This is the Forward’s coverage of books and literature, including both non-fictional and fictional works.
Books
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Books Why do we keep turning Holocaust survivor stories into self-help books?
On a recent segment of “The Today Show,” a cadre of well-coiffed hosts discussed the life of Eddie Jaku, a 100-year-old Holocaust survivor and the author of “The Happiest Man on Earth,” a memoir about his imprisonment in Auschwitz. Grainy photos of concentration camp prisoners alternated with clips from an interview with Jaku and videos…
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Books Her name is Ozick, look on her works, ye mighty, and despair
Antiquities By Cynthia Ozick Knopf, 192 pages, $21.00 Thornton Wilder’s classic play “Our Town” proposes a remarkable idea: That after death, we get to re-experience a single day from our lives — just one perfectly ordinary day. It’s a painful, startling scenario, a striking conclusion to a complicated existence. “I can’t look at everything hard…
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Books How Jewish New York got its very un-Jewish names
Joshua Jelly-Schapiro asked me to meet him on Frieda Zames Way, which is not an easy place to find on Google Maps. No street view photos, no subway wait times — nothing to feed our iPhone-era inclination to know exactly where we’re going, all the time. As any serious investigative journalist would, I immediately turned…
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Books Norton pulls Philip Roth biography from print after author accused of sexual assault
The publisher W.W. Norton has pulled its recently-released biography of Philip Roth from print after multiple women accused its author, Blake Bailey, of sexual assault. The Associated Press reported that Norton would stop printing of “Philip Roth: The Biography,” a much hyped, 912-page treatise on the author’s life, as well as Bailey’s 2014 memoir “The…
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Books They couldn’t find any books on Ashkenazi herbs — so they wrote one
Deatra Cohen was studying to become an herbalist when her teacher assigned what seemed like a straightforward task: researching and reporting on the herbal cures and practices of her own culture. But the project was anything but simple. A retired librarian, Cohen was adept at navigating databases and combing through archives. But she could find…
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Books Love in the time of the Spanish Inquisition: A Q & A with Cambria Gordon
Cambria Gordon’s family sabbatical in Madrid in 2016 became more than a time away from her native Los Angeles. Gordon felt her identity — as a writer and as a Jew — blossom. She launched into a journey of research and inquiry that led to the writing and publication of her new young adult novel,…
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Books ‘This man is not going to daunt me:’ Talking with Philip Roth’s biographer, Blake Bailey
Editor’s note: Two weeks after this interview with Blake Bailey was published, multiple women came forward to accuse him of sexual assault and other sexual misconduct. Details of the allegations may be found here. A masterful writer obsessively preoccupied with whether and how he’d be valued by history; a deeply sensitive charmer with a real…
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Books Farewell to Norton Juster, who guided generations of readers through ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’
Milo, the protagonist of “The Phantom Tollbooth,” may be just ten years old. But readers may recall he experiences a very grown-up brand of ennui. “Wherever he was he wished he were somewhere else, and when he got there he wondered why he’d bothered,” we learn of Milo in the first pages of the children’s…
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Culture RFK Jr.’s poems to Olivia Nuzzi are peak cringe — so were King Solomon’s
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Culture A shocking true story of Mexico’s Jewish community comes to Netflix
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News As young Jews move away from Israel, Jewish leaders are reluctant to change their approach
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Film & TV For ill and for good, this ‘Wicked’ song has become ubiquitous
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Oct. 7 families’ lawsuit says Bitcoin CEO, whom Trump pardoned, facilitated $1B in payments to Hamas and its allies
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Opinion What does Mamdani’s response to synagogue protests mean for Jews? No one will like the answer.
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Yiddish World New record label boasts young (and female) singers of cantorial music
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Culture Can this LGBTQ+ Jewish organization navigate these turbulent times?
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