Vanessa Paloma - The Mountain, the Desert and the Pomegranate

Vanessa Paloma

The Mountain, the Desert and the Pomegranate

Stories from Morocco and Beyond

These stories are about the mystical nature of life and intriguing stories of life experienced. It is Jewish Morocco, and California, and Israel from inside the mind of living there.

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Judge Anne F. Schlezinger - Pulling It All Together - One of America's First Jewish Women Federal Judges

Judge Anne F. Schlezinger

Pulling It All Together 

Diary by One of America's First Jewish Women Federal Judges

Ron Duncan Hart, Editor
Shulamit Reinharz (Brandeis University) Introduction
Orit Rabkin (University of Oklahoma) Epilogue: The Art of Women’s Diary Writing

Anne Schlezinger’s diary gives a personal day-by-day narrative of the building of the American Jewish professional class of the Great Generation. Like many others of that generation, she lived through the sacrifices of the Depression and World War II and had a special focus on achievement in her own life. This detailed narrative gives us day by day accounting of life as she told it. Sometimes as a reader, we want more information, and then subtly, almost without knowing it, we realize that she has given us more than we were able to realize. It is in the details of lunches and dinners, parties, shopping trips, office meetings, trial hearings, and conversations with friends and colleagues in more than 17,000 diary entries that we realize the legacy of information about life during her time that she has left for us.

Although she was a strong woman and professionally driven, but at times she was unsure of herself. She talks about her desire to be a professional woman and her doubts if she is being a good wife and mother. After a failed romance she was slow to accept the attentions of the man she eventually married. Through each stage of her life she narrates her daily life, and she weaves in her concerns about the issues facing her.

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Haketía: A Memoir of Judeo-Spanish Language and Culture in Morocco

Haketía

A Memoir of Judeo-Spanish Language and Culture in Morocco

Estrella Jalfón de Bentolila

Haketía: A Memoir of Judeo-Spanish Language and Culture in Morocco is a personalized study of the Judeo-Spanish-Arabic language of the Jewish community in northern Morocco. It was the vernacular language of Jews in the region until recent decades. Haketía dates back to time of the Expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, and it is to be distinguished from Ladino, another Judeo-Spanish language, spoken largely in the territories of the former Ottoman Empire.

With the twentieth century diaspora of the Moroccan Jewish population, Haketía was carried to the Americas, France, Israel, and other countries. In these newly adopted lands, the language was not learned by the newer generations, and its use has been declining. Now it is spoken primarily by people of the older generation, who have their roots in northern Morocco.

The vocabulary of Haketía includes a rich array of fifteenth century Castillian words, as well as Arabic verbs with Castillian declensions. Haketía is written with Hebrew characters.

This memoir of Haketía is an ode to the language of the author’s childhood and the memories of the life that she lived in the language. It is a recognition of the cultural creativity and diversity of Jewish populations that have adapted to many different cultural settings around the world.

Angelina Muñiz-Huberman - A Mystical Journey

A Mystical Journey

Angelina Muñiz-Huberman

Award-Winning Latin American Jewish Woman Writer

A spiritual odyssey to find life in the link between love and mysticism

“The uniqueness of Angelina Muñiz-Huberman’s historical novel lies in its combination of poetic prose, apparent simplicity, and an improbable happy ending. Within the structure of the archetypal journey of the hero, a Jewish teenager in late sixteenth-century Spain manages to avoid the Inquisition by joining a perilous Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He is assisted by a magical muleteer who appears and disappears periodically in different guises until the protagonist and his beloved Miriam are safely settled in the northern town of Safed.
“Although the author’s fascination with Jewish history and her poetic style mark the majority of her books of fiction and essays, I consider Tierra adentro (A Mystical Journey) her most outstanding work and one that contributes significantly to her reputation as one of Mexico’s and Latin America’s most important writers.”

Seymour Menton (Translator)
University of California

Angelina Muñiz-Huberman is one of Mexico’s best writers, and she has published more than thirty books of fiction, poetry and essays in recent decades. Her work has been recognized with more than a dozen international prizes, including the Woman of Valor Award from the American Sephardi Federation to the Jerusalem Medal granted by the state of Israel.

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Patricia Gottlieb Shapiro - Coming Home to Yourself

Patricia Gottlieb Shapiro

Coming Home to Yourself: 

Eighteen Wise Women Reflect on their Journeys

Coming Home to Yourself by Patricia Gottlieb Shapiro is the story of 18 women in mid-life who reflect on the journey through their decades of life, the changes they have had, and how this has affected them. Each one is resilient, having survived difficult events, deaths of loved ones, and health issues of their own for some. This is a book to be read by younger women as well as older women to understand the challenges of life, how to survive the difficult events, and celebrate the good ones. For More Information on Coming Home to Yourself, Click Here

Finalist Best Book Award 2011, New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards

Rabbi Min Kantrowitz has written a Kabbalistic meditation guide to the experience of counting the Omer for the 49 days following Passover. It was nominated as the Best Religious Book of the Year in 2011 and was selected as a "Book of Note" by the Jewish Book World magazine. Rabbi Kantrowitz gives suggestions for meditation and reflection during the 7 weeks of counting the Omer. Her teaching guarantees the deepening of your insight into life. For More Information on Counting the Omer

Selected as a "Book of Note"for 2011 by the Jewish Book World magazine

By Fire Possessed

Sandra K. Toro's By Fire Possessed is historical fiction that tells the life of Dona Gracia Nasi, the most important Sephardic woman of the sixteenth century. Some people argue that she ranks among the most important Jewish women of the last 500 years. She inherited a wide reaching business empire, escaped the Inquisition in Portugal and again later in Venice, and re-settled in the Ottoman Empire that was friendly to Jews. She used her ships and wealth to rescue thousands of Sephardic Jews from the Spanish Inquisition and created communities, synagogues, and even businesses were they could work in the lands of the Ottoman Empire, which included present day Greece, Turkey, and Israel. She had a major role in creating the Ladino world of the Eastern Sephardim. She was a heroic Jewish woman to be remembered. For More Information on this Book and the Life of Dona Gracia Nasi, Click Here.