Abby Sher, author of Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn’t Stop Praying (Among Other Things), is blogging all week for MyJewishLearning and the Jewish Book Council.

There are some things I love to change -– my socks or stationery, for example. I’m also okay with changing radio stations, as long as it hovers near NPR. But with most other aspects of my life -– which train I ride, which journals I write in, which side of the bed, side of the debates, seat at the table, coffee filters, pens, did I mention I’m wearing my t-shirt from sixth grade graduation as I type this? -– when it comes to personal evolution, I’m not so great.

Which is probably why I found it particularly unacceptable when my synagogue decided to feng shui its sanctuary. Larchmont Temple is a Reform congregation founded in 1948 that stands near Manor Park in a stately brick building with broad white pillars that as a child I often felt were G-d’s sturdy open arms, welcoming all inside and holding up the roof as we sang the Shema. I’m sure there were plenty of structural reasons for the shift -– the sanctuary I’d grown up in was long and narrow, sort of like a bowling alley with the rabbi and cantor at two pulpits surrounding the ark. There were a few dozen rows of benches, but for High Holidays they had to open the back doors and put out folding chairs through the hall where we usually had our oneg. Sometimes a television was even wheeled in to the people stuck in far corners so they could see what they were missing on the bima.

There could have been religious reasons for the move too. There is an entire wall of exquisite stained glass that spells out many of the prayers and in the old setting; it was kind of just a backdrop, or really side-drop. Which was fine with me because it gave me a beautiful place to wander when we were supposed to be listening to the sermon. But after the renovation, the ark stood in front of the side wall. Everything was moved into what I thought of as the center of the room. Even the special flickering lamp that was supposed to represent the eternal flame. I always wondered if it really flickered when they rewired it. I felt bad for the electrician in charge of that one.

Whatever the motive, it was done, and my mother was none too pleased about it. I had already graduated college and settled in Chicago at this time. Home for few days’ visit, she brought me over to take a look. Rabbi Sirkman was a good friend of ours, and happily showed us around.

“That’s cool,” I offered, wandering towards the commemoration wall, where deceased congregants’ names were written above small ledges. There were pebbles on the bottom so family members could place a marker as they said kaddish.

“Yeah, it’s nice,” Mom said. Then she sighed loudly, “I don’t know, it’s just not the same.”

“Sorry, Joan,” said the rabbi.

It was a peculiar sense of homelessness. The entrance even looked like it’d been tipped sideways. The familiar clangs of the coffee urns being rinsed in the kitchen were replaced with a soft swish swish of vacuumed carpet under our feet.

As we left, I felt bad for my mom, and also for myself. I knew that I was supposed to be an adult. I paid my rent on time, brushed my teeth and held down a job, but I was unprepared to find a house of worship on my own. I thought that eternal lamp was fixed in G-d’s indelible scheme. How would I know where to find that kind of safety and stability again?

Abby Sher is the author of Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn’t Stop Praying (Among Other Things). Come back all week to read her blog entries. And, check out her official website here.

Posted by Naomi Firestone

Lisa Silverman, the children’s editor for Jewish Book World , passed along some great news from the children’s Jewish literary scene:

1)Tablet Mag’s Marjorie Ingall names her favorite Jewish picture books of the year:

New Year at the Pier: A Rosh Hashanah Story
When I First Held You: A Lullaby from Israel
The Yankee at the Seder
The Champion of Children: The Story of Janusz Korczak
Faith
You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?!
When I Wore My Sailor Suit

Read the complete article here.

2)Congratulations to Malka Drucker! Malka’s Portraits of Jewish American Heroes is the winner under Juvenile Books and a finalist under Religious Books for the 2009 New Mexico Book Award. And, if that’s not enough, Malka’s Women and Judaism is also a finalist under Religious Books.

Posted by Naomi Firestone

Enjoy a few sample reviews from the newest issue of Jewish Book World:

Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife (Francine Prose)

Francine Prose, like most readers, first read The Diary of a Young Girl when she herself was a young girl. And, like most readers, she remembered Anne Frank as a teenager who poured her thoughts and emotions into her beloved diary before her arrest and death in Bergen-Belsen…Read On

Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (Melvin I. Urofsky)

Selection of a new Supreme Court member over the past thirty years often demonstrated how fraught with controversy and competition between political parties the process is. Confirming the President’s nominee has been relatively unremarkable, yet it has been rare for a new Justice to develop so enduring a record that it influences the future…Read On

Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith (Jeff Sharlet, Peter Manseau and the editors of Killing the Buddha)

A Catholic collector of Yiddish books, a Jew in search of Sufis, a witch named Velvet, even a lesbian cowboy at Bible camp. These are just a few of the characters you’ll meet in the surprising collection of essays in Believer, Beware…Read On

The Jump Artist (Austin Ratner)

A young Latvian man and his father are hiking in the Tyrolean Alps when disaster strikes. The father is murdered out of sight of the son who is accused, tried, and found guilty of patricide. That the accused was a Jew had much to do with the injustices perpetrated by both prosecutor and judge in the anti-Semitic Austrian court…Read On

Tel Aviv Short Stories (Shelly Goldman and Joanna Yehiel, eds.)

Here’s an unexpected centennial salute to the first Hebrew city: 52 new stories written in English. A reader can’t help wonder who the 38 writers are, and happily, each one (except for the author of a gay-themed story) is introduced through a short biography and a photo. They generally have origins in North America, the U.K., or South Africa, and most have careers other than writing fiction…Read On

To purchase the complete issue ($12.50), please contact the Jewish Book Council office at 212-201-2920 or jbc@jewishbooks.org.

Posted by Naomi Firestone

Oh hurrah–the Lilith fiction podcast has launched! We’re excited about this one! The first installment is “The Things We Do,” by Rachel Hall, first published in the Fall 2001 issue, and winner of Lilith’s first-ever fiction contest. The story is read by Jennifer Silverman:

http://www.lilith.org/blog/?p=445

Posted by Naomi Firestone

Jonathan Kirsch of The Huffington Post offers seven books to give for Hanukkah:

My own list is an interfaith effort, and I am giving a few of these books as Christmas presents. All of them, however, embody at least some of the loftier values that Jews and Christians attach to their gift-giving holidays even as we are gorging on latkes or swigging another cup of eggnog, as the case may be. Read On for the List

Posted by Naomi Firestone

The Forward surveys each of the 2010 Sami Rohr Prize finalists: http://www.forward.com/articles/119655/

Posted by Naomi Firestone

From Jewcy.com:

Thanksgiving Cooking with JDub’s Director of Events

JDub’s Director of Events, Adam Teeter and his fiancee Naomi are planning their wedding – and their new life together. Naomi was raised in a kosher home, and so Adam has decided to learn to make some great kosher recipes…Read On

(As the cameraman for this video, I couldn’t resist posting…enjoy!)

Posted by Naomi Firestone

We just received word about a new endeavor from Yaldah Magazine, a magazine for Jewish girls, by Jewish
girls, has expanded to YM Books, offering a variety of books for Jewish girls.

The first release is The Yaldah Year: Crafts & Recipes for Every Month of the Jewish Year, a colorful Jewish craft and recipe book for girls, by girls.

Two more books will be released following The Yaldah Year: Crafts & Recipes for Every Month of the Jewish Year:

One Is Not A Lonely Number–a young adult novel
Teen Talk–a compilation of stories, advice, interviews, and fresh perspectives on issues relevant to observant Jewish girls.

YALDAH Magazine was founded five years ago by Leah Larson at age 13.

For more information, please visit www.ymbooks.org.

Posted by Naomi Firestone

Moment Magazine lists its “Intriguing Books of 2009″:

Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West
Michael A. Ledeen (Truman Talley)

Eating Animals
Jonathan Safran Foer (Little, Brown)

The Clothes On Their Backs
Linda Grant (Scribner)

Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife
Francine Prose (HarperCollins)

Homer & Langley
E. L. Doctorow (Random House)

Israel, One Land, One People, One Dream
Emmanuel T. Santos (Jewish National Fund of Melbourne Australia)

To read the comments on each book, please click here.

Posted by Naomi Firestone

NETWORK author Jessica Handler (Invisible Sisters) reports on her experience at a Jewish Book Festival for Erika Dreifus of My Machberet:

About a month ago, my good friend G. asked me, “So, what is the Jewish platform for your book?”

She’d read Invisible Sisters, and that evening we were practicing our digital video connection for my upcoming visit to her book group, in a city 700 miles from mine. I was surprised that she asked about Invisible Sisters and Judaism. She is Modern Orthodox, a Jew by choice. She sends out email Purim cards every year, photos of herself, her husband, and their children, decked out as King Ahashverus, Queen Esther, and (boooo) Haman. She makes an effort to find the Jewish connection in every part of her life. Is it so difficult to locate that connection in this memoir? Read On.

Ruth Schuster looks at Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle for Haaretz.

Devra Furst reviews Janet Perr’s Yiddish for Babies: A Language Primer for Your Little Pitselin her article “The Pitselech Are Reviving Yiddish.”

Jacob Berkman, the JTA’s Fundermentalist, reviews Charles Bronfman and Jeffrey Solomon’s The Art of Giving: Where the Soul Meets a Business Plan.

Jake Marmer discusses Chana Bloch’s recent collection of poetry Blood Honey.