The Sapir Prize for Hebrew Literature is one of Israel’s most important literary awards, and the most significant financially. Recently, the managing board of the prize decided to change its guidelines and enable only candidates who are residents of Israel to submit their work. This new rule caused an interesting and important debate, both in…
The details on hundreds of letters, books, magazine articles, reports and other materials found in Al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden’s secret compound in Pakistan were declassified and released by the Obama administration. Among the documents released, which were taken from bin Laden’s compound by Navy SEALS after it was seized in May 2011, is an…
Catch the Jew! By Tuvia Tenenbom Gefen Publishing House, 484 pages, $24.95 Liberal Jews chagrined at the recent elections in Israel probably should read Tuvia Tenenbom’s “Catch the Jew.” Tenenbom’s book, in which he narrates his travels and conversations in Israel and the West Bank, will not provide comfort. In fact, he holds leftist Jews…
The greatest collection of rare Jewish historical documents in the United States will be boxed up later this year and put into storage until at least 2018, the Forward has learned. The library at Manhattan’s Jewish Theological Seminary — Conservative Judaism’s largest rabbinic seminary — holds the most impressive compilation of Jewish historical materials outside…
This is an occasional column in which the writer evaluates a cookbook by making some of its recipes, sharing the dishes with friends and asking those friends what they think of the results. For Passover, the writer cooked her way through “Modern Jewish Cooking: Recipes & Customs for Today’s Kitchen,” by Forward writer and contributing…
Photograph by Sang An With all due respect to the classic pairing of beets and goat cheese, there are other ways to serve cooked beets! Take this salad, which tosses them with preserved lemon, fennel, basil and capers. The lemon and capers act as a tangy counterpart to the sweet Mediterranean root, and the fresh…
Sami Rohr Prize winner Ayelet Tsabari / Elsin Davidi Ayelet Tsabari, author of the short story collection “The Best Place On Earth” (HarperCollins 2013), has won the prestigious Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature — and I couldn’t be happier about it. A couple of months ago, I issued one of those pre-New-Year’s calls for…
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday addressed the clash over the Israel Prize for Literature and the makeup of the panel that awards it by saying that more extremist, anti-Zionist judges have been appointed in recent years. “The composition of the panel that selects Israel Prize laureates must be balanced and faithfully reflect the…
Becoming Un-Orthodox By Lynn Davidman Oxford University Press, 272 pages, $27.95 In “Becoming Un-Orthodox,” a study of ex-Orthodox Jews by University of Kansas professor Lynn Davidman, a woman identified only as “Leah” describes Friday night meals in her parents’ home. “Shabbes was kind of a wash,” she says. “My father was always tired and so…
Bookshop owner Bonnie Slotnick took a quick break from packing to have her picture taken outside the 10th Street store. Photographs by Liza Schoenfein I was happy to read at the end of last week that Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, the beloved little shop on West 10th Street that recently lost its lease, had found new…
Photo: Martyna Starosta Forward 50 members Roz Chast and Gary Shteyngart are among the 30 nominees for the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Awards. The award, given to books in the areas of autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction and poetry, is given by the book critics and book review editors of the National Book Critics…
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