
The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza
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The principle of the "lesser evil"-the acceptability of pursuing one exceptional course of action in...

Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics Under Hitler
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Serving the Reich tells the story of physics under Hitler. While some scientists tried to create an...

The Holocaust in Croatia
Slavko Goldstein and Ivo Goldstein
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The Holocaust in Croatia recounts the history of the Croatian Jewish community during the Second...

American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology
Benjamin Harshav and Barbara Harshav
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This remarkable volume introduces to the large English-speaking audience what is probably the most...

Does Your Rabbi Know You're Here?: The Story of English Football's Forgotten Tribe
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Ever since the children of penniless immigrants caught the train from Whitechapel to White Hart Lane...

Mike Birbiglia recommended Annie Hall (1977) in Movies (curated)

City of Vengeance
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City of Vengeance is an explosive debut historical thriller, set in Renaissance Florence. ...
Historical Fiction Renaissance Italy Florence

The Sisters of Auschwitz
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They knew their survival depended on each other. They had to live for each other. It is 1940 and...

The Chocolate Lady (94 KP) rated Lilac Girls in Books
Oct 5, 2020
In addition - and I hope this doesn't sound racist or snobbish - as a Jew, I have a hard time with Holocaust novels that seem to outwardly ignore how the Nazis treated the Jews, and only focuses on the other "undesirables." I realize that the Nazis didn't only kill Jews, but they were their primary target, and to avoid that altogether was disingenuous, to say the least. However, I was glad that this book didn't focus on any overtly Christian themes, even though I believe that there is a market for Holocaust stories within the Christian Fiction genre (see my review of the novel The Butterfly and the Violin by Kristy Cambron here http://drchazan.blogspot.com/2014/07/beauty-out-of-ugliness.html for more on my feelings about this).
Furthermore, the only Jewish reference I found in this novel was a passing reference to visiting the Ghetto and a remembrance of eating a Hanukkah delicacy. Unfortunately, the author didn't do her research properly, and the character said she remembered eating a type of doughnut that the Jewish bakers made for the holiday. Those doughnuts - known as "sufganiot" were never part of any Eastern European Hanukkah celebration at that time. In fact, sufganiot that are popular among Jews today, come from the Jews of North Africa and Arab countries. The word, sufganiot, comes from the Arabic and Hebrew words that mean sponge. While Jews in Poland did make something similar, their popularity as a particularly Hanukkah delicacy among Easter European Jews only coincided after Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews came together in Israel (i.e., post-1948). All of this is why I cannot give this book a rating of more than two and a half stars out of five, but I'm certain that it will find a much more sympathetic audience among non-Jewish readers.

BookwormMama14 (18 KP) rated Esther: Royal Beauty (Dangerous Beauty, #1) in Books
Jan 2, 2019
Hadassah (Esther) is a Jewish girl living in the royal city of Susa, in the great land of Persia, ruled by all powerful King Xerxes. Orphaned at a young age, her cousin Mordecai and his wife Miriam raise Hadassah as their own daughter. King Xerxes’ wife Vashti has defied him. His advisers suggest that she be dismissed as Queen, or the women of Persia will begin to treat their husbands the same way. The King becomes lonely however, and therefore sends out a nationwide search for a new wife. When everything has been arranged for Hadassah’s marriage to a local Jewish man, her world is turned upside down. Brought to the palace against her will, will she please the King and become his Queen? Or will she live out her life anonymously in the harem?
Being a familiar Bible story to me, Esther: Royal Beauty was a relaxing book to read, because I knew how it would end. Angela Hunt did a wonderful job filling in the spaces of the story that have been left up to our imagination. I enjoyed learning a little bit more about King Xerxes as well. I read the book of Esther in the Bible after I finished this book and was pleasantly surprised to know that the author was very accurate with the interpretation. She even quoted word for word dialogue found in the New Living Translation. Very intriguing to anyone who enjoys bringing more life and depth to traditional Bible stories.
I received a free copy of Esther: Royal Beauty from Bethany House Publishers and a free digital copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.