Briefly Noted

Jewish Christian Dialogue: Drawing Honey from the Rock, by Alan L. Berger and David Patterson. St. Paul, MN: Paragon, 2008, 322 pp.

In Jewish-Christian Dialogue: Drawing Honey from the Rock, which will be formally reviewed in a forthcoming SAJL, Jewish American scholars Alan L. Berger and David Patterson, in dialogue with Christian scholars John Pawlikowski, John Roth, and David Gushee, examine complex historical, philosophical, and theological issues affecting communication. The Holocaust plays a central role: for Jews, devotion to God failed to prevent their being brutally murdered; for Christians, devotion to Jesus Christ failed to prevent their becoming murderers, planners, implementers, and passive bystanders. The authors explore tensions and misunderstandings within former and current contexts and crises. Their goal is to present concrete examples of steps toward continuing and maintaining an honest and meaningful Jewish-Christian dialogue.

Encyclopedia of Jewish-American Literature, edited by Gloria L. Cronin and Alan L. Berger. New York: Facts on File, 2009.

Jewish American writing holds an essential place in America's literary tradition, and Jewish American writers have flourished in many genres, including fiction, drama, poetry, and more. Encyclopedia of Jewish-American Literature examines hundreds of these authors and works, focusing on those that are part of the high school and college curriculum, as well as historically significant and very recent literature.

Mini-biographies include: The Adventures of Augie March, Woody Allen, American Pastoral, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Saul Bellow, Michael Chabon, Everything is Illuminated, "Gimpel the Fool," Allen Ginsberg, Joseph Heller, Erica Jong, Denise Levertov, Norman Mailer, Bernard Malamud, Maus, Arthur Miller, The Natural, Tillie Olsen, Cynthia Ozick, Dorothy Parker, Chaim Potok, Ragtime, Philip Roth, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Susan Sontag, Elie Wiesel, and more. The encyclopedia is dedicated to Daniel Walden.

The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture, by Warren Hoffman. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 2009, xiv+206 pp.

"The Passing Game focuses on early manifestations of queer Jewish American culture from 1907 until just after 1969 in an effort to show that queer sexuality is not a concern simply of the post-Stonewall generation but has defined Jewish American culture since at least the great wave of late nineteenth-century Jewish immigration." – from the Introduction

Hoffman devotes a chapter each to Sholem Asch's Got fun nekome, Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky, Molly Picon, Jo Sinclair's Wasteland, Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, and stories by I.B. Singer.