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Books
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Culture Deborah Feldman Isn’t Telling You the Whole Story
● Exodus By Deborah Feldman Blue Rider Press, $26.95, 288 pages While Jews around the world are preparing to retell the story of their ancestral exodus from Egypt, another story of an exodus is making its way onto bookshelves. Deborah Feldman, the 27-year-old author of the 2012 best-selling memoir “Unorthodox,” is releasing her second memoir,…
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The Schmooze Bosnia Through Muslim Eyes
New York author Susan Shapiro and her Muslim physical therapist, Kenan Trebincevic, bonded, and together they wrote the recently published “The Bosnia List: A Memoir of War, Exile, and Return” (Penguin Books). The book tells the story of the Bosnian War through Trebincevic’s eyes. In 1992 he was 12 and living a normal, happy childhood,…
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Culture In Search of a More Perfect Union
A rabbi and an imam walk into a bookstore. That may sound like the first line of a joke, but these aren’t any old rabbi and imam, and they’re not joking around. Rabbi Marc Schneier, the prominent Hampton Synagogue founder and Imam Shamsi Ali, former leader of the Islamic Cultural Center, a major Manhattan mosque,…
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The Schmooze How Jews Became ‘White’ On Broadway
Even if you’re not a theater nerd, Warren Hoffman’s “The Great White Way” (Rutgers University Press) makes a fascinating read. The book’s subtitle, “Race and the Broadway Musical,” only hints at its breadth, and the depth of Hoffman’s laser-sharp analysis of an all-American art form. Billed as “the first book to reveal the racial politics,…
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The Schmooze Reinventing Israel in Argentina
Every year, of the 75,000 young Israelis who complete their military service, it is estimated that around one third leave everything behind to go backpacking. The nomadic ramble through Southeast Asia and South America in that indeterminate period between youth and adulthood is hardly unique to Israel, but it takes on its own characteristics at…
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The Schmooze The Author as Therapist for her Characters
Literature is in Zeruya Shalev’s genes. Born in Kvutzat Kinneret in 1959 — a kibbutz by the shores of the Galilee where the songwriter Naomi Shemer was also born — Shalev grew up with a father who was a literary critic and an uncle who was a poet. Her cousin is the acclaimed novelist Meir…
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The Schmooze Did Dreyfus Affair Really Inspire Herzl?
The idea that the trial of Alfred Dreyfus inspired Theodor Herzl to write “The Jewish State” is “simply not true,” Shlomo Avineri declared in a pointed, fluent, and well-received lecture that opened the first full day of London’s Jewish Book Week on February 23. Discussing his biography of the father of modern Zionism, “Herzl: Theodor…
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The Schmooze Modern Love Illuminated
The sea of love can be a “dark and scary place — deep, cold, impenetrable, and populated by billions of freakish creatures lurking in the depths with their gnashing teeth and electrified appendages,” Daniel Jones, editor of the Modern Love essay column in The New York Times, writes in his new book, “Love Illuminated: Exploring…
Most Popular
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Culture Why saying ‘L’shana Tova’ on Rosh Hashanah may not be the correct phrase
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Culture How my odious cousin Roy Cohn was responsible for creating Donald Trump — and me
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Opinion This is the most disorienting Rosh Hashanah in memory
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Fast Forward Was the viral Ta-Nehisi Coates interview a hit piece or fair play? A journalism ethics expert weighs in.
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Fast Forward Democratic poll shows 71% of Jewish voters across 7 swing states favor Kamala Harris
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Fast Forward As Florida braces for Hurricane Milton, this rabbi is defying an evacuation order so he can help
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Yiddish ווי האָבן ייִדן געהיט די ייִדיש־קולטור אױף יענער זײַט „אײַזערנעם פֿאָרהאַנג“?How did Jews maintain their Yiddish culture behind the Iron Curtain?
ייִדישע ליטעראַטן, װאָס האָבן געטרײַ געדינט די קאָמוניסטישע רעזשימען, האָבן גענוצט זײערע פּריװילעגיעס כּדי אָפּצוהיטן ייִדיש.
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Fast Forward All the Jewish NHL players to watch in the 2024-2025 season
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