Sunday Sentence

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

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In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

My grandmother was the ninth child in an immigrant German farm family, the kind whose idea of a fun game was throwing live chickens at each other.

Source: Courtney Hodell’s “Babes in the Woods,” in Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids (edited by Meghan Daum).

Words of the Week

by Erika Dreifus on
3

“God, Master of the Universe, please make this world safe for our people this year. Next year may we be in Jerusalem, but this year please take care of the Jews in our holy city and in so many other cities: in Marseilles and Copenhagen, in Argentina and Buenos Aires, Kansas and Seattle, Paris and Tunis, Sderot and Toulouse, Brussels and Donetsk. This Passover evening is a ‘night of vigilance’ [Exodus 12:42]. Please watch over us with divine care and compassion. Protect our sacred tombstones and graves from desecration. Protect our synagogues across the globe from Swastikas and shattering glass. Protect our innocent children on their day school playgrounds and our Jewish communal workers in embassies and community centers. Pour out Your wrath against the world’s injustices so that one day, You can pour out Your love. Ani Ma’amin — I believe that day will come. It is not here yet. Together, we will await that day. We will not wait passively. We will partner with you in a covenant to protect our people and remove them from harm’s way. And we will re-affirm in word and deed our daily commitment to justice, goodness and kindness.”

From Dr. Erica Brown’s “Pour Out Your Love?” in The Jewish Week

Pre-Shabbat (and Pre-Pesach) Jewish Lit Links

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen

Every Friday My Machberet presents an array of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • Truly one of the most exciting news items that crossed my screen this week: Kevin Haworth’s announcement regarding his contract to write a book on Israeli comics artist Rutu Modan.
  • The week also brought a new issue of JewishFiction.Net, featuring work by Isaac Babel, Thane Rosenbaum, Rebecca Klempner, and many others.
  • Now that I’ve finished reading one Jewishly-inflected poetry collection (Lesléa Newman’s I Carry My Mother), it’s time to begin another one: Jehanne Dubrow’s The Arranged Marriage, reviewed this week by Judy Bolton-Fasman for The Forward‘s “The Sisterhood” blog.
  • Over on the Fig Tree Books website, Dinah Fay has contributed a new discussion of Amy Bloom’s Away.
  • “TC Jewfolk is seeking a highly motivated self-starter with experience and passion for blogging, managing writers, and community journalism to be the Editor for TC Jewfolk. This role is a paid, part-time position, with great flexibility. The primary office for this position is located at the Sabes JCC in St. Louis Park, MN.

    • Shabbat Shalom, and Chag Pesach Sameach!