Adas Library Reviews

By Robin Jacobson, Library & Literary Programs Director

Two new novels, Antiquities by Cynthia Ozick and The Vixen by Francine Prose, are well worth reading, even if they leave you shaking your head. Antiquities is a charming comedy-drama, but it is hard to make sense of it. In contrast, Vixen is easy to understand, but the novel is an eclectic mash-up of genres and styles: a coming-of-age story, historical novel,...Read more...

By Robin Jacobson, Library & Literary Programs Director

To Edmund de Waal, world-renowned ceramic artist and award-winning author, art objects are never just objects. They carry...Read more...

By Robin Jacobson

The bestselling new science memoir, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth by Avi Loeb, probes a thrilling...Read more...

By Robin Jacobson

Like many, I’m a longtime fan of the historical novels of Geraldine Brooks – Year of Wonders, March, Caleb’s Crossing, People of...Read more...

By Robin Jacobson

To many Jewish families with memories of hard times, Meyerland in the 1970s was the Promised Land. This Jewish neighborhood in Houston, Texas, was home...Read more...

By Robin Jacobson

Here’s literary news to celebrate: new novels from two of Israel’s best-known authors – A.B. Yehoshua and Eshkol Nevo – have arrived in American bookstores and libraries in English translation.

By Robin Jacobson

The intertwined history of two Baghdadi Jewish families in China – the Sassoon and Kadoorie families – is the stuff of epic...Read more...

By Robin Jacobson

Two thousand years ago, on a mountaintop overlooking the Dead Sea, 967 Jewish men, women, and children faced down the military might of the Roman empire. When defeat became certain, they chose to take their own lives rather than die at enemy hands or be enslaved. This is the defiant story of...Read more...

By Robin Jacobson

The inspiration for Rachel Kadish’s captivating novel, The Weight of Ink, was a famous essay by Virginia Woolf. If William Shakespeare had an equally brilliant sister, Woolf claimed, she would have died without writing a word, a victim of severe social...Read more...

By Robin Jacobson

A perennial source of fascination to physicists, philosophers, and...Read more...

By Robin Jacobson

At a time when stories of hope and fortitude feel essential, we are proud to present four inspiring new memoirs by Adas Israel members Judith Heumann, Esther Safran Foer, Sanford Greenberg, and Ron Hoffer (listed in order of publication). Read...Read more...

By Robin Jacobson

As Moses might have said, “You can take the Jews out of Egypt, but you can’t take Egypt out of the Jews.” It is hard to shed a past life and homeland, even one of misery and persecution. This is the theme of two outstanding books by Jewish émigrés from the former Soviet Union: Savage...Read more...