Jewish Literary Links
Toward the end of each week, the My Machberet blog presents a collection of links, drawn primarily from the world of Jewish books and writing.
- Thanks to everyone who tuned in to catch me (and others) at last week’s Jewish Authors’ Summit. I haven’t received any notification of recordings yet—but fellow speaker/attendee Jonathan Rosen did write up a Substack post about the day.
- “As Jewish Writers Face Boycotts and Bias, New Initiative Aims to Boost Their Books” is a terrific article by Jewish Insider‘s Gabby Deutch about the Jewish Book Council’s “Nu Reads” program. (You may need to enter your email address to access the piece.) And yes, as per usual, I’ve tried to draw the attention of the usual aggregators and such…but so far, I’m not seeing a whole lot of interest from them. (Please let me know if you’re catching anything that I’ve missed.)
- Speaking of boycotts and bias: It’s hard to know quite how to begin addressing this…”campaign.” But as Ellen Ginsberg Simon has noted, “perhaps we can all enjoy a few weeks of golden silence from this wretched crew.” (Her Substack post is, in fact, where I discovered this development; since I no longer read or follow Literary Hub, I’d missed an earlier article on that site, in which one learns that Lit Hub’s own EiC is among the signatories to this [again, it’s a challenge to come up with a serious descriptor for it]…project?). So perhaps it’s already time to re-up some recent thoughts about Literary Hub, as shared within my own October newsletter for writers.
- Over on his Israel from the Inside Substack, Daniel Gordis has begun “a series of conversations with Israeli authors who’ve written books in English that I think might well interest our readers.” His first guest: Judy Lev, whose latest book is the short-fiction collection Bethlehem Road: Stories of Immigration and Exile; his second is Yishay Ishi Ron, whose novel Dog is now available in an English translation by Yardenne Greenspan.
- Believe it or not, this is the final set of Jewish Literary Links for October! Among the free online literary events already on my calendar for November: Yaakov Katz’s conversation with Ami Eden about While Israel Slept, Katz’s latest book (co-authored with Amir Bohbot); author and educator Sarah Sassoon’s Mizrahi Heritage Month presentation as part of the Elson Israel Fellowship program; and a Jewish Book Month 100 One Community conversation between Abigail Pogrebin with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl about the latter’s newly available memoir. (Reminder! November will also be bringing us Jewish Book Month—and this year’s celebration will be very special!)
And a quick note that updates have continued for both “After October 7” (https://bit.ly/46QdMM1)and “Writers, Beware” (https://bit.ly/47vTyHl).
Shabbat shalom.
