Jewish Culture
Ars Longa, Vita Brevis
In this week’s Torah portion, God explains that God has called not only Betzalel and Oholiav to execute their craft ...
Normal English and the Novel
Plot was the last thing on my mind when I sat down to make a novel out of the stories ...
The Jewish Hall of Fame
I once heard Sarah Silverman tell a joke about the pride Jews inevitably take in the accomplishments of other Jews. To paraphrase, ...
Obscene Recommendations
Some of the literary works I deal with in Unclean Lips are relatively well-known—Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep (1935) and Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), for ...
Lithuania’s Past and Present
In my last blog post, I recounted the background of Yiddish linguist Dovid Katz, who has been reporting on troubling manifestations of ...
Ladino Pregnant Pop
“Ensuenyo Te Vi” Three words that normally don’t go together: Ladino, Pop, Pregnant. But in my world they make a ...
Is that baby DELICIOUS or what!?
When my siblings and I were little, my mom used to grab our chubby arms and pretend to munch on ...
An Artistic Eruv in Jackson, Mississippi
I’m involved with a wonderful collection of people in Jackson who work hard to put on Figment, a participatory arts ...
The Jews of Poland: Recollections and Recipes by Edouard de Pomiane
When I was researching my last novel, my friend Michael Rohatyn found a book at the Strand he thought I might ...
On Writing a Novel in Two Cultures
Yesterday I wrote that my novel, The Golem and the Jinni , is “pretty darn Jewish.” In truth, that’s only ...
Almost Jewish
So why would a nice Jewish girl not write nice Jewish fiction? My last book, Stations West , was about ...
The Jewish Connection to Art
People ask me how much research I had to do on art forgery for my new book A Nearly Perfect ...