1 comments about Raphael 2008 Diary (Icons).

1. Since the Tanzanian photographic safari of which I was a part over 20 years ago, I have come to love the Safari style -- rustic yet luxurious, simple yet refined, open to the elements yet comfortable, accessible to wildlife yet cloistered and secure. I love the use of natural elements in interior and exterior design. This style makes the transition between indoors and outdoors seamless. This book is rich with evocative images, many of which one can use to inform his or her own interior and exterior design. Or just read the book to be transported to a simpler, more exotic world. It is a great value at the relatively inexpensive price.

No comments about The Nineteen Letters Of Ben Uziel: Being A Spiritual Presentation Of The Principles Of Judaism.

3 comments about Crime and Punishment in Early Maryland (Maryland Paperback Bookshelf).

1. An excellent treatise of life in early Maryland, primarily during the 17th and 18th century. A terrific book for anyone writing about that period, novel or non-fiction. Also a real find if your family came from Maryland and you are looking for genealogical traces. It is amazing that this book is still available, but it is, and thank goodness for that! A great book for students of early criminology in the colonies.



2. This book is an amazing look at Maryland culture under the Proprietorship, viewed through the eyes of the law. Some of the riveting chapters include: Hog Stealing, Servant Discipline and Punishment, Drunkeness, Profanity, and Witchcraft, Sickness, Chiurgery and Burials. If it was against the peace of the Right Honorable, the Lord Proprietor, it's in there. The book is worth at least ten thousand pounds of tobacco!



3. Good reference book. A few laughs too over the old laws and rules our ancestors had to live with way back when. Will be donating to my Genealogy Society library. Enjoyed this book.

No comments about Spirit Possession in Judaism: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present (Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology).

No comments about St. Raphael.

No comments about La Curacion por los Cristales.

No comments about Introducing Thealogy: Discourse on the Goddess (Feminist Theology Series).

No comments about A Global Community: The Jews from Aleppo, Syria (Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology).

No comments about The Jews of Kurdistan (Jewish Folklore and Anthropology).

5 comments about Writing a Jewish Life: Memoirs.

1. I key Raphael into Amazon's search hoping for a new Nick Hoffman mystery and this new publication appears. Maybe it will be about writing. I enjoy books on writing, everybody's; Welty's, Cameron's, even King's, so I order it.
   Once in hand, I immediately see where over half of its slim 165 pages are repeats of pieces that appeared in a 1996 publication still sitting on my shelf, called "Journey's and Arrivals."
   Disappointed, I regret that this information is not in the discription, but I re-read a couple of the pieces that I'd first enjoyed in the earlier publication, then sought out the new ones and did find several very interesting, on writing, and fame and visiting Germany.
   Not Raphael's or anyone's expected audience for his work being an older woman, neither gay nor Jewish, I read to understand difference and not to identify, but then I found a piece called "Into His Eyes," and the author and I have identical relationships with our Westies, right down to having a hassock by the bed. I'm sure I'll re-read it many times and it certainly cut my disappointment in finding repeated pieces from an earlier book that I still own.



2. In Writing a Jewish Life, Lev Raphael explores a variety of themes, including being the child of Holocaust survivors, being Jewish, being gay, being the son of an ill parent, being the owner of a wonderful dog, and much more. In other words, Raphael taps into the very essence of being human. He does so with eloquence, wit, and writing that flows effortlessly, beautifully.
   
   WAJL delves into emotions with which I could deeply identify, regardless of my familiarity with the eliciting experience. I learned. I remembered. I laughed. I was moved to tears. I was provoked to think.
   
   Even after I had turned the last page, WAJL left me feeling as if I had received a wonderful gift. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who appreciates exceptional, masterful, emotionally evocative writing.



3. I catalog books for a living. This book came across my desk yesterday. Intrigued by the title, I looked a little further; then spent my lunch hour reading it. Although parts of it will personally touch only those of us who actually are children of Holocaust survivors, there is also a universal theme throughout the book of personal discovery and the intricacies and influences of life experiences on that discovery. Well written, the author definitely has an engaging style and the reader finds him/herself drawn into the experience. Definitely worth the read.



4. After reading through SECRET ANNIVERSARIES OF THE HEART by Lev Raphael, I went to this earlier collection of essays and "creative nonfiction" to uncork the sources of the writer's genius . . . Stimulating . . . Things I never knew . . . He had the sort of mom and dad who, imprisoned in the Nazi death camps, were all about, "Nothing else in life was ever as dramatic as that" . . . they really had no patience with him, for he had not suffered as they had . . . at the same time, their experience caused them to cut way back on how "Jewish" they were . . . understandably they complained they had had enough of other Jews in the camps . . . and led secular lives, without taking little Lev to any seders or other Jewish celebrations . . . consequently he grew up deracinated to an extent . . . and living a lie when it came to his sexuality, for how could he further devastate his family by admitting he was gay of all things . . . thus his earliest fiction had nothing real about it as he now admits . . . Under the tutelage of an understanding writing professor at college, and afterwards, for the two kept in touch, Raphael began painfully one step at a time to become real in his writing and real in his life . . . This necessitated getting involved in the Yiddishkeit which I'm still not sure about . . . what it is . . . and eventually moving to Okemos and settling down with Gersh Kaufman, wellknown psychologist . . . . trips to Israel produced more honest and compelling writing . . . while reviewing and broadcasting helped make Lev Raphael a household name.
   
   Good book . . . though some of it was familiar from earlier publication in JOURNEYS AND ARRIVALS book . . . my attitude is, can never have too much Lev Raphael and so called "double dipping" only hurts the ignorant and bigoted . . . check out "Selling Was Never My Line" for some comic relief, relief from the many tragedies outlined elsewhere in the book . . . this hilarious tale about writing a book called DANCING ON TISHA B'AV and hearing it referred to as DANCING ON THE TISSUE BOX, and other indignities even the greatest authors have to face . . . in today's mass market culture . . . puts a grin on your face.
   
   I wound up not liking the mother very much, she wouldn't give an inch . . . that's her prerogative, she suffered, she was there . . . apparently a gifted teacher in Brussels (Belgium) after the war, she shut down emotionally and wasn't available to her boy . . . and the dad was no prize either and Lev writes a bitter piece about him called "Scars."



5. Raphael, Lev. "Writing A Jewish Life: Memoirs". Carroll & Graf, 2006
   
   Self-Acceptance
   
   
   Amos Lassen and Literary Pride
   
   Gays always seem to have trouble in claiming both their religious and sexual identities. For many of us, we leave religion behind when we realize that we are gay because we feel that religion has no place for us. Lev Raphael tells his persona story of claiming both and his personal road to self-acceptance. Because we are gay, we often feel separated from our community and our family and sometimes even from ourselves. It takes a great deal of honesty to be able to reconcile ourselves with our basic religious beliefs but Lev Raphael shows that is can indeed be done.
   With deep insight and crystal clear prose his search is explained in "Writing a Jewish Life" and although he does not give s a road map on how to do the same, it is easy to look at what he has done and adapt it to our own lives. We must rise above some of the issues of society such as race, religion and gender and find a shared humanity that will bring us together.
   Raphael's book is a memoir but it is more than that. It is a guide to self understanding. He uses his own life story so that he can better understand himself in terms of his religion, his homosexuality and his life as a writer. As the son of Holocaust survivors he had to be able to rise above the inhumanity of man in order to find the basic goodness of man and in effect, this is something that many of us do everyday. We look for the good in mankind and hope to be able to fit that good into our own lives. Raphael, as am author, is able to use his skill as a writer to overcome the sense of alienation he has felt as a gay Jewish man. He is able to create his own sense of history.
   For myself, there were parts of this book that were achingly painful as I have gone through so much of what Raphael has endured. Ostracized in my own mind and feeling that my religion did not want me, I ad to find my own place where I could share the beautiful heritage of m people and my religion with my homosexuality. There is no easy fit nor is there an easy fix. It is all about self compromise. Of course some of that self compromise is dependent on how far "out" a person is. When I came to Arkansas, I had to decide if I should just be out or return to the closet until I ad built up a new circle of friends and established myself. I had already done this once before in New Orleans and then again when I moved to Israel. Coming to Arkansas, however, presented a greater challenge. I did not choose to come here; I was brought here by the National Guard after I sustained much of the wrath of one of the greatest natural disasters of all time, Hurricane Katrina. I had reconciled myself to my faith by leaving it. Now in a new place with new people, my own sense of community was with my synagogue or temple. Could I risk being out? I looked at it as not so much a risk because I was not comfortable not being myself and decided to be who and what I am and if anyone had trouble with the fact that I am gay, then that was their problem and not mine. I accepted myself and thereby expected others to accept me and they did. So many of us have wished for acceptance before we have accepted ourselves and it just doesn't work that way. After reading Raphael's book, I knew I had done the right thing.
   Jews will always be haunted by history. There are so many issues in the Jewish past--the promise land, the chosen people, the Holocaust, the wars in modern Israel and anti-Semitism. But we must rise above the past and embrace the present in order to have a better life in the future
   Just as Lev Raphael has accepted himself, so I have tried and so must all of us aspire to do, The implications of religion on sexual identity are strong but they can be dealt with and once one rationalizes who and what he is, life is that much easier.