Ocean State Libraries

Alain is a successful doctor in his mid-fifties who has been married to Gisele most of his adult life. Looking for a change and eager to embrace their Jewish heritage, they decide to pull up stakes and move from Paris to Tel Aviv.

The Ladies Auxiliary follows the uneasy movement of Batsheva--a newly widowed convert to the Jewish faith--as she and her five-year-old daughter, Ayala, unwittingly stir up trouble in the community.

Bernard Malamud's second novel is the story of Morris Bober, a grocer in post-WWII Brooklyn, who "wants better" for himself and his family. First two robbers appear and hold him up then things take a turn for the better when broken-nosed Frank Alpine becomes his assistant. But there are complications: Frank, whose reaction to Jews is ambivalent, falls in love with Helen Bober at the same time he begins to steal from the store.

Julius Lester was born the son of a black Methodist minister in the south. His book Lovesong is a beautifully written account of his spiritual journey away from the conventions of his Southern heritage and Methodist upbringing, culminating in his personal self-discovery through a conversion to Judaism. Growing up in the turbulent civil rights era South, Lester was often discouraged by the disconnectedness between the promises of religion and the...