Saturday, June 21, 2014





Theodore H. Lehman
Auschwitz Survivor
Tells His Story



 Ted Lehman tells his story of survival in Auschwitz and later as a Jewish slave laborer in a Krupp armaments factory. His detailed descriptions of daily life in the concentration camp are among the most vivid ever told. An exceptional story teller in his book Defying Odds, in these videos he gives an introduction to the more complete information in the book.

An interview with Mr. Lehman has been edited in three lengths from a short 5 minute summary to the complete interview, which is 23 minutes in length.



Ted Lehman (23 minutes)

For further information contact Gaon Books.

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Auschwitz Prisoner, Ted Lehman, Tells His Story of Survival









  Theodore H. Lehman

  Auschwitz Prisoner, Ted Lehman, Tells His Story of Survival in a New Book, Defying Odds by Gaon Books.








Eli Wiesel, Primo Levi and others have written notably about the horrors of the Holocaust, the loss of life, and the personal costs of cruelty. Ted Lehman adds a uniquely intimate, autobiographical view of that experience with day-by-day accounts of his life. His descriptions of the people and the personal interactions that drove that system are compelling and memorable. He has written for young adult readers because we can never forget. 


In Defying Odds Lehman narrates his life as a teen-age Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz and SS slave labor camps. Instead of having a Bar Mitzvah or going to high school, he learned to navigate the maze way of the Nazi death camps. As he clung to life, his family and friends were peeled away from him one by one and sent to the gas chambers.


He shows unerringly how the Nazi demonization of Jews demoralized Jew and non-Jew alike, narrating the inhumanity and barbarism of the German death camps perpetuated by a supposedly “civilized” nation. In this book Lehman describes the loss of moral direction by one of Europe’s most powerful countries, it is also a story of hope by a young man who defied that nation’s will and won.


See Ted Lehman talk about his experiences:
www.gaonbooks.com/DefyingOdds.html

and




Friday, March 7, 2014

Gaon Author Susana Weich-Shahak Wins European Prize for Folklore

Gaon Books Author

Susana Weich-Shahak

Has won the European Prize for Folklore

Agapito Marazuela

Named after the Spanish folkorist, this prize was given to Dr. Weich-Shahak for her work over the last four decades recording and documenting the Sephardic romancero (Judeo-Spanish ballads). In the interview below, which she gave after winning the award, she mentions the role of songs and oral tradition as primary factors in holding together Sephardic identity and heritage even after 500 years of exile in non-Spanish speaking lands from Morocco to Turkey and Israel around the Mediterranean and in the Americas from Argentina to the United States.






Dr. Weich-Shahak's book Moroccan Sephardic Romancero, was published by Gaon Books (2013) and summarizes her work of four decades of collecting, documenting and analyzing Judeo-Spanish ballads, which are traditionally sung by women.

What others have said about her work and this book.

For all of us who work on the traditional Romancero—and for all Hispanists whatever their speciality—we need to thank and congratulate Shoshana Weich...for having created and published a splendid book that is invaluable and full of pleasant surprises for the study of one of the most important branches of Spanish poetry: the traditional Romancero.   --  Samuel G. Armistead, University of California, Davis

Susana Weich-Shahak’s anthology of the Moroccan Sephardic Romancero vividly brings to life the Judeo-Spanish ballads transmitted by Moroccan women over the course of time and in scattered locales. Through its careful presentation of more than two hundred songs and details of their transmission
processes, this volume serves both to document a remarkable repertory in great detail and to memorialize the women who sustained these songs. This is a collection that speaks eloquently to the importance of music in Jewish life.   --  Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Harvard University




Click to Buy the Moroccan Sephardic Romancero from Amazon.com

 Click Here to Learn More about the Moroccan Sephardic Romancero


Wednesday, February 12, 2014

The Art of the Hebrew Alphabet - Gloria Abella Ballen



Gloria Abella Ballen

The Art of the Hebrew Alphabet


See videos in which Gloria talks about the art and meanings of the Hebrew letters and hear her in-depth radio interview with Mary-Charlotte in Santa Fe.


To see the videos and hear the interview go to

gaonbooks.com/HebrewAlphabet.html


Friday, December 13, 2013

Gaon Books at the URJ Biennial 2013

Thank you to the hundreds of people who came by the Gaon Books booth in the first two days of the URJ Biennial, to those who stopped to look at the books and talk, to those who bought books from Ruth Sohn's Crossing Cairo about being Jewish in Egypt to Reb Zalman's A Hidden Light about early Hasidic rabbis in eastern Europe, Patricia Shapiro's The Privilege of Aging about Jewish women and the new super agers, Arthur Gross-Schaefer's The Rabbi Wore Moccasins, about a rabbi/lawyer  who solves a murder mystery, and Gloria Abella Ballen's just published The Power of the Hebrew Alphabet that was described by a buyer as "ravishingly beautiful" and to the buyers of all the other books. Here are some of the photos at the booth and of a few of the people who stopped by.








Tuesday, December 10, 2013

We welcome you to visit Gaon Books in Booth 104 at the URJ Biennial in San Diego this week. We will be displaying all Gaon books, and we will be featuring recent titles, especially those of three authors who will be there signing their books - Gloria Abella Ballen, The Power of the Hebrew Alphabet

Also Arthur Gross-Schaefer will be signing his book, The Rabbi Wore Moccasins.


And Rabbi Ruth H. Sohn will be signing her book


The hours for the signings of each author are listed
on the Gaon Books page of the URJ Biennial website.

We hope to see you there.