Posts Tagged‘Jewish-American history’

Home » Jewish-American history » Page 16

Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled
Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
  • The application deadline is approaching for “Great Jewish Books,” a new, free summer program for rising high school juniors and seniors at the Yiddish Book Center. Listen to the Yiddish Book Center’s Academic Director, Josh Lambert, speak with Aaron Lansky about the program, and about an exemplary short story: Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith.”
  • The March 2012 issue of Poetry magazine features a section on “The Poetry of Kabbalah.”
  • The archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee are going online. Joseph Berger’s article includes the tidbit that Canadian author David Bezmozgis “is working on a novel about the Jewish experience in Crimea. He has tapped the archives to research a Joint-sponsored movement in the 1920s and ’30s to turn penniless shtetl and ghetto Jews into farmers on Soviet collective farms.”
  • Last Sunday, I went to see the Emma Lazarus exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. It will be there for several more months. Try to see it!
  • It’s not online, but my latest poem, “Dayenu” is featured in the new (March-April) issue of Moment magazine. (Page 28 for all of you subscribers!). But Clifford May’s important essay is online.

    • Shabbat shalom!

    Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled
    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
  • Did you miss the Jewish Book Council’s Twitter Book Club chat with Anna Solomon this week? You can read the transcript here. Next up for the club: Nathan Englander (March 27) and Natasha Solomons (April 26).
  • On “Good Letters,” the Image journal blog, poet Rick Chess reflects on listening, psalms, and Night.
  • The latest issue of Hadassah magazine features a profile of author Cynthia Ozick.
  • If you’re in the Bay Area this weekend, you have the opportunity to attend a pretty spectacular-looking BookFest at the JCC of San Francisco. Take a peek at Sunday’s schedule.
  • Some controversy is swirling around Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox.
  • Washington Jewish Week (based in Rockville, Md.) is looking for a Senior Writer.

    • Shabbat shalom!

    Paired Writing Contests on “The Catskills and the Holocaust”

    by Erika Dreifus on
    2

    I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before: paired writing contests–one in fiction and one in nonfiction–as part of a book project, Summer Haven: How the Catskills Experienced the Holocaust, edited by Holli Levitsky, Professor of English and Director of Jewish Studies at Loyola Marymount University, and Phil Brown, Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at Brown University, “which will provide a locus for literature exploring the experience of the Holocaust in the Catskills.”

    Clicking the link above, you’ll find much more explanation about these contests. I’ll just give you some basics: no entry fees indicated and deadlines of July 1, 2012. For each contest, the winner will receive $500 and up to $500 for travel costs to present the work at the November 2012 Jewish American and Holocaust Literature Symposium in Miami. Winning works will also be published in the Levitsky/Brown book.

    Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled
    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
  • Thanks to the Jewish Book Council for taking note of the Sophie Brody Medal news in its latest JLit Links post! (By the way, for a response to the kidlit link included in that post, see The PJ Library.)
  • And speaking of kids’ books: Marjorie Ingall writes about Holocaust books for children.
  • And still more about Jewish kidlit: ‘Tis the season for the Sydney Taylor Book Award interviews. Get to know some award-winning authors and illustrators February 5-10.
  • The American Jewish Historical Society has redesigned its website. I hope to spend some time exploring it soon.
  • Finally, a reading rec from my mom. She just finished reading The Arrogant Years, the new memoir from Lucette Lagnado, and she LOVED it. I haven’t read it yet, but I did think Lagnado’s previous book, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, was pretty terrific.

    • Shabbat shalom!

    Words of the Week: President Barack Obama

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    In fact, I am proud to say that no U.S. administration has done more in support of Israel’s security than ours. None. Don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise. It is a fact.

    Source: President Barack Obama’s keynote address before the Union for Reform Judaism’s Biennial.
    Read the text online, or (even better), watch the President give one of his best speeches ever. (IMHO, as the kids say.)

    It didn’t hurt that he wished the group a “Shabbat Shalom”; mentioned that “NFTY, I understand, is in the house”; shared his fatherly concerns over the skirts and curfews involved when his daughter Malia attends Bar and Bat Mitzvah events these days; credited the Reform movement for its essential, foundational work on civil rights; and gave a D’var Torah worthy of a pulpit rabbi.

    But in the end, he needed to convince his readers that he supports Israel.

    He convinced me.