Jewish Literary Links

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

  • “How a Polarizing Best Seller Became Required Reading for Orthodox Jewish Women”: fascinating piece by Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt for The Atlantic.
  • The Chutzpod! podcast, hosted by Rabbi Shira Stutman and Joshua Malina, seeks an intern. Compensation: “university credit or $15/hour, which is less than you’re worth, we know.” They’re looking for a minimum six-month commitment, “five-ish” hours per week. No deadline indicated; interviews/hiring “on a rolling basis.”
  • Fabulous news broke this week: WTAW Press has acquired The Only Part Left, Zeeva Bukai’s debut short story collection. “Set in New York and Tel-Aviv, the stories in The Only Part Left explore the trauma of war, loss, love, marriage, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi cultures, and the effects of exile on family, personhood, and identity. In this collection, a soldier kidnaps her beloved’s child, a Syrian boy imagines himself a great rabbi in a world that no longer exists, a group of former soldiers and immigrant neighbors are triggered when a construction crew tears up their street, a hotel maid loses her lover in a terror attack, and a woman who longs for home struggles to maintain the integrity of her marriage and family against the forces of assimilation and Americanization.” No publication date yet indicated, but if this author is new to you, you can acquaint yourself with her wonderful work on her website.
  • Today, of course, is Yom HaShoah. I’m grateful to Fiction Writers Review for re-upping my 2011 essay “Looking Backward? Third-Generation Fiction Writers and the Holocaust.” That essay occupies an interesting spot in my archive between an earlier exploration, “Ever After? History, Healing, and ‘Holocaust Fiction’ in the Third Generation” and “A Special Kind of Kinship: On Being a ‘3G’ Writer.”
  • Are you ready for #JewishAmericanHeritageMonth (here in the USA) and #JewishHeritageMonth (in Canada)? You know who certainly is ready? Penguin Young Readers, recommending lots of its own award-winning Jewish kidlit.

May the memories of all the Shoah’s victims be a blessing—and Shabbat shalom.

an open book (with Hebrew pages visible); subtitle reads "Jewish Literary Links"

2 thoughts on “Jewish Literary Links

  1. Re Yom Hashoah
    (From note I came across Imade years ago -unfortunately didn’t list attribution.)
    Dzigan and Schmacher, Yiddish comedians spent most of the war years traveling as refugees in Russia. In the year 49 or 50, they appeared in a rather shabby hall in New York’s Union Square. The place was thronged with refugees from all over Europe. On stage, Dzigan with his shuffling walk and sad, sagging face, Schumacher stepping precisely and looking bland. They scanned the audience for a long while in a silence in which you could hear a tear drop, then said simultaneously, “aby men zeht zech” (“just as long as I can see you.”) The entire audience broke down and wept.
    Larry Lefkowitz

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