Peter Shapiro

Jewish women for almost five thousand seven hundred seventy years have struggled with a tradition that moved them into a life of modesty, early marriage and motherhood. Formal education was forbidden to women, a point brought home in Maggie Anton's three novels "Rashi's Daughters I, II and III". Women inherited wisdom by what was referred to as Binah , a mystical process where they acquired all the knowledge necessary to sustain their family's needs. The progressive streams of Judaism recently have opened up their doors to women's full participation in all aspects of religious and communal life. The author Ilana Blumberg's journey is that of a woman in love with learning of Judaism whose full participation in the Modern Orthodox world is often blocked by the rules in the sacred texts she reveres.

"A Seat at the Table" is a metaphor for the Chassidic adage that no matter what one has done to stray from the teachings of Torah he or she will not be abandoned by their family. This is similar to the sentiment expressed in Robert Frost's poem, " Death of the Hired Man ": "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Mr. Zeitchik, a minor character, sets the tone when he says "... a story is never just a story". The author, Joshua Halberstam, used that statement as a lead-in to employ the literary device, "a story within a story". That is where the inner story often has symbolic and psychological significance for the characters in the outer story.

Palace intrigue, ethnic cleansing, murder, unrequited love, and the quest for new lands and their riches are all woven together in Michael James Kaplan's novel By Fire and By Water . The story takes place in Spain during the mid 1480's through the late 1490's in the reign of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand. In that time frame four world-changing events were simultaneously occurring: the establishment of the New Inquisition in Castile and Aragon, the reconquest of Granada, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and Cristobal Colon's (Christopher Columbus) so-called discovery of the Western Hemisphere.

Anton Chekov famously advised "it is not the role of the novelist to solve problems, only to present them correctly". Anita Diamant indicated that "a novelist may take license with character development, but the attendant facts must be accurate or else the reader will lose trust in the narrative". Joan Leegant has religiously adhered to those principles in her novel Wherever You Go as she has woven together three lives caught in the grip of a volatile and demanding faith.