Rivka Levy's Blog, page 5

Book Review: Don't let small problems ruin great simchas

Before you read on, I have a confession to make: this book was illustrated by Gadi Pollack, and I am completely and utterly addicted to his work. Gadi Pollack could illustrate a tyre-changing manual, and I would still spend top-dollar to buy and repeatedly drool over his artwork.
So with that confession out the way, let’s get on to the review of the his latest book in collaboration with Rabbi Baruch Chait, called: Don’t let small problems ruin great simchas.

This book, like the ‘Bad Middot Pir...

The first annual #Readukkah

The Association of Jewish Libraries is kicking-off it's first annual #Readukkah this Hanukkah, between Dec. 6-14. In short, read a Jewish book, post a review of it somewhere on the web, and you can win a book (it's fiction, which took the shine off for me a bit, but hey, we can't have everything in life.)

For more details, take a look here:

http://www.jewishbooks.blogspot.co.il/2015/10/readukkah-challenge-giveaway.html

Book Review: Calling Out To You - Journeys and Discoveries Through Clinical Depression and Anxiety

Click the cover to buy the book I was eyeing this book up in the Feldheim bookstore in Geula for a few weeks, before taking the plunge to buy it. Depression and anxiety are topics that are very close to my heart, and I have some strong views on what’s causing these issues, and what can help cure them.

On the one hand, a book dealing with this topic from an orthodox Jewish perspective sounded right up my street – but only if it was really going to be a spiritual treatment of the subject, and no...

October's Jewish Book Carnival Starts Today

I’m discovering more and more cool things about the Jewish book scene online. Recently, I stumbled across the Jewish Book Carnival , which encourages different Jewish authors to post up reviews of Jewish books on their blogs.

Each month, a different blog hosts the Carnival (I signed up Emunaroma to host it in March, ceteris parabis).
This month, it’s being hosted over on the Fig Tree Publishing blog, and you can read this month’s different reviews for yourself HERE .

Another exciting website I jus...

The Unfinished Diary

The Unfinished Diary is an unusual holocaust-era book, as it was written in hiding by the author, Chaim Wolgelernter, who was sadly killed a few short months before the war’s end. The diary was smuggled out of Poland and kept safe by Chaim’s younger brother, David. He passed it on to Chaim’s only surviving child, Feivel, on Feivel’s wedding day, and it took another 30 years’ or so before the Wolgelernter family was ready to get to grips with the diary, and start the process of getting it pub...

A Damaged Mirror

'A Damaged Mirror' is the true story of a non-Jewish American woman who started to have lots of 'Auschwitz flashbacks'. I don't want to give the whole game away, but she ended up converting to Judaism, and managed to track down the previous owner of her 'Auschwitz memories' in the Holocaust records.

The previous owner of this woman's soul had died a horrible, traumatic death as part of Auschwitz' infamous 'Sonderkommando', the Jewish inmates who were given the soul-destroying job of cleaning...

Words of Faith

EMUNAROMA RATING:YYYYY One of the amazing things about where I live in Jerusalem is that the Breslev Bookstore in Mea Shearim is literally a five minute walk from my house. I pass it at least a few times a week, and whenever I have a spare moment, I always try to pop in to see what's new on the shelves in Breslev Book World.

A few weeks ago, I struck gold: I found a two volume set of Rav Levi Yitzhak Bender's discourses on emuna, that had been translated into English.

I bought the book...