Drawing from her book, The Five Books of Miriam (Putnam 1996; HarperSanFrancisco pb, 1998), Dr. Ellen Frankel presents this ancient text through a prism of women's voices, including Our Mothers, Our Bubbes, the Rabbis, the Sages in Our Own Time, as well as a host of biblical women such as Lilith the Rebel, Mother Rachel, Wily Rebecca, and Dinah the Wounded One. She explores how new questions can uncover ancient secrets, how modern research and scholarship can shed new light on the past, and how today's women can engage in conversation with their biblical counterparts. Frankel's work is a blend of feminism, Jewish tradition, and what she calls "Folk Torah.". ...... click to read more
The Outskirts of Hope: A Memoir of the 1960s Deep South By Jo Ivester
1n 1967, when Jo Ivester was ten years old, her father transplanted his Jewish family from a suburb of Boston to an all-black town in the Mississippi cotton fields so that he could become the medical director of a clinic meant to serve the poorest region in the nation. Her mother was recruited to teach at the local high school, where she became a beloved and sometimes controversial figure who introduced black literature into the curriculum. Ivester builds on journals left by her mother to paint an inspiring portrait of her family’s experiences and a town dealing in a unique way with the racism that still grips our nation today. She describes how her mother helped her students to understand that the anti-Semitism that flourished throughout much of the Deep South was similar to the hatred that they faced as black Americans.
