Book Description
Once again, Sarah Shapiro demonstrates her keen eye and sensitive discerning heart. In a series of reflections on life, love, childhood, parenting, growing old, and many other areas of human concern, she helps us grow as Jews and indeed as human beings. The essays are short, the style is light, but there is much here to ponder. This is a volume that will enrich and inspire its readers.
–Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz
Sarah Shapiro has done it again. This is a book that will delight and inspire. It is insightful yet clever, thoughtful and fascinating, profound and yet entertaining. A must-read.
–Rabbi Emanuel Feldman
Sarah Shapiro’s writing is fine literature: profound, witty, and enjoyable.
–Rabbi Nosson Scherman
In these stories of spiritual transformation — her own and others’ — the author crosses worlds to find the truths we need to live fully.
–Sherri Mandell, author of The Blessing of a Broken Heart
When you want to get to know someone, the first place to look is their heart. The problem is that it isn’t always easy to penetrate the many walls that surround a heart. Sarah Shapiro is gifted. She knows how to translate the language of the heart into entertaining, literate English. When you read her essays and stories, you end up richer. You have more people in your life, and each one of them makes it easier for you to not only know them but to know yourself — better than you did before enjoying what is always a great read.
–Rebbetzin Tziporah Gottlieb
About The Author
Other Titles by This Author
Growing with My Children: A Jewish Mother’s Diary (Targum/CIS)
Don’t You Know It’s a Perfect World? (Targum/Feldheim)
Reflections on the World of the Jewish Woman (Artscroll Judaiscope Series)
A Gift Passed Along (Artscroll)
Wish I Were Here (Artscroll)
Our Lives: An Anthology of Jewish Women’s Writings (Targum/Feldheim)
More of Our Lives: An Anthology of Jewish Women’s Writings (Targum/Feldheim)
The Mother in Our Lives (Targum/Feldheim)
All of Our Lives: An Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Writing (Targum/Feldheim)
Praise
Once again, Sarah Shapiro demonstrates her keen eye and sensitive discerning heart. In a series of reflections on life, love, childhood, parenting, growing old, and many other areas of human concern, she helps us grow as Jews and indeed as human beings. The essays are short, the style is light, but there is much here to ponder. This is a volume that will enrich and inspire its readers.
–Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz
Sarah Shapiro has done it again. This is a book that will delight and inspire. It is insightful yet clever, thoughtful and fascinating, profound and yet entertaining. A must-read.
–Rabbi Emanuel Feldman
Sarah Shapiro’s writing is fine literature: profound, witty, and enjoyable.
–Rabbi Nosson Scherman
In these stories of spiritual transformation — her own and others’ — the author crosses worlds to find the truths we need to live fully.
–Sherri Mandell, author of The Blessing of a Broken Heart
When you want to get to know someone, the first place to look is their heart. The problem is that it isn’t always easy to penetrate the many walls that surround a heart. Sarah Shapiro is gifted. She knows how to translate the language of the heart into entertaining, literate English. When you read her essays and stories, you end up richer. You have more people in your life, and each one of them makes it easier for you to not only know them but to know yourself — better than you did before enjoying what is always a great read.
–Rebbetzin Tziporah Gottlieb
Book Reviews
They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but I was immediately drawn into Sarah Shapiro’s latest book by her ingenious title, An Audience of One. To me the words form a potent image of Hashem Himself clapping as I stand on the stage of life, reciting, acting and making the inevitable mistakes that living brings with it.
Sarah’s honesty about her own life experience is what her readers find irresistible. It is like sharing coffee with a friend who reads your mind, senses your pain and allows you into her inner world as proof of her understanding.
She draws the name for her collection of personal anecdotes from an interview with Rabbi Dovid Refson, born in Sunderland, UK, and now dean of Neve Yerushalayim, the world-famous Israeli college for women. His idea of playing to an audience of one seems grounded in the concept of speaking to each student as if they are the only one in the school. Could it still be a double entendre? For even while teaching each student, the subject matter is still Hashem Echad.
However you look at it, Sarah manages to pull the heartstrings of her own audience, giving rise to profound struggles and joys, questions of meaning and her own particular way of giving Hashem life along her personal journey.
As the daughter of the famous American, Norman Cousins—described in Wikipedia as an ‘American political journalist, author, professor and world peace advocate’— she was not automatically admitted into the inner circle of writers and influential people by rite of passage. She travelled a long and laborious road to achievement, fighting long and hard for understanding in her search for truth. She is as candid as she is real; as genuine as she is human.
A particularly touching story takes place on a visit to her sister in the States. Growing up together with a secular world view, her sister intuits only a small part of Sarah’s deep attachment to her life of Torah. The drought there causes Sarah to feel that prayer is the answer. She is a lone voice in the wilderness, but pray she does, and the outcome shocks her.
For those who remember her first and seminal book, Growing With My Children, this is a poignant sequel to those early years: a coming of age tinged with some of that same innocence and curiosity which makes her so endearing. This book is deeply coloured by the long arm of experience coupled with the ever stronger belief in the One who wrote and runs the greatest show on Earth.
In the telling, she allows us to draw on our own moments of truth which help fashion our belief that Hashem is our personal Audience of One.
Thinker –
This collection of personal essays is profoundly moving and very well written. Sometimes the quality of writing in the frum world can be a barrier for those with a secular education or sensibility. However, this book qualifies as literary, the writing is a delight and the pieces are moving and honest. I highly recommend this book.
Customer –
Sarah Shapiro’s book Audience of One resonated deeply with me as do all her books. She’s an articulate and brilliant writer weaving deep truths into her stories with stunning simplicity.
Ari –
Some Interesting stories but a slow read, hard to follow at times
Jodi Sugar –
This book touched my soul. Sarah Shapiro connects the soul of the matter to the subject matter. She writes about sensitive subjects and relates personal stories and anecdotes. I savored it and allowed myself one or two stories a day because I didn’t want the book to end! I almost gave it away but decided I will read it again one day.
Miriam Luxenberg –
Not only did I buy this book once, but when someone borrowed my copy and did not return it I bought it again. Sarah Shapiro is a keen observer and a brilliant writer, and is able to combine these two gifts to create realistic yet artistic portraits of her subjects, whomever or whatever they may be, accentuating their beauty without negating their flaws. It is a rare talent, and anyone who reads this book may ever after view the world with a slightly different eye — more forgiving, more compassionate — because of it.
eclectic –
I’m pretty particular about what I read Super good!!!!