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Oct 8, 2024 | 
thebanner.org | Ruth Behar
Author Ruth Behar was inspired to write this novel for middle school readers by the few details she knew about her Spanish grandmother’s life. In an author’s note, Behar explains that she set her story in the larger context of Sephardic history, starting in 1492, the year the Jews were expelled from Spain (which they called Sefarad in Hebrew; hence the name Sephardic Jews). Behar notes that 1492 is better known for Columbus’s conquest of the Americas.
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Sep 29, 2024 | 
jpost.com | Rivkah Lambert Adler |Ruth Behar
Ruth Behar tells the stories of four generations of 12-year-old Sephardi girls in a single family over a 500-year period. Music, poetry, and food all play significant roles in the interwoven stories.
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Jun 18, 2024 | 
jewishchronicle.org | Ruth Behar |Nancy Paulsen Books |Liza Wiemer
“The Schlemiel Kids Save the Moon,”by Audrey Barbakoff, illustrated by Rotem Teplow, published by The Collective Book Studio. Author Audrey Barbakoff took the spirit of old Yiddish stories of Chelm, which were filled with silly people who thought they were the wisest in the world, and created a modern tale where the smartest people are the children. Young readers will find humor in the ridiculous adults’ belief that the reflection of the moon in the lake is actually the moon.
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Apr 18, 2024 | 
fivebooks.com | Camilla Townsend |Jorge Ibarüengoitia |Friedrich Katz |Ruth Behar
Why is Mexican history interesting to study? Mexico has played a crucial role in modern global history. It was the first part of mainland America colonised by a European people. It became the richest part of the biggest, richest early modern European empire—the Spanish empire. It produced a lot of the silver bullion that would drive European economic expansion and economic globalisation in the period between 1500 and 1800, roughly speaking, which coincided with the colonial period in Mexico.
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Feb 5, 2024 | 
jewishbookcouncil.org | Ruth Behar
Before I began writing my new novel, Across So Many Seas, all I knew was that I wanted to write a story about four Sephardic Jewish girls, living in four different times in four different places. Somehow their stories would intersect, though I wasn’t sure exactly how. I wanted it to be a novel that kids as young as ten years old could enjoy and hoped it might have crossover appeal for adults.
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Feb 1, 2024 | 
jewishbookcouncil.org | Ruth Behar |Devon Holzwarth
Review By – February 5, 2024 The expulsion of Spain’s Jews by the Catholic monarchs in 1492 ended an era of Jewish history, but it also began a new one. Jews who refused conversion, or the dangerous option of continuing their religious life in secret, had to flee their homes. They established themselves in Turkey, Italy, North America, and other regions, bringing their language, Ladino (judeoespañol), and their rich and varied culture with them.
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Jan 11, 2024 | 
shepherd.com | Paul Stoller |Ruth Behar |Zora Neale Hurston |Miguel Covarrubias
The Vulnerable Observer is a classic work in anthropology in which the author underscores the emotional impact of being a research anthropologist. Behar’s wonderfully crafted stories evoke the wisdom of others and demonstrate why it is important for anthropologists to describe the emotional impact of social being in the world. It is an important text for understanding the emotional contours of the human condition. Why should I read it?
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Sep 10, 2023 | 
jewishbookcouncil.org | Ruth Behar |Devon Holzwarth |Jake Cohen
As we prepare to celebrate the High Holidays, to hear the shofar blasts and gather with family and friends for festive meals and wish each other a sweet new year, I’m excited in a way I’ve never been before. I’m now a grandmother – an abuelita – of two lovely girls, a toddler, and a seven-month-old baby. I hope to pass on to them as much as I can of my unique Jewish heritage.
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Jul 25, 2023 | 
anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Ruth Behar
Summary This is an afterword to a special section on flash ethnography reflecting on the filigree artistry of these short and intricate pieces that allow us as writers to be vulnerable and write in ways that are enlightening in unexpected ways. Reading this collection, I thought of how each piece is so carefully crafted, so delicately woven together. It occurred to me that flash ethnography requires a kind of filigree artistry.
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Jun 18, 2023 | 
jewishbookcouncil.org | Ruth Behar |Devon Holzwarth
RB: How wonderful that your father encouraged you to be a writer. My trajectory was different, because I wasn’t encouraged to read or to write by my family. Shortly after we arrived from Cuba, I was in a terrible car accident, which I later wrote about in my middle-grade novel, Lucky Broken Girl. It left me bedridden for a year and turned me into a reader and a writer, since there was little else for me to do while immobile.
