Shoshana Olidort
By Shoshana Olidort
-
Culture Wrestling With Faith in the Land of Oz
● JEWS AND WORDS By Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger Yale University Press, 248 pages, $25 In the epilogue to “Jews and Words,” the authors raise the age-old question “Who is a Jew?” to which they respond, “Whoever is wrestling with the question ‘Who is a Jew?’” It is not an original answer, but it’s…
-
The Schmooze POEM: Friday Late Morning Montage
baby: in bassinet, breathing loud, me: on the couch breasts filling up, heavy with milk toddler’s sweater thrown over his chair, on the floor: toys, a towel, a Ziploc bag on the ottoman: blue-and-white polka-dotted boppy — a nursing pillow on the sofa: baby-wearing wrap outside: the rain, in the dining corner: shades are still…
-
The Schmooze POEM: ‘Backseat Mama’
my son consigns me to a knife-less table-setting he explains: “mama doesn’t get a knife, she sat in the backseat” — in the car — it’s true: my husband at the wheel, his mother, visiting from revolution-ravaged Ukraine at his side I’m the only one small enough (even post-birth) to fit between two carseats surprisingly…
-
Culture Rivka Galchen’s Short Stories Transport Readers Into Magical Worlds
● American Innovations By Rivka Galchen Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 192 pages, $24 The stories in Rivka Galchen’s “American Innovations,” aren’t all fantastical — although a fair number include elements of magic realism and science fiction — but even the most realistic stories in this collection have a kind of magical quality about them that…
-
Books She Was a Novelist, Chicago-Born
‘Yudl’: And Selected Short Stories By Layle Silbert Seven Stories Press, 240 pages, $17.95 Layle Silbert’s “Yudl” opens with the protagonist, an immigrant Jew with a thick accent and heavy socialist leanings, inspecting a building that appears incomplete. “With its empty unglassed windows,” the three-story-high, red brick building “could be a new building not yet…
-
Culture Stuart Nadler’s Story of Interracial Love Explores Tensions in Jewish Families
● Wise Men By Stuart Nadler Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur, 352 pages, $25.99 In Stuart Nadler’s debut novel, a Jewish boy named Hilly, whose father has suddenly become enormously wealthy, falls in love with a black girl named Savannah whom he barely knows. The encounter, in 1950s suburbia, has far-reaching ramifications that will haunt Hilly for…
-
Culture A.B. Yehoshua Looks Back at His Country and Art
● The Retrospective By A.B. Yehoshua Translated from the Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 336 pages, $26 In A.B. Yehoshua’s latest novel, an aging Israeli film director is invited to Spain for a retrospective of his life’s work. The trip engenders a kind of journey backward in time for the director, Mr. Moses,…
-
Books Caught Between Two Worlds
I Am Forbidden By Anouk Markovits Hogarth, 320 pages, $25 The title of Anouk Markovits’s English-language debut, “I Am Forbidden,” refers both to the tragic climax of the book and to the broader world of this novel, a world defined by forbiddenness. The allure of the forbidden is ever-present in the story, which spans several…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Exclusive Mahmoud Khalil wants to reassure you
- 2
News Brad Lander joins call to end U.S. aid to Israel, in quest to replace Rep. Dan Goldman
- 3
Opinion Trump is backed into a corner on Iran. Get ready for him to start blaming Jews
- 4
Opinion Mahmoud Khalil’s reassurances are bad for Jews but even worse for Palestinians
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish פֿאָרווערטס־פּאָדקאַסט, קאַפּיטל 12: שפּראַכןForverts podcast episode 12: Languages
דאָ וועט איר הערן וואָס איז אפֿשר געווען דאָס ערשטע לשון אויף דער וועלט און אויך וועגן דעם ייִדיש וואָס ייִדן האָבן גערעדט אין אונגערן.
-
Culture A chance for the descendants of Holocaust victims to reclaim a piece of the past
-
News Jews and other minorities face similar levels of campus hostility, Brandeis survey finds
-
Yiddish װי גוג און מגוג זענען געבליבן באַטײַטיק ביזן הײַנטיקן טאָגHow Gog and Magog have remained relevant throughout history
אין משך פֿון טױזנטער יאָרן האָבן ייִדן, קריסטן און מוסולמענער געפּרוּװט אױסטײַטשן יחזקאלס סודותדיקע נבֿואה
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
