Erika Dreifus

• Only with news of her passing (on July 10, at the age of 103), have I discovered the life and work of Dutch Jewish author Marga Minco.
• ICYMI (as I did), there is, fortunately a recording of “Great Women Yiddish Writers (You Never Heard About) with Anita Norich and Lisa Newman,” a Zoominar co-sponsored by Moment magazine and the Yiddish Book Center, that was presented this week.
• “At a time when book banning by zealots on the right and left is in the news (with Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen banned for nudity and classics like Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird banned for ‘racism’), I am uneasy calling for the withdrawal of a very attractive book that has a lot to offer. I don’t want to be assimilated to book banners of any political stripe. But non-fiction books should be just that – non-fiction.” You may not agree with everything stated in this book review—but the piece raises important questions about how to deal with misinformation and disinformation in children’s nonfiction that deals with (or, as the reviewer argues here, erases) Israel and/or Jewishness.
• Another reminder that “there is more to the Jewish story than antisemitism and the Holocaust,” this time in the context of celebrated plays.
• And this week brought the arrival of the July Jewish Book Carnival, hosted for the month by Barbara Bietz.

Shabbat shalom.