Erika Dreifus

The My Machberet blog is proud to serve as October 2018 host for the Jewish Book Carnival, a monthly event where those who cover Jewish books online “can meet, read, and comment on each others’ posts.” Organized by the Association of Jewish Libraries, the Carnival travels around and is hosted on a different participant’s site on the 15th of each month.

Herewith, the October 2018 Jewish Book Carnival:

• Let’s begin with Howard Lovy, who has been writing quite a bit lately for Publishers Weekly and offers a recent interview published there with Jack Wertheimer, Professor of American Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary, about The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice Their Religion Today.
• Gila Green presents “an interview with British-Israeli translator, playwright, and poet Atar Hadari,” occasioned by Hadari’s latest publication, Lives of the Dead: Collected Poems by Hanoch Levin.
• Deborah Kalb interviews a wide variety of authors on her blog, Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb. Here’s a recent interview with Bram Presser about his new novel, The Book of Dirt.
• Representing the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute blog, Amy Sessler Powell shares a guest post in which Gabrielle Rossmer Gropman, co-author with her daughter Sonya Gropman of The German-Jewish Cookbook: Recipes & History of a Cuisine (Brandeis University Press, HBI Series on Jewish Women), recounts a trip through Germany. Mother and daughter visited places where the recipes originated “and did a number of talks and cooking demos on the German-Jewish cuisine offered in their book and the history of a cuisine nearly lost to our collective memories.”
• At Rhapsody in Books, Jill reviews The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris, which “tells the incredible story of Lale Sokolov, who served as a tattooist at Auschwitz from 1942 to 1945.”
• And at A Jewish Grandmother, Batya reviews Art of Revelation: A Visual Encounter with the Jewish Bible by Yoram Raanan, “a visual and spiritual treat, perfect to feast your eyes on Shabbat, Jewish Holidays and weekdays, too.”
• Over on The Whole Megillah, Barbara Krasner interviews memoirist Ellen G. Levine about her book, The Seven, and her family’s extraordinary journey east through the Soviet Union during the Holocaust.
• From The Book of Life podcast, Heidi Rabinowitz offers a conversation with Barbara Bietz, author of The Sundown Kid: A Southwestern Shabbat.
• And last, but maybe not least: here’s the very latest pre-Shabbat round-up of Jewish lit links as presented right here on the My Machberet blog. Last Friday’s batch included: a chance to be published on the Jewish Review of Books website; a spotlight on Dara Horn’s latest Tablet piece (on Yiddish writer Dovid Bergelson); an introduction to a new novel by Shais Rishon (MaNishtana); a review by Howard Freedman of three books focused on Jewish law; and an update from me about my work with Jewish Storyteller Press.