An audio recording of 12 Yiddish writers reading their works, accompanied by English translations, is now available. The recording can be ordered either as a digital download or as two CDs (or both), and comes with a book that includes the readings in Yiddish and in English, as well as a biography of each writer…
Around two years ago, Johanna Kaplan learned, out of the blue, that HarperCollins was interested in reissuing a short story collection she had originally published all the way back in 1975. “It’s a marvelous, marvelous, amazing thing to be happening to me at this age,” said Kaplan, 79. When the collection debuted, under the title…
It would seem counterintuitive that a graphic novel featuring mice and cats as Jews and Nazis would be a more effective Holocaust teaching tool than the diary of a young girl who died in Bergen-Belsen. Yet, after a Tennessee school district unanimously voted to ban Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” from its eighth grade curriculum due to…
British literature is so full of antisemitic tropes that the goblins in Harry Potter are now the most obvious ones
For the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, the irony of Dan Grunfeld’s first contract offer to play professional basketball was a bit on-the-nose. It was not just that it came from Germany. The team that wanted him was from Oldenburg — the first state to put the Nazi party in power. Grunfeld’s new book, By…
On December 18, iconic film director Steven Spielberg, will turn 75. No doubt, admirers of his work round the world will mark the event by watching some of his greatest movies, including “The Color Purple”, “Jaws” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”. Others will return to movie theatres after a long plague-driven break, to catch his newest…
Former President Donald Trump worked on expanding the Abraham Accords from his hospital bed where he was being treated for a life-threatening case of COVID-19, hoping the positive news coming out of the Middle East would distract the country’s attention away from his illness, his former chief of staff reveals in a new memoir. “Still…
Welcome to Forward Reads, your monthly tour of the Jewish literary landscape. I’m a culture writer at the Forward, and I spend a lot of time combing through new releases so you can read the best books out there. This article originally ran in newsletter form. To sign up for Forward Reads and get book…
Soon it will be even harder to find Sally Rooney’s books in Hebrew. Two major bookstore chains in Israel, Steimatzky and Tzomet Sefarim, announced they will no longer sell Rooney’s work The Times of Israel reported Thursday. The move comes after the writer caused an uproar by announcing she would not have her latest novel,…
In the five years since Steve Israel retired from Congress, he’s written his second novel, been considered for ambassador to Israel, helped recruit Democratic candidates and launched a think tank at Cornell University. But nothing seems to excite him as much as opening his own bookstore — one that will reflect his interests, including his…
Like many Israelis, Shelley Goldman, a retired book and newspaper editor from Tel Aviv, was shocked when Irish author Sally Rooney said she will not sell the Hebrew-language rights to her latest book to a publishing house that doesn’t abide by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement’s guidelines. Rooney said in a statement Tuesday that…
