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Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

by on Friday, September 28, 2012 (0) Comments

Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen


Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish literary news from around the Web.

  • First up: The Natan Award is an exciting new prize for a nonfiction book-in-progress. This award “brings Natan’s values of infusing Jewish life with creativity and meaning into the intellectual arena by supporting and promoting a breakthrough book on Jewish themes intended for mainstream audiences.” No entry fee. Applications due December 3.
  • The latest issue of Jewish Book World is now online, in its entirety.
  • Poet Gerald Stern is profiled in The Forward.
  • The Yiddish Book Center has announced a new Translation Fellowship Program for those with at least an intermediate-level proficiency in Yiddish. “Beginning in the winter of 2012, the Center will select five Translation Fellows who will receive yearlong mentorship and training to complete book-length projects in Yiddish translation. As an incentive to produce works of the highest caliber, each Fellow will receive a grant of $5,000.” There is no application fee. Application deadline is November 15, 2012.
  • Finally, I am delighted that my home congregation has added live-streamed services to its offerings. Now I can much more easily share something that’s so important to me with all of you. For example: our senior rabbi’s most recent Rosh Hashanah sermon, archived for everyone to absorb. Let’s just say that there was a lot I agreed with in what he said about Israel this year.

    • Shabbat shalom.

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    Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    by on Friday, August 17, 2012 (0) Comments

    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen

    Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish literary news from around the Web.

  • First up: this month’s Jewish Book Carnival, hosted by Needle in the Bookstacks, a blog from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) librarians.
  • Many short-story treats this week, starting with this gem from The New Yorker: a 1970 story by Isaac Bashevis Singer (“Job”), plus notes about the translation.
  • A brand-new issue of JewishFiction.net is now available for our reading pleasure.
  • I read it first in the print magazine, but it looks as though Moment has made Edith Pearlman’s short story, “The Kargman Affliction,” available online, too.
  • Adam Kirsch writes about Amoz Oz’s reissued story collection, Where the Jackals Howl (trans. Nicholas De Lange).

    • Shabbat shalom.

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    Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    by on Friday, August 10, 2012 (4) Comments

    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen

    Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish literary news from around the Web.

  • First up is an event taking place this Sunday–in Yiddish–at NYC’s Center for Jewish History: “The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research together with the Congress for Jewish Culture, CYCO Books, the Forward Association, the Jewish Labor Committee, and the Workmen’s Circle invite you to attend a commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Soviet Yiddish writers and other members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee at the hands of Stalin. There will be several short films based on the poetry of Perets Markish; Boris Sandler, editor of the Forward, will read his own poems; well-known singers Hy Wolfe and Paula Teitelbaum will sing and recite poetry; Shane Baker will recite poetry; David Mandelbaum of New Yiddish Rep and Paul Glasser of YIVO will read prose. The emcee will be Tom Bird of Queens College.”
  • Lots to think about in Ilana Sichel’s review of Anouk Markovits’s I Am Forbidden.
  • In somewhat related news: Zackary Sholem Berger profiles “the writers and editors behind the astonishing rise of Orthodox magazines and fiction.”
  • The passing of businessman and philanthropist Sami Rohr this week has been noted in many quarters. Among the most lovely tributes is Gal Beckerman’s.
  • Finally, yet another contest from The Whole Megillah: “Yom Kippur often gets us thinking about our departed loved ones and our own lives. Perhaps you’ve even written your reflections about your family or yourself. If you have a memoir manuscript in progress, consider submitting its first page to The Whole Megillah First Page Competition for Memoir.”

    • Shabbat shalom.

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    Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    by on Friday, May 25, 2012 (0) Comments

    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen

  • In this podcast from the Yiddish Book Center, “Ilan Stavans sits down with Josh Lambert to answer questions about the concept behind his documentary-style fotonovela, [email protected]:53am, a fictional meditation of the two hours before the 1994 terrorist attack on the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.” The [email protected]:53am exhibit at the Yiddish Book Center runs into early November.
  • Coming soon: The Toronto Jewish Book Festival (June 4-7, 2012), featuring, on June 6, a celebration of JewishFiction.net’s second anniversary.
  • If you missed the latest meeting of the Jewish Book Council’s Twitter Book Club (as I did), you can read the transcript of the chat with Ramona Ausubel, author of No One Is Here Except All of Us.
  • Zackary Sholem Berger’s Tablet article introduced me to a slice of Jewish writing that is utterly new to me: a sort of underground Hasidic literary culture.
  • Still waiting to read my story collection, Quiet Americans? Here’s another opportunity to win a free copy. Simply leave a comment on Christi Craig’s generous Q&A with me about the book.

    • Shabbat shalom, and Chag Shavuot Sameach.

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    Announcing the Yugntruf Zhurnal Writing Contest

    by on Tuesday, May 01, 2012 (0) Comments

    From Yugntruf (Youth for Yiddish): the Yugntruf Zhurnal Writing Contest:

    Are you the next Sholem Aleichem or Avrom Sutzkever?
    We’re looking for young emerging Yiddish writers and poets who need a modern literary platform suited to their unique voices.

    That’s because Yugntruf – Youth for Yiddish is reviving its Zhurnal – its Yiddish-language literary journal of poetry, short stories, editorials and articles.

    Debuting this August 2012, our new Zhurnal, co-edited by Jordan Kutzik and Leyzer Burko, will be available to Yugntruf members and to subscribers worldwide in both full-color hard copy and online download.

    So, if you’re 35 years of age or younger, you’re invited to submit your original, unpublished Yiddish poetry or fiction to our ZHURNAL YIDDISH LITERATURE COMPETITION to win cash awards — and publication in our new Zhurnal! Continue reading ›

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    Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    by on Friday, February 10, 2012 (7) Comments

    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen

  • The New York Times divulges author Nathan Englander’s Sunday routine.
  • Speaking of Nathan Englander, not everyone will agree with Adam Kirsch’s take on his latest work, but you can’t deny that Kirsch’s conclusion is tantalizing and provocative: “Perhaps the great Jewish fiction of the near future will have to be less psychological and social than is currently the norm, and more explicitly political. And perhaps the great dividing line in contemporary Jewish life is not the one between religious and secular Jews, but between those who see themselves as members of a historical Jewish nation, and those who find such an identity archaic or delusional.”
  • JTA, “the global news service of the Jewish people,” is hiring.
  • New graduate program in Jewish cultural arts.
  • Deborah Feldman’s new memoir, Unorthodox, is making waves. Read all about it.

    • Shabbat shalom!

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