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Review of "Blanch on the Lam"

Review of Blanche on the Lam, Barbara Neely’s Smart, Sassy and Groundbreaking Crime Novel

Blanche White is a plump, feisty, middle-aged African-American housekeeper working for the genteel rich in North Carolina. It took me a while to realize that this was a classic Southern Gothic novel, but twisted around from a black woman's perspective. Dubious characters hiding secrets from their past, mysteries to be ferreted out. But the detective is not an outsider, but that most inside yet unseen, insider -- the black housekeeper who has access to every room, who sees and hears everything. And this servant is not servile. She's part of a community of strong black women who know everything about their white employers, and has the intelligence to put together the pieces to figure out who did what to whom and why. No detailed spoilers here, only that the villains get their just desserts and our heroine gets her reward. A unique, and excellent crime novel. 5 Stars.

Review of "The Winemker's Wife" by Kristin Harmel

The Winemaker's Wife by Kristin Harmel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I'm not sure how much more I liked this novel because the main characters were vintners in Champagne, France. It brought me back 25 years, when I was researching wine making for Rashi's Daughters, which was also set in Champagne, where Rashi's family were vintners in the 11th century. So I knew what Kristin Harmel was writing about and appreciated her accuracy.

I had no trouble with the split time periods, seesawing between early 1940s and 2019, but there were times I really didn't like the 1940s characters. OK - people do things during wartime they regret later, when they don't think about the risk or danger. But there were times I just wanted to scream "Stop! Don't do that" at them. Also, I had to reread the final chapters several times to understand who did what to whom and what happened to them all afterwards. Still, it was good to learn how active the French Resistance was in Champagne. And even better that most of the characters ended up with a happy ending.



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Moment Magazine's Favorite Jewish Jokes

I regularly receive email announcements about all sorts of articles in the Jewish press. Today I got one from Moment Magazine, What is Your Favorite Jewish Joke and Why that was so irresistible I clicked on the link immediately and read the entire thing. Here’s the introduction:

“Jokes, including the Jewish variety, are a staple of Western civilization. Some Jewish jokes have been around for centuries and are passed from generation to generation; others might have made their first appearance this week. It turns out that even the Talmud is teeming with surprising zingers. Twitter too. A first-rate Jewish joke—whether told by a Talmudic sage, Sigmund Freud, Joan Rivers, Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman or your grandmother—does more than make you laugh; it illuminates complex corners of the Jewish psyche, culture and history. That’s why we’ve asked joke tellers, writers and scholars to share their favorite Jewish joke and explain why it’s funny or meaningful. Fair warning: Some jokes in this collection will make you laugh, others will make you groan and grimace, and many are for mature audiences only. All will teach you something.”

Of course I had to leave a comment. You can read it here instead of clicking on the link above, but then you’ll miss all the others. This one, based on an actual discussion in the Talmud, comes from my book Fifty Shades of Talmud: What the First Rabbi’s Had to Say About You-Know-What

A groom comes to the rabbi with questions about his wedding. “Is it permitted to dance with my bride?”
“No” says the rabbi. “It’s immodest for men and women to dance together.”
“Can I dance with my wife after the ceremony?”
When the rabbi shakes his head, the groom asks, “But if I’m allowed to sleep with my wife after the ceremony, why can’t I dance with her?”
“Procreation is a mitzvah–be fruitful and multiply,” the rabbi explains. “Mixed dancing is not.”
“Can we try different positions then?” asks the man. “Like doggy-style?”
“Of course, it’s a commandment.”
“Even turning over the table?”
“For the sake of bringing children, all positions are allowed.”
“Can we do it standing up?”
“No!” declares the rabbi, “That is forbidden.”
“But why?”
“It might lead to dancing.”

According to the Talmudic Sages, everything the rabbi says is indeed Jewish Law. But the Sages’ reason for not having sex standing up is because they thought a woman couldn’t get pregnant that way. It had nothing to do with dancing.

Jewish Women Scholars' Writing Fellowship

Yesterday/Monday morning I got up early, for me, in order to zoom the culmination of the first-ever Jewish Women Scholars’ Writing Fellowship, launched by Sefaria and Yeshiva Maharat, the first Open Orthodox yeshiva in North America to ordain women.

For the past six months, their 14 incredible fellows have been busy writing on a vast array of topics — from creation to the Jewish ethics of vaccination. I was lucky to celebrate their projects by joining them for a fascinating showcase of amazing women’s scholarship. The fellows are: Maxine Berman • Rabbi Dina Brawer • Rabbi Atara Cohen • Ranana Dine • Rabbanit Goldie Guy • Rabbi Margo Hughes-Robinson •Dr. Tammy Jacobowitz • Zoe Fertik • Rabbi Sari Laufer • Rabbanit Leah Sarna • Nomi Schenk • Chamutal Shoval • Rabbanit Aliza Sperling • Rabbi Avi Strausberg. These women scholars represent a cross-section of Jewish movements from Reform to Modern Orthodox.

The nearly 120 zoom participants, including me, learned more about the program, and then joined breakout rooms to hear the fellows speak in greater depth about their writing and their process, as well as what they have gained over the course of this program. It was an amazing event and I awed at the variety and quality of scholarship displayed. In addition, I was humbled that there were some in the chat who recognized me and praised my novels.
Be sure to read the women's papers to see this great display of Jewish learning.

Cilka's Journey

Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I stayed up until 3 am reading Cilka's Journey. Based on a true story, this historical novel is a powerful depiction of a young woman prisoner's years in a Siberian gulag. I did not read "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" first, and it didn't hinder my understanding. The author did an excellent job of inserting short flashbacks throughout, which was enough for me as I've read plenty of Holocaust literature over the years.

I learned a lot about the Soviet gulags, and especially appreciated the woman's viewpoint. True, there were scenes depicting the depraved treatment of the prisoners, by both guards and other prisoners, but I was grateful for the many scenes of friendship and love strengthening the women. The parts set in the hospital were fascinating, and helped me understand how the gulag, awful as it was, was different from the Nazi death camps.

As a Jewish writer, which Heather Morris is not, it infuriated me that the Afterword by Owen Matthews could write that "Hitler's camps and the Soviet Gulag existed for the same purpose - to purge societies of its enemies and extract as much work from them as possible before they died." That was true of the gulag, but the Nazi death camps' main purpose was genocide and most of those murdered were not society's enemies. Also that he wrote that, unlike Poles, Armenians, Ukrainians, etc, who formed tribal groups in the gulag, Jews lacked a common language and identity. This is certainly false; these Jews all spoke Yiddish and celebrated/observed the same religious customs. As Cilka does in the flashbacks to her childhood.

But the Afterword's faults shouldn't detract from the excellence of "Cilka's Journey." This novel is a perfect example of why historical fiction is such an important genre. Not just because I write it, but because that's the way we get to learn about women's lives in the past. Historically, men wrote about other men. If we want to know about how the other half really lived in times over 100 years ago, we must rely on novels like this one.



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Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner

I'm not usually a fan of "chick lit" but in preparation for publicizing the upcoming novel, I've been assigned the homework of finding at least 8 comps [novels comparable to mine]. That means recently published books that my audience would be reading. Ideally historical fiction with a Jewish component and female protagonist. When were they published, what Amazon category are they in, what size are they, what do their covers look like, what kind of front and back matter do they have, what do their authors' websites look like? Things like that.So those will be the next batch of books I'll be reviewing.


Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


. Big Summer is a pleasurable soap-opera of a novel. Rich and famous characters [not our heroine though], fabulous clothes and homes, great location [Cape Cod], romance, adultery, illegitimate children, family dysfunction, revenge, and murder. And oh yes, hot sex in a hot tub. It's a fast fun read if you don't look too closely at the plot. I thoroughly enjoyed it.



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"Zorro' by Isabel Allende

Zorro by Isabel Allende

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I had a difficult time deciding between 3 and 4 stars, but I gave it 4 because Isabel Allende's writing is so good. I'm a big Zorro fan, starting when I was a child watching the Disney series with Guy Williams and continuing with Antonio Banderas, so I was eager to read her novel about his origins. But the story was uneven. I really liked the first part, about his childhood in Alta California, and the part set on the ship taking him to Spain. But each section after that was less interesting than the one before. Except for the grand finale, when he returns to California and takes up the Zorro mantel. I could easily have skipped the sections where he flees Spain and encounters the pirate LaFitte in the Caribbean. Still, all in all, an entertaining read, especially for fans of the TV show.



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Review of "The Orchard" by David Hopen

The Orchard by David Hopen

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I usually don't waste my time reviewing books I didn't like, but I disliked this one so much I had to post my review. First I must explain that I have been studying Talmud for over 25 years and am quite familiar with the tale of the four 2nd-century mystic sages who entered Pardes [the Orchard] hoping to encounter God. The disaster that happened to those sages, and to the protagonists in this novel, is the reason why later Jewish scholars ruled that a man must be at least 40 years old before he studies the Kabbalah and its teachings.

I found the male characters completely unlikable, irresponsible, dissolute moral failures. They seem to all sound alike, and with so much dialogue without attributions, I often couldn't tell one speaker from another. The protagonist almost immediately annoyed me by, after arriving at a party to which he's invited in order to be the designated driver, not only accepts the first drink he's offered, but gets so drunk he passes out and wakes up in a stranger's bed. And this is just the first in an interminable number of alcohol and drug fueled parties with his spoiled teenage buddies.

As if that weren't enough; between the the insular, anti-secular education Haredi world and the society of rich, self-centered Florida Jews, the author gave us two of the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes for his characters' communities.

The rabbi who teaches these boys Talmud is unbelievable, as are most of the girls. Honestly, would any pregnant Jewish teenager with wealthy parents go off for a year to have the baby rather than get an abortion? Speaking of parents; how can they remain ignorant of or uninterested in their destructive children's behavior?

Reading this book was like watching a train wreck or a freeway pileup. I knew it was going to be a disaster but I couldn't look away.



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Back in the Blog saddle

Sometime in late 2018, my blog software stopped connecting with the infrastructure on the server that held my websites. Apparently it was out of date, and I had no idea how to update it.

At that time, I was focused on writing [and rewriting] my next novel, so fixing my blog was a not a high priority. Now that that manuscript is finished and on its way to the copyeditor, I realized that I needed to get my blog up and running before the book comes out next year.

Last year, I hired a new webmaster, who updated my websites for the latest book from Banot Press, Rabbi Rachel Adler's Tales of the Holy Mysticat: Jewish Wisdom Stories from a Feline Mystic. He fixed the problem, so here's my first blog post in 3 years.