As a high school English teacher who writes poetry in her free time, I read a poem a day at the start of each class period. Last September, I read poems by Emma Lazarus, because students were going to be writing an essay about her famous sonnet “The New Colossus.” When I introduced her to…
Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting Danya Ruttenberg Flatiron Books, 320 pages, $25 I’ve read my share of parenting books. There’s a stack by my bedside table that inevitably tips over with my three kids’ rambunctious play nearby. With a 3, 5, and…
For Canadian author Michael Wex, the process of researching Yiddish cuisine was almost as distasteful as a glass of a p’tcha (calves foot jelly) on an empty stomach. Everyone who discovered that he was writing about Jewish food seemed to have a comment, complaint or bagel store to boycott. Friends and acquaintances alike insisted their…
Eighty is an age when many people would be resting on their laurels and hanging up their chef’s whites — especially someone like Joyce Goldstein, the former Chez Panisse Café chef who went on to run her own Mediterranean restaurant and has written numerous cookbooks. But when you open your first restaurant at 49, as…
Yael Raviv (above) is author of “Falafel Nation: Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel (Studies of Jews in Society).” by Yael Raviv, is a work of culinary anthropology that looks at the founding of the state of Israel through the prism of food. The book (University of Nebraska Press) is the outgrowth…
Valentine’s Day is upon us, and ignoring the holiday’s relatively morbid roots in favor of its relatively charming modern incarnation, what better way to celebrate than with the romantic musings of some beloved Jewish writers? Should you be in need of lofty-sounding fodder with which to celebrate your loved ones — or woo those you’d…
A Brazilian publisher has decided to cancel the release of a new printing of “Mein Kampf” after strong pressure from the Jewish community and scholars. Editing company Edipro reportedly decided on Thursday to call off a first printing run of 1,000 copies, saying it was an old translation to Portuguese from the 1930s, with no…
Aharon Appelfeld. BOSTON — A celebrated Israeli novelist is among the winners of this year’s Sydney Taylor Book Award for Jewish children’s books. The Association of Jewish Libraries on Thursday announced the selection of Aharon Applefeld, an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor who has written about the genocide extensively. He won the award for older readers for…
When Anne Frank wrote in her diary to pass the time, she probably never even thought about copyright law or the sticky question of who would come to own her words. She died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 at the age of 15, but her father Otto survived and eventually was persuaded to…
BERLIN – For the first time since Hitler’s death, Germany is publishing the Nazi leader’s political treatise “Mein Kampf,” unleashing a highly charged row over whether the text is an inflammatory racist diatribe or a useful educational tool. The 70-year copyright on the text, written by Hitler between 1924-1926 and banned by the Allies at…
This is an occasional column in which the writer evaluates a new cookbook by making some of its recipes, sharing the dishes with friends and asking her guests what they think of the results. She recently cooked her way through “NOPI: The Cookbook” (Ten Speed Press) by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ramael Scully. Related “NOPI” Pistachio…
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