Posts Tagged‘Anti-Semitism’

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Occasional Notes from a Practicing Writer

by Erika Dreifus on
12

This past Sunday afternoon, I moderated a panel titled “Addressing Antisemitism in Our Literary Lives” at the 2023 Jewish Book Council Writers’ Conference. In addition to moderating, I participated as a panelist. And below, you’ll find the handout around which most of my remarks were organized.

As I made clear at the session’s outset, I was speaking for myself only—not for the Jewish Book Council, and not for any of my co-panelists, either. I also said that there was no way I’d be able to cover everything there was to say. That would have been the case even if the session had been held before October 7. (In fact, we proposed the panel last summer, which is also when it was accepted. Because, unfortunately, antisemitism in literary and literary-adjacent spaces is not new.)

I hope that you’ll find this to be a helpful resource. (Don’t neglect the footnotes!)

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Finds for Writers

by Erika Dreifus on
5

Another week, another atypical Friday post.

Normally, I post a set of particularly Jewishly-inflected literary links over on the My Machberet blog each Thursday. And the next day, I link to that post as one of several “finds” for the broader writing community right here on Practicing Writing.

But in my world, and for many of you, nothing’s normal right now.

Here’s what I posted on My Machberet yesterday.

And in this space today, I’ll post some items that, more urgently than usual, seem important for both blogs’ audiences to encounter.

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Words of the Week: Sarah Einstein on “Writing as an Act of Teshuvah”

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

The essay I’m currently working on covers a time in my twenties when I was decidedly, and based on flimsy reasoning, anti-Zionist….During that time, I said many stupid things, informed by fringe sources and a little in love with my own sense of being “one of the good ones” in my group of radical lefty friends. In playing this role, I helped to enable the antisemitic rhetoric of the left and gave cover to those who espoused the worst of it. And while very few (but not none) of my lefty friends went on to become people who set policy or hold much sway, it still contributed to the current climate in which Jews find themselves unwelcome in some of the politically progressive movements we helped to found.

[….]

I’m intentionally working on this essay during these days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when we are called on to do the necessary acts to right the wrongs we have done, because I want the writing to be inflected with the need to publicly own the harm and for the essay itself to fulfill Maimonides’ steps of teshuvah:

Please read Sarah Einstein’s full essay, “Writing as an Act of Teshuvah,” on Substack.