ATJT BOOKSTORE

ATJT BOOKSTORE

Literary Companions to our Current Season [click on title to purchase]

Stories for Children
by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Thirty-six stories by the Nobel Prize winner, including "The Fools of Chelm and the Stupid Carp". and other Singer versions of the Chelm tales that inspired ATJT's Moonwatcher. Also contains such treasures as "Zlateh the Goat" and "Mazel and Shlimazel."

The Chosen
by Chaim Potok

Few stories offer more warmth, wisdom, or generosity than this tale of two boys, their fathers, their friendship, and the chaotic times in which they live. Though on the surface it explores religious faith--the intellectually committed as well as the passionately observant--the struggles addressed in The Chosen are familiar to families of all faiths and in all nations.

In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a Modern Orthodox Jew with an intellectual, Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together they negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered when Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S., loss, love, and the journey to adulthood. The intellectual and spiritual clashes between fathers, between each son and his own father, and between the two young men, provide a unique backdrop for this exploration of fathers, sons, faith, loyalty, and, ultimately, the power of love. (This is not a conventional children's book, although it will move any wise child age 12 or older, and often appears on summer reading lists for high school students.)

Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms
by Norman Fischer

ATJT's friend and unofficial spiritual advisor, Norman Fischer, has re-worked 92 psalms in breathtakingly fresh language.
ATJT founding member Corey Fischer (no relation) is developing a new theatre piece
based on Norman's versions for 2003.

The Song of Songs : A New Translation With an Introduction and Commentary
by Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch

Ariel and Chana Bloch's new translation of the Song of Songs--the most sexually explicit and sensually rich book of the Bible--is pure delight from beginning to end. Its introduction is an accessible, sophisticated, entertaining, and comprehensive orientation to the literary and religious history of the Song of Songs. The Blochs say the speakers in this poem "don't suffer love, they savor it." Their translation, overflowing with full--almost to the point of florid--feeling ("Feast, friends, and drink / till you are drunk with love!"), arrives at a time when many Jews and Christians are opening themselves to the religious dimensions of sexuality and human love. Song of Songs has a great deal to teach us; this translation is sure to attract many eager students. --Michael Joseph Gross

Be My Knife [click on title to purchase]
by David Grossman

A compelling love story from the leading Israeli novelist of his generation whose landmark novel, See Under: LOVE was adapted for the theatre by Corey Fischer, winning several major awards.
We could be like two people who inject themselves with truth serum, and at long last have to tell it -- the truth. I want to be able to say to myself, "I bled truth with her," yes, that's what I want. Be a knife for me, and I, I swear, will be a knife for you.

An awkward, neurotic seller of rare books writes a desperate letter to a beautiful stranger whom he sees at a class reunion. This simple, lonely attempt at seduction begins a love affair of words between Yair and Miriam, two married, middle-aged adults, dissatisfied with their lives, yearning for the connection that has always eluded them -- and, eventually, reawakened to feelings that they thought had passed them by. Their correspondence unfolds into an exchange of their most naked confessions: of desire, childhood tragedies, joys, and humiliations.

Through the dialogue between Yair -- a family man and surprisingly successful adulterer, whose guarded letters reveal a life of duplicity -- and Miriam, at first deceptively open and warm, who fills her life with distraction to avoid a past full of painful secrets, Be My Knife explores the nature and the limits of intimacy.

A deep departure from David Grossman's previous work, Be My Knife is his subtlest, most passionate novel yet.

The Art of Biblical Narrative [click on title to purchase]
by Robert Alter

A distinguished professor of Hebrew and comparative literature examines the Old Testament stories from a literary point of view. This book did much to transform the way we read Torah and has long been an inspiration to ATJT.

Jew Boy [click on title to purchase]
by Alan Kaufman

Alan is another friend of ours who has been changing the face of American Jewish writing.
"A classic, if wholly unconventional, American coming-of-age story.… Kaufman’s writing can make gorgeous dreams of some of his most distubring memories."
San Francisco Chronicle, 10 September, 2000

Books on Yiddish Poetry

American Yiddish Poetry, A Bilingual Anthology
Harshav, Benjamin and Barbara (Translators)
U.C. Press ISBN:0520048423
A landmark, in-depth selection of Yiddish poets who lived and wrote in America. Harshav's introduction makes an important case for Yiddish poetry as the most extensive body of American poetry written in a language other than English.

The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse
Howe, Irving; Wisse, Ruth; Shmeruk, Khone (Ed.)
Penguin ASIN: 0140094725
The most comprehensive bilingual collection available. The translations are by contemporary American poets.

A Few Words in the Mother Tongue : Poems Selected and New (1971-1990)
Klepfisz, Irena
Eighth Mountain Press ISBN: 0933377053
As far as we know Klepfisz is the only contemporary American poet who incorporates Yiddish into her poems. Her work has been one of our major inspirations.

An Anthology of Modern Yiddish Poetry (Bilingual)
Whitman, Ruth (Translator)
Wayne State University Press ISBN:0814325335
Whitman is one the finest translators of Yiddish we've found. Our title came from an interview we did with her several years ago, in which she told us her sense of mission came from the feeling that, untranslated, Yiddish poetry would remain unseen, "...like Diamonds in the Dark."

Selected Poems of Jacob Glatstein
Whitman, Ruth (Translator)
October House ISBN: 0807901768
Glatstein is one of the most important American Yiddish poets. Several of his poems were part of an earlier work of ours, The Last Yiddish Poet

God Hid His Face : Selected Poems
Zychlinsky, Rajzel (Barnett Zumoff, Aaron Kramer, Translators)
Word & Quill Press ISBN: 0965864006
Zychlinsky, one of the few surviving Yiddish poets, writes with stunning simplicity and painful clarity.

Other Books on Yiddish Poetry

Bearing the Unbearable: Yiddish and Polish Poetry in the Ghettos and Concentration Camps
Aaron, Frieda W.
State Univ. of New York Press ISBN: 0791402479

Onions and Cucumbers and Plums : 46 Yiddish Poem in English
Betsky-Zweig, Sarah
Wayne State Univ. Press ISBN: 0814316743

The Meaning of Yiddish
Harshav, Benjamin
Univ. California Press; ISBN: 0520059476

The Last Lullaby : Poetry from the Holocaust
Kramer, Aaron and Lishinsky, Saul (Editors)
Syracuse Univ. Press ISBN: 0815604785

The Fiddle Rose : Poems 1970-1972 Bilingual Edition
Sutzkever, Abraham, (Ruth Whitman, Translator)
Wayne State Univ. Press ISBN:0814320015