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Lexile/Reading Level
Recommended for 9-12 Grade & Adult

Genre/Category
Fiction | Historical

Historical Time Period
Medieval | Middle Ages
Date
1200s
Topic
Anti-Semitism | Intelligience | Jews or Jewish
Geographic Region
England | Europe | France | Germany | Middle East
Main Character
Woman/Women
Format
Book | Ebook

Fruit of Her Hands: The Story of Shira of Ashkenaz

Author: Cameron, Michelle

Based on the life of the author’s thirteenth-century ancestor, Meir ben Baruch of Rothenberg, a renowned Jewish scholar of medieval Europe, this is the richly dramatic fictional story of Rabbi Meir’s wife, Shira, a devout but rebellious woman who preserves her religious traditions as she and her family witness the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe.

Raised by her widowed rabbi father and a Christian nursemaid in Normandy, Shira is a free-spirited, inquisitive girl whose love of learning shocks the community. When Shira’s father is arrested by the local baron intent on enforcing the Catholic Church’s strictures against heresy, Shira fights for his release and encounters two men who will influence her life profoundly—an inspiring Catholic priest and Meir ben Baruch, a brilliant scholar. In Meir, Shira finds her soulmate.

Married to Meir in Paris, Shira blossoms as a wife and mother, savoring the intellectual and social challenges that come with being the wife of a prominent scholar. After witnessing the burning of every copy of the Talmud in Paris, Shira and her family seek refuge in Germany. Yet even there they experience bloody pogroms and intensifying anti-Semitism. With no safe place for Jews in Europe, they set out for Israel only to see Meir captured and imprisoned by Rudolph I of Hapsburg. As Shira weathers heartbreak and works to find a middle ground between two warring religions, she shows her children and grandchildren how to embrace the joys of life, both secular and religious.

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What is my Child’s Lexile Measure?

GRADELEXILE
1st0-300L
2nd140-500L
3rd330-700L
4th445-810L
5th565-910L
6th665-1000L
7th735-1065L
8th805-1100L
9th855-1165L
10th905-1195L
11th/12th940-1210L
College+1210+

Find out more about Lexile Measures.

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