NEW BOOKS

A Prophetic Voice Speaks from 60 Years Ago

Bringing a long-hidden novel to light

On March 22, David Behrman posted this in the OnLion blog:
Over a half-century ago Rabbi Eugene Borowitz approached my father, telling him there was a remarkable novel that Behrman House had to pick up. A must.

And so, Behrman House became the publisher of As a Driven Leaf. Sixty years later, it has helped hundreds of thousands of readers explore their Judaism, struggle with issues of reason and revelation, and balance the forces of ethnicity and assimilation while living as Jews in a modern secular world....

This past weekend, from Rabbi Steinberg’s pulpit at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York, we began to answer those questions as we introduced The Prophet’s Wife to the public. But not quite all of it: Rabbi Steinberg wrote his last words on March 19, 1950, from under an oxygen tent in his hospital bed, after suffering his fourth heart attack. He died the next day. He was on page 440 of the typescript manuscript.

Yesterday, from the same bimah where Rabbi Steinberg once spoke, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, Rabbi Steinberg’s successor, convened a panel of notable Jewish thinkers to discuss Steinberg’s life and contribution to our community. Keynoted by Rabbi Harold Kushner and moderated by Gary Rosenblatt, Editor of The Jewish Week, the panel of Chancellor Arnold Eisen of Jewish Theological Seminary, Dr. Adrianne Leveen of Hebrew Union College, Rabbi Dr. J.J. Schacter of Yeshiva University, and Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College discussed Steinberg’s theology, his fiction, and the contributions he might have made had he lived beyond such an untimely death....

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TEACHING IDEAS

Students Make Connections

"Teaching is about relationships"

Mary Meyerson of Morah Mary Consulting wrote to us after seeing Kol Yisrael 2 for the first time:
I promised myself that my reward for getting through most of my "to-do" list this evening would be to take a few moments to look through Kol Yisrael. 

I was immediately struck by the connections that the characters Ben and Batya make between their lives (both the Jewish and especially the secular aspects of them) and the prayer language/intent/content.  I don't think I've ever seen a Hebrew text book make the connection between the Pledge of Allegience and the Sh'ma before.  There were other examples—opportunities for students to reflect on their families, personal experiences, and school lives—that offer the opportunity for students to make similar connections. 

The longer I teach, the more convinced I become that teaching is about relationships: about those that exist between the teacher and the student, the teacher and the content, and the student and the content.  Kol Yisrael has the potential to help students forge a personal relationship with prayer that can be relevant in their lives today.
Mary Meyerson can be reached at www.morahmaryconsulting.com.

DIGITAL NEWS

Need Help with Passover? There's an app for that

Ancient text meets digital technology

Reprinted from The Washington Post, Wednesday,  March 24, 2010

Preparing for Passover? There's an app for that. Several, actually.

Jewish technophiles have created a host of online and iPhone applications that put a modern spin on the traditional Seder meals, storytelling and singing associated with the weeklong celebration of the biblical exodus from Egypt...

 The iMah Nishtanah app helps users ask the ceremonial four questions in perfect Hebrew, with a record mode that lets them rehearse the readings and songs before going public at the Seder.
"Mobile devices are a perfect platform for language acquisition," said Jeremy Poisson of Behrman House, a publishing house that helped develop this and other Hebrew programs. "The mobility allows users to learn, play, or practice anywhere."

FUN AND GAMES

And the winners are ...

Students and schools are winners in Kol Yisrael video game contest

Congratulations to the winners of the Kol Yisrael Holiday Sling Contest. The gamers with the three fastest times won gift certificates to Game Stop, and their schools won as well, each receiving enough copies of Kol Yisrael 1 and 2 for an entire class. Top scorer was Beau Smith of Temple Beth Torah of Wellington, Florida, who completed the game in 1.572 seconds. (He must use Kol Yisrael 1, because he knows the secret for resetting the timer!) Prizes also go to Cameron Angwin and Temple Sinai, South Burlington, Vermont (shown here with the Director of Congregational Education at Temple Sinai, Judy Alexander), and to Jesse Oberstein and Temple Beth Ahm, Hazlet, New Jersey. 

AT THE OFFICE

Behrman House Goes to Accounting School

Learning about "the other kind of books"

Personal and professional growth for the employees is a key firm value here at Behrman House. Some of us study Hebrew, others take marketing classes, a few learn management and leadership skills, one of us studied about the arts and education for a week at Lincoln Center.

But none of us was quite prepared for the two-day in-house accounting class the entire company took with a guest professor this week. For many of us this was our initiation into balance sheets, "T" accounts, GAAP, and accrual accounting. For others, like Vicki Weber (pictured left in photo), Rabbi Mark Levine, and Joy Ferraris, this was just a refresher. For us all it was a close-knit, highly personal way to learn about the other kind of books. We are all the better for it.