L ifestyle /C ulture
would be a disservice to this
odd, exciting little book.

Broder’s story — about
secular American Judaism,
the contemporary professional
woman’s relationship to food
and sex, and an Orthodox
woman who works the counter
at a frozen yogurt shop — is
not for the faint of heart. If
you’re appropriately girded,
give this one a shot.

“God I Feel Modern Tonight:
Poems from a Gal About
Town” Catherine Cohen
If you had to put Catherine
Cohen into a single category,
“comedian” would come closest
to describing what she does.

But Cohen’s career as a cabaret
performer, actor, podcaster and
stand-up all points to unique
ambitions as an artist — she’s
appeared in mainstream shows
like “Broad City” and “Late
Night with Seth Meyers,” but
she’s also someone who, prior
to the pandemic, performed
weekly as a chanteuse at a New
York club with an unprintable
name. And you can still catch
her podcast, if you’re missing
that live Cohen zing.

“God I Feel Modern Tonight”
reads like poetry written by a
non-poet; Cohen’s singular voice
and performance instincts give
her work a quality you don’t come
across frequently. The PR for this
book tries to brand Cohen as a
very particular millennial type
that exists more as an elevator
pitch than a person — “A Dorothy
Parker for our time, a Starbucks
philosophe with no primary-care
doctor” — but Cohen is blessedly
uncategorizable. “Osnat and Her Dove: The
True Story of the World’s
First Female Rabbi”
Written by Sigal Samuel, illus-
trated by Vali Mintzi
We don’t often write about
illustrated children’s books, but
an exception must be made for
“Osnat and Her Dove.” Why the
story of Osnat has stuck with me
since I was a child is anyone’s
guess, though it probably has
something to do with finding
the name funny when I was 10
and the fact that I heard it told
with great care by the rabbi at
Perelman Jewish Day School.

Whatever the reason,
Samuels’ retelling
and Mintzi’s striking illustrations
— brilliant reds, yellows and
oranges — transported me
back to those days and, for
that, I’m grateful.

“Nuestra America: My
Family in the Vertigo of
Translation” Claudio Lomnitz
family memoir. His eye for the
meta-stories of peoples and
nations is brought to bear on
the forces that shaped the lives
of his grandparents, Jews who
fled what is now Romania for
Peru in the 1920s. They arrived
to find that terrible truth that
if one insists on being Jewish
everywhere, one will be treated
as a Jew everywhere.

“Nuestra America” is more
than the tragic tale of a family
caught in the gears of 20th
century -isms, though that
subject is certainly worthy
of exploration on its own.

Lomnitz reads his life and the
lives of his family members as
closely as he does political and
cultural texts, complicating
our understanding of both. The
language can be a little dry, but
the characters and the subject
matter are anything but. l
Lomnitz, an anthropolo-
gist at Columbia University, jbernstein@jewishexponent.com;
bites off quite a bit in this 215-832-0740
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