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Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish literary news from around the Web.

  • This week brought the excellent news of a forthcoming essay collection by Kevin Haworth. Titled Famous Drownings in Literary History, the collection is billed as grappling with the “confusing things that make up the life of post-9/11 Jewish American parents and artists.” You can read one of the book’s essays, “The News from Bulgaria,” on Airplane Reading.
  • Read Jacob Paul’s essay on David Grossman’s See Under: Love.
  • “The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute awards grants to support interdisciplinary research or artistic projects on Jewish women and gender issues. Scholars, activists, writers and artists who are pursuing research on questions of significance to the field of Jewish women’s studies may apply.” Application deadline: September 13, 2012.
  • Terrific essay by Doreen Carvajal about her family: “We were raised as Catholics in Costa Rica and California, but late in life I finally started collecting the nagging clues of a very clandestine identity: that we were descendants of secret Sephardic Jews — Christian converts known as conversos, or Anusim (Hebrew for the forced ones) or even Marranos, which in Spanish means swine.”
  • Mark your calendars for October 23, when Norman Manea will appear at YIVO in NYC.

    • Shabbat shalom.

    Words of the Week: Bret Stephens

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    “But the important point is not whether you’re for a democratic Israel or you’re for a Palestinian state. The important question is how that Palestinian state is going to come into being, whether it’s going to be a — it’s going to come into being in a negotiated and peaceful way and, also, what the character of that state is going to be in the future.

    Is that state going to be a progressive, forward-looking, liberal-minded state that really wants to live in peace with Israel or is it going to be another miniature of Lebanon or Iran or another state the sort of remains irredeemably intent on destroying what remains of Israel.

    That’s the issue. It’s like needing an operation. Just because you need an operation, I think both Peter [Beinart] and I can agree that, at some point, Israel might need an operation, doesn’t mean that you just take out the hack saw and cut off your leg because otherwise you’re faced with the possibility of the cancer spreading.”

    Source: Fareed Zakaria GPS. I watched this on Sunday and I thought that in these lines, Stephens captured something significant. (Emphasis in the second paragraph is mine.)

    Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
    Every Friday, My Machberet presents a set of Jewish Literary Links to close out the week.

  • I’ve publicized application deadlines for the Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative in the past. The latest issue of Moment features an article reported through that initiative. It’s gripping–if dispiriting–reading about anti-Israel sentiments and activism in Olympia, Wash.
  • Q&A with Lesléa Newman on the occasion of the adaptation for the stage of her short story, “A Letter to Harvey Milk.”
  • Sample poems from “four Jewish guys”: Philip Terman, Jake Marmer, Jay Michaelson, and Yehoshua November.
  • On my other blog, Practicing Writing, I make it a point to publicize only calls for submissions that promise payment to contributing writers. But because the literary marketplace for specifically Jewish-themed writing is smaller, I’ll consider nonpaying calls for My Machberet. This call, for work to be included in A Family Treasury of Mitzvah Stories, is one example.
  • And as the 2012 London Olympics open today, I remember the 11 Israeli athletes murdered 40 summers ago in Munich. Part of the commemoration: I’ve recorded brief excerpts from my short story, “Homecomings.” Background and link to the audio here.

    • Shabbat shalom.

    Words of the Week: Ambassador Michael Oren

    by Erika Dreifus on
    2

    “Unfortunately, we Israelis observe several minutes of silence every year. We stand in silence for the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, for our soldiers who fell defending the state, and for the victims of terror. We stand in silence for the five Israeli tourists recently murdered by a Hezbollah suicide bomber in Bulgaria. And we will stand in silence tomorrow for our athletes who were senselessly killed at Munich. We stand in silence because we remember and honor, and we stand in silence because this is the loudest expression of our humanity.”

    Source: Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, for The Washington Post‘s “On Faith.”

    Beautifully said, Mr. Ambassador. Thank you.