“If we blow into the narrow end of the shofar, we will be heard far,” said Cynthia Ozick in 1970. “But if we choose to be mandkind rather than Jewish and blow into the wider part, we will not be heard at all.” Through books like The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories, The Shawl, and The Puttermesser Papers, Ozick has become one of the most recognized Jewish American authors. Her most recent novel, Heir to the Glimmering World, is the Depression-era story of Rose Meadows, an 18-year-old orphan, who finds herself caught up in the domestic and intellectual dramas of the Mitwissers, a family of German Jewish refugees.

Recorded Tuesday, May 23, 2006 at Chicago Public Library.