This is the Forward’s coverage of books and literature, including both non-fictional and fictional works.
Books
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Books Did Tolkien Take a Page From Purim?
Jewschool’s Ben Dreyfus notes a striking similarity between J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy masterpiece “The Lord of the Rings” and the Purim story: Haftarat Zachor (which is read twice this year here in Jerusalem) + Megillat Esther = The Lord of the Rings. One of them is totally plagiarized. After winning the war with Sauron, Isildur is…
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Books Klinghoffer: God Is a Conservative; Alterman: Jesus Is a Liberal
It gives me great pleasure to announce the upcoming publication of a book from Forward columnist David Klinghoffer, titled “How Would God Vote?: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative,” which is due out this summer from Doubleday. But while Klinghoffer believes that God is a conservative, Nation columnist Eric Alterman apparently thinks…
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Books Songbook Recaptures Lost Melodies
Heard any good Yiddish folksongs lately? Chances are good that the answer is “no.” Not because there aren’t any good Yiddish folksongs to be heard; for generations, the Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe sang innumerable songs about love and loss, death and marriage. They sang to their children to soothe them to sleep, and they…
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Books The Water Carrier
Renowned scholar David G. Roskies is the Sol and Evelyn Henkind chair in Yiddish literature and culture at the Jewish Theological Seminary. The following excerpt is from his forthcoming memoir, “Yiddishlands” (Wayne State University Press). In the work, Roskies discusses his life and the life of his mother, and explores the Yiddish experience and historical…
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Books Goodbye, Grace
Writer Grace Paley died yesterday. A New York Times obit says that, “In a sense, her work was about what happened to the women that Roth and Bellow and Malamud’s men had loved and left behind.” Paley was 84.
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Books Happy Birthday, Harry
Dutch writer Harry Mulisch turned 80 yesterday. “I have a theory that everybody has an absolute age which he will always have,” he said in an interview. “My absolute age is 17.”
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Books Samuel Freedman on Michael Chabon’s ‘Love Letter to Exile and Dispossession’
Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon’s latest novel “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” set in an imagined Jewish homeland in Alaska, has drawn critical raves. But it also elicited a widely discussed New York Post item provocatively titled, “NOVELIST’S UGLY VIEW OF JEWS.” Barbs flung by the wildly sensationalistic Post are easy to laugh off, and Chabon…
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Books Worst… Book Title… Ever
Wondering what the book’s about? Fortunately, there’s this informative back-cover testimonial from Stanford literature professor Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht: Reading the texts of a culture that could only achieve its Germanness by being so utterly Jewish, along the lines of the 20th-century’s terminal mass migrations, Todd Presner’s book opens our 21st-century eyes to a new way…
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Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
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News They texted about Torah and mitzvahs. Feds say they were insider trading
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Culture At Eurovision, Israel’s near triumph shows the limits of tolerance
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Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
In Case You Missed It
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Culture The Israeli song that almost won Eurovision was about far more than the breakup of a love affair
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Yiddish אַ ייִדישער כאָר אין סאַאָ־פּאַולאָ, בראַזיל געפֿינט זײַן קול פֿון דאָס נײַA Yiddish chorus in Sao Paulo, Brazil finds its voice again
דער נײַער אַלבאָם „שמשׂ“ פֿאַרבינדט די ייִדישע מוזיק מיט אַנדערע דיאַספּאָרישע טראַדיציעס.
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News Israeli flag attack ad prompts antisemitism charge in PA state race — yet boosts the Jewish candidate
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Fast Forward Spain defends soccer star Lamine Yamal over Israel’s criticism of Palestinian flag display