Kirjahaku

Successful father-and-son business partners Maurice and Norman Messer know a good product when they see it. That product is the Holocaust--and they market it enthusiastically. Maurice is a survivor with a self-inflated personal history. Norman enjoys vicarious victimhood via the second-generation movement. And nothing will prevent them from pushing their agenda and reaping the rewards. Not guilt, pride, or ethics. Not the disappearance of Norman's daughter, Nechama, into the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz or her reemergence as Sister Consolatia of the Cross. Not even the violent takeover of America's most powerful Holocaust memorialization institution by an angry coalition of self-styled "victims" eagerly seeking Holocaust status.

Set in the near future within a war-torn Israel, The Jewish War chronicles the rise to power of Jerry Goldberg, a Bronx teen who has devoted his life to hastening the arrival of the Jewish Messiah. Charismatic and ambitious, Jerry changes his name to Yehudi Hagoel and amasses a cadre of followers to help him establish and maintain the God-given boundaries of Palestine.Written with the humor and satire that have won her acclaim, Tova Reich narrates Hagoel's illicit passage to Israel, his coronation as king of secessionist Judea and Samaria, and his ultimate retreat from the Israeli armies.

This is the story of Mara, a Jewish girl from Riverside Drive, and a hippie from Israel whom everyone distrusts, and the Orthodox wedding that unites them.

Literary, lyrical, and cuttingly satiric, Mother India is a brilliantly original novel about Jews who go to India to find transformation and eternal release from the sufferings of life. Narrated in luminous prose by Meena, a Jewish American lesbian who has claimed India as her home, the novel is vividly populated by the darkly comic universe of three generations of women along with other family members, as well as by the Indians whose world they seek to penetrate. There is Meena’s religiously observant mother, Ma, whose desire to remove herself from the wheel of life plays out in a Faulknerian funeral procession and cremation on the banks of the holy river Ganges; Meena’s daughter, Maya, a misunderstood child coming of age in an emotionally treacherous household; her ex-wife, Geeta, a privileged and hedonistic Indian woman who enters their world with devastating consequences; Meena's twin brother, Shmelke, a charismatic rabbi turned guru and international fugitive; and the Indian servant, Manika, whose loyalty to the family both sustains and shackles them.ldentifying with the humanity of its characters, the reader is drawn into a vast, tragicomic, and fascinating epic, Homeric in scope, drama, discovery, and surprise. Universal yet intimate, brutal yet tender, satiric yet sympathetic, Mother India evokes reactions—intellectual, emotional, visceral—that are complex, even contradictory, containing the might and bite that our current cultural hubris and self-involvement deserve. In Mother India, Reich offers us her most poignant and astonishing novel to date.

One Hundred Philistine Foreskins centers on the life of Temima Ba'alatOv, known also as Ima Temima, or Mother Temima, a charismatic woman rabbi of extraordinary spiritual power and learning, and an utterly original interpreter of the Hebrew Bible. Temima is revered as a guru with prophetic, even messianic powers one who dares to raise her woman's  naked" voice even in the face of extreme hostility by the traditional establishment. Moving between two worlds Temima as a child in Brooklyn and Temima as an adult in Jerusalem the story reveals the forces that shaped her, including the early loss of her mother; her spiritual and intellectual awakening; her complex relationship with her father, a ritual slaughterer; her forced marriage; her  ascent" to Israel; and her intense romantic involvements with charismatic men who launch her toward her destiny as a renowned woman leader in Israel. True to Reich's voice as a satirist of humanity's darker inclinations, the story is rooted in contemporary times, revealing the extreme and ecstatic expressions of religion, as well as the power of religion and religious authorities to use and abuse the faithful, both spiritually and physically, with life-altering and crushing consequences. Cynthia Ozick said of Tova Reich that her  verbal blade is amazingly, ingeniously, startlingly, all-consumingly, all-encompassingly, deservedly, and brilliantly savage." This has never been more true than in One Hundred Philistine Foreskins, a work of literature sure to be hailed as an immensely authoritative and fearlessly bold tour-de-force.

One Hundred Philistine Foreskins centers on the life of Temima Ba'alatOv, known also as Ima Temima, or Mother Temima, a charismatic woman rabbi of extraordinary spiritual power and learning, and an utterly original interpreter of the Hebrew Bible. Temima is revered as a guru with prophetic, even messianic powers one who dares to raise her woman's  naked" voice even in the face of extreme hostility by the traditional establishment. Moving between two worlds Temima as a child in Brooklyn and Temima as an adult in Jerusalem the story reveals the forces that shaped her, including the early loss of her mother; her spiritual and intellectual awakening; her complex relationship with her father, a ritual slaughterer; her forced marriage; her  ascent" to Israel; and her intense romantic involvements with charismatic men who launch her toward her destiny as a renowned woman leader in Israel.True to Reich's voice as a satirist of humanity's darker inclinations, the story is rooted in contemporary times, revealing the extreme and ecstatic expressions of religion, as well as the power of religion and religious authorities to use and abuse the faithful, both spiritually and physically, with life-altering and crushing consequences. Cynthia Ozick said of Tova Reich that her  verbal blade is amazingly, ingeniously, startlingly, all-consumingly, all-encompassingly, deservedly, and brilliantly savage." This has never been more true than in One Hundred Philistine Foreskins, a work of literature sure to be hailed as an immensely authoritative and fearlessly bold tour-de-force.

An old New York Catskills hotel is converted into a Reeducation center for star #MeToo offenders in a story full of cunning and craft, double meanings and doppelgangers. A finalist for the Jewish National Book Award strikes again with another brilliant satire--a treat for readers of Philip Roth, Dara Horn, Nathan Englander, and others. Somewhere in the Catskills there's a camp, it's called Camp Jeff. The place is named for Jeffrey Epstein, not that Jeffrey Epstein, this is the good Jeffrey Epstein, a benefactor who wants his name on the building, though the bad one's not entirely irrelevant to this story. Tova Reich's newest novel, on the heels of her award-winning Mother India is a raucous and biting tale of a reeducation camp for alleged sex offenders. Reich's verbal blade is sharp and she slashes with it, but not without the sensitivity that such incisiveness requires. Camp Jeff is a work in Reich's signature satirical mode, an unhindered indictment of both #MeToo and therapeutic culture, and at the same time is also a deeply considered work of psychological portraiture and an examination of love, faith, and affection in American culture.

" Tova Reich's] verbal blade is amazingly, ingeniously, startlingly, all-consumingly, all-encompassingly, deservedly, and brilliantly savage."--Cynthia Ozick In this extraordinary collection of short fiction, Tova Reich dives deep into the world of Orthodox Jewry--a world that her stories, like the shows "Unorthodox" and "Shtisel," embrace with respect and affection while also poking at the faultlines in its unshakeable traditions. The eight stories collected in this volume are all populated by seekers--of holiness, illumination, liberation, meaning, love. Their journeys unfold in the U.S., Israel, Poland, China, often in the very heart of the Jewish world, and are rendered with an insider's authority. The narrative voice bringing all this to life has been described as fearlessly satiric and subversive, with a moral but not moralizing edge, equally alive to the sacred and the profane, comically absurd to the point of tragedy. From the opening story, "The Lost Girl" (winner of a National Magazine Award in Fiction) to "Dead Zone" in the closing pages of this collection, we are confronted with souls unable to rest, unable to find release, searching for their place in this life, and beyond. Between these two stories, we encounter a true believer seeking personal redemption in China ("Forbidden City"), and an aged woman longing at the end of her life to find a way back to her mother ("The Plot"). Three of the stories, "The Page Turner," "The Third Generation," and "Dedicated to the Dead," are animated by the long-term fallout from the Holocaust--generational trauma, abuse of memory, competitive victimization, and more. In the midst of all this is the story "The House of Love and Prayer," which, in its way, encompasses the entire spectrum. The novelist Howard Norman has said, "Few contemporary writers are truly original. Tova Reich is one of them." Read this book and discover her satiric genius.

Literary, lyrical, and cuttingly satiric, Mother India is a brilliantly original novel about Jews who go to India to find transformation and eternal release from the sufferings of life. Narrated in luminous prose by Meena, a Jewish American lesbian who has claimed India as her home, the novel is vividly populated by the darkly comic universe of three generations of women along with other family members, as well as by the Indians whose world they seek to penetrate. There is Meena's religiously observant mother, Ma, whose desire to remove herself from the wheel of life plays out in a Faulknerian funeral procession and cremation on the banks of the holy river Ganges; Meena's daughter, Maya, a misunderstood child coming of age in an emotionally treacherous household; her ex-wife, Geeta, a privileged and hedonistic Indian woman who enters their world with devastating consequences; Meena's twin brother, Shmelke, a charismatic rabbi turned guru and international fugitive; and the Indian servant, Manika, whose loyalty to the family both sustains and shackles them. ldentifying with the humanity of its characters, the reader is drawn into a vast, tragicomic, and fascinating epic, Homeric in scope, drama, discovery, and surprise. Universal yet intimate, brutal yet tender, satiric yet sympathetic, Mother India evokes reactions—intellectual, emotional, visceral—that are complex, even contradictory, containing the might and bite that our current cultural hubris and self-involvement deserve. In Mother India, Reich offers us her most poignant and astonishing novel to date.

A new story collection from the razor-sharp wit of Tova Reich, who was described by Jonathan Safran Foer as "fearless, hysterically funny, and with the sharpest eye for truth and falsity. . . a brilliant writer." The searing and hilarious satire of Tova Reich knows no boundaries. Here in this story collection, she explores end-of-life truths and surprises, daring to make sense of the dilemma of the meaning of Jewishness in a world that is drowning in violence. In "Managed Care," a beloved son drafts his mother's obituary in advance, and hastens her demise as a final act of filial devotion. In "Solidarity," the recipient of a widow's generosity turns violently against her. In "Mengele in Jerusalem," as the title suggests, we meet the former Nazi war criminal in the most unlikely of places. Then there is the title novella, in which a convert must carry on after the death of her domineering mistress, herself also a convert. In "Gifted and Talented," the doting mother of a gifted child catalogues her losses. And finally, in "Moscow Night in New York," a group of Russian ex-pats gathers in Brooklyn to wonder why all the important things have been washed away by all the unimportant ones. When it is over, our host finds his wife weeping at the kitchen sink. "Why?" he asks. "Because I'm out of cigarettes," she replies furiously. In her previous work, Reich has turned a Borscht Belt resort into Camp Jeffrey Epstein where sex offenders find their just desserts (Camp Jeff, Seven Stories, 2024), she has shown aspects of the Holocaust legacy as a competitive game of one-uppance (My Holocaust, 2007). Here, Reich turns up the heat to greet our end-times.