Rabbi Menachem Even-Israel and Congressman Eliot Engel

The world’s largest library — the Library of Congress in Washington, DC — will house a version of the Talmud, translated from Hebrew to English by Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz. The religious work entered the library in a March 5 ceremony. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) noted that Rabbi Steinsaltz “is the first person since Medieval times to have completed a full translation and commentary on the Babylonian Talmud.” Pictured, Rabbi Menachem Even-Israel, the son of Rabbi Steinsaltz, presents the first volume of the Steinsaltz Talmud to Rep. Engel.

Photo: The Aleph Society

The $5.45 million that has been donated to the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh following the October 2018 shooting that killed 11 worshippers — the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history — will be given to survivors, first responders, congregations and families of the victims.

The victims’ families will receive more than $3 million; those who were in the building during the shooting and survived will get $215,162; and those who were on the premises will be given $23,905. About $1.3 million will be allocated towards rebuilding or restoring the synagogue. Two of the congregations in the building, Dor Hadash and New Light, will each receive more than $240,000. Another $200,000 will be given in honor of the first responders, and about $234,000 will be donated towards memorialization.

An independent panel determined how the donations from around the world should be allocated. “No amount of money can fully compensate for loss of life, serious wounds, and congregation damage,” the panel said in its report. Nevertheless, the panel said “…it hopes that these payments will serve as a comforting reminder of the expression of compassion that came from thousands of people around the world.”

Here’s hoping the book is as good as the review. Ever on the lookout for a fun read for Shofar readers, what should appear in a recent Dwight Garner review in The New York Times but Ben Katchor’s The Dairy Restaurant.

            Katchor’s new book is a love song to the American dairy restaurant that flourished in the Lower East Side in the late 1800’s. Here, Katchor offers descriptions of the milekhdike cuisine and an homage to potato knishes, borscht, cheese kreplekh, kasha varnishkes, pirogen, blintzes, and poppy seed cakes. While the restaurants have mostly vanished, their cultural and culinary history have not. As part of the fun, Katchor lists the famous and infamous who frequented these establishments, such as, yes, Leon Trotsky for one, also Edward G. Robinson, Franz Kafka, Emma Goldman, Theodore Bikel, Arthur Miller, Bert Lahr, Frank Zappa, Leonard Bernstein, and blacklisted screenwriters who came to salve their souls.

The distribution and production company Cohen Media Group has acquired North American rights to the Holocaust-era drama “Persian Lessons” and plans to release the film in late 2020, according to an article in Variety.

Set in 1942, the film is about a Belgian Jew in a German concentration camp who claims to be Persian to avoid being executed. The prisoner tries to save himself by agreeing to teach Farsi, a language he does not know and subsequently makes up, to a Nazi officer who hopes to open a restaurant in Iran after the war.

The film, based on the story “Erfindung Einer Sprache” by Wolfgang Kohlhaase, was first written in Russian, then translated into English and eventually into German. The film had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival on Feb. 22.

The final letters of the Torah were written at a reception held on Feb. 6 at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Iceland, Jeffrey Ross Gunter, who is Jewish. The new scroll, which took a year to write, was donated to the Jewish community of Reykjavik by Uri Krauss of Zurich, Switzerland.

On Feb. 16, members of the city’s Jewish community brought the Torah scroll to the local Chabad Jewish Center, the first full-time Jewish institution on the island nation. Up to now, the center has been borrowing a Torah for use every Shabbat morning.

Two days after the Yiddish edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, translated by Arun Viswanath, became available for pre-order, the book sold out its first print run of 1,000 copies. A second edition is in the works. Copies were ordered in the United States, Israel, Poland, Sweden, Morocco, Australia and China.

Few — if any — new Yiddish books published outside of the Hasidic world sell 1,000 copies in a year. Most are released in modest editions of several dozen to maybe several hundred.

Read other children’s books translated into Yiddish, free at the Yiddish Book Center’s online library, include The Prince and the Pauper, Gulliver’s Travels, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Oliver Twist, and The Emperor’s New Clothes. New translations for sale include The Little Prince, Curious George, Winnie-the-Pooh, and several works by Dr. Seuss.