Writing
Not-So-Young AdultThursday, April 25, 2013 by Diane Cole | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
With remarkable sensitivity and clarity, Israeli novelist Nava Semel portrays children in Mandate Palestine working as hard as they can to make sense of a post-Holocaust, pre-state limbo.
Shani Boianjiu and the Past and Present of Jewish LiteratureWednesday, March 20, 2013 by Melissa Weininger | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Israeli writer Shani Boianjiu's first novel, composed in English, is a rare contemporary addition to the Jewish tradition of transnational literature.
Buczacz by Way of Newark: On Literary Lives at the EndThursday, January 10, 2013 by Jeffrey Saks | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Philip Roth has bowed out gracefully from the literary world. But for the great Hebrew writer S. Y. Agnon, retirement was never an option.
Crossing Borders—Without PassportsWednesday, December 19, 2012 by Moshe Sokolow | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
“Crossing Borders,” a current exhibit at New York City’s Jewish Museum featuring works on loan from Oxford's Bodleian Library, displays medieval Jewish manuscripts embedded in their Christian and Muslim scribal milieus.
Editors' Picks
"Was I a Man or a Jerk?" David Wolpe, Los Angeles Review of Books. Greg Bellow's memoir of his father, author Saul Bellow, reveals "a sort of uneasy, seesaw truce between a famous, domineering, and rageful father, and a sensitive son."
Zuckerman Abridged Max Ross, New Yorker. "The recent discovery of hundreds of notebooks and journals hidden throughout Zuckerman’s home in the Berkshires explains, at least in part, the seclusion and silence that marked his final 35 years." (Fiction)
The Sheikh and I Michael Janofsky, Los Angeles Review of Books. "For the better part of a year, I was the Sheikh’s blogger; or the Sheikh was my avatar. . . I suppose this is the point where I should say I’m Jewish."
Irwin Isaac Meiselman Joseph Epstein, Standpoint. “I should have said, ‘Of course I don't want to read your chapter. Why the hell would I want to do that?’ Instead I hear myself saying, ‘Sounds interesting. I'd very much like to read it.’” (Fiction)