I can hardly believe a week has passed since my last post. I am leaving for 6 days in Phoenix [part book tour and part family visit] shortly after dawn tomorrow and not even packed yet. For those in the Phoenix area, here’s where I’ll be speaking:
Jan 24 - 7 pm. Valley of the Sun Hadassah. Temple Chai, 4645 E Marilyn Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85032
Jan 27 - 10:30 am. Temple Emanuel, 5801 S Rural Rd.Tempe, AZ 85283
Jan 28 - 7 pm. Jewish Women's Learning Center, 7825 E. Paradise Lane, Scottsdale AZ 85260
I hope I’ll see some of my Arizona fans there, despite the fact that nobody I invited has signed up on my Facebook event page.
On another subject, I have learned of a fascinating new website of the Jewish English Lexicon . The JEL, an outgrowth of a 2007 study by HUC scholar Sarah Bunin Benor of words used by American Jews, is a collaborative database of distinctive words that are used in the speech or writing of English-speaking Jews. Think of it as the Wikipedia or Urban Dictionary of Jewish language.
The words in this database stem from several languages of the Jewish past and present, including the Hebrew and Aramaic of ancient biblical and rabbinic texts, the Yiddish of centuries of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, and the Modern Hebrew of contemporary Israel. When Jews use words from this list within their English speech or writing, they indicate not only that they are Jewish but also that they are a certain type of Jew. Some are Yiddish lovers, some are engaged in religious life and learning, some have a strong connection to Israel, some have Sephardi heritage, and some are all of the above. Because Jewish and non-Jewish social networks overlap, these words are not used exclusively by Jews. Some are English words that certain Jews use in distinctive ways, and some are Yiddish-origin words that have become part of the English language.
The database is open to all, both to look up words and to add them. I urge you all to check it out and enjoy. And if you search for a “Jewish” word and don’t find it, please add it.
My morning schedule typically involves lying around in bed partly awake considering what scene I’m going to write next. For unknown reasons, this is a very creative time for me, when my mind drifts around somewhere between dreaming and thinking. I bring this up to explain why I sometimes don’t get online until noon. Yesterday was one of those days, and the first place I went was Facebook, to see whose birthday it was and to send off my first “happy birthday” greeting. With 2100+ friends, some days I need to start early to get to them all in a day.
To my astonishment, there were a bunch of “congratulations” and “mazel tov” posts to me, but I had no idea what they were for. It took a little while to discover that that “Rav Hisda's Daughter” was chosen as Fiction Finalist for 2012 National Jewish Book Awards,long with Joshua Henkin’s “World Without You” and Herman Wouk’s “The Lawgiver.” The fiction winner was “The Innocents” by Francesca Segal. Pretty impressive to be in the same company as the author of “The Caine Mutiny” and “Marjorie Morningstar.”
In my email box was a very lovely letter from my publicist at Plume, forwarding me the official announcement and offering her congratulations as well. Of course I am thrilled, especially as I’ve never won any kind book award from a Jewish group, and the National Jewish Book Awards are the most prestigious –the Pulitzer Prize of the Jewish literary community. And it’s not like the finalists are also-rans, but more like the Olympics where there are several medalists. Not all categories of Jewish Book Awards have finalists, and if so, there could be between one and three chosen. Considering all the Jewish novels published every year, being a finalist is big honor.
I’ve been told not to expect an immediate jump in sales. But we’ll see if this new honor gets me any more reviews in the Jewish press. For more about the history and importance of the National Jewish Book Awards, see this link.
I’m finally home from a busy and productive week in South Florida, speaking about “Rav Hisda’s Daughter” at 3 JCC’s and 2 synagogues, plus taping 2 radio interviews. As a native Angelino I’m used to warm weather, even in January, but these temperatures [88/71 high-low in Naples and 56/37 in Los Angeles] were pretty extreme. So I took advantage of the Florida heat by taking a dip in the ocean at Miami Beach.
In the weeks before I left, I had the disconcerting experience of accidentally coming across two online articles on subjects that I’m researching. The good news was that I discovered them at all, the bad news is that I have to believe that there is probably even more useful information that I will never learn about.
The first article was among the references Rabbi Milgram cited in her recent review of my novel in the Philadelphia Jewish Voice [see my Jan 1 blog post]. Meir bar-Ilan’s article, “Witches in the Bible and the Talmud,” is not new, yet despite its relevant title, I had never heard of it. I don’t agree with all his conclusions, but it was informative nevertheless.
The other article, where Geoffrey Herman suggests that the tradition of lighting lamps to celebrate Hanukah was actually borrowed from Zoroastrianism, was mentioned on The Talmud Blog. For the curious, “Religious Transformation between East and West: Hanukkah in the Babylonian Talmud and Zoroastrianism” [pp. 158-170] can be accessed at this link.
Tomorrow [Monday] morning at the ungodly hour of 6 am, I fly to Miami for five days of speaking gigs in South Florida. Considering that I once did a two-week book tour of the Great Lakes region in January, I jumped at the opportunity to travel to a warmer local this year.
My schedule is as follows [and I hope to see some of you there]:
Monday: 7 pm, Michael-Ann Russell JCC, 18900 NE 25th Ave, North Miami Beach
Tuesday: 11:30 am, Temple Shalom, 4630 Pine Ridge Rd, Naples
Tuesday: 7 pm, David Posnack JCC, 5850 S. Pine Island Road, Davie
Wednesday: 7:30 pm, B'nai Torah Congregation, 6261 SW 18th St, Boca Raton
Thursday: 7 pm, Dave & Mary Alper JCC, 11155 SW 112th Ave, Miami
For those who want to know more about my strange writer’s journey, here is an article profiling me from the So. Florida Sun-Sentinel.
For more information about some of my events, visit these two websites: Miami Jewish Federation and Kendall Gazette.
For all my So. Florida area friends and fans, I'll be speaking about my new novel, "Rav Hisda's Daughter," at 5 locations [No. Miami, Naples, Davie, Boca Raton, Miami] from Jan 7-10. Here's an article from the Pinecrest Tribune about my program in Miami and another from the Kendall Gazette.
For more info check my speaking schedule [link to the left].
I just received a wonderful “New Year” present from Rabbi Goldie Migram, a link to her review of “Rav Hisda’s Daughter” in the “Philadelphia Jewish Voice” . Not only did she glowingly praise my novel, she added a good deal of scholarship about the history of Talmud, its rabbis, and Jewish witches. Her article is over 2500 words, so I’ve provided an excerpt.
“Fascinating reading and learning surprises await those who dive into the vividly depicted world of Babylonian Jewry in Rav Hisda's Daughter, Book I: Apprentice: A Novel of Love, the Talmud, and Sorcery by Maggie Anton, who earlier brought us the remarkable historical fiction series Rashi's Daughters. Anton succeeds brilliantly in drawing us into the formative period leading up to the Talmud. This was a time when most in the third century Persian culture — men, women and children, sages and commoners, Jews and gentiles - wore amulets, incantation bowls and spells for protection from demons and disease, and in hopes of fertility, healing and good fortune. Yes, this is all well documented right in the Talmud, a typically 37 volume work that emerges after the time of this story, aspects of which are elegantly embroidered into the Rav Hisda's Daughter's narrative. Anton's redemptive thesis reveals how what we would view as magical thinking and behavior would, or could, have been a form of prayer and much sought-after professional community service … the incantations provided are the richly fascinating ones.
Here in Rav Hisda's Daughter, what we have is the work of a master craftswoman set upon repairing a major gap in Jewish literature and understanding of our own past. Maggie Anton is forging a repair that goes even deeper than history, for her story gives insight into how to approach contemporary encounters with what Phyllis Trible dubbed religious "Texts of Terror" against women … So it is both fitting and wonderful that this story of Rav Hisda's Daughter focuses substantially upon Anton envisioning her apprenticing to a woman who makes amulets and incantation bowls. While the story line's resolution is disappointingly obvious from the get-go and Jewish holidays seem more described than experienced for their spiritual force, Anton effectively opens the times to us through a pleasurable texture similar to the details of dreams that unfold wonders … heightened appreciation for Anton's vivid, almost tactile written descriptions of the arts of the period …
Anton agreeably positions a number of traditional Jewish legal debates and principles within the family life of Hisda's daughter, allowing her to sit in and have us listen-in through her experience … Anton does us the mitzvah of zachor in creating Rav Hisda's Daughter — researching, reclaiming and "re-membering" the little-recorded lives of Jewish women and girls retroactively into our people's history. The volume title illustrates how even the names of those of female gender were rarely recorded in sacred text by the sages of patriarchal times; instead they were generically female--"daughter"--and labeled by paternal descent …
Maggie Anton provides evocative imagery, such as the "smell of boiling pomegranates," the color and texture of silks, the tiling of mosaics with, yes, women's images on synagogue floors, the fragrance of love, the scent of fear and the hormonal surge of having your feet washed by the one to whom you are betrothed, which brings us fully into each moment of the life of Rav Hisda's daughter, whom Anton names Hisdadukh. In a cool bit of interpretation of the incantations and signage on bowls that were placed upside down to capture demons on the street in rabbinic times, Maggie Anton points out in her notes that the term "dukh-daughter" is appended to the name of the father to yield female names on these items and so dubs her main character, Rav Hisda's daughter — Hisdadukh …
Rav Hisda's Daughter joins the annals of great historical fiction beside Jewish examples such as Anita Diamant's The Red Tent: A Novel, and Deena Metzger's What Dinah Thought; the novels of Hayyim Grade also come to mind. Expect authentic period depth and delights when reading a work of historical fiction by Maggie Anton. Let's hope the next in the Rav Hisda's Daughter series comes through soon.”
--- excerpted from Philadelphia Jewish Voice, Dec 2012 by Rabbi Goldie Milgram
For those who want to read more of the lengthy, but high informative, review, which includes some interesting footnotes such as an article about witches in the Bible and Talmud, be sure to click on the link above.