Beth Kissileff is co-editor of Bound in the Bond of Life: Pittsburgh Writers Reflect on the Tree of Life Tragedy and author of the novel Questioning Return. She is at work on a book about Jewish wisdom on healing from trauma and grief and lives in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh with her family.
Beth Kissileff
By Beth Kissileff
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Culture Philip Roth, Once Outcast, Joins Jewish Fold With Jewish Theological Seminary Honor
(JTA) — What is being done to silence this man?” an American rabbi asked in a 1963 letter to the Anti-Defamation League. He was talking about the novelist Philip Roth, whose early novels and short stories cast his fellow American Jews in what some considered a none-too-flattering light. Fast-forward half a century. On Thursday, the…
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Culture 8 New Israeli Writers You Need To Read Right Now
Dalia Betolin-Sherman is the first Ethiopian woman to publish a volume of short stories in Hebrew. In conversation, she speaks modestly about the success of “How the World Became White,” which won the 2014 Ramat Gan prize for debut literature. I met her at the Tel Aviv café Tola’at Sefarim Maazeh, where she told me…
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The Schmooze Granta Magazine Launches Israeli Edition
Israel is known for all kinds of things — a burgeoning local food scene, TV series like “Homeland” and “In Treatment,” and high tech companies like Waze. Now, with the launch of Granta Israel, a Hebrew edition of the prestigious magazine started by Cambridge University students in 1889, Israel is officially an international literary powerhouse….
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The Schmooze Embezzlement Drama Wins Israel’s Top Literary Prize
The biggest point of contention with this year’s Sapir Prize, Israel’s equivalent to the Booker, was who the judges were and how they came to their shortlist of five nominees. But controversy should not take away from the achievement of winner Noa Yedlin for her “Ba’alat Bayit” or “House Arrest,” her second novel. Yedlin works…
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Culture A Uniquely Israeli Vision of the Afterlife
The World of the End By Ofir Touché Gafla Translated by Mitch Ginsburg Tor Books, 368 pages, $16.98 A recent cartoon published in the New Yorker shows a group of people standing by a grave. A woman is speaking, and the caption reads, “Wherever he is, I know he’ll be upgraded.” Might the afterworld —…
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Life Bar and Bat Mitzvahs Critical to Future of Jewish Community
When my oldest daughter had her bat mitzvah, one of my proudest moments did not occur during the ceremony, though she certainly invested time and hard work in preparing. It came early Sunday morning when we were deciding what to do with the leftover food from our huge Shabbat Kiddush. My daughter suggested that we…
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News Why Can’t Yeshiva Alumni Follow Horace Mann Blueprint on Abuse Scandal?
I went to a high school that had high standards. Students at Horace Mann School, were primed and expected to excel in all areas: There were regular Intel International Science and Engineering Fair winners, students who performed with major symphony orchestras and award-winning writers. As fellow alum Robert Boynton, who graduated in 1981 and who…
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Opinion Dedicating SOTU Moment to Slain Dad
As far as Sami Rahamim knows, the seating at the State of the Union address is random. He told the Forward that there “were couples invited who were separated.” His seat, as the guest of his congressman, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), was “up in the gallery, facing the President on the left side.” The man…
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