4.
Arts & Entertainiwk
On The Bookshdf
1
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Candle # 4
For The Sports Fan
Candle # 5
For The Cartoon Collector
Candle # 6
For The History Hound
Pray Ball! The Spiritual Insights of a
Jewish Sports Fan, by Rabbi James
Gordon (Gefen Publishing; $21.95), is a
collection of essays in which the author,
a Chicago-based attorney/rabbi, connects
The New Yorker 75th Anniversary
Cartoon Collection, edited by Bob
Mankoff (Pocket Books; $40), offers
707 of the best cartoons from the
entire history one of America's most
celebrated magazines.
Over the years., there have
been some 62,000 cartoons on
the pages of The New Yorker and
each in their own way has pro-
vided a fascinating record of
American history, life, love, busi-
ness and society. For this collec-
tion, Mankoff, the current car-
toon editor of The New Yorker,
reviewed all of the magazine's car-
toons, asked for advice from
other cartoonists and editors, and
also included the choices of
30,000 readers who registered at
The New Yorker's cartoon site,
www.cartoonbank.com .
The result is a look back at the
gems of some of the most gifted
comic artists of 20th-century
America, including Peter Arno,
Charles Addams, Mary Petty, Roz
Chast, William Steig, Jack Ziegler
A People Apart: The Jews in Europe
1789-1939, by David Vital (Oxford
Press; $45), a distinguished Tel Aviv
University political scientist and histori-
an, is billed as the first full-length study
to examine the history of the Jews on
the entire European continent.
The author, in more than 900 pages,
documents the struggle of the Jewish
people to establish a place for itself
within a political and social environ-
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Rabbi James Gordon
Fore.vord by Lou 1Veisbach & Leigh Steinberg
sports with Jewish identity
"An involvement in sports,
both as a spectator and partici-
pant, can provide a deeper inner
meaning into our lives," writes
Gordon in the book's introduc-
tion. "For me, sports has empha-
sized such important traditional
Jewish lessons as cooperation
(team play), respect (sportsman-
ship), hard work and understand-
ing our own limitations."
Pray Ball! is comprised of a
series of spiritual messages pertain-
ing to eight sports-related topics:
baseball, basketball, the Olympics,
hockey, football, golf, sports
agency, and leaders and heroes.
The book explores such ques-
tions as: What do the "professional"
careers of Michael Jordan and
Moses have in common? How does
the competition between home run
sluggers Mark MaGwire and
Sammy Sosa illustrate proper Jewish
competition? How do Cal Ripken
Jr. and Jewish tradition promote the
importance of passion?
Gordon, who comes from a long
line of rabbis, received a bachelor of
arts degree from the University of
Michigan and is the longest-serving
rabbi in the history of Congregation
B'nai Shalom in Buffalo Grove, Ill.
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and many more.
Mankoff, a native New Yorker,
quit his graduate school program in
psychology to begin his career and
sold his first cartoon to The New
Yorker in 1977.
ment, which, despite the liberties
granted in some countries, was
increasingly hostile.
He explores the clashes within Jewish
communities between those who
sought to confine Jews to their tradi-
tional quietism, and those who
wished to break free and strike out
for some political self-determination
and autonomy. The modern history
of the Jews, he argues, up until the
destruction of the Holocaust, was of
their own making — at times by
their autonomous action and choice,
at others by inaction and default.
The London-born author, who grew
up in Palestine and the United States,
held appointments in Israeli govern-
ment service during the 1950s and
'60s but switched to an academic
career. He served as the Nahum
Goldmann Professor of Diplomacy at
Tel Aviv University from 1977-1995.
Candle # 7
For The Children
Roman Vishniac: Children of a
Vanished World, edited by Mara
Vishniac Kohn and Miriam Hartman
Flacks (University of California Press;