Summer Reading
Jewish Ledger | June 22, 2012
Summertime is the perfect time to curl up with a good book. What to read? Here are some suggestions from people around the state.
Relax with a good book!
Dr. Vera Schwartz
Director of the Freeman Center for East Asian Studies and chair of the East Asian Studies Program, Wesleyan University, Middletown
Right now I am reading:
Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog, a witty, thought-provoking novel about a brainy concierge in Paris and a suicidal teenager. How often can difficult philosophical ideas about the nature of knowledge and the ultimate purpose of life and education come so fully alive? Since I grew tired of academic epistemology, I am more appreciative of Barbery’s narrative craft.
Jordan Paper’s The Theology of the Chinese Jews. Well researched reflections about a group of Jews gaining more and more attention in the West: Our cousins from Kaifeng, now starting a trickle, of aliya to Israel. We know so little about what Chinese Jews believed and did religiously in the eight centuries before their encounter with outsiders (from 1000 to 1850). Now we are learning that they were/are closer to Jewish mainstream than previously believed. After teaching the first undergraduate seminar on the Jews of China last spring, I find this argument very suggestive.
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Rabbi Andrea Cohen Kiener
Congregation P’nai Or, West Hartford
I am reading Jacob’s Return by a local writer (now in Israel) Andrew Tertes (the son of Elliot and Carolyn Tertes), about a Jewish man who is widowed of his Native American wife. It puts him on a journey. Good so far.
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Josh Cohen
Director -BBYO, Connecticut Valley Region, Woodbridge
This summer I’ll be reading Oy Vey! Isn’t a Strategy by Deborah Gratson Riegel.
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Cheryl Rosenfield
Communications Coordinator, University of Saint Joseph; former director of the Hartford Jewish Book Festival
West Hartford
Every summer, I make it a point to uncover one or two classics that I have always intended to read. It all started a few years ago, when I read for the very first time (at almost the age of 50 – shame on me) Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I couldn’t put it down and wished the story would never end! This summer, I’ve got a Midwestern theme going: Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson and Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor. Each author has a unique literary style; while some may consider small town life ordinary, both books are masterfully written with great depth and understanding to elicit that which is universal and profound. I am also looking forward to reading Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken.
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Dr. Arnold Dashefsky
Director, Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life; Director, Berman Institute-North American Jewish Data Bank, UConn, Storrs
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s new book Prague Winter, about her experiences as a young girl after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia — the country where she was born.
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Yehudis Wolvovsky
Chabad Jewish Center, Glastonbury
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