Customer Reviews

The Portable Jewish Mother: Guilt, Food, And... When Are You Giving Me Grandchildren

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

As I read this book, I found many of the passages eerily familiar. That is because they are from two books that I wrote, Haikus for Jews: For You, a Little Wisdom and Zen Judaism: For You, A Little Enlightenment. The Portable Jewish Mother contains three passages from Zen Judaism woven into the text, i.e. not presented as quotations from another source (on pp. 56, 147 and 153). It also quotes numerous haikus from Haikus for Jews without ever mentioning the book.

Two other pages in the book (pp. 195-196) struck me as familiar, and they appear to be taken from The Optimist Sees the Bagel the Pessimist Sees the Hole: Life's Little Jewish Instruction Book by Leonard Sorcher.

With respect to my material, this book was the subject of a claim of copyright infringement that has been settled out of court. While the terms of the settlement were and are confidential, I am allowed to state that the passages in question will be removed from future printings of the book (if any).

I am not in any way commenting on the motivations or intentions of Professor Rozakis, which remain a mystery to me. I do strongly feel that that potential purchasers and readers of this book should aware of the problems with the originality of this book.

I bought this book for a converted sister-in-law so she would know how to properly guilt and nag her kids (kidding). But I always read every book I gift first so I can truly recommend it and this one is a real find! Humorous and informative! I love it. It's so full of motherly warmth, too. An awesome book for any mom.

I gave this to my mother for mother's day and she couldn't stop laughing. The food bits were especially funny for her, as she's always baking and shipping food to me and all my siblings. The book is very funny and I'd recommend it to anybody who has a mother.

This book is wonderful--witty, full of insights, and warm, as are other books I've read by this prolific author. As for the reviews talking about supposed issues with the text, they are so petty I'm appalled they got published by Amazon; if the review writer and the publisher worked this out, why bring it up here? Nobody publishes the number of quality books I've seen from this author without the ability to be original and write well. Period.

So, back to the point, which is the book itself. It's a fun read, a great gift, and truly doesn't depend on you being Jewish to appreciate the dynamics of the maternal instinct at work in our culture. Buy it for yourself, your mother, your daughter, or friend. Thanks for another delightful read, Ms. Rozakis!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It would be particularly useful for someone marrying into a Jewish family or someone with a Jewish friend. Certainly there are a lot of funny stories, many of which are so old that Moses might have told one to Aaron, but still funny. There is a lot of information about holidays and traditions. There are recipes-but be warned that every family has its own idea about food preparations. I can still hear my husband say, "Fluffy matzoh balls? Whoever heard of fluffy matzoh balls?"

This book has a lot crammed into it and could be considered an adventure in meeting another culture, one I'm glad to say has a unique sense of humor.