Jewish Literary Links

an open book (with Hebrew pages visible); subtitle reads "Jewish Literary Links"
Image by Yedidia Klein from Pixabay

  • “The Best Jewish Children’s Books of 2023” (by Rachel Fremmer for Tablet).
  • Just launched: the Kickstarter campaign for Howard Lovy’s From Outrage to Action: A Practical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism, envisioned as a “‘how-to’ book on challenging anti-Jewish attitudes from digital spaces to the real world.” (I’ve backed it.)
  • Two Etgar Keret pieces crossed my screen this week. First: a new short story written, as the Guardian introduces it, “in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.” Also inflected by the current moment: Keret’s (poignant) latest Substack post. Both pieces are translated by Jessica Cohen.
  • Missed my daily Jewish Book Month tweets? You can find them here. (I’ll eventually transfer the titles to a Bookshop list.) Note that recently, I’ve included “#ReadIsrael” for relevant tweets, a practice that I plan to continue and encourage others to adopt.
  • And just in time for Hanukkah—a new issue of JewishFiction.net.

Speaking of Hanukkah: This first night of the holiday, coinciding with the 82nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, is perhaps a particularly appropriate time to revisit “Fidelis,” my short story that was first aired on NPR’s 2011 “Hanukkah Lights” broadcast. (Apologies: NPR did not provide a transcript.)

Wishing everyone a Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom.

Jewish Literary Links

an open book (with Hebrew pages visible); subtitle reads "Jewish Literary Links"
Image by Yedidia Klein from Pixabay

Wishing everyone a Shabbat shalom.

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

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.