55. Sotah by Naomi Ragen

read on my iPhone
originally 1992
493 pgs.
Adult CRF
Finished 6/17/2019
Goodreads rating: 4.12 - 2144 ratings
My rating: 4
Setting: contemporary (1992) Jerusalem

First line/s:  " 'Yes, I understand all that!'  Chaya Leah insisted, biting the pillow pressed to her chest to keep from screaming in frustration."

My comments:  I've wanted to read this for years.  There's a WORLD of difference between "cultural" or secular Jews and Orthodox Jews, and another, even huger world between Orthodox Jews and the Hasidic community!  This book takes you right into one family in the Hasidic community of Jerusalem and follows three sisters from adolescence through their young marriages.  Some of it is shocking, some of it fills me with despair, and yet some of it is very enlightening.  All of it, however, fills my feminist being with deep frustration.  Such an interesting story.

Goodreads synopsis: Set against the backdrop of Jerusalem's ancient rituals, Sotah is a contemporary story of sacred and profane love, and a young woman's struggle to reconcile tradition with freedom. Ninety three weeks on the best-seller list.vSotah introduces a family with three daughters approaching the age of marriage: Devorah, Dina and Chaya Leah. In the strict orthodoxy of their world, a Sotah is a wife suspected of infidelity who can be tried by ordeal to prove she is guiltless. Which sister could be capable of such a thought, let alone the act? Into the pious world of strict chaperoning and modest clothing, where a married woman's hair must never be seen by a man other than her husband--insinuates this serpent suggestion of evil. Ragen's powerful tale of three sisters spins endless questions: Which one? Could she? Did she? What changes could come into this orderly world because of unthinking actions?

PICTURE BOOK - Snow in Jerusalem by Deborah da Costa

Illustrated by Cornelius VanWright & Ying-Hwa Hu

2001, Albert Whitman Co.

Only available new, in paper, $6.99

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:3.58 - 65 ratings

My rating: 4

Endpapers:  an illustration:  the walled city, with a golden-domed building on the other side of the wall

Illustrations cover both pages, and the text is on top of the illustration, no white edges!

1^st line/s:  "In the walled old city of Jerusalem, which some call the Center of the Universe, Avi waited."

My comments: I didn't realize there are four ethnic/cultural sections in Jerusalem - Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Armenian.  In this story, two boys from different cultures - Jewish and Muslim - find common ground because of a stray cat who "befriends" them both.

Goodreads:  Avi and Hamudi are two boys who live in Jerusalem's Old City -- Avi in the Jewish Quarter and Hamudi in the Muslim Quarter. To each boy, the other's neighborhood is an alien land. And although neither boy knows it, both are caring for the same beautiful white stray cat.One day the boys follow the cat as she travels the winding streets and crosses the boundaries between the city's quarters. And on this journey something wonderful happens, as unexpected as a snowfall in Jerusalem.

69. Storm Front - John Sandford

#7 Virgil Flowers

Audio read by Eric Conger

8 unabridged discs (9.5 hrs)

2013 Penguin audio

384 pgs. (HC edition)

Adult mystery

Finished 11/4/2014

Goodreads rating:  3.81

My rating:   3-I liked it

TPPL

Mostly in and around Mankato, MN...but the beginning and ending took place in Israel

1st sentence/s: "His bags were packed and sitting by the door.  Nobody thought that was strange because four diggers were jammed into each small living suite.  With two tiny bedrooms feeding into a tiny kitchen area and even tinier bathroom there was hardly any place to keep clothing, so they kept it in their bags."

My comments:  This installment DID seem different. I listen to these read so well by Eric Conger, who has become the "voice" of Virgil for me, but the story seemed disjointed and even appeared to have some small parts missing. I liked the mystery - a lot - but the plot jumped so quickly from character to character and locale to location that at times I didn't even try to follow it, just went with the flow. Virgil's quick humor was present and very much appreciated. His lust for "Ma" was SO Virgil, but it never quite fully went into why he was so taken with her, other than she was ... built ... and perhaps because she had an IQ of 151? Of course, that was just slipped in, and I'm thinking this would matter to our Mr. Flowers. Okay, so maybe not on par with other Virgil Flowers books, but since I want them to keep on comin', I won't complain too loudly..... (And 3-stars means I DID like it.)

Goodreads book summary:  In Israel, a man clutching a backpack searches desperately for a boat. In Minnesota, Virgil Flowers gets a message from Lucas Davenport: You’re about to get a visitor. It’s an Israeli cop, and she’s tailing a man who’s smuggled out an extraordinary relic—an inscribed stone revealing startling details about the man known as King Solomon.
          Wait a minute, laughs Virgil. Is this one of those Da Vinci Code deals? The secret scroll, the blockbuster revelation, the teams of murderous bad guys? Should I be boning up on my Bible verses?
          He looks at the cop. She’s not laughing. As it turns out, there are very bad men chasing the relic, and they don’t care who’s in the way or what they have to do to get it. Maybe Virgil should start praying.

MOVIE - Omar

NR (1:38)

Limited release 2/21/14 (Nominated for an Academy Award)

Viewed at Loft with Sheila 3--5-14

RT Critic: 88 Audience: 83

Cag: 5: Outstanding film

Directed by Hany Abu-Assad

Adopt Films

In Arabic with subtitles

The actor who played Omar, Adam Bakri, was mesmerizing.

My comments:  What a story!  (And what an incredibly high wall).  I'm thinking this took place in Jerusalem/West Bank/Occupied Territories - will do a little more research now, which is usually the way of it, right?  This was the only tiny problem I had - I had to spend a little too much time figuring out the setting.  I could understand the language being spoken was Arabic, but so were all the police-types.  I had no pre-information, but now that I've read the review, I'm glad I didn't.  Watching this movie with no previous "clue" about its content was the best thing I could have done.  The ending fit perfectly with the character and personality of the protagonist.  Anything else would have been untrue to his innermost character.  Added note:  I can't imagine living like this.  On either side, Palestinian or Israeli.  Human beings are human beings.  How do I know what I'd do if I were put into non-human situations?

Reviews: A tense, gripping thriller about betrayal, suspected and real, in the Occupied Territories. Omar (Adam Bakri) is a Palestinian baker who routinely climbs over the separation wall to meet up with his girl Nadja (Leem Lubany). By night, he's either a freedom fighter or a terrorist-you decide-ready to risk his life to strike at the Israeli military with his childhood friends Tarek (Eyad Hourani) and Amjad (Samer Bisharat). Arrested after the killing of an Israeli soldier and tricked into an admission of guilt by association, he agrees to work as an informant. So begins a dangerous game-is he playing his Israeli handler (Waleed F. Zuaiter) or will he really betray his cause? And who can he trust on either side? Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now) has made a dynamic, action-packed drama about the insoluable moral dilemmas and tough choices facing those on the frontlines of a conflict that shows no sign of letting up. 

MOVIE - The Attack

R (1:42)

Limited release 6/21/2013

Viewed with Sheila at the Loft on 8/22/2013

RT Critic: 91 Audience:  79

Cag:   2/it was okay 

In Hebrew with subtitles

Based on the book of the same title by Yasmina Khadra

Directed by Zlad Doueiri

Cohen Media Group

Rotten Tomatoes summary:  Amin Jaafari (Ali Suliman, Paradise Now) is an Israeli Palestinian surgeon, fully assimilated into Tel Aviv society. He has a loving wife, an exemplary career, and many Jewish friends. But his picture perfect life is turned upside down after a suicide bombing in a restaurant leaves nineteen dead, and the Israeli police inform him that his wife, Sihem (Reymonde Amsellem, Lebanon) who also died in the explosion, was responsible. Convinced of her innocence, Amin abandons the relative security of his adopted homeland and enters the Palestinian territories in pursuit of the truth. Once there, he finds himself in ever more dangerous places and situations. Determined, he presses on seeking answers to questions he never thought he would be asking.

My comments:  I loved the book - I read it when it first came out.  The movie left me with a totally different feeling.  At the end of the book, I think I understood how Jaafari felt.  Not at the end of the movie.  I can't understand his lack of conscience, it left me feeling empty and bereft.  It was a really tough movie, anyways.  

Yuvi's Candy Tree - Lesley Simpson

illustrated by Janice Lee Porter
Kar-Ben Publishing, 2011
HC $17.95
32 pgs.
Rating:  3.5
Endpapers:  Gold
Title page: all-over gold with painting of burro
Based on a true story from 1980's

Yuvi is traveling from Ethiopia to Jerusalem, stopping at a refugee camp and being flown from there to Israel.  They have no food, drink muddy water, and are robbed many times.  There is a donkey that she is able to ride for part of the way, but most of the way is on foot.  She dreams of trees made of candy, and when she arrives in Israel, she finds her candy  tree -  a tree covered with juicy, sweet oranges.

This was a really nice story, but I wish it had a little more....I guess it's good for very young children, but might be even better with just a little more information, it needs to be a tiny bit grittier to see the hardships, distance traveled, and unease, I didnt' feel like it had that, it seemed more like a simple trip to go to Israel.

35. The Song of the Whales - Uri Orlev

translated from Hebrew by Hillel Halkin
Houghton Mifflin, 2010
108 pgs.
Rating: I'm afraid I didn't like it at all

Michael's parents move from America to Israel because Michael's grandfather, who lives there, is getting old, and the parents don't want him to give his estate away to his housekeeper/"kept woman." They buy a big house in Jerusalem, and Michael goes - on his own - to visit his grandfather, who he feels close to.

Michael has no friends. He'd rather create and pretend, and he's never had friends. He isn't close to his parents, who don't seem to have much interest in him, either, to tell the truth. Madame Saupier, the housekeeper, doesn't like children because she was never able to have any of her own, and she forces Michael to be clean, clean, clean.

When Grandfather begins to ail, he and Madame Saupier come to live at Michael's house. Imagine, they have four bedrooms, how convenient. And Michael (who has become Mikha'el in Israel), slips into bed with his grandfather now and again. And now the really weird part - they share grandfather's dreams. This is a gift that he has apparently had, and it has passed on to Michael.

The dreams are bizarre (as dreams usually are), sometimes scary, and boring to read. The story jumps here there and everywhere, never really sticking to a storyline or finishing out an idea that was about to blossom. Sometimes it was even hard to tell what was real and what was a dream. And.....I didn't care. I was just happy to be finished.

I can't imagine a kid liking this book.