The Jew Store by Stella SubermanMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a very interesting family memoir. I'm glad I read it. I liked her father's quote "Know when you're happy and the rest is easy". This book made me uneasy though, because the family was so unhappy about leaving an area and a lifestyle they loved in order to accomplish some of the mother's religious goals. One of the study questions was about whether or not they should have left Concordia for New York City. That's actually a very hard question. Is it right to make the rest of the family unhappy in order to accomplish one person's religious goals? Even if those goals are considered to be good ones? It's sad that either way, someone was asked to sacrifice something that was very dear to them. One of the hard things about true family histories is that, even in retrospect, it can be very hard to see what should have been done since the issues involved are too complex to justify a simple answer.
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