Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
Shabbat shalom.
Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat
Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards Update
I’ve been wondering what was happening with the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Awards for Poems on the Jewish Experience. I routinely enter (and lose) this competition, and it seems to have a spring deadline. I wasn’t finding any updates online for this year’s contest, and then, lo and behold, an email message arrived this morning.
The message was from Michal Mahgerefteh, publisher/editor of Poetica Magazine, Contemporary Jewish Writing and Art, and it informed me that the 2013 competition is being administered by the magazine.
The contest is open to all writers, irrespective of ethnicity or religious affiliation. Poems should address “Jewish Experience.” There’s no entry fee, and the deadline for 2013 is November 15. “Total prize money of $3000 will be distributed between 1-3 places and honorable mentions.”
You can find full guidelines here.
Thanks to Ms. Mahgerefteh for contacting me.
Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat
Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
Shabbat shalom.
Giving a Voice–and a Name–to Noah’s Wife: My Interview with Rebecca Kanner
These days, we attend more closely to the role of our biblical matriarchs. But while Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel occupy the spotlight, most of us haven’t thought much about another female antecedent: Noah’s wife.
As I mentioned here recently, Rebecca Kanner’s new novel, “Sinners and the Sea,” imagines the experiences of that woman. I recently had the opportunity to interview Kanner, who is based in Minneapolis, for The Forward‘s Sisterhood blog.
Theodor Herzl, George Eliot, and Me
If you follow me on Goodreads, you know that not long ago, I was reading George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda.
Today’s edition of Jewish Ideas Daily features some reflections on that reading.
In the beginning, there was Theodor Herzl. Or so I thought. I have a Ph.D. in European history, but I have long been aware of the deficiencies in my knowledge of Jewish history and my Israel literacy. So when I discovered the opportunity to take a non-credit course on Zionism here in New York, I jumped at the chance.
Once enrolled, I learned just how much Zionist history there was before Herzl. Our initial sessions were devoted to a variety of Zionist forerunners and an extensive documentary legacy that anticipated Herzl’s visionary 1896 pamphlet, The Jewish State.
I was dutifully taking notes during our second class meeting when our professor mentioned another text that expressed Zionist sentiments well before Herzl took up his mission. But unlike the writings of Rabbis Yehuda Alkalai and Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, or those of Leon Pinsker and Ahad Ha’am, this text was written in English, and by a woman who wasn’t even Jewish. Somewhat surprisingly, it wasn’t a polemic or a pamphlet. It was a novel by George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Anne Evans), Daniel Deronda, published in 1876, 21 years before Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress.
To read the rest of my essay, please click here.
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