Rivka Levy's Blog

Come join me at:  https://rivkalevy.com/

BH, I'm so excited about this. For years, I wanted to start up a podcast where I'd start interviewing some of the more interesting orthodox Jewish authors out there, so readers could engage a little more with the person behind the book.

Yael Shahar is a veteran contributor to Sasson Magazine, and has just published a new book called Returning, which absolutely blew my socks off, when I read it.

You can find out a little more about who Yael actually is, and why her book had such a strong impact...

A little while back, I was exchanging some emails with a fellow-writer about the art of commenting on posts, and trying to build a real relationship with our readers.

While it’s easy to comment on a post – all you do is type something and press ‘submit’ – actually commenting in a thoughtful way which is not just about massaging your own ego or ‘being seen to comment’ is actually way, way harder.

Like so many of the things internet-connected, it’s an iron fist hidden in a velvet glove,...

I'm always a sucker for memoirs, and especially memoirs written about experiences or periods of time that capture some of the essence of what it meant to be a Jew at that time and in that place.

Hava Ben-Tzvi's memoir, called 'We Who Lived, Two Teenagers in World War II Poland' packs a lot of poignant detail into some deceptively simple and easy-to-read prose - I read the book in one sitting. The story begins in Poland, transverses the horrors of World War II and the holocaust, and then skips...

A few weeks’ back, I got my first bad review on ‘ The Secret Diary of a Jewish Housewife’, over on Amazon. A nice-sounding woman called Yvette had this to say about it:
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I thought this book would be about Jewish life but it is really about the author's inability to enjoy her life without all her questions being answered. Even God doesn't seem to be able to answer them for her. It never occurs to her that maybe there are no answers, at least none that will be available in her lifetime)... and...

One of the reasons I very rarely read books by English-speaking rabbis these days is because I usually find them woefully superficial, and not so satisfying intellectually or spiritually.

Within Israel, and within chassidut generally, you tend to find a much deeper grasp of the real, underlying spiritual mechanisms going on in the world, but much of that is based on having a much deeper knowledge of the Zohar and the kabbalah from the original Hebrew sources – and most English-speakin...

In our superficial world, it’s so easy to hype a book up as being ‘life-changing’. But how often do the tomes in question actually live up to their hyperbole? So it’s with some hesitation that I tell you that From the Depths, the new book from Rav Ofer Erez in English is just that.

I first got hold of a copy of this book, in the original Hebrew, around three years ago, when I was in the middle of a huge mid-life crisis. This was just after our business in the Old City of Jerusalem had cl...

I haven’t bought a cookbook for Pesach in more than 15 years. The last one I got was quite the disappointment - big on gorgeous pictures, but full of ‘recipes’ that were basically some version of ‘combine onion soup mix with X’ or ‘get X brand and then do this with it’.

While all that stuff was available in the US for Pesach, the UK 15 years’ back was nowhere near as well stocked with kosher for Passover ‘brands’, so most of the recipes in that book were a bust.

Then, I went through my hardcor...

The new biography of Rav Eliezer Berland, shlita, 'One in a Generation: From Haifa to Uman' has just hit the #1 spot for new releases on Amazon in the 'Orthodox Judaism' category! 

Which is pretty exciting, even though between you and I, it doesn't take a lot of book sales to get to achieve that in the 'Orthodox Judaism' category. But it's still really nice to see it! Here's a bit of blurb about the book, and then if you scroll down, you'll find how you can buy if for yourself.

It just...

10 ways to enjoy your writing even if it’s not paying the bills

Tip 1: Stop promoting yourself

This sounds so counter-intuitive, I know, but here’s the low-down: the whole world is absolutely, thoroughly sick and tired of self-promoters trying to get us to buy their latest book, or forcing us to ‘share’ how wonderful they think they are.

Pretty much the fastest way to turn-off your potential readership and alienate your audience is to keep banging on about that book you wrote that you’re t...