This may not be the summer we all had planned but that’s no reason to not kick back with an excellent book! Our clergy have some terrific suggestions for your summer reading list, so fire up your kindle or help support your local bookstore with a curbside pick-up of these page-turners!
Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback
How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
An important book for this moment especially. Kendi invites us to think deeply about ways that we demonstrate our values and beliefs more actively when it comes to confronting racism, bigotry, and xenophobia.
The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties that Helped Create Modern China by Jonathan Kaufman
Pulitzer Prise winning journalist, Jonathan Kaufman, tells the extraordinary story of the Kadoori and Sassoon families and their role in saving the lives of over 18,000 Jewish refugees during World War II. Kaufman opens a window into a fascinating world that is no more.
Listen to Rabbi Yoshi’s interview with Jonathan Kaufman
Rabbi David Woznica
Two of my favorite authors had books published in recent months. I enthusiastically recommend them.
The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larsen
The book begins with Churchill’s rise to Prime Minister (on his first day in office, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium) and chronicles a most eventful year, notably the German bombing of the United Kingdom known as The Blitz. You’ll come to know Churchill, his advisors and his family intimately and by book’s end have a great sense of why Churchill is placed on a mantel of greatness.
If you enjoy learning history through the eyes of those who experienced it (I confess, for me it’s far and away the best method) you’ll undoubtedly relish this book. As Larsen has done in previous volumes, he explores diaries, archives, and intelligence reports to bring the past to life in an intriguing and enjoyable manner. Compulsively readable, this is a great book.
The Order by Daniel Silva
Fans of Gabrielle Allon, the fictional protagonist in Daniel Silva’s series of thrillers, need no encouragement to read further. All you need to know is Silva’s annual book, as they use to say, “is on the bookshelves.” While I’ve read only 50 pages, if this is typical of his previous works, you (and I) are in for a treat. Allon is both spy (rising to the heights of “spydom” as head of Israel intelligence) and art restorer. This time, while on vacation with his family in Venice he is summoned to Rome by the Pope’s personal secretary.
While a writer of fiction, Daniel Silva often takes us to disparate parts of the world, having well-researched the cities and circumstances that we find Mr. Allon must navigate. The book jacket notes “it is a novel of friendship and faith in a perilous and uncertain world.” How apt. Enjoy the ride.
Rabbi Ron Stern
Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
A fictional, period piece about a slave who escapes from the British Virgin Islands by hot air balloon. This beautifully written book is a fascinating integration of 19th century technology and innovation into a rich book about the experiences of an extraordinarily talented Black man who is hobbled by the prejudices of his age. Even as it reveals the challenges of a world different from our own it speaks to the Black experience today.
Rabbi Sari Laufer
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
A particularly timely novel about race, memory, identity, and family ties. Beautifully written, and spanning small town Louisiana, Los Angeles, New York, and Minnesota, it is a beautifully written story centering around two sisters, and the choices they make and have made for them.
Rabbi Sari Laufer and Cantor Emma Lutz
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
SL: The latest from speaker, blogger, and activist Glennon Doyle is a call to live our truest lives. For all of us raising children (especially girls and women), and for all of us still in the process of becoming someone new, this is a memoir of learning to listen to the voice deep within and bring our fullest selves into the world.
EL: A beautiful memoir by activist, speaker, and author Glennon Doyle about the power of true love and the joy of embracing our whole selves. Doyle is authentic, spiritual, hilarious, and thought provoking in this, her third publication of autobiographical essays.
Rabbi Josh Knobel
A Knock at Midnight by Brittany Barnett
Lawyer Brittany Barnett’s life forever changed when she met Sharanda Jones, a single mother serving a life sentence without parole for a first-time drug offense. Already on track for a lucrative career in corporate law, Barnett reveals how she closed million dollar deals by day as a corporate lawyer while working pro bono at night to free Sharanda and others from an unjust legal system addicted to incarceration.
Wandering Dixie by Sue Eisenfeld
Eisenfeld explores the Jewish South, past and present, in the hopes of unearthing a Jewish love letter to the rural South. What she finds is so much more: a complicated and sometimes fraught history of our nation and of the American Jewish community.
Cantor Emma Lutz
The Girl from Berlin by Ronald H. Balson
I couldn’t put this book down until I finished it. The story within a story covered so much: Nazi resistance, romance, intergenerational narratives, and the transcendent power of music. Reading this while staying safer at home felt like an even more special invitation to explore the villas of Italy and the music halls of Berlin from my couch!
Cantorial Intern Josh Goldberg
Catbird: The Ballad of Barbi Prim by Barbara J. Ostefeld
Trailblazer Cantor Barbara Ostfeld takes the reader on a touching, no holds barred journey through her life story from growing up on the East Coast, to becoming the first ordained female cantor in America. We take for granted now that we have so many amazing female cantors across the United States (like our own Cantor Lutz!) but some might not realize how different the clergy looked back in the 70’s and 80’s!
Wisdom of the Jewish Sages: A Modern Reading of Pirke Avot by Rabbi Rami Shapiro
Rabbi Shapiro is a beautiful writer and uses his modern poetic license to distill some key passages from Pirkei Avot, the words of wisdom of the rabbis from 2,000 years ago.
