PUBLISHERS, AUTHORS, READERS -- DO YOU HAVE A HALF-JEWISH BOOK, PLAY OR MOVIE THAT WE SHOULD REVIEW?

If you have a book, play or movie that you think would interest adult children and other descendants of intermarriage, please contact us at:

binarystar@aol.com

Here are our guidelines:  the book, play or movie, whether fiction or non-fiction, must have, as its central subject, adult children, grandchildren or other descendants of intermarriage.

Books, plays and movies about interfaith couples are usually not reviewed by the Half-Jewish Network, unless one member of the interfaith couple is also an adult child or grandchild or other descendant of intermarriage.

Feel free to contact us about books, plays, and movies on interfaith couples, and we will gladly refer you to alternative organizations for interfaith couples, and interfaith family members in general, that would be happy to consider reviewing those books and plays.

Thank you!

HALF-JEWISH LITERATURE

BOOK REVIEWS

1. The Mistress's Daughter,  by A.M. Homes (Penguin Books paperback, 2007) -- (of especial interest to adoptees who are members of interfaith families, and biological adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage).

Homes, a brilliantly-talented and award-winning author, is an adoptee, and the book is a memoir of the very sad (though sometimes comic) consequences of being "found" by her unstable biological parents, both of whom were themselves patrilineal adult children of intermarriage. Both of her birth parents were themselves hopelessly confused about their ethnitic(ies) and religion(s). 

It is definitely a book that will interest many adult descendants of intermarriage who are adoptees and also many adult children and grandchildren of intermarriage. It is a sobering reminder that blood may be thicker than water, but it does not guarantee compatibility or family happiness. -- Robin Margolis

 2. Jewish, Christian, Chewish, or Eschewish?: Interfaith Marriage Pathways for the New Millennium, by Rabbi Reeve Robert Brenner

Bob Seltzer recommends Reeve Brenner’s “valuable new book on Jewish and interfaith marriage” in the following words:

 “Some of us know of our colleague Reeve Robert Brenner’s path-breaking study “The Faith and Doubt of Holocaust Survivors”, the publication of which by MacMillan Free Press I enthusiastically endorsed. 
 
This posting is to call your attention to his newest published work, a wide-ranging, broadminded, comprehensive, and knowledgeable guide to Judaism for non-conventional (and some conventional) young married and to-be-married couples:  Jewish, Christian, Chewish, or Eschewish?: Interfaith Marriage Pathways for the New Millennium. 
 
The neologisms (e.g. Chewish, Eschewish, retrojected lineality) add to his distinctive voice.  Not only would it be valuable for couples in marriage counseling but it will give rabbis pointers as well.  The book can be downloaded for free via his website:
 
  http://www.reevebrenner.com
 
-- Rabbi Dr. Robert Seltzer, Professor of History, Hunter College, City University, NY, Author of “Jewish People, Jewish Thought”