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 - 4 round • WPM =MEI IM•M• 011• ■ =WI !ME imr ■ IM ■ IN =WE INI: ■ •• ■ 11•1=1:1M1•1111111 ■ 1 11MMUNIIIMMI•111111:7•11011•11M:7111111==:1••=li = 11117111• ■ ••••11•11=1 1=111W11•111M1•111M IIIIMIIIMM•INIEWIE WALTER LITT FAMILY CONCERT NOVEMBER 12, 2000 4:00 PM Congregation Beth Ahm J1 12 ❑ V 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 114 Nj Featuring IPI The Rackham Symphony Choir And guest soloist Cantor David Montefiore I The public is cordially invited - There is no charge. =NM !MN mosimm 1 MN =Mk ==1:1111•1111=111•7111M hi Pi 1111 NM= mg= wir ■ =wilt ess ■ mgmi Nom= • IIMMILIIMEM7IMIIMEMINNIMIMMUM=k INIMMEMIIMMINEMt Min.. 11=1==1•111 ■ 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