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 In ‘Little Eyes,’ a human gaze more frightening than the digital
There’s a gut-clenchingly tender moment midway through “Little Eyes,” Samanta Schweblin’s deft and ineffably creepy new novel, when Emilia, a lonely Peruvian widow, gazes on a pair of closed eyes. “It had been a very long time since she had seen anyone with their eyes closed,” she observes; not since her son, a banker based…
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Books Are you there, Judy Blume? It’s me, Molly.
I spent my childhood summers in a small beach town near Mystic, Conn., swimming in the frigid Fishers Island Sound, catching crabs by affixing sliced hot dogs — or, in a pinch, mussels crushed beneath a paving stone — to thick white string and dangling the bait off the dock. I accompanied my older cousin…
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Books In a change of heart, Amazon has dropped white nationalist books
Amazon has removed several white nationalist and anti-Semitic books from its website, a change from its past policy of defending the sale of objectionable publications, The New York Times reported Sunday. While the online marketplace has frequently removed things like anti-Semitic action figures and Christmas ornaments listed for purchase by third-party sellers, it has traditionally…
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Books What books should Jared Kushner have read about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
White House senior advisor Jared Kushner was widely mocked after telling Sky News Arabia that he was qualified to propose a new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan because he had “read 25 books” about the conflict. While the White House refused to tell the Forward what those books were, our reporting uncovered four of them. But it…
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Books The history of Hasidism: A New History by those who wrote it
Editor’s Note: In 2018, the Forward published this essay raising concerns about female representation in Jewish Studies, focused on a 2017 book about Hasidism. One of its authors responded this month with a broader critique of diversity in the field. The original critics then had another take, and now more of the authors are responding….
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Books Discovering Louisa May Alcott’s Jewish history on Portuguese tour
Louisa May Alcott was often told as a child that her dark hair and dark eyes came from her Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Her mother, Abigail May Alcott, who had similar coloring, had learned this from her father, Joseph May, a late 18th-century Boston businessman whose Portuguese Jewish ancestors immigrated to Sussex, England, just before 1500….
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Books Jewish Groups Try To Silence Storytime Reading Of ‘P Is For Palestine’
Jewish groups have issued a legal threat against a public library in New Jersey if librarians proceed with a public reading of a book called “P is for Palestine,” the Bridgewater Courier News reported Monday. The two groups – the Central Jersey Jewish Public Affairs Committee and the Zachor Legal Institute, a legal group that…
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Books The Dangers Of Female Pleasure – And Rage. A Q&A With Jennifer Weiner
Jennifer Weiner, best-selling novelist, has been known to be outspoken about inequalities in publishing and in the consideration of women’s work. This is what Weiner told me she wants her obituary to read when we caught up last week. And unlike the obit your favorite male novelist is probably composing for himself, Weiner’s is 100%…
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Holy Ground A Jewish farmer broke ground on a synagogue in an Illinois cornfield. His neighbors showed up to help.
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Opinion I discovered anti-Zionism at the University of Michigan. I’m glad it lives on there
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Opinion An alarming new battleground in campus fights over Israel
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Culture An Israeli genocide scholar looks to Israel’s history to understand ‘what went wrong’
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Elected PA Jewish judge leaves Democratic party, citing ‘disturbingly common’ antisemitism
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Fast Forward At Abraham Foxman’s funeral, an elegy for the last generation with direct ties to the Holocaust
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Fast Forward Israeli report on ‘systematic’ Oct. 7 sexual violence seeks to shift debate from denial to accountability
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News Mamdani supersizes NYC hate crimes office, as tensions simmer over synagogue protests