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ORDER NOW FOR TAKE-OUT OR COME IN AND JOIN THE PARTY! BLOOMFIELD PLAZA 6646 Telegraph Rd. At Maple (15 Mile) (248) 932-0800 A Little Bit Of New York Right Here In Bloomfield Hills tASTY INDIAN RESTAURANT Authentic SOUTH INDIAN & NORTH INDIAN CUISINE —SPECIALIZING IN EXOTIC KERALA DISHES- • VEGETARIAN SPECIALITIES - 11. 0% OFF ■ CARRY OUT 810-268-2333 CATERING 2079 15 MILE RD.AT DEQUINDRE 11 AM - 2:30 PM $6.99 Sat - Sun 11:30 -3:00 PM $7.99 • CHICKEN • LAMB • GOAT • FISH • SHRIMP • CLAY OVEN TANDOOR BUFFET Mon - Fri WITH THIS AD r Your One-Stop I Gourmet Shop! • Gourmet Groceries • SmithNiches • Salads • fresh Sushi • Seitfinni Dell • Organic. Natural Frozcii • Prentin In \Ville Selection • Beet' Liquor • Ci!'zir 12/7 2001 92 V iii 1idur I I OFF 7 Purchases of S30 or more with this coupon I Excluding Alcohol or Tobacco Exp. 12/15/0.1 i ~ • Gilt Baskets f o r all Occasions Mapie & Telegraph• Across from Andiamo West Restaurant 6535 Telegraph Rd.• Bloomfield Hills, MI 40301 • 248/646.6484 iving an adolescent any gift but cash is a perilous act. And giving a book! How can a book compare to a computer game or DVD? Yet some of us feel compelled to try. In our chaotic teens, books gave our psyches shape and kept us from despairing that we were the only human beings who had faced the pain we faced, the same confusion, ambi- tion, lust. Our daughters and sons might be drowning, as we were. But they no longer have the instinct to reach for a book ro save them. And who are we to know which vol- umes they might need? The easiest solution is to grab one of those nifty credit cards at the bookstore's register and hope it won't be squandered onan Idiots' Guide to the Web. I am reluctant to make suggestions. When I was in my teens, our town librarian introduced me to a woman who was looking for a novel for her 13-year-old daughter. I didn't need time to think. "Women in Love, by D. H. Lawrence," I advised. The grown- ups gasped and shook their heads while I stood and tried to guess what they might object to. "Oh, don't worry," I assured them. "The women aren't in love with each other." Today, the title alone would cause Wome- n in Love to be banned from many libraries. Jews often scorn the Christian right's intolerance for any book that doesn't present the world as a wholesome place and Christians as wholesome people. But when it comes to books by Jews, we can be equally as squeam- ish. Bad enough that Philip Roth revealed to the world that Jewish peo- ple masturbate, cheat on their wives- and say nasty things about other Jews. Eileen Pollack, a creative writing pro- fessor at the University of Michigan and author of the novel Paradise, New YOrk (Temple University Press), wrote this feature foilBooks.com , a book review site published by Jewish Family Life! www.JewishFamilycoin. How dare he expose those secrets ro Jewish kids! No grown-up in the 1960s would have given a book by Roth to any child he loved. Much safer to wrap and send The Diary of Anne Frank, The Jewish. Book of Why or a collection of biographies of Jewish athletes, as if being Jewish in America had only to do with planning where to hide in another Holocaust or refusing to pitch in the World Series on Yom Kippur. Any parent who drives a Hebrew school carpool knows that sixth- graders today hear and say worse things about sex and Jews than can be read in any book by Philip Roth. Yet Roth's first short story collection, Goodbye, Columbus, and his first novel, Portnoy's Complaint, were railed against for decades from every bimah in America. Not until 1993 did I hear a rabbi admit that if he and his colleagues had paid more attention to Roth's corn- plaints, Jewish adolescents wouldn't have turned to other sources for their spiritual needs. Of course there are safer books to give a Jewish child than Roth's work. You can't go wrong with solid, middle- brow novels like The Source by James Michener or Exodus by Leon Uris. Chaim Potok's The Chosen allowed me to see inside the chasidic world, their gates barred in real life. And, as a Catskills native, I can't help but recommend The Big Book of Jewish Humor. Any child who can't recite the best routines of Groucho Marx, WoodY. Allen, Sholem Aleichem and Lenny Bruce has missed an essen- tial part of Jewish culture. But if you are giving a young person you love a book, why not give the best? Many of the early works by our finest Jewish waiters are based on their childhood years and appeal to teen-age readers. Call It Sleep by Henry Roth is the greatest Jewish American novel — and the greatest immigrant novel — of modern times. In 10th grade, I sat riv- eted by the troubles of David Schearl, a high-strung Jewish bov growing up in a-brutal Ne\v York slum in those far- away years when my father was young. HOW strange to see Yiddish in a book, to learn that Jewish families fought, that Jews were once so poor.