Holiday Party this year @
LaDifference's professional staff will help you plan
your office's Holiday party this year either at our
home or yours.
Coincidentally, the interview takes
place across the way from his late grand-
mother's apartment. She was born in
America, while his father's mother,
whom he knew only from a single pho-
tograph and family stories, was killed in
Buchenwald in 1939. It is in the
dichotomy of his grandmothers' worlds,
between the poles of hope and tragedy,
doubt and faith, where Rosen also lives,
and navigates the contradictions.
In the memoir-like parts of the book,
he tells stories of his family, his child-
hood in a house full of books. He was
the kind of kid who'd frequently ask
questions like, "Would you rather be
drowned or burned alive?"
Rosen, 37, began studying Talmud
not at age 5 in checler, like the young
students he describes, but as a teenager
in an after-school program run by the
Jewish Theological Seminary. "In what-
ever attenuated suburban form it trick-
led down to me, an exposure to those
texts, the repositories of Jewish culture,
has been enduring," he writes.
He has continued studying in his
adulthood — sometimes with his wife, a
rabbi who serves as a hospital chaplain
— and comments that although he
doesn't live inside of a religious world
defined by Talmud study, "it doesn't
mean I'm prepared to abandon that
world. I'm reaching it for it as best I
can."
He likes the notion, suggested in the
Talmud, that God spends three hours of
His day studying Talmud. When asked
if he senses God's presence in the
Internet, Rosen ponders, and says he
doesn't know. He says he is struck by the
way the Internet both "knits the world
closer together" and, at the same time,
creates a sense of dislocation, "a sense of
global Diaspora or exile." These two
opposite sensations "are familiar to me
from Jewish culture."
Rosen is an unusual writer in that he
seems comfortable in many genres. The
author of Eve's App/e, he is now working
on a new novel and continues to publish
essays and reviews.
Since finishing this book, the
unborn-but-goon-expected daughter he
mentions in the final chapter is now
very much part of his life, and named
after his mother's mother. "I can only
wish for her," he writes, "a world that,
chastened by the tragedies of the last
century, manages to keep its contrary
impulses in healthy talmudic balance." ❑
Enjoy the party!
LaDiffErence is a kosher restaurant with a
knowledgeable staff and pleasant atmosphere.
Ask. for John Wood.
HOURS Sun. - Thurs. 11:00am - 2:00pm
Dinner 5:00pm - 9:00pm
Orchard Lake
LaDifference
7295 Orchard Lake Road • West Bloomfield
www.ladifference.com • call 248.932.9934
• Carry outs are available from LaDifference yea
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4
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WALTER LITT FAMILY CONCERT
NOVEMBER 12, 2000
4:00 PM
Congregation Beth Ahm
J1 12
❑
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BettAhm
5075 West Maple Road
West Bloomfield, Michigan
Presents
Selections From King David
Symphonic Psalms
and selections from
Bernstein's Chichester Psalms
Narrator, Soli and Chorus
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Featuring
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The Rackham Symphony Choir
And guest soloist
Cantor David Montefiore
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The public is cordially invited - There is no charge.
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■
Michigan s Hottest Group
Mel Ball and Colours
Jonathan Rosen speaks 6:30 p.m.
Wednesday, Nov. 8, at the Jewish
Community Center in West
Bloomfield.
Voted. II 1 Best Band by
Crain s Detroit
Business Magazine
www.detroitjewishnews.com
(248) 851-1992
11/3
2000
99