Life Reborn

Aharon Golub is the kaddishel for his family - the only son upon whose shoulders falls the responsibility to recite the prayer for the dead, the Kaddish, for his parents. And as the kaddishel, he honors his parents by remembering both the joys of his early childhood in Ludvipol and the hatred that sought to destroy Ludvipol, and his childhood. Aharon bears the burden of an entire generation of children who made promises to their parents, promises that are relived at every Yahrzeit, every anniversary of the death of their parents: Never to bask in the luxury of forgetting.

Dante and I are inseparable...and we are dying. Our shared soul cannot sustain us and our love threatens to kill us both. Our only hope lies in messages from a mysterious benefactor, leading us on a treacherous journey across Europe in search of the secret of eternal life. But our enemies are tracking us. And if they catch us, will our love survive?

The #1 New York Times Bestseller One-half of the celebrated Men in Blazers duo, longtime culture and soccer commentator Roger Bennett traces the origins of his love affair with America, and how he went from a depraved, pimply faced Jewish boy in 1980’s Liverpool to become the quintessential Englishman in New York. A memoir for fans of Jon Ronson and Chuck Klosterman, but with Roger Bennett’s signature pop culture flair and humor. Being a teenager isn’t easy, no matter where in the world you live or how much it does or doesn’t rain in your hometown. As an outsider—a private-schooled Jewish kid in working-class, heavily Catholic Liverpool—Roger Bennett wasn’t winning any popularity contests. But there was one idea, or ideal, that burned bright in Roger’s heart. That was America— with its sunny skies, beautiful women, and cool kids with flipped collars who ate at McDonald’s. When he embraced American popular culture, the dull gray world he lived in turned to neon teal—a color which had not even been invented in England yet. Introduced first through the gateway drug of The Love Boat, then to Rolling Stone, the NFL, John Hughes movies, Run-DMC, and Tracy Chapman, Roger embraced everything that would capture the imagination of a teenager growing up Stateside. When he made a real, in-the-flesh American friend who invited him over for the summer, he got to visit the promised land. A month in Chicago, and a life-changing night spent in the company of the Chicago Bears, was the first hit of freedom, of independence, of the Roger Bennett he knew he could be. (Re)Born in the USA captures the universality of growing pains, growing up, and growing out of where you come from. Drenched in the culture of the late ’80s and ’90s from the UK and the USA, and the heartfelt, hilarious sense of humor that has made Roger Bennett so beloved by his listeners, here is both a truly unique coming-of-age story and the love letter to America that the country needs right now.

"My American Harp" presents 1,169 poems written 2010-2014 by Surazeus that explore what it means to be an American in the modern world of an interconnected global civilization.

Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) survived in concentration and death camps, in hiding, and as exiles in the Soviet interior. After liberation in the land of their persecutors, some also attended university to fulfill dreams of becoming doctors, engineers, and professionals. In The New Life: Jewish Students of Postwar Germany, Jeremy Varon tells the improbable story of the nearly eight hundred young Jews, mostly from Poland and orphaned by the Holocaust, who studied in universities in the American Zone of Occupied Germany. Drawing on interviews he conducted with the Jewish alumni in the United States and Israel and the records of their Student Union, Varon reconstructs how the students built a sense of purpose and a positive vision of the future even as the wounds of the past persisted. Varon explores the keys to students’ renewal, including education itself, the bond they enjoyed with one another as a substitute family, and their efforts both to reconnect with old passions and to revive a near-vanquished European Jewish intelligentsia. The New Life also explores the relationship between Jews and Germans in occupied Germany. Varon shows how mutual suspicion and resentment dominated interactions between the groups and explores the subtle ways anti-Semitism expressed itself just after the war. Moments of empathy also emerge, in which Germans began to reckon with the Nazi past. Finally, The New Life documents conflicts among Jews as they struggled to chart a collective future, while nationalists, both from Palestine and among DPs, insisted that Zionism needed “pioneers, not scholars,” and tried to force the students to quit their studies. Rigorously researched and passionately written, The New Life speaks to scholars, students, and general readers with interest in the Holocaust, Jewish and German history, the study of trauma, and the experiences of refugees displaced by war and genocide. With liberation nearly seventy years in the past, it is also among the very last studies based on living contact with Holocaust survivors.

What follows are some poems written along my journey. Some were written as I rode my destiny train, others as I fell from it, and many as I walked along the track waiting for it to come around again. Some are dark, some are deep, and others loving. Some speak of loss, and some are full of hurt. Some are full of joy, and others are fun and slightly quirky. They all offer hopewell, at least they did to me when I wrote them. Enjoy.

The basic subject is Renaissance--the Salvation Experience of Christ the Holy Spirit of God in human life. New Christian guidance examples in essays and poetry testifying to the truth of life with God: the reality of his Word, his presence as the Holy Spirit, and Jesus as Lord guiding my life, described in non-fiction life with Christ. This is the first, of this author’s 7-Logos Work of ten-volumes, each volume of which is able to stand alone as God’s Book of Life, portraying Life with the Holy Spirit by belief in the Christ of Jesus as Savior to eternal life with God. The author here continues his Story of Writing God's Book of Life, using nonfiction essays and poetry with the help of divine intervention in producing his seven Logos work of ten volumes, followed by four more, seeking to fully understand, explain, and publish this work inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Christ of Jesus. This work relates the action of God in fulfilling for him in seven years all of Rodger Crafton's dreams of becoming a writer of poetry and prose, an armchair philosopher, and an artist working in his new, upstairs garage atelier.