This is the Forward’s coverage of books and literature, including both non-fictional and fictional works.
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Books Q&A: Michael Feinstein on the Gershwins and ‘Porgy’
When Michael Feinstein was in his 20s, he had the good fortune to work as an assistant and archivist for the great Ira Gershwin, who, with his brother George, wrote some of the greatest and most beloved songs in American history. Now a beloved singer in his own right, Feinstein spoke with the Forward about…
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Books Jami Attenberg Phones Home
My new novel, “The Middlesteins,” follows the lives of the titular suburban Chicago Jewish family, whose matriarch is obsessed with food, a thing with which I am also very much interested in myself. Your relationship with food is often informed by a parent’s relationship with it, so I decided to go to one of the…
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Books Rachel Tzvia Back’s Verse Confronts Devastating Loss
A Messenger Comes By Rachel Tzvia Back Singing Horse Press, 110 Pages, $15 Mourning propels us. We are, none of us, immune. It is the first thing children fear: loss — of a parent, a friend, a sibling, a grandparent — and the first lie we tell them, or half-truth we impart, as parents, promising,…
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Books Némirovsky’s ‘Wine of Solitude’ Confirms Her Place
The Wine of Solitude By Irène Némirovsky Vintage, 256 pages. $15 When we first meet Hélène Karol, she is an 8-year-old girl growing up in Ukraine. She dislikes, and is disliked by, her mother, an exceedingly unhappy member of the morally and financially bankrupt bourgeoisie. Hélène loves and admires her father, who doesn’t care much…
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Books Michael Feinstein Strikes Up The Bland
The Gershwins and Me By Michael Feinstein Simon & Schuster, 320 pages, $45 George Gershwin is widely, and rightly, regarded as a quintessentially American character. This isn’t merely because of the way his music sounds; while the music he wrote is unmistakably American, the same can be said for any number of other American composers…
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Books Author Blog: Different, but Special
Jami Attenberg’s most recent novel, “The Middlesteins,” is now available. Her other books include: “Instant Love,” “The Kept Man” and “The Melting Season.” Her blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit: I have…
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Books Don’t Know Much About Semitism
I came from such an assimilated family that our clam chowder was Campbell’s. Nevertheless, I was raised with certain traditions. There was the “No Slacks on Yom Kippur” rule and the “Seder at Aunt Sara and Uncle George’s.” If my family had settled in Dallas or Indianapolis, we might have easily melded into America, but…
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Books Teenage Hero Is a Distinctly West Coast Jew
Since you Left Me By Allen Zadoff Egmont USA, 320 pages, $16 Has any Jewish teenager in recent American literature felt as much antipathy toward attending Hebrew school as Sanskrit Aaron Zuckerman? The 17-year-old narrator of Allen Zadoff’s new bildungsroman, “Since You Left Me,” has just cause, though. First, he’s only attending “B-Jew” (the nickname…
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News What We Know About Jeffrey Epstein’s Childhood
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Fast Forward AIPAC fails its first test in the midterms
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Fast Forward Mamdani appoints Phylisa Wisdom, progressive Jewish leader, to run Office to Combat Antisemitism
In Case You Missed It
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Opinion My grandmother Eva Schloss survived Auschwitz. She would not be silent about America today.
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Fast Forward Credit Suisse had many more bank accounts with Nazi ties than previously known, investigation finds
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Fast Forward Former Moscow rabbi says he rebuffed proposal to convert a million Russians discussed in Epstein files recording
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Looking Forward Why am I so much better at singing in Hebrew than in English?
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