The Newsletter of Fig Tree Books LLC
March, 2021: Issue #16
Fredric D. Price, Founder & Publisher
OUR MISSION: Fig Tree Lit is the Newsletter of Fig Tree Books LLC. Like our books, we aim to cover the dynamic American Jewish experience.

Tell us what you think; we're eager to hear what you have to say at Info@FigTreeBooks.net.
FEATURED IN THIS ISSUE

JEWS OF DIFFERENT HUES: The last Jewish town in Azerbaijan

SHORT STORY: In Those Days by Deborah Flusberg, from The Jewish Literary Journal

COMING SOON TO FIG TREE BOOKS (MAY 4, 2021): Jacobo's Rainbow - A new novel by David Hirshberg

APPLES & HONEY: Two Passover Essays by Lisa Lipkin

ESSAY: Funeral, by Fran Scheffler-Siegel

CHAPTER FROM A FORTHCOMING NOVEL: An excerpt from Looking Always by Roger Roffman

MY JEWISH YEAR: The Purim Report, by Abigail Pogrebin

BLOG: Now with commentary on culture/current events, plus mini-reviews of books
CHAPTER FROM A FORTHCOMING NOVEL: An excerpt from Looking Always by Roger Roffman
Milena Hodrová has no idea that it is someone else entirely whose life will be altered by the letters she writes each week to her troubled daughter. Elliott Sterling, Milena’s new neighbor, is a psychologist whose world has crumbled. He begins to steal those letters before the postal delivery person arrives, steams them open and inhales their wisdom before placing them in a street corner mailbox. In this forthcoming novel, a Holocaust survivor’s revelations of how she keeps safe from dwelling helplessly in the darkest of memories offer a pathway for healing to future generations. 

Following his retirement from the University of Washington social work faculty, Roger Roffman wrote Marijuana Nation, a memoir that Pegasus Books published in 2014. Looking Always is his first work of fiction.   
A gloomy dawn; I dressed in black and silence.
Bouquets arrived in lavish vases and massive baskets. Heavy with water, awkward to carry. I lugged them in, one at a time. Put them everywhere. Anywhere. Wherever.
SHORT STORY: In Those Days by Deborah Flusberg, from The Jewish Literary Journal

"On the darkest night of the year, Mattie wishes she could slow down. She wants to slink into the darkness, let it cradle her to sleep like a baby. To disappear into a place where she can escape from the endless tasks and anxious thoughts that never stop rushing through her head."
COMING SOON: Jacobo's Rainbow by David Hirshberg
Jacobo’s Rainbow an historical literary novel set primarily in the 1960s during the convulsive period of the student protest movements and the Vietnam War. It focuses on the issue of being an outsider—the ‘other’—an altogether common circumstance that resonates with readers in today’s America. Written from a Jewish perspective, it speaks to universal truths that affect us all. It uses the inconceivable events of the narrator's family’s life and the world in which he lived as a foil to deal with major issues that affect Americans today. It’s been purposefully set in earlier times to provide some distance from the current ‘talking heads’ climate that instantly categorizes and analyzes events from a narrow, partisan perspective.
JEWS OF DIFFERENT HUES: The last Jewish town in Azerbaijan

Qirmizi was once known as the Jerusalem of the Caucasus, but the once bustling community now lives on memories and longing for people and times gone by. In a small cafe in Qirmizi, Azerbaijan, a few elderly mountain Jews chat over a strong tea with sugar cubes. They speak Juhuro, the forsaken tongue of Caucasus Jews. It’s a kind of Persian mixed with Hebrew.
APPLES & HONEY: Two Passover Essays by Lisa Lipkin

And so it came to pass that shortly after I signed a lease on my rent controlled studio apartment on Tenth Avenue and 57th street, a large management company, as ruthless and as unforgiving as a Pharaoh, bought my building. Soon after, the head of the company called a meeting of all his executives and said, “We have a problem. My people on Tenth Avenue pay me nothing. This is no way to run a business. I’m afraid we only have one option. We have to let my people go.”  And the management team determined to do everything in its power to remove us from the building, not through eviction, but through a much more insidious method: benign neglect.
MY JEWISH YEAR: The Feminist Passover, Chapter 17
All firstborn sons are supposed to fast on the eve of Passover, to remember that God spared the eldest Jewish boys during the tenth plague. Some Jews interpret the fasting mandate to apply to firstborn women as well.
This year, my mom, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, an un-shy feminist (and loving noodge), assumed that I’d be fasting as part of my holiday marathon.
“I’m not a firstborn son,” I replied petulantly. (I frankly didn’t relish
starving all day before the first bite of matzah.) She retorted, “But you’re a firstborn!” (Come on, barely: I was born
just one minute ahead of my identical twin sister.)
BLOG: Now with commentary on culture/current events, plus mini-reviews of books not published by Fig Tree Books

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