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Pre-Shabbat Jewish Literary Links

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

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

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

  • A gorgeous meditation for the Days of Awe by Richard Chess.
  • Etgar Keret explains why Yom Kippur is his favorite holiday (translation by Sondra Silverston).
  • Irving Kristol’s only published short story, re-published on Mosaic this week, features an post-World War II encounter in France between an American Jewish GI and an Auschwitz survivor.
  • Have you perused the amazing collection of archived summary-reviews of major works of American Jewish fiction over on the Fig Tree Books website?
  • Last, but by no means least: David (D.G.) Myers, whose many areas of expertise included Jewish literature, passed away last Friday. Please take a few moments to read through some tributes to him.

    • Shabbat shalom, and an easy/meaningful fast to all who will be observing the Yom Kippur holiday.

    From My Bookshelf: On Bittersweet Place, by Ronna Wineberg

    by Erika Dreifus on
    2

    BittersweetCovLast Thursday evening I had the great pleasure of celebrating the publication of On Bittersweet Place, a novel by Ronna Wineberg, at a lovely book party on the West Side of Manhattan.

    I’ve known Ronna for years. I interviewed her when her short-story collection was published. She helped shepherd one of my short stories along the route to publication in Bellevue Literary Review. And one of her cousins is a dear friend of one of my cousins—which makes Ronna and me practically family!

    So I was honored to be asked to contribute a “blurb” for On Bittersweet Place, which relocates the typical Jewish-American immigration story from New York to Chicago. After reading the galley last spring, here’s what I wrote: “In the pages of Ronna Wineberg’s On Bittersweet Place, one finds echoes of Anzia Yezierska and Betty Smith; in the fictional story of Lena Czernitski’s immigrant family in the first quarter of the 20th century the reader recovers a piece of our larger American history. Quite impressive.”

    You’ll surely be hearing more about this lovely novel soon. For starters, you might want to read this new Q&A with Ronna on the wonderful Bloom website. Read through to the end, and you’ll see a link to a book excerpt, too.

    Pre-Shabbat Jewish Literary Links

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
    Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • Coming in 2016: a new book by Jeffrey Goldberg, on “the Middle East through the prism of President Obama’s years in power.”
  • On my more immediate TBR list: Stuart Rojstaczer’s The Mathematician’s Shiva. According to this Jewlicious post, it’s a novel that “mixes Jewish family life, comedy, academia, mystery, greed, chaos shiva, lust and math.”
  • Matthue Roth on Heinrich Heine’s “love song to cholent.”
  • On the Moment blog, Linda Tucker reviews Rabbi David Wolpe’s new book on the biblical David.
  • If you still don’t have enough books on your own TBR list, you’ll find a few more in Sandee Brawarsky’s fall books preview for The Jewish Week. (Coming soon: a similar overview piece by yours truly, elsewhere. Stay tuned!)

    • Shabbat shalom.

    Pre-Shabbat Jewish Literary Links

    by Erika Dreifus on
    2

    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
    Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • New poetry: “Almost Like the Blues,” by Leonard Cohen, and “Stolpersteine,” by Rachel Unkefer.
  • The new issue of JewishFiction.Net features work by Steve Stern, Joan Leegant, David Bezmozgis, and many more.
  • The Jewish Week‘s Well Versed blog spotlights The Jerusalem Lover, a novella by Shira Dicker that is described as “a prescient and courageous look at the ongoing battle between Israel’s staunch defenders and her harsh critics.”
  • In which D.G. Myers reverses the famous Tolstoy line–“unhappy families are more alike than happy families”–with reference to Joshua Henkin’s The World Without You (and to his own circumstances).
  • On my weekend agenda: listening to the first episode of “Israel Story,” which is being billed as an Israeli version of “This American Life.”

    • Shabbat shalom.

    Pre-Shabbat Jewish Literary Links

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
    Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • Typically brilliant and especially timely work from Adam Kirsch: “Wicked Sons: Benjamin Kerstein, Doron Rabinovici, and Norman Finkelstein.” (The Tablet subtitle reads: “Is Jewish rebellion really a form of submission? Two new novels and one political critic examine apostasy.”)
  • Midmonth brought the latest Jewish Book Carnival, hosted for August by Ann Koffsky.
  • “This book had me hooked with the cover.” So writes Sandee Brawarsky about Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?“
  • The editors of a new volume, Sephardi Lives: A Documentary History, 1700-1950, discuss their fascinating book.
  • “Philadelphia-based humorist and freelance writer Stacia Freedman has a knack for one-liners and her snappy new novel, Tender is the Brisket, is peppered with them.” Read more about Freedman and her work on the Lilith blog.

    • Shabbat shalom.