Description

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"Uniformly excellent."--The Jewish Standard

This rich medley of stories, poems, and essays features evocations of Chanukah by classic and contemporary authors including Sholom Aleichem, Nobel laureates S. Y. Agnon and Elie Wiesel, I. L. Peretz, Emma Lazarus, Theodor Herzl, Chaim Potok, Mark Strand, A. B. Yehoshua, Emma Green, Joanna Rakoff, and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. There are humorous as well as meditative tales from Israel, Central Europe, and the United States--works that capture the Festival of Lights as observed on Manhattan's Upper West Side alongside accounts of celebrations in shtetls of the Old Country and far reaches of the Diaspora including Africa. The writings underscore what it means to be Jewish in a world that's not always welcoming and include intriguing commentary about Chanukah's origins and what it means now.

About the Author

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S. Y. Agnon (1888-1970) was a Nobel Prize-winning writer and one of the principal voices of modern Hebrew literature.Sholom Aleichem (1856-1916), one of the fathers of modern Yiddish literature, was born in what is now Ukraine. He wrote many books including Tevye the Dairyman, which would be adapted into the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof.Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) was a journalist and playwright, and the founder of the political form of Zionism.Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) was a poet and essayist best known for writing "The New Colossus," the sonnet excerpted in an inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty.Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (1950- ) is a writer and philosopher whose books include the novel The Mind-Body Problem and the nonfiction work Plato at the Googleplex.Chaim Potok (1929-2002) was a rabbi and author of The Chosen, The Promise, and other novels.Joanna Rakoff (1972- ) is a memoirist and novelist.Mark Strand (1934-2014) was poet laureate of the United States.Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) was a writer known for his literary accounts of surviving the Holocaust.