On My Nightstand: Books that Prizmah Staff Are Reading

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HBR Guide to Data Analytics Basics for Managers

Running a school or organization, now more than ever, there is a need to be able to make sense of numbers. This Harvard Business Review book is a guide for business managers who don’t have a data background to be able to make data-informed decisions. Each chapter is written by a different author with varying expertise in the data analytics world. Learn how to gather the right information, the difference between data and metrics, and how to analyze data to make decisions and communicate your findings.

When you’re not a data scientist, you have to rely on those who are the experts. This book helps you ask data experts the right questions to have a better understanding of what you’re looking at. For example, asking what assumptions are behind your analysis can give one a deeper understanding of the limitations of the data. While this book is written for the business world, there is still a lot to take away for people with oversight of an organization’s finances and test score data. 

Review by Odelia Epstein

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Zabar’s, A Family Story, with Recipes, by Lori Zabar

Lox, family, history; family, history, lox. No matter which way you look at this book, I knew I could not go wrong.

I lived on the Upper West Side of New York City for 10 years in the ‘80s and ‘90s. To this day when I visit, a trip to Zabar’s, the legendary appetizing store, remains a favorite activity, sometimes to purchase delicious Jewish specialties and sometimes just to gawk. For the past 26 years I have lived in Tampa, and we just don’t see this in central Florida.

Lori Zabar tells a beautiful tale of her family, beginning when her grandparents immigrated to the United States, and the incredible work that went into building this iconic NYC brand. Yet what stood out for me was how dedicated they were, and still are, to family. Not many family-owned retail food businesses can boast that they have the fourth generation still heavily engaged in the operations. I was also very pleased to learn how committed the Zabar family was to the creation of the State of Israel and to many other Jewish organizations to which they shared their success. Synagogues, day schools, camps and social service providers were all the beneficiaries of some connection to the Zabar family. 

In short, this book provides a lovely insight into an immigrant success story, even as it surrounds the reader with the flavors and aromas of walking into that orange and white building at 80th and Broadway. 

Review by Amy Wasser

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Humble: Free Yourself from the Traps of a Narcissistic World, by Daryl Van Tongeren

This book is easy to read, has practical applications and is based on hard data and research. I am enjoying being pushed out of my comfort zone. Essentially, Dr. Van Tongeren explains that true humility is knowing yourself and loving yourself, so that you have the confidence and inner strength to remain open and curious about what you do not yet know. In today’s society of growing fear of the “other” and a real avoidance of confrontation or exposure to new or radical ideas, the author posits that the only attitude to extremism is actually humility. 

One of our greatest teachers was Moses, whom the Torah describes as “more humble than anyone else.” A funny way to describe being humble, if you think about it… But when you think about humility in the way this book suggests, then Moses was, indeed, able to receive wisdom from all sources, and is someone who we might consider as a role model for us as teachers: to know ourselves, our strengths and our weaknesses so that we can be open to learn.

Review by Rachel Dratch

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The Disappearance, by Geneviève Jurgensen (translated by Adriana Hunter)

This memoir is a brutally honest and powerfully written account of a mother’s unending grief at the shocking loss of her two young daughters in an automobile accident. The story is told through a series of letters written by the author to a friend 12 years after the death of her children. The intervening years have done little to soften the blow of that phone call informing Jurgensen of the unimaginable accident.

This haunting epistolary memoir is Jurgensen’s attempt at remaining tethered to a world bereft of her daughters: Mathilde, age 7, and Elise, age 4. With each letter, Jorgensen seems to obliquely ask whether and how it is possible to live a life in the shadow of such immense loss. In letter after letter to her friend, Jurgensen’s wish is not for her own “closure,” not a desire to overcome her suffering and grief. She well knows the pain of her loss will never end; rather, she is determined that her friend (as well as all readers of this unforgettable book) will comprehend the depth of her loss through knowledge of who these two young girls truly were.

The Disappearance is a meditation on managing to live with grief and loss, and as Jurgenson’s memoir makes clear, perhaps suffering was the last way she could continue to love her children. Despite the violent end of their short lives, on the pages of this book they are once again seen in their full humanity—we witness their pain, love, fragility, strength, and ultimately, through their mother’s perseverance, most of all, their courage.

Review by Ilisa Cappell

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