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The Echad Series: Five Anthologies of Jewish Writing From Around the World

ed. by Roberta Kalechofsky,
with introductions by Roberta Kalechofsky

Description

These anthologies were developed so that Jews throughout the diaspora could learn about one another, about their similarities and their differences. We are all shaped the particular cultural evironments we find ourselves in, and Jews must learn that about each other, both religious and secular Jews must learn that about each other, the Oriental Jew about the European Jew, the Israeli Jew about the American Jew.

Many of the writers in these anthologies, such as Clarice Lispector from Brazil and Morris Lurie in Australia, are famous in their own lands. Their writings present a rich opportunity to learn about the experiences and literary traditions of Jews outside the mainstream centers of Jewry. These anthologies are rewarding for discussion and class groups, and for the Jewish traveller who wishes to know the literature of the country he/she visits.

All the anthologies include biographical statements.

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1) An Anthology of Latin American Jewish Writings

ISBN: 916288-06-4    288 pgs.    pbk.    $15.00

Description:

Twenty-five writers, journalists, critics, short story writers, poets, playwrights, scholars and editors, from Argentina, Guatemala, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. The anthology includes the work of Alberto Gurchenoff and Ceasar Tiempo from Argentina, who were famous in their day, Clarice Lispector from Brazil, and many more. It includes such journalism as the interview with Dr. Elena Blumenfeld, who was decorated by the Venezuelan government for her work with lepers, and the discovery of a "lost" Jewish community on the Amazon river.

Reviews:

"Until the appearance in English of the works of Jewish writers born...between 1890 and 1945 in twelve Latin American countries and represented in Echad...non-Spanish readers were barred from familiarity with the poetry, drama, novels and criticism of Latin-American Jewish writers. If this were all that Echad provides, it would indeed be sufficient for us to be grateful to the editors." Martin Sable, Inter-American Review of Bibliography

"The editors are to be congratulated for having amassed the present material and making it available in English." American Jewish Archives.

"...this anthology...is important as a reminder of our links with that large segment of world Jewry, as a brief glimpse into Latin American Jewish literature...." Judaica Book News

"[The translators]... succeed in communicating worlds that seem beyond reach....'Echad' catches the voices of those talking to themselves and the world." Sylvia Rothchild, The Jewish Advocate
 
 

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2) South African Jewish Voices

ISBN: 916288-10-2    280 pgs.    pbk.   $15.00

Description

Thirteen writers, including Nadine Gordimer, Jillian Becker; Dan Jacobson, and others, who remind us of what life, and what Jewish life, in apartheid South Africa was like.

Reviews:

"In the South African imagination, racial prejudice is the dead-end to which all roads lead.... Many of the writers in this book now live in exile" Hadassah

"...excellent anthology....infused with a seriousness of purpose that is apparently the birthright of these South African Jewish writers." Gerald Jonas, Present Tense

"...the volume contains a considerable harvest worth having and reading...."

"The South African Jewish voices are often vivid--but not always for Jewish reasons.

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3) Phoenix Rising: Contemporary Jewish Voices in Fiction and Poetry

ISBN: 916288-11-0    222 pgs.    pbk    $12.00.

Description:

Includes writers like Menke Katz, who was an outstanding Yiddish poet, a religious scholar and editor of Bitteroot; the poet, Shelley Ehrlich who, suffering from multiple scerlosis, captured the decay of disease in her poetry. Her imagery combined Jewish symbols or history with the details of her disease, as in the following poem, "Father, 1900-1968":

Stanley Nelson describes himself as "a modern gnostic in Brooklyn," and documents the lives of immigrants living in Brooklyn in a scintillating prose-poetry, such as in the following example.

Baron Samedi
Lord of the Dead Souls of the Cemetery
and you are
the white-aproned attendant
who cleans the butts from the floor
of the all-night cafeteria
I have seen you mid mops and
pails and soapsuds
disappearing behind kitchen doors
what you do back there cooking under a
dim red light your batches of
ox-gall powdered lizard jasmine and heliotrope crushed
pineapple holly leaves goat testicles beef heart sheep
brain tasting blood of the animals and insect squashings
you have the stench of
Sacrifice
 

Reviews:

"There is something for every taste. Should you have a taste for mysticism and the avant-garde, then Stanley Nelson is for you....If you think insider-academia jokes are screamingly funny you will enjoy Richard Darabner....If, however, you are given to brilliantly written narrative about Jewish family life (Jane Amster), or the bitter-sweet realization of an aging Jewish hippy and his funny description of pilpul (hairsplitting reasoning) how the kashruth of turbot can sometimes lead to nirvana, then by all means read and enjoy David Kronfeld. Tragic stories of the shtetl and the Holocaust are contributed by Rachel Fialkoff and Roberta Kalecofsky. However, the poetry was (for me) the high point of this collection. Shelley Ehrlich, Elaine Starkman, and Emily Borenstein's poems of life, love, concern, and the family reach into the heart. The Kalechofskys are to be thanked for bringing contemporary Jewish American writers to our attention."

"...the book belongs on library shelves and should be of interest to all who respond to upbeat, energetic Jewish voices." Religious Studies Review
 
 

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4) Jewish Writing From Down Under--Australia and New Zealand

ISBN: 916288-16-1    pbk.    304 pgs.    $15.00

Description:

An anthology of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and the journalism of 17 writers, from the beginning of English literature in the 18th century, which documents the lives and history of two centuries of Jewish life in Australia and New Zealand.

Jewish emigration to New Zealand and Australia began, as so much other English emigration to Australia began, with the arrival of nine Jewish convicts from England in 1788. This first handful of convict-emigrants settled in Sydney. In 1817 a burial society was established, which soon developed into the Great Synagogue of Sydney.

Reviews:

"The Jewish content is absorbingly interesting, and the literary level is extremely high....It provides evidence not only of burgeoning and mature talents, but ofa candour and clarity of observation that seems to characterize Australian writing." The Jerusalem Post

"This is an unusual sampling of work by a score of interesting writers." Present Tense
 
 

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5) The Global Anthology of Jewish Women Writers

ISBN: 916288-29-3    450 pgs.    pbk.    $18.00

Description:

Thirty-four Jewish women writers from four continents explore in poetry, fiction, essays, and play, what modernity has made of the Jewish woman as writer, social activist, revolutionary, and housewife. Focuses on Jewish women of the last two centuries, as they emerged from their ghettoes into a Europe which embraced the principles of "Enlightenment."Writers include Hannah Arendt, Nelly Sachs, Nadine Gordimer, Evgenia Ginsburg, Cynthia Ozick, Roberta Kalechofsky, Shulamith Hareven, Clarice Lispector, Emma Goldman, and others.

Reviews:

"This collection is a far-reaching amassing of Jewish women writers from all over the world....There is a grittiness and honesty to these writings that cannot be ignored."

"...this omnibus of stories, essays and poetry hums with vitality." Publishers' Weekly

"This book would appeal to those interested in women's literature, women's issues, feminism, and history." Harvard Educational Review

"The Global Anthology of Jewish Women Writers is a work that should grace any reader's library..." The Australian Jewish News