Newly revised and updated, the definitive guide to planning a Jewish wedding, written by bestselling novelist Anita Diamant—author of The Red Tent and The Boston Girl—and one of the most respected writers of guides to contemporary Jewish life.
This complete, easy-to-use guide explains everything you need to know to plan your own Jewish wedding in today’s ever-changing world where the very definition of what constitutes a Jewish wedding is up for discussion.
With enthusiasm and flair, Anita Diamant provides choices for every stage of a wedding—including celebrations before and after the ceremony itself—providing both traditional and contemporary options. She explains the Jewish tradition of love and marriage with references drawn from Biblical, Talmudic, and mystical texts and stories. She guides you step by step through planning the ceremony and the party that follows—from finding a rabbi and wording the invitation to organizing a processional and hiring a caterer. Samples of wedding invitations and ketubot (marriage contracts) are provided for inspiration and guidance, as well as poems that can be incorporated into the wedding ceremony or party and a variety of translations of traditional texts.
“There is no such thing as a generic Jewish wedding,” writes Anita Diamant, “no matter what the rabbi tells you, no matter what the caterer tells you, no matter what your mother tells you.” Complete, authoritative, and indispensable, The Jewish Wedding Now provides personalized options—some new, some old—to create a wedding that combines spiritual meaning and joyous celebration and reflects your individual values and beliefs.
Addie Baum is a Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant Jewish parents who live a very modest life entrenched in Roxbury's Jewish community. Addie's intelligence and curiosity lead her to a more modern path. Addie wants to finish high school and to go to college. She wants a career, she wants to find true love. She wants to escape the confines of her family. And she does.
Boston Girl begins in 1985 when Addie Baum's 22 -year old Granddaughter asks about Addie's childhood. Starting her story in 1915, the year she began to question her role in the world -- Addie relates the story of her life. From the one-room apartment in Boston's West End she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library groups for girls at the Salem Street Settlement where Addie finds refuge after high school and on Saturdays. To Rockport Lodge in a seaside town 40 miles north of Boston where Addie and other immigrant girls from the Settlement go for a vacation in the summers and make friendships that will last a lifetime and where they learn about art, boys, and sports. From her brother-in-law's shirt factory where she works as a secretary, to the offices of the Transcipt, one of Boston's evening newspapers -- where she begins as a secretary typing and answering phones and ends up writing a column about events "Seen and Heard" around Boston. From a first boyfriend to failed relationships, to the "real thing." Addie's story is told against the backdrop of World War I, the flu epidemic, the ideas of Margaret Sanger, reforms in child labor laws, the growth of Reformed Judaism in America, and how the role of women was changed by all of this.
Written with the same attention to detail and emotional impact that made Diamant's previous novels bestsellers, Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman's complicated life in the early 20th Century, and a window into the lives of all women seeking to understand the world around them.
In her most moving and powerful novel ever, Anita Diamant portrays richly imagined female characters in a haunting fictionalization of the post-Holocaust experience. Atlit is a holding camp for "illegal" immigrants in Israel in 1945. There, about 270 men and women await their future and try to recover from their past. Diamant, with infinite compassion and understanding, tells the stories of the women gathered in this place. Shayndel is a Polish Zionist who fought the Germans with a band of partisans. Leonie is a Parisian beauty. Tedi is Dutch, a strapping blond who wants only to forget. Zorah survived Auschwitz. Haunted by unspeakable memories and too many losses to bear, these young women, along with a stunning cast of supporting characters who work in or pass through Atlit, begin to find salvation in the bonds of friendship and shared experience as they confront the challenge of re-creating themselves and discovering a way to live again. Day After Night is a devastatingly beautiful novel, a story only Anita Diamant could tell, and it will make every listener weep.
Her name is Dinah. In the Bible her fate is merely hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the verses of the Book of Genesis that recount the life of Jacob and his infamous dozen sons. The Red Tent is an extraordinary and engrossing tale of ancient womanhood and family honour. Told in Dinah's voice, it opens with the story of her mothers - the four wives of Jacob - each of whom embodies unique feminine traits, and concludes with Dinah's own startling and unforgettable story of betrayal, grief and love.
Deeply affecting and intimate, The Red Tent combines outstandingly rich storytelling with an original insight into women's society in a fascinating period of early history and such is its warmth and candour, it is guaranteed to win the hearts and minds of women across the world.
'If you don't read it you'll be missing out' Eve
'I genuinely fell into this rich and colourful world and Dinah and Leah have stayed with me as ancestors and sisters brought to life by Anita Diamant's imaginative novel' Maureen Lipman
Anita Diamant's international bestseller The Red Tent brilliantly re-created the ancient world of womanhood. Diamant brings her remarkable storytelling skills to Good Harbor -- offering insight to the precarious balance of marriage and career, motherhood and friendship in the world of modern women. The seaside town of Gloucester, Massachusetts is a place where the smell of the ocean lingers in the air and the rocky coast glistens in the Atlantic sunshine. When longtime Gloucester-resident Kathleen Levine is diagnosed with breast cancer, her life is thrown into turmoil. Frightened and burdened by secrets, she meets Joyce Tabachnik -- a freelance writer with literary aspirations -- and a once-in-a-lifetime friendship is born. Joyce has just bought a small house in Gloucester, where she hopes to write as well as vacation with her family. Like Kathleen, Joyce is at a fragile place in her life. A mutual love for books, humor, and the beauty of the natural world brings the two women together. They share their personal histories, and help each other to confront scars left by old emotional wounds. With her own trademark wisdom and humor, Diamant considers the nature, strength, and necessity of adult female friendship. Good Harbor examines the tragedy of loss, the insidious nature of family secrets, as well as the redemptive power of friendship.
A magnificent storyteller with vast imaginative range, Anita Diamant gave voice to the silent women of the Old Testament in "The Red Tent." Now, in her third novel, she brings to vivid life an early New England world that history has forgotten.
Set on Cape Ann in the early 1800s, "The Last Days of Dogtown" is peopled by widows, orphans, spinsters, scoundrels, whores, free Africans, and "witches." Among the inhabitants of Dogtown is Black Ruth, an African woman who dresses as a man and works as a stone mason; Mrs. Stanley, an imperious madam whose grandson, Sammy, comes of age in her rural brothel; Oliver Younger, who survives a miserable childhood at the hands of a very strange aunt; and Cornelius Finson, a freed slave whose race denies him everything. At the center of it all is Judy Rhines, a fiercely independent soul, deeply lonely, who nonetheless builds a life for herself and inspires those around her to become more generous and tolerant themselves.
This is a story of hardship and resilience -- and an extraordinary re-creation of an untold chapter of early American life. With a keen ear for language and profound compassion for her characters, Diamant has created her most moving and powerful story.
