Big League Dreams Small Worlds

Download or read book Big League Dreams (Small Worlds) written by Allen Hoffman and published by WW Norton. This book was released on 2011-06-21 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Big League Dreams finds the Krimsk Rebbe and many of his flock in St. Louis on a Saturday, the Sabbath, in the summer of 1920. In St. Louis, it is the summer of 1920 and the day is the Sabbath, but there is little rest for the Jews from Krimsk and less reverence for the wondrous Krimsker Rebbe, who led them to the New World seventeen years before. The rebbe's former hasidim have embraced America to discover that the vision of "gold in the streets" evokes larceny in the heart. Matti Sternweiss, the ungainly, studious child wonder in Krimsk, now the cerebral catcher for the St. Louis Browns, is scheming to fix Saturday's game against the pennant-contending Detroit Tigers. It is an American Sabbath: Prohibition, bookies, the criminal syndicate, the Hiberian fellowship of the police brass, hometown blondes, a bootlegging rabbi, and big league baseball. It is also Krimsk in America: Boruch Levi, the successful junkman, confiscates his zany, crippled brother-in-law Barasch's sizable bets; Barasch's lusty wife, Malka, has her own connubial reasons for wanting to stop the gambling; the chief of police fatefully inspires his loyal disciple, Boruch Levi, to bring Matti before the Krimsker Rebbe on the Sabbath in order to preserve the purity of the national pastime. Recluse and wonder-worker, messianist and pragmatist, the Krimsker Rebbe navigates the muddy Mississippi River, haunted by a recurring prophetic vision of Pharaoh's blood-red Nile. In the final, decisive innings, with Matti crouched behind home plate, it will come down to Ty Cobb versus the kabbalah. Richly imagined, populated with robust, complex characters, Big League Dreams is a profoundly original, inspiring, and comic creation. It is the second volume in the series Small Worlds, which follows the people of Krimsk and their descendants in America, Russia, Poland, and Israel. In each volume Allen Hoffman draws on his deep knowledge of Jewish religion and history to evoke the finite yet infinite "small worlds" his characters inhabit.

Download or read book Two for the Devil (Small Worlds) written by Allen Hoffman and published by WW Norton. This book was released on 2011-06-21 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is Rosh Hashanah — the Jewish New Year and Day of Judgment — in Moscow during the Stalinist purges of 1936. In the Lubyanka secret police prison, senior investigator Grisha Shwartzman masterfully pursues the rigorous logic and obsessive legalism of the Soviet witch-hunt. Facing an extraordinary prisoner, Grisha realizes that the Soviet system he has faithfully served is murderously corrupt and that he himself will be the next victim — but not an innocent one. In despair, he flees to his home, where his deranged wife and an unexpected Rosh Hashanah letter from his father-in-law, the enigmatic Krimsker Rebbe in America, await him. The Day of Judgment proves to be a startling experience as Grisha, the once idealistic radical, judges himself, accepts his responsibilities, and is guided to sublime passion and possible redemption by his mad wife, who for twenty years has been patiently awaiting him in a closed wardrobe. In 1942 a train of imprisoned Jews leaves the Warsaw ghetto for "resettlement in the East." It is Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement and the holiest day of the Jewish year. In a crowded cattle car stands a lonely, defeated individual who is ashamed that he cannot even remember his own name. During the tortuous journey Yechiel Katzman will overhear a talmudic debate and meet a dull-witted giant who turns out to be none other than Itzik Dribble, also from Krimsk. As they arrive in the death camp of Treblinka, Yechiel remembers not only his name but also the Krimsker Rebbe's prophetic curse that exiled him from Krimsk forty years earlier. Yet as death approaches, that curse will prove a blessing. Stalin and Hitler decree certain death, but Grisha and Yechiel discover Jewish fates. The devil incites loneliness, degradation, despair, and even complicity; through memory, the victims elicit community, dignity, and the awareness of sanctity. Grisha's "Soviet" Rosh Hashanah and Yechiel's "Nazi" Yom Kippur are truly "Days of Awe." Even when death is certain, life can be lived.

Download or read book To Be Continued written by Hope Apple and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2000-10-10 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keeping track of prolific authors who write fiction series was quite challenging for even the most ardent fan until To Be Continueddebuted in 1995. Noew, readers will be happy that the soon-to-be-released second edition has added 1,600 new books and 400 new series. To Be Continued, Second Edition, maintians the first volume's successful formula that featured concise A-to-Z entries packed with useful information, including titles, publishers, publication dates, genre categories, annotations, and subject terms. Among the genre categories that can be found in To Be Continued are romance, science fiction, crime novel, horror, adventure, fantasy, humor, western, war, Christian fiction, and others.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature written by Hana Wirth-Nesher and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-12 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than two hundred years, Jews have played important roles in the development of American literature. The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature addresses a wide array of themes and approaches to the distinct yet multifaceted body of Jewish American literature. Essays examine writing from the 1700s to major contemporary writers such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. Topics covered include literary history, immigration and acculturation, Yiddish and Hebrew literature, popular culture, women writers, literary theory and poetics, multilingualism, the Holocaust, and contemporary fiction. This collection of specially commissioned essays by leading figures discusses Jewish American literature in relation to ethnicity, religion, politics, race, gender, ideology, history, and ethics, and places it in the contexts of both Jewish and American writing. With its chronology and guides to further reading, this volume will prove valuable to scholars and students alike.

Download or read book Kagan's Superfecta: And Other Stories written by Allen Hoffman and published by WW Norton. This book was released on 2000-11-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The art of Jewish storytelling thrives in this captivating collection of tales by Allen Hoffman, filled with memorable characters. This captivating collection of stories by Allen Hoffman, award winning author of the critically acclaimed Small Worlds series are deeply felt explorations into the Jewish mind and world?stories in the tradition of Isaac Bashevis Singer. At the same time, illuminated by compassion and humor, they transcend cultural boundaries and provide fascinating studies in the universal human experience. Kagan the compulsive gambler, Bluma the old beggar woman, Hymie the well-to-do arsonist, and Maxie the juggling uncle are but a few of the comic and sympathetic characters of Hoffman's title novella and four short stories that celebrate the human experience. Hoffman loves and integrates two worlds, the modern secular and the timeless traditional. Kagan's Superfecta is a dazzling, inspirational performance.

Download or read book The New Jewish Leaders written by Jack Wertheimer and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2011 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting study of a generational transition with major implications for American Jewish life

Download or read book Big Game, Small World written by Alexander Wolff and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-12 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the late 1990s, eminent basketball journalist Alexander Wolff traveled the globe to determine how a game invented by a Canadian clergyman became an international phenomenon. Big Game, Small World presents Wolff’s dispatches from sixteen countries spread across five continents and multiple US states. In them, he asks: What can the game tell us about the world? And what can the world tell us about the game? Whether traveling to Bhutan to challenge its king to a pickup game, exploring the women’s game in Brazil, or covering the Afrobasket tournament in Luanda, Angola, during a civil war, Wolff shows how basketball has the power to define an individual, a culture, and even a country. This updated twentieth anniversary edition features a new preface in which Wolff outlines the contemporary rise of athlete-activists while discussing the increasing dominance within the NBA of marquee international players like Luka Dončić and Giannis Antetokounmpo. A loving celebration of basketball, Big Game, Small World is one of the most insightful books ever written about the game.