A rare work on Jewish liturgy that offers as much to rabbis and cantors as it does their lay congregations.
A group of prominent American rabbis reimagine the haftarah’s place in the Jewish liturgy in this collection edited by Symons.
Derived from the Hebrew word meaning conclusion, the haftarah is the final word of sacred text read or chanted before the Torah scroll is returned to the ark during Sabbaths and festivals. Its passages typically come from the Old Testament’s second half, such as Isaiah 58, in which the ancient prophet calls out the hypocrisy of Israelites for not practicing the virtues they preach. The haftarah was originally designed to be “liturgically radical,” urging listeners to “disrupt society’s oppressive hypocrisy and call attention to the plight of all those who suffer,” as Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner says in this book’s foreword; however, many rabbis are familiar with looking out into their congregations as “eyes glaze over during the haftarah reading, which should be summoning us to action.” The idea of this volume, which features roughly 150 contributors, was born during a national conference in 2018 among Reform Jews who sought to direct the moral impulses of their religion to contemporary issues, including racial justice, voting rights, gun violence, reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, and mass incarceration. It begins with introductory essays about prophetic readings and the origins of the haftarah; the second part provides contemporary interpretations of standard Reform haftarah texts, and the third and fourth parts offer alternative voices to address issues that correspond to the traditional Jewish calendar and American Jewish calendar. The latter includes “Brown v. Board of Education in International Context,” by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for International Women’s Day and “Invisibility in Academe” by Adrienne Rich for the Transgender Day of Visibility. Vetted by an editorial advisory committee of more than a dozen rabbis and Jewish scholars, this is a well-researched work that boasts over 500 endnotes. Under the experienced eye of Symons, the editorial board’s chair, it offers scholarly bona fides and an accessible writing style that’s sensitive to contemporary liturgical needs.
A rare work on Jewish liturgy that offers as much to rabbis and cantors as it does their lay congregations.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9780881233704
Page Count: 562
Publisher: Central Conference of American Rabbis Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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