Focusing on the novels and films of daughters and sons of Holocaust survivors, this book sheds light on the relationship between the Holocaust and contemporary Jewish identity. It is the first systematic analysis of a body of work that introduces a new generation of Jewish writers and filmmakers, as well as revealing how the survivors' legacy is shaping--and being shaped by--the second generation. Carefully studying the work of these contemporary children of Job, Berger demonstrates how the offspring, like the survivors themselves, represent a variety of orientations to Judaism, have significant theological differences, and share the legacy of the Shoah. Berger clearly shows that members of the second generation participate fully in both the American and Jewish dimensions of their identity and articulates distinctive second-generation theological and psychosocial themes.

The American-born son of the Borowski family, Stefan, is a small boy lost in magic, visions, and fears; a detached but hungry adolescent; a lonely young man on the edge of self-discovery.

When Lev Raphael published the controversial story collection Dancing on Tisha B'Av, he broke new ground in contemporary literature. Never before in one collection had an American writer revealed the conflicts between homosexuality and traditional Judaism, linked the chilling mind diseases of anti-Semitism and homophobia, and offered testimony not only to the legacy of Holocaust survivors but the suffering and conflicts of their children. Winner of the prestigious Lambda Literary Award, Raphael widened the scope of American Jewish fiction for a new generation. Secret Anniversaries of the Heart unites the most compelling tales from Dancing on Tisha B'Av with twelve new stories appearing in book form for the first time and the title story, never before published. Emotionally complex, edgy, and daringly intimate, here is a collection of twenty five years of stories that wrestle with questions of religious and sexual identity while displaying the gifts of a visionary writer in mid-career. Book jacket.

This book is a collection of letters from a religious Jew in Israel to a Christian friend in Barcelona on life as an Orthodox Jew. Equal parts lighthearted and insightful, it's a thorough and entertaining introduction to the basic concepts of Judaism.

Janet Burstein argues that American Jewish writers since the 1980s have created a significant literature by wrestling with the troubled legacy of trauma, loss, and exile. Their ranks include Cynthia Ozick, Todd Gitlin, Art Spiegelman, Pearl Abraham, Aryeh Lev Stollman, Jonathan Rosen, and Gerda Lerner. Whether confronting the massive losses of the Holocaust, the sense of “home” in exile, or the continuing power of Jewish memory, these Jewish writers search for understanding within “the little secrets” of their dark, complicated, and richly furnished past.