Erika Dreifus

• As we approach 2020, Lea Zeltserman is sharing her top 10 picks from the “Soviet-Jewish Decade” just past. She is spotlighting “the works that have advanced and changed how we think about and understand Soviet Jewry. They are works that have also stuck with me personally, expanded my own knowledge of the Soviet-Jewish experience, or sometimes ‘just’ moved me deeply.” I’m watching the list develop with great interest.
• Earlier this week I spent some time reading the latest issue of the Jewish Review of Books, which includes a standout piece occasioned by the release of a new edition of “Glikl” (aka Gluckl of Hameln)’s Memoirs. Included within: a couple of excerpts.
• I’m happy to have discovered that there’s work afoot to adapt Dorit Rabinyan’s novel All the Rivers (as it’s known in the English translation by Jessica Cohen) for the screen—and that Gal Gadot is involved. I’m less pleased to see that the news has re-upped the buzzworthy-but-misleading description of the novel as “banned” in Israel. (For a review of that subject, please refer to my 2017 piece.)
• “Which Israeli writers did I depend on this year? Who offered fresh thinking and sharp analysis on Israel from Israel? Whose evocative descriptions gave me a taste of Israel on the days I missed it most? Most of all, which writers were an invaluable help in my work of telling Israel’s story?” Find out who served as Sally Abrams’s teachers in this post.
• And, from the archive: This week I listened again to “Fidelis,” the short story that I wrote in 2011 for that year’s “Hanukkah Lights” broadcast on NPR. It’s a pretty good story, if I say so myself.

Shabbat shalom and chag sameach!