This is the Forward’s coverage of books and literature, including both non-fictional and fictional works.
Books
The Latest
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Books The Curious Case of the San Nicandro Converts
In a new book, “The Jews of San Nicandro,” author John Davis, the chair in Modern Italian History at the University of Connecticut, sheds light on the little-known but highly curious tale of how a community of Italian Catholic peasants came to embrace Judaism during the rise of Fascism and the Second World War. Using…
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Books Making Kosher Food Is an All-Night Affair
Earlier this week, Sue Fishkoff wrote about watching a goat get slaughtered and people who only keep kosher on holidays. She is the author of “Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority.” Her blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish…
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Books Our Rack: Yeshiva Girl YA; Bios of Bernhardt, Alcott
NON-FICTION In “Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt Robert Gottlieb,” Robert Gottlieb trims away the fat from the storied life of the legendary actress, who was born Jewish and who was later baptized a Roman Catholic. Gottlieb presents a peppy and concise biography rooted in facts and recorded accounts. The book, the debut title in…
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Books Getting Close to Your Food Is Harder When Meat Is Involved
On Monday, Sue Fishkoff wrote about people who only keep kosher on holidays. She is the author of “Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority.” Her blog posts are being featured this week on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author…
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Books The Meaning of Money
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Many moons ago, when I was a graduate student in Jewish history happily spending my days doing little else but reading, one of the most intriguing books I encountered was not Maimonides’ “Guide to the Perplexed,” or “Transactions of the Paris Sanhedrin” or, for that matter, Hannah Arendt’s “The…
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Books Q&A: Author Michael Wex on the Jewish Comic Novel
Michael Wex is best known for his acerbic, authoritative books on Yiddish language and culture, but in this fall’s “The Frumkiss Family Business,” he has turned his attention to fiction. The sprawling novel is a farcical family saga, following three generations of a Jewish clan in Toronto’s Bathurst Manor neighborhood and questioning, in Wex’s characteristically…
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Books Misreading Claude Lévi-Strauss the Man
After the well-deserved hosannas of praise for the centenary, and subsequent dignified mourning for the demise, of the great French Jewish anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, a backlash seemed inevitable. On October 7, “Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory,” by Patrick Wilcken, presented as the “definitive account of the life, work, and legacy,” was published by…
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Books Polishing the Golden Rule
The story goes that a certain heathen approached the Jewish sage Shammai and asked to be converted, on the condition that he is taught the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Indignant at receiving such a ludicrous request, Shammai chased the man away. Undeterred, the heathen then approached the sage Hillel with the same…
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Fast Forward Mamdani appoints Phylisa Wisdom, progressive Jewish leader, to run Office to Combat Antisemitism
In Case You Missed It
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Opinion In Trump’s instinct to punish and desecrate, a rejection of the values of King David
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Culture Why Bad Bunny’s halftime show delighted New York Jews of a certain age
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Yiddish World Elie Wiesel as an American phenomenon and a family man
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Culture These two anti-Zionist Jews think the Israeli government is so bad, it’s funny
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