Bøger i Library of Modern Jewish Liter serien

In Bociany, Rosenfarb offers completely absorbing portrayals of Jews and Christians from several walks of life in the shtetl. Her primary characters are the scribe's widow Hindele, her son Yacov, the chalk vendor Yossele Abedale, and his daughter Binele. Jewish relations with neighboring Catholics are generally civil, if complicated. Despite living next door to a convent, Hindele finds the nuns' behavior implacably alien.Rosenfarb establishes an indelible sense of place, evoking its charm and the shtetl residents' ease with the natural world. Her vivid characters and portrait of the preurban, pre-Holocaust world ring true. Yet even in isolated Bociany, new ideas-socialism, Zionism, Polish nationalism, secularism-begin to challenge the shtetl's traditional agrarian and mercantile economy.

Sholem Aleichem romanticized shtetl life. Isaac Bashevis Singer eroticized it. In the novel Bociany and its sequel, Of Lodz and Love, Chava Rosenfarb brings a vanished world to vibrant, compelling life. Rosenfarb follows the destinies of characters from the Polish town of Bociany as they grow up, grow old, and leave the shtetl for the city.

In this pair of moving, gracefully poignant novellas, sisters Pokras and Yariv explore the world of the elderly with deft humor and heart-wrenching detail. Pokras' Feeding Mrs. Moskowitz introduces us to the remarkable Golde Moskowitz, an elderly Russian widow living alone with her memories. In Golde's world, "signs" are everywhere, the dead converse with the living and dreams are real. Natalie Holtzman, a thirty-six-yearold graphic artist longing for connection, fills her world with work and with Artie, her commitment-wary boyfriend. One sweltering summer morning, Golde decides to do some grocery shopping. Natalie, on her way to work, quite literally "runs into" her and the lives of both women are forever changed. Yariv's The Caregiver unfolds in a series of stories, revealing the inner workings of Sunset Hills, a fictional upscale assisted-living facility in Hollywood. Narrated by Ofelia Hernandez, a young Latina caregiver, the stories capture both the mundane routines and the absurdities of the residents' lives. With deep empathy and subtle humor, Yariv crafts intimate portraits of characters whose passion, intensity, and intelligence are only magnified with age.

An emigration story, Waiting for America explores the rapid expansion of identity at the cusp of a new, American life. Told in a revelatory first-person narrative, Waiting for America is also a vibrant love story in which the romantic main character is torn between Russian and Western women.