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.