A rare combination of cookbook and theological commentary, both visually stunning and profound.
Harper explores the Torah through imaginative challah creations.
“Challah is no ordinary bread,” writes the author, a rabbi, “it is rich with religious and spiritual resonance, as well as powerful sensory memories that are often connected to community and culture.” As described in the book’s introduction, which surveys the long history of the eggy, yeasty, braided bread throughout Jewish history, challah has long been a staple of Jewish cultures throughout the diaspora. By the 18th century, Ukrainian Jews were baking “increasingly elaborate challah shapes for different holidays” (birds and ladders for the pre-Yom Kippur fast, hands for Hoshana Rabbah, and keys for the Shabbat after Pesach), while Moroccan Jews were embedding whole eggs in a “thin ‘cage’ of dough” to represent Haman’s evil eye during Purim. After exploring this rich legacy, the bulk of the book takes readers through the Torah, with individual chapters devoted to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, respectively. The major stories from these biblical books are given brief synopses, along with learned commentary from Harper that balances astute scholarship (backed by hundreds of citations) and exegesis with applications to daily life. An assistant rabbi at Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with an advanced degree in Hebrew literature, the author is a talented scholar and teacher, both strengths on full display as she distills complex, theologically dense material into an easy-to-read format. While this narrative on its own makes for a thoughtful book, the triumph of this volume lies in its highlighting of the gorgeous, creative interpretative bread that accompanies each story. While on the surface, Harper admits, “Challah dough may have some limits as an artistic medium,” the variety, symbolism, and beauty of the loaves are the undeniable stars of the book, displayed in full-page, high-quality glossy photographs. The book’s final section includes tips on baking and shaping challah, enabling readers to learn more about the Torah while participating in “Floury Fun.”
A rare combination of cookbook and theological commentary, both visually stunning and profound.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780881233797
Page Count: 321
Publisher: Central Conference of American Rabbis Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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