Ruth Lehrer's memoir-in-thirty-six essays is a compelling contemplation about her life as a secular American Jewish woman. With humor and passion, she tells of her family's arrival in America in 1920, her Yiddishe Mama, Catskill vacations, Bar Mitzvahs, Christmas trees, war and peace, religion, God, and politics. She delights in books, theatre, and film with Jewish content, and laughs loudest at jokes told in Yiddish. When she hears of a crime, she prays that the perpetrator is not Jewish. A Judaica gift shop is her favorite place to browse.

Ruth Lehrer's memoir-in-thirty-six essays is a compelling contemplation about her life as a secular American Jewish woman. With humor and passion, she tells of her family's arrival in America in 1920, her Yiddishe Mama, Catskill vacations, Bar Mitzvahs, Christmas trees, war and peace, religion, God, and politics. She delights in books, theatre, and film with Jewish content, and laughs loudest at jokes told in Yiddish. When she hears of a crime, she prays that the perpetrator is not Jewish. A Judaica gift shop is her favorite place to browse.

Tiger laughs when you push / She already has dirt with her donut / and knows the cage is cardboard. The poems in Tiger Laughs When You Push are full of wit, lyric ingenuity, and imaginative acuteness. Heartcracked, I need cereal lowjack / fruit GPS / to get out from under / the cheesy cheers. Ruth Lehrer's virtuosity for the use of detail, for image, for sound - is unique and a great great gift to encounter. These poems are insightful and provocative. They are marvelous.
- Emily Pettit, author of Goat in the Snow
From a mother who sends her daughter...