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New Books in Jewish Studies

New Books in Jewish Studies

By: Marshall Poe
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Interview with Scholars of Judaism about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studiesNew Books Network Judaism Spirituality
Episodes
  • Semmy Stalhammer, "Codename Barber: My Father’s Story" (Albert Bonniers Publishers, 2007)
    Jun 6 2025
    The Nazi threat emerges from Germany 1933 and shatters the small town life in Krasnik south of Lublin in eastern Poland. The teenager Mischa Stahlhammer manages to escape from a German work camp and joins Polish partisans. He survives by becoming a specialist in arming and disarming mines, the most dangerous of all missions. After the war he ends up in Sweden, meets Sonja, who also lost her family and youth in German concentration camps. Their son Semmy, born in Eskilstuna, tells the story of what a boy, his family and friends had to live through in Poland before, during and after the Second World War, and how love gives him back the will to live – and the strength to create a new life in a foreign land. Semmy Stahlhammer was First Concertmaster at the Stockholm Royal Opera and Ballet for 25 years, and Artistic Director of Chamber Music at Stockholm Grand Hotel, and of the music festival in San Giovanni in Tuscany, Italy. He is now leader of Stahlhammer Klezmer Classic. In his violin ateljé in Stockholm he restores/repairs string instruments. Codename Barber is translated into Swedish, German, Russian, Hebrew and Chinese. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies
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    1 hr and 27 mins
  • Dave Margoshes, "A Simple Carpenter" (Radiant Press, 2024)
    Jun 6 2025
    NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with award-winning author Dave Margoshes’ novel, A Simple Carpenter (Radiant Press, 2024)—which recently won a Saskatchewan Book Award and the Western Canada Jewish Book Award for Fiction. Set in the early and mid-‘80s in the Middle East, A Simple Carpenter plays out against a backdrop of strife in Lebanon and ethnic/religious tensions between Jews and Arabs in Israel and Palestine. This historical backdrop serves as an empathetic and thoughtful commentary on our modern political climate. Part biblical fable, part magic realism, and part thriller, A Simple Carpenter follows the epic journey of a ship’s carpenter stranded on a small Mediterranean island and visited by a frightening mysterious creature. He’s lost his memory but has acquired the ability to speak, write and understand all languages. After his rescue, he spends time in a Lebanese coastal village recuperating with a group of nuns who, observing him perform what appear to be small miracles, take him to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. Later in Beirut he’s hired as a translator for the UN peacekeeping force, and is recruited as a messenger for a group named Black September. On a quest to find his true identity he travels on foot across the hills to the Sea of Galilee, encountering a series of strange and magical communities evoking biblical times along the way. More about Dave Margoshes: Dave Margoshes is a Saskatoon-area poet and fiction writer. He began his writing life as a journalist, working as a reporter and editor on a number of daily newspapers in the U.S. and Canada, and has taught journalism​ and creative writing​.He has published twenty books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. His work has appeared widely in literary magazines and anthologies, in Canada and beyond, including six times in the Best Canadian Stories volumes; he’s been nominated for the Journey Prize​ several times and was a finalist in 2009. His Bix’s Trumpet and Other Stories won two prizes at the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Awards, including Book of the Year. He also won the Poetry Prize in 2010 for Dimensions of an Orchard. His collection of linked short stories, A Book of Great Worth, was named one of Amazon. CA’s Top Hundred Books of 2012. Other prizes include the City of Regina Writing Award, twice; the Stephen Leacock Prize for Poetry in 1996 and the John V. Hicks Award for fiction in 2001. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies
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    55 mins
  • Elisabeth Åsbrink "And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Remain: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Family Torn Apart by War" (Other Press, 2020)
    Jun 4 2025
    Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and a Notable Translated Book of the Year by World Literature Today Winner of the August Prize, the story of the complicated long-distance relationship between a Jewish child and his forlorn Viennese parents after he was sent to Sweden in 1939, and the unexpected friendship the boy developed with the future founder of IKEA, a Nazi activist. And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Remain: The Heartbreaking True Story of a Family Torn Apart by War⁠ (Other Press, 2020). Otto Ullmann, a Jewish boy, was sent from Austria to Sweden right before the outbreak of World War II. Despite the huge Swedish resistance to Jewish refugees, thirteen-year-old Otto was granted permission to enter the country—all in accordance with the Swedish archbishop’s secret plan to save Jews on condition that they convert to Christianity. Otto found work at the Kamprad family’s farm in the province of Småland and there became close friends with Ingvar Kamprad, who would grow up to be the founder of IKEA. At the same time, however, Ingvar was actively engaged in Nazi organizations and a great supporter of the fascist Per Engdahl. Meanwhile, Otto’s parents remained trapped in Vienna, and the last letters he received were sent from Theresienstadt.With thorough research, including personal files initiated by the predecessor to today’s Swedish Security Service (SÄPO) and more than 500 letters, Elisabeth Åsbrink illustrates how Swedish society was infused with anti-Semitism, and how families are shattered by war and asylum politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/jewish-studies
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    1 hr and 6 mins
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