"There's a little Jewish mother in every mother," as comedienne Judy Gold reveals in her achingly hilarious and poignant book For a Jewish girl who remembers the first book ever read to her as a child was the pop-up version of The Diary of Anne Frank, learning how to be a Jewish mother who wasnt a carbon copy of HER Jewish mother wasnt easy. Here, Emmy Awardwinning comedienne Judy Gold asks, "Are there any Jewish mothers out there like me, or are they all, G-d forbid, like my mother" In 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, she incorporates her own adventures in Jewish motherdom and her memories of growing up Jewish in suburban New Jersey -- communicating with her mother by putting Ann Landers articles on the fridge ("Dear Ann, My mother wont let me walk alone to school and Im 16! Please help." "Dear Ann, The crossing guard drinks. Please help.") -- with the voices of the fifty other Jewish mothers, she and her co-author, Kathleen Moira Ryan, interviewed. They asked homemakers, lawyers, Holocaust survivors twenty-five questions, including: --Who's your favorite Jewish mother (Judy's is Barbra Streisand.)? --How many times a day do you talk to your children or mother (for Judy, it's anywhere from one to the high double digits)? --Are Jewish mothers really more paranoid (or, "Why do I have to write an entire itinerary with names, addresses, and phone numbers every time I leave the house")? And so on. The culmination of these extraordinary stories confirms that there is ultimately something strong, courageous, and loving in every Jewish mother -- a hopeful -- and very funny -- message to mothers and their children everywhere.

In You Never Call, You Never Write, Joyce Antler provides an illuminating and often amusing history of one of the best-known figures in popular culture--the Jewish Mother. Whether drawn as self-sacrificing or manipulative, in countless films, novels, radio and television programs, stand-up comedy, and psychological and historical studies, she appears as a colossal figure, intensely involved in the lives of her children. Antler traces the odyssey of this compelling personality through decades of American culture. She reminds us of a time when Jewish mothers were admired for their tenacity and nurturance, as in the early twentieth-century image of the "Yiddishe Mama," a sentimental figure popularized by entertainers such as George Jessel, Al Jolson, and Sophie Tucker, and especially by Gertrude Berg, whose amazingly successful "Molly Goldberg" ruled American radio and television for over 25 years. Antler explains the transformation of this Jewish Mother into a "brassy-voiced, smothering, and shrewish" scourge (in Irving Howe's words), detailing many variations on this negative theme, from Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks to television shows such as "The Nanny," "Seinfeld," and "Will and Grace." But she also uncovers a new counter-narrative, leading feminist scholars and stand-up comediennes to see the Jewish Mother in positive terms. Continually revised and reinvented, the Jewish Mother becomes in Antler's expert hands a unique lens with which to examine vital concerns of American Jews and the culture at large. A joy to read, You Never Call, You Never Write will delight anyone who has ever known or been nurtured by a "Jewish Mother," and it will be a special source of insight for modern parents. As Antler suggests, in many ways "we are all Jewish Mothers" today.

In You Never Call, You Never Write, Joyce Antler provides an illuminating and often amusing history of one of the best-known figures in popular culture--the Jewish Mother. Whether drawn as self-sacrificing or manipulative, in countless films, novels, radio and television programs, stand-up comedy, and psychological and historical studies, she appears as a colossal figure, intensely involved in the lives of her children.Antler traces the odyssey of this compelling personality through decades of American culture. She reminds us of a time when Jewish mothers were admired for their tenacity and nurturance, as in the early twentieth-century image of the "Yiddishe Mama," a sentimental figure popularized by entertainers such as George Jessel, Al Jolson, and Sophie Tucker, and especially by Gertrude Berg, whose amazingly successful "Molly Goldberg" ruled American radio and television for over 25 years. Antler explains the transformation of this Jewish Mother into a "brassy-voiced, smothering, and shrewish" scourge (in Irving Howe's words), detailing many variations on this negative theme, from Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint and Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks to television shows such as "The Nanny," "Seinfeld," and "Will and Grace." But she also uncovers a new counter-narrative, leading feminist scholars and stand-up comediennes to see the Jewish Mother in positive terms. Continually revised and reinvented, the Jewish Mother becomes in Antler's expert hands a unique lens with which to examine vital concerns of American Jews and the culture at large.A joy to read, You Never Call, You Never Write will delight anyone who has ever known or been nurtured by a "Jewish Mother," and it will be a special source of insight for modern parents. As Antler suggests, in many ways "we are all Jewish Mothers" today.

Ruth Rothwax had no trouble composing letters for others, but is at a loss for words when she attempts to confront her parents horrific past--and her own possible future. Print features.

"This beautiful work of historical fiction was inspired by the diary of an actual 18th-century Roman Jewish girl, imprisoned by the Catholic Church because someone with a grudge offered her to the Church. Anything But Yes is the true story of a young woman's struggle to defend her identity in the face of relentless attempts to destroy it. In 1749, 18-year-old Anna del Monte was seized at gunpoint from her home in Rome's Jewish ghetto and thrown into a convent cell at the Casa dei Convertiti, the house of converts. With no access to the outside world, she withstood isolation, sleep deprivation, endless lectures, and threats and promises. If Anna were to utter the simple word "yes," she would risk forced baptism, which meant never returning to her home and losing contact with any Jew-including her own family-for the rest of her life. Even in Italy today, few people know the full story of Rome's Jewish ghetto, the abduction of Jews, or the popes who were intent on forcibly converting every non-Catholic living in the long shadow of the Vatican. Young girls and small children were the primary targets of these forced conversions, for they were most vulnerable. But Anna del Monte was different. She was strong, brilliant, and educated, and wrote a diary of her experiences. Her diary became lost for more than 200 years but was rediscovered in Israel in 1989. Anything But Yes is based on Anna's diary and Joie Davidow's extensive research on life in the 18th-century Roman Jewish ghetto and its personalities, traditions, foods, and dialect"--

Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award 2010 A gripping story of a lone Jewish woman battling land sharks to keep her community alive Rachel lives alone by the sea. Her children have long migrated to Israel as have her Bene Israel Jew neighbours. Taking care of the local synagogue and preparing exquisite traditional Jewish dishes sustains Rachel's hope of seeing the community come together again at a future time. When developers make moves to acquire the synagogue and its surrounding land, Rachel's vehement opposition takes the synagogue committee and the town by surprise. Written with warmth and humour, Book of Rachel is a captivating tale of a woman's battle to live life on her own terms. Continuing the saga of the unique Bene Israel Jews in India, it adds to Esther David's reputation as a writer of grace and power.

"A stunning novel about childhood, marriage, and divorce by one of the most interesting minds of the 20th century, now back in print for the first time since 1969. Sophie Blind is starting a new life. She has left her husband Ezra and taken her three children to Paris. She has lovers there and another in New York. She is lecturing and writing. And she is compulsively reviewing her own history, having resumed the "lifelong struggle" of "coming into consciousness." The task of reclaiming her existence is all the more urgent because, even as Sophie Blind undertakes this necessary transformation-Sophie Blind is dead. Dream and reality overlap in Divorcing, a book in which divorcing is not just a matter of marital collapse but names a rift that runs right through the inner and outer worlds of its brilliant but desperate protagonist. Can the rift be mended? Perhaps in the form of a novel, one that goes back from present day New York to her childhood in pre-World War II Budapest, that revisits the divorce between her Freudian father and her fickle mother, and finds a place for a host of further tensions and contradictions of Sophie's life now. The question that haunts Divorcing, however, is whether any novel can be fleet and bitter and true and light enough to gather up all the darkness of a given life. Susan Taubes's startlingly original novel was published in 1969 but largely ignored; after the author's tragic early death, it was forgotten. Its republication presents a chance to rediscover a dazzling intense and inventive writer whose work in many ways anticipates the fragmentary, glancing, lyrical novels that Renata Adler and Elizabeth Hardwick would write in the 1970s"--

Juliet Applebaum juggles the demands of her two young children while investigating the disappearance of her young Hasidic woman babysitter.

A spiritual companion for those grieving infertility, pregnancy loss, or stillbirth, bringing solace from Jewish tradition. "This book begins where the others leave off. While the doctors do what they must do, when it is time for us to wait, or hope, or cry, or sleep, or pray, it is time for this book. The passages found within are drawn from the rich pool of spiritual responses that Judaism possesses. They reach out to us and embolden us to join our voices to the ancient prayers designed to get us through the night."--from the Introduction Enables those frustrated and pained in their attempts at parenthood to mourn the loss of a pregnancy or infertility through the prayers, rituals, and meditations of the Jewish tradition. This new edition--updated and expanded--includes guided questions and pages on which to add personal reflections of your own emotions and experiences along the path toward parenting.

A biography of Gertrude van Tijn (1891-1974), born as Gertrud Franzisca Cohn in Braunschweig, Germany. From 1911-15 she lived in London, but was forced to immigrate because of her status as an enemy alien. She then went to Holland, where she became a fervent Zionist. In 1920 she married Jacques van Tijn, a Dutch Jew, and gave birth to two children. As he was a mining engineer, they lived in different countries until 1932 when they returned to Holland; in 1937 they were divorced. Focuses on her life and activities during 1933-45, when she worked for organizations dealing with the resettlement of Jewish refugees from Germany who fled to Holland, as well as with emigration of Dutch Jews, in particular for the Committee for Jewish Refugees. In April-May 1941 van Tijn, with Nazi approval, traveled to Portugal to coordinate, together with Portuguese authorities and the Joint Distribution Committee, the transit of Jewish refugees through Portugal and across the Atlantic. Her task proved to be very difficult, but some Jews got through, including her daughter. Her son served in the Allied army in France and Belgium. Van Tijn became head of the emigration department of the Jewish Council in Amsterdam; however, her achievements in this capacity were modest. In September 1943 she was deported to Westerbork, and in March 1944 to Bergen-Belsen. In the summer of 1944 she was freed with a group of prisoners in exchange for Germans arrested in Palestine. She stayed in Palestine for a few months, traveled back to Europe in 1945, and eventually settled in the USA, living close to her daughter. While in Palestine she wrote a report of what she had witnessed, which is found in the Leo Baeck Archives in New York, but was never published. Soon after the war van Tijn was criticized and censured as a dupe of the Nazis, guilty at the least of false credulity and at the most of collaboration, but she was later exonerated.

Shalvi has been a pioneer in advancing the status of women in Israel and in religious girls' education. She has been an active participant in peace dialogues and inter-religious initiatives and has been a social activist all her life. Born in Germany in 1926 to Orthodox parents, Shalvi grew up in London and studied English at Cambridge, before moving to Jerusalem in 1949 where she went on to pursue a PhD at Hebrew University, eventually teaching English Literature. In 1950, Shalvi met and married her husband, Moshe Shelkowitz (later Shalvi), who died in 2013. They had six children together. One of Shalvi's greatest accomplishments was the establishment of the Pelech School which she headed from 1975 to 1990. This experimental/ progressive religious high school for girls in Jerusalem has become a model for women's Orthodox education across the country. Shalvi was a co-founder of the Israel Women's Network, established to advance the status of women. In 2007 she was awarded the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievements in the areas of education, social welfare and human rights.