This is the Forward’s coverage of books and literature, including both non-fictional and fictional works.
Books
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Books Yankel and Leah (Chapter 2): Awkward First Date
This originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. To read the previous chapter. And so after some perfunctory small talk, an appointment was arranged. Yankel would meet with someone called Leah Spielman (he scribbled this into his small appointment book), daughter of Abe and Helen Spielman, refugees from the Old World, now living in Flatbush. “Appointment”…
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Books Messianic Jewish Publisher Sparks Ultra-Orthodox Anger at Israeli Book Week
An ultra-Orthodox group filed a complaint with Jerusalem police after HaGefen, a Messianic Jewish publisher, offered a new translation of the Bible to teenagers at Israel’s annual Hebrew Book Week. Yad L’Achim, a prominent activist group that has been known for harassing Christian missionaries to Israel and voicing opposition to Arab-Israeli marriages, complained that the…
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Books Jewish Converts in the Russian Empire
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Ellie R. Schainker, “Confessions of the Shtetl: Converts from Judaism in Imperial Russia, 1817-1906” (Stanford University Press) In Sholem Asch’s novel “Petersburg,” Madam Kvasnetsova, an interesting Jewish woman who has converted to Christianity, owns a house in St. Petersburg and an inn for Jews who come to…
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Books Amazon Bookstore: Think British, Read Yiddish
‘First they drive all the bookshops out of business, then they open a bookshop.” A fleeing British tourist voiced the suspicion of New Yorkers still mourning many of the city’s deceased independent bookstores at the May 25 opening of the Amazon bookstore in New York’s Time Warner Center. What’s the point of such a store?…
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Books Israel’s City of the Future: Portrait of a Smug Society
Excerpted from the book “No Country for Jewish Liberals.” This is a political and personal story about Israel, about how over the years it went one way and I went the other. I’m going to start where I live, literally—in the city (actually the sprawling suburban bedroom community) of Modi’in, which is truly a showcase…
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Books Is There Still A Chance For Peace In The Middle East?
Not long ago, I strolled along the spotless streets of Rawabi, a new Palestinian city being built near Ramallah, with Jack Nassar, the project’s development manager. He is an educated young man, smartly dressed and well compensated. We walked past the impressive amphitheater, strolled through expansive parks, saw the church and the mosque, and viewed…
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Books 7 Books Every Jewish Feminist Should Read
It’s no secret that the second wave of the Feminist movement was propelled forward partially by Jewish women. Decades after some of the books written by these women were published, they continue to inspire women of all faiths and cultures to step and fight for the cause. Below, in no particular order, are 7 books…
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Books Idra Novey Wins Sami Rohr Prize For Literature
(JTA) — Idra Novey, author of the novel “Ways to Disappear,” won the 2017 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. She takes home $100,000 for winning the prize, which was announced Wednesday by the Jewish Book Council at a ceremony at New York’s Jewish Museum. Her book explores a translator’s search for a missing…
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Culture RFK Jr.’s poems to Olivia Nuzzi are peak cringe — so were King Solomon’s
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Film & TV For ill and for good, this ‘Wicked’ song has become ubiquitous
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