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 How I Learned Not To Be J.D. Salinger
Back in high school, I was friends with the Salinger boys, but I wasn’t really one of them. As I recall it now, there were three: John, Thom and Barnaby (I’ve changed two of their names and I’ve left one the same, for reasons you’ll probably figure out later). You could recognize the Salinger boys…
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Books The Misadventures of a Secular English Teacher in an Orthodox School
The son of Polish Holocaust survivors, Larry N. Mayer grew up in the Bronx, NY. His first book, “Who Will Say Kaddish?: A Search for Jewish Identity in Contemporary Poland” was published by Syracuse University Press in 2002. He has worked with at-risk high school students for over fifteen years, and wrote about his experiences…
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Books Unread Family Letters Open Window Onto Life on the Eve of the Holocaust
On my first trip to Israel, just hours after I landed in Tel Aviv, my Israeli cousin Benny told me that he had nearly 300 family letters dating back to the 1930s and ’40s. I had come to Israel to research a book about the family that Benny and I have in common, and this…
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Books Meet the Pope’s Jewish Bookbinder
Those of you who have strayed through antiquarian bookshops will have, on occasion, chanced upon particularly unique-looking books. Perhaps a volume bound and covered in leather or vellum, as likely or not adorned with ornate designs or engravings. Maybe the cover has been embossed with an ancient typeface? These books might have special features such…
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Books In ‘Like Dreamers’ a Paratrooper from the 1967 War Dives Into the Settler Movement
Yossi Klein Halevi’s new book, “Like Dreamers,” is about seven of the paratroopers who reunited Jerusalem during the Six Day War in 1967. It is their story and Israel’s story in the years that unfolded. In this excerpt, the first of two being published by the Forward, two of those paratroopers, Hanan Porat and Yoel…
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Books ‘My Basmati Bat Mitzvah’ — and Pew
Earlier this month, my social media feeds were full of comments about the recent Pew Study, A Portrait of Jewish Americans. Even more than the actual study though, it was the New York Times article about the findings that generated the most conversation, with its telling headline, “Poll Shows Major Shift in Identity of U.S….
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Books The Ordinary Women Who Committed Nazi Atrocities
In her latest book, “Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields,” American historian Wendy Lower takes on an under-examined aspect of Holocaust scholarship: What role did ordinary women have in perpetrating the horrors of the Third Reich? The book, for the most part, takes place not on actual killing fields, but in the…
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Books Why Philip Roth Is ‘Too Jewish’ for Nobel
When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded, I knew that Philip Roth had not won. A colleague condescended: “I never liked Roth,” a put-down to me, a Miltonist and teacher of Renaissance literature, who really doesn’t know better. A couple of decades ago, someone would have mentioned the more elegant, supposedly more disciplined and…
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Fast Forward Chabad ‘let me down,’ suspect said, in hours before allegedly attacking their headquarters
In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish פֿאָרווערטס פּאָדקאַסט, קאַפּיטל פֿיר: פֿאָלקס־מעשׂיותForverts podcast, episode 4: Folk tales
הערט אַן אַרטיקל וועגן אַ באַליבטער מעשׂה פֿון אַ באָבע מיט די אייניקלעך און אַ צווייטן אַרטיקל וועגן חסידישע מעשׂיות.
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Opinion A death knell for the American Jewish dream of a melting pot — in the 1920s, and today
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News Antisemitism group keeps board member who emailed Epstein on the legality of transporting minors for sex
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Fast Forward Mamdani appoints Phylisa Wisdom, progressive Jewish leader, to run Office to Combat Antisemitism
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