Julia M. Klein, the Forward’s contributing book critic, has been a two-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. Follow her @JuliaMKlein.
Julia M. KleinContributing Book Critic
By Julia M. Klein
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Culture Can ‘Tootsie’ Turn Men Into Mensches In The #MeToo Era?
After winning Tony and Grammy awards for his score for “The Band’s Visit,” composer-lyricist David Yazbek is poised for another Broadway hit with the musical adaptation of Sydney Pollack’s 1982 film classic, “Tootsie.” With book writer Robert Horn and director Scott Ellis, Yazbek (“The Full Monty,” “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” “Women on the Verge of a…
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Culture Judaism In The Digital Age, By Way Of Nathan Englander
kaddish.com By Nathan Englander Alfred A. Knopf, 224 pages, $24.95 Religious rituals can seem cumbersome or constricting. It helps to believe that they matter — that they are, in fact, essential to righteousness or redemption. The possibilities of the digital world, by contrast, can seem liberating — a promise of entertainment, distraction, ease and convenience….
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Culture A Wandering Jew Finds Her Way Back Home
The Art of Leaving By Ayelet Tsabari Random House, 336 pages, $26 As a young woman, Ayelet Tsabari is the prototypical wandering Jew. She abandons her family, in suburban Tel Aviv, for the United States, Canada, India, Thailand and other countries, fleeing grief and loss. But is she losing even more in the process? Bouncing…
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Culture America’s Jewish Women — From RG (Rebecca Gratz) To RBG
America’s Jewish Women: A History From Colonial Times to Today By Pamela S. Nadell W.W. Norton & Company, 336 pages, $28.95 In her swift-paced and concise history of American Jewish women, Pamela S. Nadell name checks all the usual suspects, from the Philadelphia philanthropist Rebecca Gratz and the poet Emma Lazarus to Betty Friedan and…
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Culture Jill Abramson Takes On ‘The Powers That Be’
MERCHANTS OF TRUTH: THE BUSINESS OF NEWS AND THE FIGHT FOR FACTS By Jill Abramson Simon & Schuster, 534 pages, $30 Jill Abramson brings a uniquely informed perspective to the question still obsessing the media world: What’s required for a news organization to survive in the face of a broken business model and the disruptive…
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Culture The Future Of Judaism Will Need A Big Tent
The Jewish American Paradox: Embracing Choice in a Changing World By Robert H. Mnookin PublicAffairs, 308 pages, $28 Robert H. Mnookin, who is a professor at Harvard Law School and chairs its Program on Negotiation, has gotten the “changing world” part of his subtitle right. Writing before last October’s deadly anti-Semitism-inspired attack on congregants at…
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Culture In ‘On The Basis Of Sex,’ A Reverential Portrait Of RBG
In the opening sequence of Mimi Leder’s feature film “On the Basis of Sex,” set in 1956, swarms of men in black and grey suits march toward what turns out to be Harvard Law School. Suddenly, among those drab masculine multitudes, we spot the back of a single woman in a blue dress: our heroine,…
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Art In Skokie, Memories Of Genocide Retold In Stories Of Everyday Objects
Objects and images, linking memory and history, are a mainstay of museum exhibitions. They are the embodiment of synecdoche, the part standing in for the whole. A photo album, a china set, a teddy bear — even the most quotidian of artifacts — all resonate with special poignancy when associated with stories of persecution and…
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