Category Archives: Books

Tweet Jean Harlow reads. Tweet In the past few weeks Seraphic Secret have been reading bios of Brigitte Bardot, Paulette Goddard, Hedy Lamarr and Cleopatra. But lest you think that we are totally superficial we hasten to add that we have also been delving into books by several of our unusually articulate and talented readers. [...]

Tweet Safta’s Diaries: Bina Appleman, Intimate Diaries of a Religious Zionist WomanPublisher: Ktav Format: HardcoverDimensions: 6.5″x9.5″Pages: 558ISBN: 978-1-60280-168-4 Karen writes: In the interests of full disclosure, I delved into Shera Aranoff Tuchman’s ambitious, meticulous transcription of her grandmother’s fifty-year diary entries with personal knowledge of the matriarch. As a good friend and classmate at Yeshiva [...]

Tweet One of my favorite novels, The Moonflower Vine, has been reissued, after 46-years, with a new forward by novelist Jane Smiley. Here’s what I wrote about this towering novel back in 0ct ’06: This obscure book, the one and only novel ever written by the mysterious Jetta Carleton, appears to be autobiographical. But make [...]

Tweet About twice a week I get e-mails from aspiring screenwriters that go something like this: Dear Mr. Avrech: I have a great idea for a movie, can I tell it to you? I just need someone to write it down for me. Are you available? Maybe we can collaborate and then split the profits. [...]

Tweet Seraphic Secret recommends this fine volume. We received it a few days before Pesach and during the holiday read close to half the book. The original documents are real eye openers. If you care about Israel, if you care about history and truth, well, this book is essential reading. Seraphic Secret often links to [...]

Tweet My favorite bit of comedy from the Democrats is that support for Israel is a bi-partisan issue. This is a Big Lie. True, there are Democrats who support Israel. But the party as a whole, has made a landslide plunge to the left, has swallowed the poison pills of multi-culturalism, and moral equivalence. In [...]

Tweet I don’t often do this but I’m reprinting an entire article from The New York Times. I’m surprised that they published this piece but I get the impression that Edward M. Rothstein has a great deal of editorial freedom. In any case, the book he reviews and ponders The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s [...]

Tweet The pictures, in black and white, are softly focused, but the images are sharp and striking. These are our ancestors in Poland before the Holocaust. They are ordinary workers, scholars and doe-eyed schoolchildren; there are graves of holy Rabbis, the miraculous grave of a Polish nobleman who converted to Judaism, there’s a yeshiva for [...]

Tweet Seraphic Friend Tony Woodlief has written a great pamphlet. I’ve read it—twice—and encourage all my readers to order this fine work, and support the The New Pamphleteer. This is a cutting-edge conservative enterprise whose work echoes the early political pamphlets circulated by Tom Paine and other great American figures. How does a hapless 21st [...]

Tweet Observing the decline of Britain is a sad, infuriating spectacle. The great people who stood alone and fought so heroically when the rest of Europe was being swallowed by the Nazi conflagration is but a pale shadow of its former self. Yes, now we have an island seething with intellectual Jew-haters who disguise their [...]

Tweet In the 1840′s there were among the simple folk many women [in Europe] who did not know how to pray in Hebrew. Still, they felt a great need to pray on the Sabbath, and especially on the High Holy Days. And there were literate women who made a business of their learning, praying aloud [...]

Tweet In her fine book, Film Journal, the great photographer Eve Arnold records a photo session she had with Marlene Dietrich in the mid-sixties. Dietrich was no longer a young woman, but still a lovely and vigorous star. Arnold, a thorough professional, snapped dozens of still photographs of the great actress. When Arnold developed the [...]