How odd
Of God
To choose
The Jews.

William Norman Ewer

But not so odd
As those who choose
A Jewish God,
But spurn the Jews.

Cecil Browne, replying to William Ewer

Labels: Books, Judaism

We stopped by Half Price Books yesterday, and, as I always do, I went to the Religion section and perused the shelves. I am always on the prowl for Hebrew books and for PD books we can use at work. As I was looking through the shelves I saw a copy of the Kitzur Shulkhan Arukh (all Hebrew) sitting on the Bibles bookshelf. Someone probably thought it was a Tanakh; I suspect there are very few people at the store who are interested in Jewish books or knowledgeable enough about Hebrew to know what they are looking at. That became more clear a few minutes later. I went ahead and moved it to the proper place next to some other books in the Judaica section and kept perusing.

Then I stepped over to the Collectibles shelves and saw that they have a shelf devoted to old non-English books. Sitting there, in all their glory were these two beautiful hardcover volumes of the Midrash Rabbah—Bereshit (Genesis) and Shemot (Exodus). I looked in them expecting to see a $30 price tag and almost dropped them when I saw the price on each was $5. Five dollars. These people had no idea what they had!

So, of course, I slipped the books under my arm and casually strolled to the checkout counter. When the guy punched in the price I expected him to say that the price was listed wrong, but he made no such claim. I walked out of there feeling like I had just stolen the crown jewels. I have been wanting a full set of these for a while, but a full set will usually run about $150. Starting off my collection for only $10.83 works for me!

Labels: Books, Judaism

As a result of history being my field of study, I am a big fan of alternate history stories. It is interesting to consider the "What If?" that comes with those stories, and many of them have time-travel and technology aspects, which are also among my favorite story elements.

I just finished reading a book called In the Presence of Mine Enemies by Harry Turtledove. He is one of the most prolific alternate History authors, and by far my favorite. He always picks interesting story lines and his plots are usually somewhat plausible (if you don't count the time travel and invading space aliens in some of his novels).

In the Presence of Mine Enemies is set in an alternate earth in 2009 where Adolf Hitler and the German Reich succeeded in defeating the Allies during Word War II. All of Europe, the US, and many other parts of the globe are under German rule, and the Germans have kept up their extermination of the Jews and other "undesireables" for that entire time. All known Jews are dead, Washington and New York are nuked, the blacks in the US are almost all gone, and Germany rules its conquered lands with an iron fist.

The book follows one main character, Heinrich Gimpel, an analyst for the Wermacht (the Army), and his wife, three girls, and friends. They are part of a small number of Jews living under cover in the middle of the German Empire, right under the noses of the SS. Turtledove does a good job of portraying a plausible storyline, and seems to have a decent handle on how Jews think and what they might do if placed in that situation.

There are a few annoying aspects of the book, the most notable being that Turtledove seems to think that his readers will forget who the characters are, even when the book is almost over, so he is constantly reminding you of the characters last names and other small data. He also constantly repeats his little explanations of why the characters are hiding and the fact that they are keeping information secret from others. It becomes annoying at points, but I guess he is making sure that the reading level is not so high that he loses some of his audience.

Despite these annoyances, I encourage you to check out Turtledove's books. You never know what might have happened until you look into the what if's...

Labels: Books, History, Personal