Between 1929 and 1935, Yiddish writer Moyshe Kulbak (1896-1937) published a comic novel called “The Zelmenyaners” serially in the Minsk-based Yiddish language monthly Shtern.The novel told the story of a family courtyard in Minsk, in Soviet Belorussia, which was being progressively transformed through aggressive Soviet modernization. As I will explain in an April 13 lecture…
Crossposted from Haaretz “Writing on the Internet is like breathing or walking,” says Dr. Carmel Vaisman, who earned a Ph.D. from Hebrew University for her research on language, gender and play. “Hebrew Online” (Keter, in Hebrew), which Vaisman wrote with her colleague, Ilan Gonen, who is completing a thesis on the Aramaic of Kurdistan’s Jews,…
Austin Ratner‘s first book, “The Jump Artist,” is the winner of the 2011 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. His blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog series. For more information on the series, please visit: When I learned…
Marina Blitshteyn is the author of the new poetry chapbook “Russian for Lovers.” In her earlier post, she wrote about the origin of Russian for Lovers and the poetry writing process. Her blog posts have been featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog…
On the morning of July 18, 1994, the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of Argentina took place with the bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, killing 85 people and injuring hundreds. The investigation into the attack is ongoing. In his new fotonovela, “Once @ 9:53 am,” Forward contributing editor Ilan Stavans, along with…
Back in the early 1980s, the Russians were coming. Not the Cold Warriors, but the Jewish children, with names like Yana and Inna and Igor. Each child seemed impossibly pale — pale hair, pale eyes, pale skin, pale lips, pale hand clutching the hand of his or her mother, a woman, in contrast, impossibly bright…
Marina Blitshteyn is the author of the new poetry chapbook “Russian for Lovers.” In her earlier post, she wrote about the origin of Russian for Lovers. Her blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog series. For more information on…
Is publishing a book easier if your daughter’s an Oscar winner? Natalie Portman’s dad is about to find out. Avner Hershlag, the Israeli father of the “Black Swan” star, is currently peddling his debut novel to major publishing houses, the Observer reports. Partly inspired by his work as a fertility specialist, the book is described…
Marina Biltshteyn is the author of the new poetry chapbook “Russian for Lovers.” Her blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog series. For more information on the series, please visit: It was my first semester in the MFA program…
A.B. Yehoshua’s new novel was inspired by a painting of a woman breast-feeding her father. The 74-year-old literary luminary, who has published some 15 books, does not retreat from the provocative or the perverse. Yehoshua calls “Spanish Charity” a probing of the creative process, and Haaretz saw it as a retrospective of the author’s own…
“It’s a shanda (outrage)!” exclaimed Bruce A. Phillips of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles Campus. He was reacting to the cessation of the American Jewish Year Book after a successful run of more than a century by the American Jewish Committee. The Yearbook — a handy compendium of demographic and historical trends,…
