The Auschwitz Violinist

by Jonathan Dunsky

In this, the third of Jonathan Dunsky's Adam Lapid mystery series, Lapid sees a man on a Tel Aviv street that he hasn't seen since his imprisonment in Auschwitz.

The man, Yosef Kaplon, had vanished so quickly from the barracks that Lapid believed he had been killed. Kaplon tells him that he survived Auschwitz thanks to his mother: the violin lessons she forced him to take allowed him to become a member of the orchestra that greeted new arrivals to Auschwitz.

Kaplon invites Lapid to come to a cafe and hear him play. It turns into a magical evening for Lapid, filled with bittersweet memories.  Surrounded by people speaking his native Hungarian, eating goulash that rivals that of his own mother and listening to Kaplon's heavenly music, Lapid is reminded of all he lost at Auschwitz.

The Book of Jewish Values

by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin

In the hit HBO series, "Game of Thrones," the Stark family of the north repeatedly says, "Winter is coming!"

When Elul rolls around, we Jews say, "Yom Kippur is coming!"

Every year I reach the end of the High Holy Days inspired to do more -- study more, come to more services, observe more rituals more often -- and be more -- kinder, more charitable, more aware and more grateful.

Yet when Elul comes round again, I'm disappointed in myself. Overwhelmed by the possibilities for improvement, I realize I've defaulted to business as usual on the path of least resistance.

This year, however, I've discovered a book to guide me: Rabbi Joseph Telushkin's The Book of Jewish Values; A Day-by-Day Guide to Ethical Living. The book offers short, readable essays on Jewish values for every day of the year except Shabbats, when Rabbi Telushkin recommends reviewing the previous six days' essays.

Sarah’s Key

 By Tatiana de Rosnay

The event that turns the plot of Sarah’s Key is the July 16 and 17, 1942, mass arrests of Jewish men, women and children in Paris, and their detention in the Vélodrome d’Hiver in Paris.

Decreed by the Nazis, the roundup was executed by French police, using Paris city buses and the “Winter Velodrome” bicycling racetrack and stadium built near the Eiffel Tower by Henri Desgrange, who later organized the Tour de France.

The Vél d’Hiv round up captured 13,152 victims – men, women and 4,051 children. There were no functioning lavatories and just one water tap. The limited food and water available was brought by Quakers, the Red Cross and the few doctors and nurses allowed to enter.

Five days later they were then taken to internment camps at Drancy, Beaune-la-Rolande and Pithiviers, and ultimately murdered in Auschwitz.

Ten Years Gone

by Jonathan Dunsky

Private investigator Adam Lapid is a former detective with the Hungarian police and a decorated soldier who served in the Negev Desert during Israel's War of Independence.

He is also a survivor of Auschwitz, struggling to survive post-war life in Tel Aviv. 

His nights are riddled with nightmares; his days haunted by ghosts; his soul heavy with losses and experiences he cannot share.

When a small, faded, thin woman -- Henrietta Ackerland -- asks for his help finding her son in July 1949, Lapid listens with a sinking heart. He feels, as vividly as he feels the scorching July heat, that this is a futile mission that will end in heart-break.

The Ladies Auxiliary

by Tova Mirvis

The Ladies Auxiliary describes a year in the life of an Orthodox community in Memphis, Tenn.

The year begins in early summer with the arrival of Batsheva Jacobs and her young daughter Ayala. It ends just after Shavuot the following year.

Through that year, the community goes through tumultuous times that lead to two teenagers in the community leaving, separately and under dramatically different conditions.

Bloodlines – Recovering Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws, from Patton’s Trophy to Public Memorial

By Anthony Platt

The physical typescript of the Nuremberg Laws – from their discovery by two Jewish American soldiers in Eichstätt, Germany, in 1945 to their first public exhibition in 1999 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles – is the focus of Anthony Platt’s riveting book, Bloodlines.

Platt, a professor emeritus at California State University, Sacramento, was on sabbatical with his partner and co-author Cecelia O’Leary doing research at the Huntington Library in 1999.

His curiosity was aroused by the controversy stirred by the Huntington’s announcement that it was loaning an original copy of the Nuremberg Laws to the new Skirball Cultural Center. Received by the library from Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., in June 1945, the documents had been out of sight in the Huntington’s vault 54 years.

Three Floors Up

by Eshkol Nevo; translated from Hebrew by Sondra Silverston

As its title suggests, this book tells three stories taking place on different floors of the same apartment building in a Tel Aviv suburb.

While these neighbors see each other in passing, leaving the ATM, or through shutters being closed, there's little direct interaction. The plots of the stories don't intermingle.

Arnon Levanoni, his wife Ayelet and their daughters Ofri and Yaeli live on the first floor across the hall from Ruth and Herman, an elderly German couple. Hani Gat lives on the second floor with her daughter Lyri and her son Nimrod. Her husband Asaf is away so often on business that the neighbors secretly nickname her "the Widow." Devora Edelman, who lives on the third floor, actually is a widow. She and her husband Michael were judges before they retired. She hasn't seen her troubled son Adar for years, ever since he turned his back on his family, after a tragic accident.

The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis

by David Fishman

This is story is as exciting as a spy thriller. But instead of smuggling information across enemy lines, this tale is about how dedicated band of scholars, writers and teachers in the Vilna Ghetto who saved priceless books, letters, artwork, Torah scrolls and Judaica from destruction by the Nazis.

Among the treasurers they saved were the record book of the Vilna Gaon's kloyz (house of prayer) covering events from 1768 to 1924; early chapters of Zionist Theodor Herzl's diary; letters and manuscripts by writers Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Sholem Aleichem and poet Hayim Bialik; a drawing by Marc Chagall; and sculptures by Ilya Gintsburg.

Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

by Dani Shapiro

Based on a DNA test she took because of her husband's interest in genealogy, Dani Shapiro discovered the man she grew up believing was her father actually wasn't.

This book is the telling of her search for answers: How did this  happen? Why did her parents never tell her? Who is her biological father? Who is she now that everything she believed has changed?

With both parents dead, she can no longer get answers directly. She instead dissects memories,  slowly making connections. She realizes why she never felt like she belonged in her family, with blond hair and blue eyes that were so unlike her relatives.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

By Michael Chabon

If Raymond Chandler had sat down with Isaac Bashevis Singer over a bottle of schnapps, they might have produced The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union combines a noir murder mystery with Jewish messianic beliefs in a “what if . . . “ context that springs from an actual historical fact.

Chabon’s starting point is the 1940 Slattery Report that recommended that Alaska be used for temporarily resettling European Jews fleeing the Nazis. Ultimately, Alaska Territory Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives Anthony J. Dimond prevented a vote on the Slattery recommendation from ever taking place.

Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar

by Alan Morinis

Mussar is the spiritual discipline of becoming a mensch.

Alan Morinis’ book, Everyday Holiness: the Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar, brings this 1,000-year-old tradition to life for modern audiences.

Mussar practice – a blend of study, meditation, introspection and action – was originally passed from student to teacher. The practice virtually died out with the Holocaust.

Morinis himself discovered Mussar at one of the lowest points of his life. Working as a filmmaker, writer and producer, he was riding a comet of success – until a film failed. He was forced to confront the fact that the man he had become was far, far from the man he had planned to become.

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin

By Erik Larson

At the start of one of the most critical periods in U.S.-German relations, President Franklin D. Roosevelt found himself unable to find a candidate willing to accept the role of ambassador to Germany in 1933.

Germany was volatile and the assignment oxymoronic: do what you can to protest Nazi treatment of Jews in Germany unofficially while maintaining cordial official diplomatic relations.

Wiser, more experienced men than Professor William E. Dodd, who ultimately accepted the position, turned the post down.

Triangle

By Katharine Weber

On March 25, the 108th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire will be observed. The fire, which broke out near closing time on a Saturday afternoon, killed 146 workers, mostly women, many of whom jumped to their deaths to escape the flames. It was the 9/11 of its time.

The tragedy spurred major reforms in working conditions in New York City’s sweatshops and helped unions gain acceptance.

Triangle tells the story in three voices. Esther Gottesfeld, the last living survivor of the fire at 106, is heard from only indirectly through interviews and trial transcripts. She has kept key secrets for a lifetime. Ruth Zion is a self-serving feminist researcher with a nose for missing information and an astute ability to suggest what fits into the blanks. Internationally renowned composer George Botkin marries Esther’s granddaughter, Rebecca, a genetic researcher.

The Woman Who Fought an Empire; Sarah Aaronsohn and Her Nili Spy Ring

By Gregory J. Wallance

Had it not been for a homesick housewife returning to her native Palestine and witnessing the Armenian genocide in 1914, the British would have faced greater challenges defeating the Ottoman Empire in 1917.

Of course, the housewife was no ordinary woman. She was Sarah Aaronsohn. The daughter of Romanian immigrants, she had grown up in Zichron Ya'akov, a settlement community about 22 miles south of Haifa.

Sarah happened to be on the train from Constantinople (modern Istanbul) to Haifa to visit her family. In March 1914, she’d married Haim Abraham, a Bulgarian Jewish businessman who lived in Constantinople. But she was unhappy, and missed the freedom and autonomy she had managing her father's household in Zichron and working with her brother Aaron, an internationally renowned agronomist. Her visit was supposed to last only a few months, but she never returned.

The Ruined House

by Ruby Namdar
Translated by Hillel Halkin

When this book opens "on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Elul, the year 5760, counting from the creation of the world," Andrew P. Cohen, professor of comparative culture at New York University (NYU), is at the peak of a perfect life.

But that day, "which happened to fall on Wednesday, September 6, 2000, the gates of heaven were opened above the great city of New York, and behold: all seven celestial spheres were revealed, right above the West 4th Street subway station, layered one on top of another like the rungs of a ladder reaching skyward from the earth."

There, in the first paragraph, we are faced with the amazing and beautiful duality of this book. Page after page, author Ruby Namdar makes the real magical and the magical real.

Walking Israel; A Personal Search for the Soul of a Nation

by Martin Fletcher

Martin Fletcher had long dreamed of walking Israel's 110-mile coastline which "has to be the most fascinating, action-packed hundred miles in the world . . . when you consider the extraordinary span of history crammed into this tiny coastline."

He was able to achieve that dream in the summer of 2008, when he walked from Rosh Hanikra (once known as the Ladder of Tyre) at the border of Lebanon to Israel's boundary with Gaza.

As a reporter who had covered Israel and the Middle East for European and American television since 1973, Fletcher knew how easily wars, bombings and terrorist attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank hit the news.

Testament

by Kim Sherwood

When painter Joseph Silk dies, the world pays tribute. For John, the son he didn't love, and Eva Butler, the granddaughter he did, there is little agreement about who Joseph Silk was.

In the gap between Silk's death and his funeral, Eva wanders through his "Blue Room," a combination studio and library of the color of blue. After being beaten in a German labor camp, Silk became partially color blind; blue was the color he saw best. The room is filled with postcards of seas and ice fields, soccer shirts, torn Levis, milk of magnesia bottles, peacock feathers, tea tins, amethyst crystals -- all shades of blue.

Giving Up America

By Pearl Abraham

The first thing Deena and Daniel do in their new house in Brooklyn is take down the smoked mirrors that cover the windows and living room doors. The former owners said they were needed for privacy. The next morning Deena comes down the stairs and sees a triangle of light – sun shining through a leaded glass window.

The next six months shed new light on her seven-year marriage to Daniel. Deena’s father, a Hassidic rebbe said the marriage was doomed by the gematria of their names. Deena recalculated the equations stemming from the numbers linked to the letters of their names to justify why Daniel was just the man for her.

The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story

By Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman has skillfully woven Antonina Zabinska’s writings about her time at the Warsaw Zoo before and during World War II into a book that both terrifies and delights.

Antonina, her zookeeper husband Jan, and their son Ryszard lived in a villa on the zoo grounds.

“Each morning, when zoo dawn arrived, a starling gushed a medley of stolen songs, distant wrens cranked up a few arpeggios, and the cuckoos called monotonously like clocks stuck on the hour.

Beaufort

By Ron Leshem

Beaufort – named “beautiful fortress" by 12th century French Crusaders– was a symbol of Israeli defensive strength when it was captured from the PLO in 1982.

With a commanding view of the upper Galilee and South Lebanon, it was touted as the safe zone that protected Northern Israel.

By the late 1990s, it was a symbol of the failure of the Israeli campaign into Lebanon. Rising death tolls made it the focus of escalating anti-war campaigns and a national debate on troop withdrawal.

When I Lived in Modern Times

By Linda Grant

“Scratch a Jew and you’ve got a story,” Evelyn Sert tells us on the opening page of her own story, When I Lived in Modern Times.

The time is April 1946, when “victory hung like a veil in the air, disguising where we might be headed next.” The place is Palestine.

Evelyn herself is two generations away from a Latvian shtetl. Her late mother was the mistress of a Zionist businessman. When Evelyn’s mother dies, he sells the hairdressing salon Evelyn’s mother managed and gives Evelyn the proceeds to go to Palestine.

Fräulein Rabbiner Jonas; The Story of the First Woman Rabbi

by Elisa Klapheck

Had it not been for the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and for Regina Jonas' foresight in leaving her documents with the Berlin Jewish community before being deported by the Nazis, her life and achievements might well have been lost in the mists of history.

Fräulein Rabbiner Regina Jonas became the first woman to be ordained as rabbi on Dec. 27, 1935. Seven years later, she and her 66-year-old mother Sara were sent to Theresienstadt. They arrived at Auschwitz on one of the last transports on Oct. 12, 1944, and were probably murdered on arrival.

It would not be until 1974 that another woman was ordained a rabbi: Sally Priesand in the Reform Movement, followed in 1976 by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso in the Reconstructionist movement, and in 1985 by the ordination of Amy Eilberg in the Conservative movement.

The Last Watchman of Old Cairo

by Michael David Lukas

Michael David Lukas' story, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, unfolds as if he were pulling fragments from an ancient geniza and piecing them together.

It's apt for a book about an ancient synagogue (Ibn Ezra) in Old Cairo. In the world Lukas has created, Jews and others have believed for more than a thousand years that a flawless Torah scroll created by a scribe named Ezra was hidden within the synagogue's geniza.

One fragment of this story is about Joseph al-Raqb, 26, born to an Egyptian Muslim father, Ahmed al-Raqb, and an Egyptian Jewish mother, Claudia Shemarya, who is trying to understand his origins and why his parents never married.

National Jewish Book Awards

I don't always agree with the judges of book awards, but I love having a list of books that a panel of people have ranked as worth reading. In that sense, the finalists are as interesting as the winners to me.

The National Jewish Book Awards are particularly important because books with Jewish themes or content don't always make best-seller lists.  These awards are an easy way to discover new books and authors.

Jewish Book Council announced its 2018 National Book Award winners this month. Here's the concise listing of the winners. (You can find a full list of winners and finalists here.)

The Genizah at the House of Shepher

by Tamar Yellin

In the attic of the Shepher house at Kiriat Shoshan in Jerusalem, aging paper turns to dust. The trash and treasures of three generations of the family tumble into chaos.

In this geniza, an accidental find is made. It is a book, a codex, a bound manuscript of the Torah that doesn’t precisely match the accepted version of the Torah today.

Is this a national treasure? Will it change the fate and fortunes of the Shepher family? Does it even belong to them?

Sacred Trash; The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza

By Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole

Imagine Rabbi Solomon Schechter cast in a role like Harrison Ford’s in the movie “The Raiders of the Lost Ark” and you’ll get the flavor of this true life, swashbuckling history of the treasures of the Cairo Geniza.

The Cairo Geniza, located in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat (or Old Cairo), contained nearly 1,000 years of documents and manuscripts from one of the wealthiest and most centrally located medieval Jewish communities.

Among its 300,000 manuscript fragments are scraps handwritten by Maimonides and renowned poet and thinker Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, both of whom lived in ancient Cairo during this period.