Memory & Redemption

Reflections on Jewish life from within

A Damaged Mirror

 

Read the Foreword by Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo.

 

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Excerpts from A Damaged Mirror

Recent Posts

  • The Great Hanukkah Cover-up: self-censorship and national survival
  • The Time of Our Rejoicing – In spite of everything
  • Making order of the Passover Seder
  • The Post War Challenge: Learning from successes as well as failures
  • Knowing the Way Home

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Recent Posts:

  • The Great Hanukkah Cover-up: self-censorship and national survival
  • The Time of Our Rejoicing – In spite of everything
  • Making order of the Passover Seder
  • The Post War Challenge: Learning from successes as well as failures
  • Knowing the Way Home
  • The Gaza War and the Challenges of Statehood
  • From the place where we are right: What we can learn from a Talmudic story
  • The Holocaust and Literature: The Writer’s Dilemma
  • Meetings at the well
  • Tu B’Av – What is love
  • Whoopi Goldberg and the Jewish Question
  • The Song of Songs – Rabbi Akiva’s time capsule
  • Eshet Yifat Toar: Some thoughts on a shocking legal ruling
  • Back into the Light: The March Jewish Book Carnival
  • Drinking Coffee with the Rambam: A review of Judaism Reclaimed
  • Sukkot and the Paradox of Joyfulness
  • HaRav Adin Steinsaltz: A place at the four dimensional table
  • Locked Down? Here are some good reads to pass the time
  • Parashat Terumah – Mind the Gap!
  • February Jewish Book Blog Carnival
  • Parashat Beshalach: Of Miracles and Folly
  • Parashat Bo – Pesah and Foreshadowing
  • Message Delivered: A Sonderkommando steps into the light
  • Shemot – The mystery of a displaced story
  • VaYechi: Ahuzah vs. Ahuzat Olam
  • Parashat Vayigash: What might have been
  • Parashat Vayishlah – A house divided
  • Yaakov’s Dream
  • Of Birthrights and Blessings
  • Parashat Chayei Sarah: A mother’s role in nation building
  • Rockets & Reads: The November Jewish Book Carnival
  • Book Musings: Devorah Steinmetz, Punishment & Freedom
  • Parashat Vayera: The Nimrod-Avraham Spectrum
  • Parashat Lech Lecha: The Covenant of Generations
  • Noah, Law, and the Chiastic Structure of Reality
  • August Jewish Book Carnival
  • Just out! Cardozo on the Parashah
  • It is not in Heaven: Musings on the Meaning of Torah min Shamayim
  • Parashat Midbar: The Wisdom of Plurality
  • The Night a Sonderkommando absolved God
  • The Afflicted House and the Observer-Dependent Reality
  • Parashat Sh’mini: I will be sanctified by those closest to me
  • Parashat Vayikra: Teshuvah for acts committed under coercion
  • Parashat Pekudai: The Hidden Test
  • Parashat Vayakhel: The limits of creation
  • Of Broken Covenants and Divine Justice – Ki Tisa
  • Parashat Tetzave: Power and its limitations
  • Parashat Terumah: The Tent of the King
  • Parashat Mishpatim: What’s in a Name?
  • Moral & Religious Dilemmas in the Holocaust – Free Download
  • The January Jewish Book Carnival
  • BeShelach: The vulnerability of freedom
  • We have met the enemy… The Jewish terrorists among us
  • Reinforcing Barriers
  • Remember When? Guest Post by Gila Green
  • Parashat Sh’mot
  • Halakhah: Language or Operating Manual?
  • Fall Pickings: The November Jewish Book Carnival
  • Parashat Toledot: Learning from God’s bad example
  • The Yeshiva of Shem & Ever: A midrashic view of cultural legacies
  • Just Add Love – Guest Post by Irris Makler
  • Torah – A Contract with Eternity
  • Parashat Haazinu: The Perils of Success
  • When no one survives to forgive
  • Nitzavim: I place before you life & death
  • Returning is now available!
  • Parashat Ki Tavo – The seeds sown in darkness
  • Parashat Ki Teitzei – Live long and prosper
  • The Law of the King – To whom is it addressed?
  • Elul – The forgiving month
  • Parashat Ekev – A lesson in causality
  • V’Etchanan: Memory as a foundation for Peoplehood
  • Tisha b’Av – Learning from the past
  • Books for Lazy Summer Days: The July Jewish Book Carnival
  • Book Review: An Unexpected Afterlife by Dan Sofer
  • Parashat Chukat: Leadership lessons
  • Returning is now available online to early reviewers and book bloggers
  • Writing Tips: Some Notes on Story Structure and Pacing
  • Social justice as holiness
  • First Fruits of Spring: The April Jewish Book Carnival
  • Returning has a publication date!
  • Are women people? The implications for women’s Torah study
  • Purim Torah: Or questions meant to cross a rabbi’s eyes!
  • Purim: The Covenant ratified in Exile
  • In a Time of Persecution – New version
  • Weapons & Norms: an Israeli perspective on U.S. gun violence
  • Parashat Yitro: Covenant and Peoplehood
  • The Sonderkommando and the Rabbi: A conversation on the nature of evil
  • Tu b’Shvat: A Tree planted in Hope
  • For Those Who Wrote: The attempts by the Birkenau Sonderkommando to leave a record
  • Message Delivered: A Sonderkommando speaks
  • Moral Dilemmas in the Holocaust: Discussion topics for Jewish Book Clubs
  • In a Time of Persecution: The Sonderkommando & the Rabbi
  • Priorities and Charity: A Sonderkommando’s lesson in humanity
  • Non-Jewish Wine and the Perils of Halakhic Over-compensation
  • To be a Memory: Trauma and identity
  • Parashat VaYigash: history and transformation
  • Parshat Miketz: The Fractal Nature of Destiny
  • VaYeshev: If you will it, it is no dream
  • Vayishlach – A battle for selfhood

Dazzling… Returning is an extraordinary and challenging book on many levels.
– Philip K. Jason, Washington Independent Review of Books

Intriguing! At times dark and haunting, at times lyrical and introspective, Returning resonates long after “the end”!
– Dan Sofer, author of the Dry Bones Society trilogy

Returning is a compelling, puzzling, remarkably honest story of a Jew’s sins against his people and his tradition, and of his search for forgiveness and restoration.
– Bill Tammeus, Faith Matters

Free Download

Popular Posts

  • Parashat Terumah: The Tent of the King
    Parashat Terumah: The Tent of the King
  • HaRav Adin Steinsaltz: A place at the four dimensional table
    HaRav Adin Steinsaltz: A place at the four dimensional table
  • We have met the enemy... The Jewish terrorists among us
    We have met the enemy... The Jewish terrorists among us
  • Book Review: An Unexpected Afterlife by Dan Sofer
    Book Review: An Unexpected Afterlife by Dan Sofer
  • It is not in Heaven: Musings on the Meaning of Torah min Shamayim
    It is not in Heaven: Musings on the Meaning of Torah min Shamayim
  • Yael Shahar - Home
    Yael Shahar - Home
  • Haveil Havelim Jewish Blog Carnival
    Haveil Havelim Jewish Blog Carnival
  • Book Review: The Disappearance of God by Richard Elliot Friedman
    Book Review: The Disappearance of God by Richard Elliot Friedman
  • The Law of the King: individual commandment or national constitution?
    The Law of the King: individual commandment or national constitution?

Main Topics

  • Book Reviews
  • Featured
  • Guest Posts
  • Halakhic Process
  • Hashkafah & Jewish Thought
  • Havruta with a One-Eyed Cat
  • Memory & History
  • Miscellaneous
  • Parashat HaShavua
  • Poetry
  • Returning
  • T'shuvah & Healing
  • The Jewish Year
  • Writing & Publishing
Yael Shahar

Yael Shahar

Yael Shahar is the author of Returning. She spent most of her career working in security and intelligence, with brief forays into teaching astronomy and physics. She now divides her time between researching trends in terrorism and learning Talmud with anyone who will sit still long enough.

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"In those circumstances we are reduced to bare existence, bereft of all that we once believed to define us. Naked, we have no pockets in which to store the things that we once used in the natural trade of human interactions. Instead, we come to value a different currency—our humanity. It is this currency that truly defines us, and even death cannot entirely devalue it. The more is taken away, the more we value what is left."

 

- Ovadya ben Malka, A Damaged Mirror

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“We stand on the edge of the abyss, across whose unknowable face we paint meaning so as not to see into it. It is always there. But we’re here too, and we are no less real than the abyss. We are no less meaningful for being transient creatures caught up in something too big for us. There is still value to our lives. I’ve learned that those things that are most fragile are also the most precious.”

 

― Ovadya ben Malka, A Damaged Mirror

Top Posts & Pages

  • Parashat Terumah: The Tent of the King
  • HaRav Adin Steinsaltz: A place at the four dimensional table
  • We have met the enemy... The Jewish terrorists among us
  • Book Review: An Unexpected Afterlife by Dan Sofer
  • It is not in Heaven: Musings on the Meaning of Torah min Shamayim
  • Yael Shahar - Home
  • Haveil Havelim Jewish Blog Carnival
  • Book Review: The Disappearance of God by Richard Elliot Friedman
  • The Law of the King: individual commandment or national constitution?
Cover_3D_small

 

With a new Foreword by Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo.

View a Sample Chapter

 

Excerpts from A Damaged Mirror

Main Topics

  • Book Reviews
  • Featured
  • Guest Posts
  • Halakhic Process
  • Hashkafah & Jewish Thought
  • Havruta with a One-Eyed Cat
  • Memory & History
  • Miscellaneous
  • Parashat HaShavua
  • Poetry
  • Returning
  • T'shuvah & Healing
  • The Jewish Year
  • Writing & Publishing

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