Pre-Shabbat Jewish Literary Links

Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
Every Friday My Machberet presents an array of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • Over on the On Being blog: a beautiful poem, “Reasons for Liturgy,” by my friend Amy Gottlieb.
  • “Reading novels published in the last year by some of America’s best Jewish writers, I found myself struck by a recurring character—Israel. That Jonathan Safran Foer’s Here I Am and Joshua Cohen’s Moving Kings both feature Israel and Israelis as important plot devices might have been a coincidence. But then this fall came Nathan Englander’s Dinner at the Center of the Earth and Nicole Krauss’s Forest Dark, both of which are set mostly in Israel. Something’s going on.” Over on the Jewish Review of Books site, Matti Friedman explores.
  • In “Where Crime Fiction Meets the Talmud,” over on Electric Literature, we’re told that “Tod Goldberg’s gangster-turned-rabbi series is the madcap spiritual noir you didn’t know you were looking for.” I’m intrigued.
  • As the publicist who’s running it, I’m compelled to remind you that there’s still time to enter this giveaway for a chance to win the second volume of Rabbi Shai Held’s The Heart of Torah. (Some superb new attention to Rabbi Held and his work includes a conversation on WBEZ (Chicago)’s “Morning Shift” and marvelous profiles on JewishBoston.com and in The Jewish Week.
  • And ICYMI: two items of my own this week. For Tablet, I wrote something in response to a New York Times-suggested reading list. And right here on My Machberet, I published something that The New Yorker didn’t.
  • Happy 5778 and Shabbat (Shuvah) Shalom.