Pre-Shabbat Jewish Literary 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.

  • For your viewing pleasure: a video of Adam Kirsch speaking on the topic, “Is There Such a Thing as Jewish Literature?”
  • One of the most interesting articles I’ve read thus far on Patrick Modiano in the wake of his Nobel-prize win, by Michael Weingrad for Mosaic Magazine.
  • A trove of Hanukkah fiction from JewishFiction.Net.
  • My thanks to Christi Craig for inviting me to expound on “Jewish storytelling.”
  • And last, but by no means least: the latest newsletter from Fig Tree Books!

    • Shabbat shalom and Chag Sameach!

    Midweek Notes from a Practicing Writer

    by Erika Dreifus on
    11

    Watching my grandfather--a refugee from Nazism and a U.S. Army WWII veteran--kindle the Hanukkah candles in 1972.
    Watching my grandfather–a refugee from Nazism and a U.S. Army WWII veteran–kindle the Hanukkah candles in 1972.

    HANUKKAH

    Since Hanukkah began last night, I planned to share something I posted here last year: this photo of my grandfather and me, accompanied by a link to the archived story of mine that was included on National Public Radio’s “Hanukkah Lights” broadcast back in 2011. That story, “Fidelis,” was on my mind again last year when I caught this article in The New York Times Magazine on the anniversary of a World War II battle (Tarawa) that is central to it.

    Lo and behold, I returned from a Hanukkah celebration last night (to which I happened to wear, as I often do, a ring that belonged to my grandfather on a silver chain around my neck), to discover that “Fidelis” has been “re-upped” to be part of the 2014 “Hanukkah Lights” broadcast, too. Icing on this cake (or jelly doughnut, as the holiday case may be): NPR is calling the story “a classic” from its “vault.” To which all I can say is: Wow.

    ‘TIS THE SEASON: FOR LITERARY AWARDS

    Last week I had the pleasure of attending two literary-award events. (more…)

    Sunday Sentence

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    Toews

     

    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.”

    If you have to end up in the hospital, try to focus all your pain in your heart rather than your head.

    Source: Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows (NB: this book is filled with potential Sunday Sentences)