hours 19 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: October 18, 2016
- Language: English
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4.33(1403 ratings)
4.33(1403 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0038.99 USDThe first comprehensive yet accessible history of the state of Israel from its inception to present day, from Daniel Gordis, “one of the most respected Israel analysts” (The Forward) living and writing in Jerusalem. Israel is a tinyThe first comprehensive yet accessible history of the state of Israel from its inception to present day, from Daniel Gordis, “one of the most respected Israel analysts” (The Forward) living and writing in Jerusalem.
Israel is a tiny state, and yet it has captured the world’s attention, aroused its imagination, and lately, been the object of its opprobrium. Why does such a small country speak to so many global concerns? More pressingly: Why does Israel make the decisions it does? And what lies in its future?
We cannot answer these questions until we understand Israel’s people and the questions and conflicts, the hopes and desires, that have animated their conversations and actions. Though Israel’s history is rife with conflict, these conflicts do not fully communicate the spirit of Israel and its people: they give short shrift to the dream that gave birth to the state, and to the vision for the Jewish people that was at its core. Guiding us through the milestones of Israeli history, Gordis relays the drama of the Jewish people’s story and the creation of the state. Clear-eyed and erudite, he illustrates how Israel became a cultural, economic and military powerhouse–but also explains where Israel made grave mistakes and traces the long history of Israel’s deepening isolation.
With Israel, public intellectual Daniel Gordis offers us a brief but thorough account of the cultural, economic, and political history of this complex nation, from its beginnings to the present. Accessible, levelheaded, and rigorous, Israel sheds light on the Israel’s past so we can understand its future. The result is a vivid portrait of a people, and a nation, reborn.
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We Stand Divided
- By: Daniel Gordis
- Narrator: Fred Sanders
- Length: 8 hours 6 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: September 10, 2019
- Language: English
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4.17(149 ratings)
4.17(149 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDFrom National Jewish Book Award Winner and author of Israel, a bold reevaluation of the tensions between American and Israeli Jews that reimagines the past, present, and future of Jewish life. Relations between the American Jewish community andFrom National Jewish Book Award Winner and author of Israel, a bold reevaluation of the tensions between American and Israeli Jews that reimagines the past, present, and future of Jewish life.
Relations between the American Jewish community and Israel are at an all-time nadir. Since Israel’s founding seventy years ago, particularly as memory of the Holocaust and of Israel’s early vulnerability has receded, the divide has grown only wider. Most explanations pin the blame on Israel’s handling of its conflict with the Palestinians, Israel’s attitude toward non-Orthodox Judaism, and Israel’s dismissive attitude toward American Jews in general. In short, the cause for the rupture is not what Israel is; it’s what Israel does.
These explanations tell only half the story. We Stand Divided examines the history of the troubled relationship, showing that from the outset, the founders of what are now the world’s two largest Jewish communities were responding to different threats and opportunities, and had very different ideas of how to guarantee a Jewish future.
With an even hand, Daniel Gordis takes us beyond the headlines and explains how Israel and America have fundamentally different ideas about issues ranging from democracy and history to religion and identity. He argues that as a first step to healing the breach, the two communities must acknowledge and discuss their profound differences and moral commitments. Only then can they forge a path forward, together.
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Let There Be Laughter
- By: Michael Krasny
- Narrator: Michael Krasny
- Length: 5 hours 41 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: March 08, 2022
- Language: English
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3.86(167 ratings)
3.86(167 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0021.99 USDFrom the host of NPR affiliate’s Forum with Michael Krasny, a compendium of Jewish jokes that packs the punches with hilarious riff after riff and also offers a window into Jewish culture. Michael Krasny has been telling Jewish jokes since hisFrom the host of NPR affiliate’s Forum with Michael Krasny, a compendium of Jewish jokes that packs the punches with hilarious riff after riff and also offers a window into Jewish culture.
Michael Krasny has been telling Jewish jokes since his bar mitzvah, and it’s been said that he knows more of them than anyone on the planet. He certainly states his case in this wise, enlightening, and hilarious book that not only collects the best of Jewish humor passed down from generation to generation, but explains the cultural expressions and anxieties behind the laughs.
“What’s Jewish Alzheimer’s?”
“You forget everything but the grudges.”“You must be so proud. Your daughter is the President of the United States!”
“Yes. But her brother is a doctor!”“Isn’t Jewish humor masochistic?”
“No. And if I hear that one more time I am going to kill myself.”With his background as a scholar and public-radio host, Krasny delves deeply into the themes, topics, and form of Jewish humor: chauvinism undercut by irony and self-mockery, the fear of losing cultural identity through assimilation, the importance of vocal inflection in joke-telling, and calls to communal memory, including the use of Yiddish.
Borrowing from traditional humor and such Jewish comedy legends as Jackie Mason, Mel Brooks, and Joan Rivers, Larry David, Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld and Amy Schumer, Let There Be Laughter is an absolute pleasure for the chosen and goyim alike.
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Hitler in Los Angeles
- By: Steven J. Ross
- Narrator: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 14 hours 0 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2017
- Language: English
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3.95(440 ratings)
3.95(440 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDThis is the chilling, little-known story of the rise of Nazism in Los Angeles and the Jewish leaders and spies they recruited who stopped it. No American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, the greatestThis is the chilling, little-known story of the rise of Nazism in Los Angeles and the Jewish leaders and spies they recruited who stopped it.
No American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, the greatest propaganda machine in the world. The Nazis plotted to kill the city’s Jews and to sabotage the nation’s military installations. Plans existed for hanging twenty prominent Hollywood figures such as Al Jolson, Charlie Chaplin, and Samuel Goldwyn; for driving through Boyle Heights and machine-gunning as many Jews as possible; and for blowing up defense installations and seizing munitions from National Guard armories along the Pacific Coast.
US law enforcement agencies were not paying close attention–preferring to monitor Reds rather than Nazis–and only Leon Lewis and his daring ring of spies stood in the way. From 1933 until the end of World War II, attorney Leon Lewis, the man Nazis would come to call “the most dangerous Jew in Los Angeles,” ran a spy operation comprising military veterans and their wives who infiltrated every Nazi and fascist group in Los Angeles. Often rising to leadership positions, this daring ring of spies uncovered and foiled the Nazis’ disturbing plans for death and destruction.
Featuring a large cast of Nazis, undercover agents, and colorful supporting players, Hitler in Los Angeles, by acclaimed historian Steven J. Ross, tells the story of Lewis’ daring spy network in a time when hate groups had moved from the margins to the mainstream.
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Genius & Anxiety
- By: Norman Lebrecht
- Narrator: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 18 hours 1 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2019
- Language: English
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4.03(221 ratings)
4.03(221 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDThis lively chronicle of the years 1847-1947–the century when the Jewish people changed how we see the world–is “[a] thrilling and tragic history…especially good on the ironies and chain-reaction intimacies that make a peopleThis lively chronicle of the years 1847-1947–the century when the Jewish people changed how we see the world–is “[a] thrilling and tragic history…especially good on the ironies and chain-reaction intimacies that make a people and a past” (The Wall Street Journal).
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In a hundred-year period, a handful of men and women changed the world. Many of them are well known–Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka. Others have vanished from collective memory despite their enduring importance in our daily lives. Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusions or major surgery. Without Paul Ehrlich, no chemotherapy. Without Siegfried Marcus, no motor car. Without Rosalind Franklin, genetic science would look very different. Without Fritz Haber, there would not be enough food to sustain life on earth.
What do these visionaries have in common? They all had Jewish origins. They all had a gift for thinking in wholly original, even earth-shattering ways. In 1847, the Jewish people made up less than 0.25% of the world’s population, and yet they saw what others could not. How? Why?
Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent, beautifully designed volume is “an urgent and moving history” (The Spectator, UK) and a celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.
Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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