A Momentary Taste of Being

from Seven Prayers That Can Change Your Life Leonard Felder If you look underneath the cumbersome English phrase "gratefully acknowledge" and just focus on the feeling of the Hebrew words Modeh/Modah, it's almost like the sensation of kvelling , a Yiddish word that means "to feel joy in your entire being." Kvelling expresses a sense of fullness or completeness because something wonderful is happening or because you feel loved and connected to a best friend, a beloved partner, or a child whose joyfulness makes you feel alive. Tonight I am kvelling, and I don't know why.  

Surveying the new Haggadot--a marvelous article by Michael Medved. Thanks to Prof. Myers.

Prof. Myers comments on the list of most essential Jewish Fiction

50 Essential Works of Jewish Literature One can't help but feel a little disappointment to see Judy Blume on the list but not Jane Yolen (particularly, but not limited to The Devil's Arithmetic

Inspired by a review I looked at yesterday, I took this book up (again?--I honestly can't recall if I've read it before, though I'm certain I've held it in my hands and nearly certain I've read it--but upon rereading remember almost nothing of it) and swiftly finished.  It is a short book.  Very short.  And like Frankl's but in some sense a mirror image of it, a powerful book.  Elie Wiesel was a 14 year old boy living in Hungary when the Hungarian Holocaust occurred.  Now, I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that for the majority of the war, the Hungarian Jews had a measure of protection from the Holocaust.  The ruler of Hungary refused to go along with the German plan with regard to the Jews.  That isn't to say that life was easy or without hardships or prejudice, but until 1944, the Hungarian Jews knew little or nothing of the holocaust.  That all stopped suddenly, dramatically, in 1944 when a new government, a more cooperative go...

Long list of best Jewish Books of the year. And a comment on the list