Erika Dreifus

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.

• The 100th anniversary of Jewish Book Month continues! My personal observance has included reading the fabulous new picture-book biography all about the heroine of this happy story: Fanny Goldstein. Learn more in author Rich Michelson’s post for the Jewish Book Council’s PB Daily.
• “I would simply say that we, Jewish writers living in the diaspora after Oct. 7, who write in English (or French, Spanish, German or Russian), simply do not have the luxury of writing about whatever we want. We are too fractured, too confused, too assimilated, too threatened, and our story is too important for that. We need to tell it in a way that preserves and celebrates Jewish continuity with the past while extending it towards new, imaginative horizons.” From an undated, though presumably new essay (at any rate, I’ve only newly encountered it) by rabbi and novelist Benjamin Resnick for My Jewish Learning.
• By Amy Cook: “How Antisemitism at My MFA Program Led Me Back to Torah” (On Being Jewish Now).
• Over on Between the Lines, Gary Rosenblatt has shared two excerpts (first and second) from a chapter he contributed to a forthcoming book titled A Shattered World: Jews and Israel After October 7. “Edited by well-known academics Michael Berenbaum and Gilbert Kahn, and published by Purdue University Press, it consists of a collection of essays – each by a different contributor – on a key issue impacting the Jewish future.” Rosenblatt’s subject: mainstream media’s coverage of the war.
• Announced last week: the longlist for the Wingate Prize, the UK-based award for “the best book, fiction or non-fiction, to convey the idea of Jewishness to the general reader.” And announced yesterday: the longlist for the Freudenheim Translation Prize, also UK-based, which “celebrates excellence in translated fiction and non-fiction, highlighting the power of Jewish literature to engage diverse audiences.”

Shabbat shalom.