A New Song: Poems Inspired by the Weekly Torah Portion

Roberta Chester, the author of A New Song, has chosen a particular detail from each weekly Torah portion, and shares her perspective in expressive poetry. Her viewpoint creates a “new song,” entertaining a possibility in the biblical text that illuminates and animates the past with the sensibility of the present. Each of these poems is in essence a midrash, whose root meaning is “to search out, to seek, to inquire.”

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The Partisan's Coat
by Yehiel Grenimann

Joe Kamens stared into the glass case in the military museum in Minsk. There it was, his coat, just like the one he had found as a child in a dusty suitcase in Melbourne. Once, it had kept a heroic Jewish partisan warm in the freezing forests of Belarus.

Yanosh and Eva, Holocaust survivors, have built new lives in Australia, far away from the horrors, but Joe, their son, caught up in the passions and intimacies of a Zionist youth movement, is inexorably drawn to the alternative they rejected: Israel. Arriving in the land of his dreams in the devastated aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he hopes to find the partisan behind his coat. Is he still alive? Really dead? Or now a Mossad agent?

Joe is intent on strengthening the country he loves and building a family of his own. But as he begins to unravel the fragmentary stories of friends and family members, the coat’s enigmatic original owner criss-crosses his life, forcing him to question his loyalties, his faith, and his identity.

Historical Novel

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Lashon Aish – Tongue of Fire – Israel at War is a historical novel based on actual events that occurred in Israel between 1973 to 1975 including war, terrorism and counter-terrorism, written by Barbara Goldscheider.    
​    The novel opens on the eve of the return of Israeli prisoners-of-war from Syria’s notorious Al Maza prison after eight months of captivity. The protagonist, Rafi Haas, is flown back to Israel with other POWs on a Swiss aircraft via an undisclosed NATO base on Saturday, June 1, 1974.
   After convalescing, Rafi “volunteers” for Sayeret Mat’kal, an elite commando force attached to the Israel Defense Force’s (IDF) General Staff. Rafi becomes second-in-command, recruiting and honing this unit into a counter-terrorist and hostage rescue force par non, together with the enigmatic Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Avi Levy. They carry out a dangerous mission in Beirut, assassinating three leaders of Black September, while other IDF units demolish the headquarters of the terrorist leader, Nayef Hawatmeh, in retaliation for the 1972 Munich Massacre and the 1974 Ma’alot Massacre of Israeli teenagers on the 26th anniversary of Israel’s independence.
   Lashon Aish – Tongue of Fire – Israel at War shows how these searing events affect the characters in the novel, the changes they undergo, and the resilience they display. While this is the story of three dedicated officers of the IDF, and their need to protect and defend their people no matter the personal cost to them, it is also the story of the women who love them, through the most trying years of Israel’s existence.
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Hardness of Heart - Hardness of Life:
The Stain of Human Infanticide
Infanticide is the crime of killing an infant. It is one of the commonest, yet least understood of all human crimes. Estimates of its frequency, based upon historical studies and modern data, indicate that up to 10-15% of all children ever born have been killed by their parents: an astounding seven billion victims! Most people find it difficult to accept that anyone, except the most severely mentally disturbed felon, would kill their own child.

The author provides the first exhaustive survey of infanticide, drawing on historical data from around the world. He then uses this survey as a basis for investigating why infanticide has been present in every form of human society throughout history.
Although academic articles document isolated aspects of this problem, a single, unified analysis of infanticide has not been completed until now.

Both comprehensive and compelling, this important study will intrigue students of human psychology, social welfare, and child abuse, and will promote further research on this alarmingly overlooked atrocity.
Song about Pity, written by the Czech Israeli author and diplomat, Avigdor Dagan (1912-2006), portrays the life of a Jewish community in a small pre-war Czechoslovakia town during the economic downturn and drought in the 1930s.   
    The main protagonist, young Daniel Menasse, questions his family’s faith and traditions as he thinks about God and his plans and actions.
   He has two wonderful grandfathers who are both profoundly religious. One views God as strict and harsh, whereas the other sees God as merciful and full of compassion.
    Daniel listens to their deliberations, tries to understand the tragic events unfolding around him from both perspectives, but remains unsure of what the truth is.
    Years after the war, Daniel returns for the first time to his childhood home to revive his memories and find solutions to his search. He is the only one from the entire Jewish community who survived the Holocaust, but his life experience does not help answer his philosophical questions. However, his journey back to his childhood home allows him to find meaning and gain new hope.
Is Chicken Soup Jewish?
Questions and Answers for Jewish Kids
by Rabbi Rafael Grossman
This is a book Jewish kids need to read. Jewish kids are bound to have friends who are not Jewish or Jewish friends who want to know more about Judaism. Sometimes their friends might ask some questions about Jewish life. For example, they might want to know about the Jewish holidays, or understand how their religion is different. Maybe they had some chicken soup and want to know if there really is a Jewish connection.

When Jewish kids show their friends a book with Hebrew writing, their friends might want to know why the letters look strange or even funny. But just because kids are Jewish doesn’t mean they know all the answers – yet.

So, to help Jewish kids enhance their knowledge about Judaism, Rabbi Rafael Grossman wrote this book with answers to more than 180 questions that kids had asked him. While some of the questions might seem basic to the Jewish way of life, these are questions that Jewish kids need to be ready to answer.
Reuniting The Neshamas is a moving, historical non-fiction memoir of the experiences of Sheri Stern (the author) confronting her family’s old, but present trauma, her own prejudiced thoughts she’d never consciously realized, and still… finding hope – all in relation to the Holocaust. (Neshamas: Hebrew and Yiddish for souls)

The seed for this memoir was planted when the author's family received an email from an association in Germany that commemorates the fate of the town’s Jewish inhabitants under Nazi rule when they were deported to concentration camps or had to leave Germany to survive. The association planned to lay Stolpersteine, memorial plaques, for a particular Stern family. The email writer wanted to know if there was a family connection.

Yes, the American Stern family was indeed related to the German Stern family this association wanted to commemorate.

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Who Is David?
by Angeline Leito

In the time of Israel’s first king in the Bible, Saul and his army were terrified of going to battle against the Philistine giant, Goliath. Not one warrior came forward to fight him. Who could save the Israelite nation from the enemy army and this humiliation? Unexpectedly, a young shepherd boy from Bethlehem, who didn’t seem to be a warrior at all, volunteered for the fight. Backed by his faith in God, just as he cared for and protected his father’s sheep, he was prepared to do the same for God’s flock.

The shepherd boy who defeated Goliath was David, the son of Jesse of the Israelite tribe of Judah. Then everyone asked, “Who Is David?”

Based on the biblical texts and years of research, the author of this book, Angeline Leito, answers this question in depth as she explains this prophetic story of God’s establishment of the throne of King David and His eternal relationship with the House of David.

Volume 2 will be published in 2023.
Paperback and Kindle
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Nature Upclose Six-Book Series written and illustrated by 
John Himmelman

Have you ever wondered how some of nature’s smallest creatures spend their days? Here’s your chance to take a scientifically accurate peek into their lives. Striking illustrations and a lively storyline capture the real life challenges of these creatures in the Nature Upclose series featuring ♦ A Hummingbird’s Life ♦ A Luna Moth’s Life ♦ A Wood Frog’s Life ♦ A Mealworm’s Life ♦ A Mouse’s Life and ♦ A Slug's Life.

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“What one remembers of love depends on whether it was blissful or painful; whether it brought fulfillment or anguish. My love for Esther never seemed to fit either category. My wife called it an obsession. Perhaps it was . . .”

When Max, a hard-nosed, cynical young journalist, first meets the passionate, restless twenty-year-old Australian, Esther, in his Fleet Street office in London in 1951, he is certain he will find her insufferable; instead – within an hour – he is smitten.

Spanning the decades, and moving across continents, to cities: from the lively streets of London to the awe-inspiring lights of Jerusalem, from literary cocktail parties to the war-torn Lebanese-Israeli border, we watch Max and Essie move in and out of each other’s orbit – deaths, marriages, and careers – like planets drawn together by being in the same magnetic field, yet always, somehow, forced apart by another equal power.

As Max grows into a respected journalist, husband, and father, and Essie, an award-winning author and syndicated writer living in Jerusalem, his love for her never falters.

Esther is a wise, passionate, heartbreaking, and ultimately redemptive story of unbreakable bonds, and the many shapes of love.

“Readers with a taste for tragic romance should clear their calendars for an evening, grab a box of tissues and enjoy this haunting story of love . . .”
Publishers Weekly
Fleeing from the Portuguese Inquisition to England, Roderigo “Ruy” Lopez, a Jewish doctor, establishes himself in London. He gains a prestigious post at St. Bart’s Hospital and becomes the personal physician to Queen Elizabeth I and several aristocrats including the Earl of Essex.

All goes well until Sir Francis Walsingham, the head of the queen’s Secret Service, conscripts Lopez to be a spy and engage in espionage. He now has to follow what Spain, England’s great enemy, is plotting.

Subsequently, the unwary Lopez becomes inadvertently trapped in the royal web as the political battles between the queen’s important ministers and the vengeful Essex unfold. Lopez has no way of seeing how his international ventures will backfire on him, and being Jewish in an anti-Semitic court does not help.

The author, David Lawrence-Young, has based this novel on real events in the life of Roderigo Lopez in the 1500s.

How often have we seen the Torah Scrolls and been unaware of the mysteries surrounding their preparation, the reasons for variations in sizes of letters, why some letters are inverted and yet others have dots above them?These are but a few of the questions that might tax the mind of the congregant when following the reading from the Torah in the synagogue.

To open the door to this fascinating experience of living with a Sopher, a scribe, as he meticulously prepares himself and his parchment for his complicated task, the author of this volume decided to write this illuminating story of the Bible text, taking the reader far beyond the confines of the scribe and his intricate task of writing the Scroll.

He relates its impact through history, the scholarship and skills with which it was interpreted, and the vital part that its reading has always played in the life of the people, who have ever treated its presence with that particular aura and respect exclusively reserved and preserved since Sinai for the Torah and its message.

The Book of Books: The Role of the Sacred Torah Scroll in Judaism provides a comprehensive guide in English to these and many other facets of the Torah Scrolls, the most sacred and precious possession of the Jewish People and indeed of mankind.

The idea for writing this book suggested itself as I observed my fellow Jews on Sabbath mornings at synagogue services. By and large, even regular congregants evinced no knowledge and even less curiosity about the Hebrew letters samekh and pei interspersed throughout the printed Five Books, and various glaring irregularities like minuscule and large letters or other oddities like dots above words and so on.

On further inquiry I learned that very few were aware of the regulations involved in writing a Torah Scroll, the stories of the Bible Canon, the Masorah, the printed Bible and other essential information pertaining to the most sacred possession of our people and civilization – the Book of Books.

I was, therefore, persuaded to produce this popular presentation of the Bible text. I hope it will introduce Jew and non-Jew to the history of the Bible Canon and to the impressive story of how it was committed to memory and preserved through the millennia. This story, unmatched in the annals of civilization, should deepen our pride in, and heighten our reverence for, the Holy Scriptures. It will certainly enlighten the worshiper, enliven the Torah reading period in the Synagogue, the study of it at home, and help provide the background for the stirring events of recent years, such as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the restoration of the Aleppo Codex to Jerusalem.


Although pertinent, the historical data and information covered in this book have not been stressed in the teaching of Jewish history and literature to our youth. I have endeavored to correct this omission: a knowledge of the development of the Bible text should enhance an appreciation of the role of the Holy Writ in Jewish life.

“Amidst the shouting and barking, cracking of whips and thud of the clubs, Beila and the children craned their necks to look for me. For a fraction of a second, through a sliver in the crowd, Sara’le and Hillel’s terror-filled eyes locked with mine as they were clinging to Beila and each other. That fleeting final glimpse of them is branded onto my soul. It will haunt me for as long as I am alive. Eyes begging me to save them. I could not. They were gone, engulfed by the chaos.” ... Misha Levine, in the Stutthof Death Camp, July 17, 1944.

Misha Levine, born and raised in Vilna at the turn of the 20th century, recounts poignant memories from Lithuania buried deep within. Known as the “Jerusalem of Lithuania”, medieval Vilna was also modern and sophisticated – the uncontested epicenter of East European Jewry. Time and again Misha was caught up in events that toppled all but the strongest of body and spirit. His moving tale of survival is also a rare window into the Lithuanian Jews' trials during the turbulent first half of the twentieth century: the Russian Revolution, World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Spanish Flu epidemic, war with Poland, three wars for Lithuanian independence, the Russian invasion and the Nazi Blitz Krieg takeover – culminating in the Holocaust and its aftermath. A higher percentage of Jews were murdered in Lithuania than anywhere else in Europe: an astounding 96.4%.

Benjamin Levine, the author of They Were Set Ablaze and Misha’s son, wrote this story in the voice of his father providing a unique portrayal of events branded into Misha’s soul: the nationalist Nazi collaborators’ murder squads, the Shavl ghetto and three concentration camps, Stutthof, Dachau and Mühldorf.

After unspeakable horrors, including the murder of his wife and two children, Misha found the capacity to love again. After the war, he met a beautiful Lithuanian survivor, two decades his junior, in Munich – birthplace of the Nazi movement. She, too, had the strength and courage to miraculously withstand the Kovno ghetto, Stutthof Concentration Camp, from where she made a daring escape, and her Russian liberators.

Did they have the resilience to rekindle a will to live ... would their love be enough to fan the flame of hope necessary to marry and raise a new family after all they had endured?
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'Ruth The Sleuth and the Messy Room' received a 'Seal of Approval' from Literary Classics
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Congratulations to Aviva Hermelin on a great review from Midwest Book Review:

LATEST REVIEW FOR BOOK 5:

Exceptionally entertaining and thoroughly 'kid friendly' in organization and presentation, "Summer Vacation With The Grizzbears" is very highly recommended for family, preschool, elementary school, and community library collections.

A new release from the popular Animals Build Character series promoting compassion, respect, and responsibility from observing animal wisdom, "The Grizzbears Make New Friends: Listen and Learn From the Animals, Book 2" is sure to please an audience of young readers ages 5-10. Using animals from the Golan to teach thoughtful ways of showing respect, compassion for others, and other positive character traits, this original series is written and illustrated by a talented Israeli former preschool teacher. Divided into six illustrated chapters in 39 pages, "The Grizzbears Make New Friends" describes stages of adjustment as the Grizzbears family of four settle down to live among the other animals of the Golan Mountains..."The Grizzbears Make New Friends" is a great teaching book for children of different ages, cultures, and backgrounds. The Animals Build Character series demonstrates that wise animals can make good counselors and teachers. Read the complete review.
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Joseph Lichtman, a young man from Frankfurt, is determined to escape the culture of the ghetto, still dominant fifty years after Napoleon. Dramatically, he not only leaves his family, but also steps back from his faith.

Reaching Cologne, he successfully climbs the cultural and social ladder as a journalist. But the higher he gets – losing himself in the rich life of the enlightened circles of European culture – the more he experiences his own limitations and ultimately, emptiness. In the end, his detachment and loose liberal views land him in a Venetian prison.

Joseph’s search for light and spiritual freedom, against the background of the ongoing enmity against Jews in Europe, eventually brings him to Palestine. There, he faces the challenges of this new land with his wife and son in a complex blend of cultures and religions. He eventually witnesses the courageous, but unsuccessful attempt to start a new agricultural settlement, Petach Tikva. Joseph endures the harsh conditions of his new land with emotional consequences. In time, these experiences lead him to recognize a good greater than his own well-being.

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In this landmark book, Gol Kalev demonstrates how Zionism has turned into the organizing principle of Judaism. It has become the primary conduit through which both Jews and non-Jews relate to Judaism - in both the positive and negative.
 
Through an in-depth analysis of long-term shifts in Israel and in North American Jewry, as well as assessment of global trends that impact Judaism, Kalev shows that the anchor of the Jewish nation-religion has shifted from its religious element (Judaism 2.0) to its national element - Zionism (Judaism 3.0). This is occurring without  any compromise to the religious aspects of Judaism. Whether in support or criticism, Zionism has become the one aspect of Judaism that evokes  emotions, anger, passion and engagement.
 
Tying Theodor Herzl's original vision of Zionism to today's realities, Kalev shows that Judaism 3.0 is not only the most accurate reflection of the contemporary state of Judaism, but also the optimal architecture to address key issues of our times, such as intermarriage, Diaspora-Israel relationship, Tikun Olam and peace.
 
Kalev then shows how Judaism 3.0 is also the relevant framework to counter emerging threats to Judaism. First and foremost, the existential threat of Israel-bashing, which has replaced anti-Semitism as the primary currency of age-old opposition to Judaism
The Fittest Survivor
by Sigmund Abeles

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While this book is a first-hand account of a Hungarian family destroyed in the murderous Holocaust as well as those who survived, it is also the story of two men from different generations who discover each other’s existence to remember and record their family’s history.“The Fittest Survivor” provides an insightful and under-reported aspect of World War II history, refracted through the personal perspective, and courageous life of one notable forced slave labor survivor, Vilmos Abeles.

AMAZON 5 STAR REVIEW
https://amzn.to/33EwSmV
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautiful tribute and a moving story
September 17, 2019
Format: Paperback
Sigmund Abeles was my graphic art teacher and mentor when I was a college student. Since then I have followed his professional career in the art world over the years. I have viewed his work in galleries, museums, and read about him in art magazine articles. Once many years ago I studied with him in a pastel workshop. I have long been inspired by his skillful and intense realism in his treatment of portrait and figurative work. His art is consistently probing, penetrating and openly personal whatever the medium. I was quite curious to read The Fittest Survivor to learn more about my former teacher and how he would use his talents in a very different medium.

I was thrilled to find the book wonderfully illustrated with his drawings, paintings and family photographs. And I was especially happy to see that Sigmund Abeles does with words what he does so well with his visual tools. As I expected, this is a very intense and personal story, a double portrait really, of one man’s heroic survival of the Holocaust against terrible odds and another man’s discovery of his father’s family history. It is also a page turning detective story. Carefully the writer collects facts and stories about a part of his family he never knew. His visits in Brooklyn, New York with his aging but still very sharp second cousin, Vilmos Abeles are very moving. Finally, Sigmund Abeles takes us on his journey to eastern Europe to learn more about his roots, affirming the tragic fate of so many other relatives.

The Fittest Survivor is both a very personal and a universal story that reminds us that 6 million is not just a number. Kudos to the artist/author

amzn.to/33EwSmV
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​NEWS UPDATE:  Dvora Waysman has been awarded the  "Shabazi Prize" for her historical novel, "The Pomegranate Pendant", published by Mazo Publishers.

The committee of the Shabazi Prize for the Heritage of Jews from Yemen said "we have decided to honor and award you with the Shabazi Prize for your novel, The Pomegranate Pendant. We acknowledge its sensitive and creative literary style, which is deserving of the highest praise. Your book is a special cultural treasure, which adds an important chapter to the Zionist History by commemorating the First Aliyah of Jews from Yemen [Aliyah b'Tamar] and their participation in the redemption of Eretz Israel and the establishment of the State of Israel."

The Prize is awarded to researchers, authors and artists who have contributed to the research of the heritage of the Jews of Yemen and their culture.

ABOUT MAZO

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Within our publishing group are the imprints of Mazo Publishers, Gallery House, Tiptop Books, Acaday Press and Rabeinu Publications.

Each imprint presents a focused topic approach for the editorial message of the book.

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Someone recently posted a question on social media about a concentration camp and I responded. The man, son of a survivor, commented about the power of knowledge, saying, "you responded within 10 minutes with the answer to a question I've had for 75 years."
...Chaim Mazo, Publisher