Cape for Kali :)

Dear readers,

Please take a look at a delightful new children’s book published by my adopted sister, Rabbi Galina Trefil. In short, this book teaches kids that it’s ok to be different and that in fact, being different is beautiful!  I will be reviewing it later this month!

Link to Cape for Kali

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Thank you for sticking with me!

Just a quicky Hi to you guys! I am so honored that so many of you are still sticking with me even though I’ve been on a bit of a radio silence for a while.I want you to know that I am doing better and although I miss my mom every moment, I am learning to move forward. I am starting to read again at my usual pace and have actually a book in mind that was given to me during my mourning that I would love to comment on here. Alice Hoffman does wonderful nonfiction, you guys!

Anyway, I will be back soon, hopefully after this weekend’s birthday celebration. That would be my own, and I think I might be ready to celebrate myself even though I feel rather wistful at the same time.

Love,

Eugenia

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For my Rita

One month ago, my mommy had gotten diagnosed with diffused large b cell lymphoma. Two weeks ago, she began her first chemo cycle. Thirty eight hours ago my beloved mommy passed away. She handled chemo like a trouper, didn’t complain or ask for anything. For several days after chemo ended, she felt fine. Then the fatigue set in and things unraveled from there. On Tuesday she ended up in the ER and eventually ICU as everything got worse. On Friday, early in the morning despite putting up an insanely hard fight given how sick she became, my mother went back to her first family: her mother, father and older sister.

You may ask me how I can write right now. With a great amount of difficulty but full clarity of mind. I am the younger of two, and the daughter and I don’t think I grasped even the millimeter of how much I love my mother until now, how close I was with her. This blog is important to me and I feel like I’ve bonded with you all to the point where I can share my real life with you. My mom is (and I think I am going to be saying is for a long time) a very private, old fashioned person, I don’t think she understood what a blog really was and I seem to recall her pretty much rolling her eyes at me when I told her about it. But she cared about what made me happy and having this outlet makes me happy. She had the same attitude towards Facebook.

She instilled the love of reading and books in me which led me to this blog in the first place. As many kids, I didn’t share myself fully with mom and though I know she was often hurt by it, she understood. She raised me to be loyal and independent, stubborn and private like she was. I wasn’t always the easiest daughter but I know she always knew how much I loved her and how much she meant to me. On her last day, I started reading to her from a book she shared with me as a child, a book we both read as kids. And I know she was happy to hear me read to her, maybe she thought it was cheesy but I know she heard me and it comforts me that we could share this even when she was asleep.

I love you мама. 10351399_10100315302867559_3244375718699888115_n

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72nd Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award Winners | Jewish Book Council

72nd Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award Winners | Jewish Book Council
— Read on www.jewishbookcouncil.org/pb-daily/72nd-national-jewish-book-award-winners

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Fabulous read – One Hundred Saturdays by Michael Frank

I think this was probably the best book I’ve read this year, perhaps one of my very favorite Jewish stories of the last few years. . As an Ashkenazi Jew, my knowledge of pre war and Holocaust Sephardi Jewish experience has been sadly lacking and frankly, barely existent, One Hundred Saturdays made a great way in changing that, I don’t think I can find a single thing to complain about, dislike, or otherwise negatively speak about his absolute gem of a book. I desperately want to meet Stella, or at least listen to her speak because Michael Frank was able to make her voice shine through every single word of this book, he was able to paint such a vivid portrait of Jewish life in Rhodes that I physically hurt when the timeline moved the pendulum closer and closer to the war years.

This is a must read for any person who has any humanity and desire to learn about Jews as real, vibrant citizens of the world and to truly understand what we lost in our world with the Holocaust and all the death that it wrought on the world. Read it, read it, read it. Also, Stella is amazing.

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Best fall titles

www.heyalma.com/almas-favorite-books-for-fall-2021/

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Spin: A Novel Based on a (Mostly) True Story by Peter Zheutlin

Ride away on a ’round-the-world adventure of a lifetime—with only a change of clothes and a pearl-handled revolver—in this trascendent novel inspired…

Spin: A Novel Based on a (Mostly) True Story by Peter Zheutlin

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Cousins’ Club by Warren Alexander

When the matriarch of the least successful Jewish family in America gets tired of their misfortune, she consults mystical texts for help. Determined …

Cousins’ Club by Warren Alexander

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Eva and Eve: A Search for My Mother’s Lost Childhood and What a War Left Behind by Julie Metz

The author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Perfection returns with an unforgettable account of her late mother’s childhood in Nazi-occupied …

Eva and Eve: A Search for My Mother’s Lost Childhood and What a War Left Behind by Julie Metz

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The 83 books posted on JewishBookWorld.org in May 2021

Here is the list of the 83books that I posted on JewishBookWorld.org in April 2021. The image above contains some of the covers. The bold links take …

The 83 books posted on JewishBookWorld.org in May 2021

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A Land Like You by Tobie Nathan

Trans­la­tor: Joyce Zonana Cairo 1925, Haret al-Yahud, the old Jewish Quarter. Esther, a beautiful young woman believed to be possessed by demons, …

A Land Like You by Tobie Nathan

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If Anyone Calls, Tell Them I Died by Emanuel Rosen

The Holocaust and its aftermath were not often discussed in families of second-generation survivors. In Tel Aviv of the 1960s, Emanuel Rosen grew up …

If Anyone Calls, Tell Them I Died by Emanuel Rosen

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The Plum Trees by Vic­to­ria Shorr

Consie is home for a funeral when she stumbles upon a family letter sent from Germany in 1945, which contains staggering news: Consie’s great-uncle …

The Plum Trees by Vic­to­ria Shorr

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