Podcasts

Yid Lit: Nicole Krauss

By Allison Gaudet Yarrow

Nicole Krauss is having banner year. The author of the novels “The History of Love” (W. W. Norton & Company, 2006) and “Man Walks into a Room” (Anchor, 2003) was named one of the New Yorker’s 20 under 40 fiction writers and her new novel, “Great House,” came out the same month it was nominated for a National Book Award. “Great House” weaves together characters who have been shaped by loss and who work to create meaning by piecing together rooms, families and the shards of themselves.Read More

---

Reporters' Roundtable: Beck on Soros; Jewish Voice for Peace; Demjanjuk on Trial

Glenn Beck’s controversial comments about philanthropist George Soros; what is likely to be the last trial of alleged Nazi guard John Demjanjuk; and the rising profile of Jewish Voice for Peace are the topics of this week’s Reporters’ Roundtable.Read More

---

Yid Lit: Adam Levin

By Allison Gaudet Yarrow

In this week’s Yid Lit Podcast, debut author Adam Levin discusses his novel “The Instructions.” The story follows a 10-year-old scholar and weapons expert with a messiah complex who, after getting kicked out of two yeshivas, stages a coup with a band of Israelites in his secular school after his identity is questioned and he falls in love.Read More

---

Reporters' Roundtable: The 2010 Election

How American Jews voted in the 2010 election, and what the results mean for the Jewish community and Israel policy, are the subjects of this week’s Reporters’ Roundtable. Host Josh Nathan-Kazis speaks with Forward associate editor Karen Loew, who co-edits our politics blog, MitzVote, and with Washington-based staff writer Nathan Guttman.Read More

---

Reporters' Roundtable: The Forward 50

The Forward has just released The Forward 50, an annual list of men and women who have impacted the American Jewish story in the past year. In this week’s Reporters’ Roundtable, host Josh Nathan-Kazis speaks with Forward editor Jane Eisner and managing editor Lillian Swanson about how the list is compiled, and who’s on it.Read More

---

Yid Lit: Sheffer on Singer

By Allison Gaudet Yarrow

In a special edition of this week’s Yid Lit podcast, Isaiah Sheffer host of National Public Radio’s “Selected Shorts,” reads from the newly rereleased novel “The Magician of Lublin” by Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer.Read More

---

Yid Lit: Rachel Botsman

By Allison Gaudet Yarrow

If you pay for a membership to Netflix or Zipcar, if you’ve gone to a clothing swap, a potluck or given or gotten anything from Craigslist, you’re participating in “collaborative consumption,” the phenomenon of sharing, swapping, borrowing and lending that Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers name and dissect in their new book, “What’s Mine is Yours” (Harper Business), is enabled by networking technology and is changing the way we live. I spoke with author and speaker Rachel Botsman recently about the sharing’s Jewish roots and Israel’s unique position in this space as a kibbutznik culture and technology front-runner.Read More

---

Reporters' Roundtable: The Loyalty Oath

Israel’s decision to change its oath of allegiance, and thus require all new citizens — regardless of religion — to pledge their loyalty to “a Jewish and democratic state,” is the subject of the latest Forward Reporters’ Roundtable. Editor Jane Eisner and staff writer Gal Beckerman join host Josh Nathan-Kazis for the discussion.Read More

---

Reporters' Roundtable: Rick Sanchez's Fall; Brooklyn Cuisine

In this week’s Forward Reporters’ Roundtable, host Josh Nathan-Kazis speaks with staff writer Gal Beckerman about Rick Sanchez’s recent firing — and about other prominent journalists who have lost their jobs after making comments perceived as hostile toward Jews. Then editorial assistant Devra Ferst joins the conversation to discuss accompanying famed food writer Joan Nathan on a culinary tour of Brooklyn. Devra edits The Jew And the Carrot, a food blog that is a partnership between the Forward and Hazon.Read More

---

Women's Roundtable: Thoroughly Modern 'Balebustes'; Welcoming a More Inclusive Prayerbook

In the latest episode of the Women’s Roundtable Podcast, host Gabrielle Birkner speaks with Forward Editor Jane Eisner, Lilith Editor Susan Weidman Schneider, and Lilith Associate Editor Sonia Isard about whether modern Jewish women should be embracing or eschewing the moniker “balebuste,” Yiddish for homemaker, and the domestic work that it implies. The panel also discusses why Haiti’s tent cities are such dangerous places to be female, and weighs in on the new, more inclusive Conservative movement prayerbook. Then, each woman shares her mother’s favorite saying — be it wacky, witty or wise (or some combination therein).Read More

---