The Genizah

Bridge builder: My life since the Holocaust is the fourth and final volume of Shimon Redlich's autobiographical cycle, which began with Together and Apart in Brezany (2002), a description of relations among Poles, Ukrainians and Jews in his native town and his survival during the Holocaust. It continued with Life in Transit (2010), an account of his family's resettlement in postwar Lodz and a new life in Israel. A New Life in Israel (2018) portrayed his adjustment to life on a kibbutz and service in the Israel Defense Forces. In Bridge Builder, Redlich recounts his life since the late fifties. It features his academic journey from student in Jerusalem and the US to professor at Ben-Gurion University, his friendships, his encounters with Jews and non-Jews in Eastern Europe, and his unconventional approach to controversial topics. As in previous volumes, in Bridge Builder Redlich's own memories are supported and enriched by meticulous historical research.

As a self-described ‘90s suburban high school weirdo, Alicia Jo Rabins spent her time practicing violin and smoking cigarettes behind the mall while secretly dreaming of setting out on a spiritual quest no one around her seemed to understand. She often found herself drawn to the more ritualistic and rigorous Judaism that her parents had abandoned to assimilate and “become American.” In college, a chance meeting led her on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to study rabbinical texts (and play bluegrass fiddle on the street for cash). But that two years of immersing herself in traditional observance was only the start of a journey full of twists and turns. When We’re Born We Forget Everything follows Alicia’s relentless, often embarrassing, sometimes enlightening search for the sacred in everyday life as she tours America playing with a klezmer-punk band, falls in and out of love, scrapes through the initiations of motherhood, and witnesses the beauty—and danger—of mysticism. Rabins braids this personal narrative with the hidden stories of biblical women, uncovering a path of queer identity, feminist awakening, and spiritual self-invention. This lyrical, searching memoir is a meditation on longing, lineage, and what it takes to find meaning in a fractured world.

Kylie Ora Lobell grew up in a typical American home: religiously lukewarm, where they only went to church on Christmas and Easter. Though she believed in God when she was a child, after her parents’ divorce and her grandmother’s untimely death, twelve-year-old Kylie lost her faith. She began experiencing depression and anxiety, and constantly asked herself, “What am I living for?” In college, she meets Danny, a stand-up comedian who is Jewish but gave up practicing Orthodox Judaism after some negative experiences. The one event he still attends is Shabbat for Friday night dinner, and once they start dating, Kylie comes along. Sitting at the Shabbat table, Kylie has an epiphany: This warm feeling in her chest is none other than God. God is real, and she wants to convert to Judaism with the help of an Orthodox rabbi. But Danny vehemently rejects her decision to pursue an Orthodox Jewish conversion, which threatens the future of their relationship. Despite the many challenges—including potentially losing the love of her life—Kylie knows she must move forward. In Choosing to be Chosen, she details the spiritual journey she must take to become the person she was meant to be all along.

The existence and achievements of Jewish “self-rescuers” within Nazi-occupied Hungary remains, in spite of their significance, historically underexplored. In this illuminating chronicle of the life and work of a Jewish couple, László and Eugenia Szamosi, Remembering Resistance seeks to address this lacunae, offering a unique insight into a family’s personal history of resistance under the Nazi regime. Combining oral testimony from fellow survivors, with a previously-unpublished translation of László’s memoir, this book foregrounds the remarkable work of the Szamosis and their network, in rescuing Jews from the Death Marches and reuniting displaced families. Through doing so, this book offers a powerful framework for mediating how we remember Jewish experiences of the Holocaust.