A welcome reintroduction to the psalms for 21st-century Jews.
A rabbi offers commentary on ancient psalms for a contemporary audience.
“Life is joyful, tragic, visionary, mired in muck,” writes Rabbi Elyse Frishman. Reflective of the range of human experiences and interactions with the divine, the Bible’s Book of Psalms explores topics that range from expressions of gratitude for God’s gifts during personal triumphs to accusations against God’s seeming desertion amid heartbreaks. While psalms are relevant to contemporary society, their traditional biblical arrangement often makes them inaccessible to those unfamiliar with them. Seeking to pair “traditional psalms with different moments of our contemporary lives,” Sank Ross offers readers 72 psalms rearranged thematically into six categories (anticipation, commemoration, despair, gratitude, pain, and relief). The first section, “Psalms for Anticipation,” suggests pairing specific psalms for periods of anxious waiting, such as before a surgery, before traveling, or during a pregnancy. Additional sections provide similar matchings of psalms to real-life experiences through topics that include celebrating anniversaries, mourning death, moving on after divorce, and experiencing antisemitism. Given its goal of connecting with modern readers, the book utilizes Richard Levy’s 2018 translation of psalms, Songs Ascending. Each psalm is accompanied by a stylized Hebrew heading and a brief introduction by Sank Ross, who provides guidance on how to incorporate the psalm into one’s prayer practices. Many entries contain footnotes that refer readers to similar psalms that are found in different sections of the guide. An associate rabbi at the Community Synagogue in Port Washington, New York, Sank Ross excels at making her editorial comments meaningful to a general audience, from those who attend temple weekly to those who haven’t been in decades. The book opens with a fascinating introduction that draws on Sank Ross’ academic background in anthropology; she provides a brief historiography of psalters and introduces readers to the literary nature of the psalms as metaphorical poetry. “The beauty of metaphors,” she notes, “is that they can be redefined.” Guided by an impressive editorial advisory committee of eleven rabbis and Jewish scholars, this book is both profound and refreshingly simple.
A welcome reintroduction to the psalms for 21st-century Jews.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780881236453
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Central Conference of American Rabbis Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.
An experimental, illustrated essay collection that questions neurotypical definitions of what is normal.
From a young age, writer and comedian Myers has been different. In addition to coping with obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks, she struggled to read basic social cues. During a round of seven minutes in heaven—a game in which two players spend seven minutes in a closet and are expected to kiss—Myers misread the romantic advances of her best friend and longtime crush, Marley. In Paris, she accidentally invited a sex worker to join her friends for “board games and beer,” thinking he was simply a random stranger who happened to be hitting on her. In community college, a stranger’s request for a pen spiraled her into a panic attack but resulted in a tentative friendship. When the author moved to Australia, she began taking notes on her colleagues in an effort to know them better. As the author says to her co-worker, Tabitha, “there are unspoken social contracts within a workplace that—by some miracle—everyone else already understands, and I don’t….When things Go Without Saying, they Never Get Said, and sometimes people need you to Say Those Things So They Understand What The Hell Is Going On.” At its best, Myers’ prose is vulnerable and humorous, capturing characterization in small but consequential life moments, and her illustrations beautifully complement the text. Unfortunately, the author’s tendency toward unnecessary capitalization and experimental forms is often unsuccessful, breaking the book’s otherwise steady rhythm.
A frank and funny but uneven essay collection about neurodiversity.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063381308
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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