We discuss how Judaism is and is not portrayed in fiction today and about the influence of religion, spirituality, community and assimilation on today’s Jewish author
“And the Bride Closed the Door” is a broad comedy about a bride who refuses to go forward with her wedding ceremony, sowing havoc. The book captures a segment of Mizrahi society not often featured in Israeli fiction.
If All the Seas Were Ink is a memoir of a young, recently divorced American-Israeli, living in Jerusalem, whose personal struggles lead her to take on the practice of Daf Yomi, reading a page from the Talmud every day for seven years. Kurshan’s inspiring memoir about learning how to put one foot in front of the other is a winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. In conversation with Moment book review editor Amy E. Schwartz.
Dorit Rabinyan is a two-time awardee of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Hebrew Literary Works. She was born in Israel to a family that emigrated from Iran. All the Rivers is the story of a romance between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, based on the author’s own experiences.
Etgar Keret is an award-winning writer who uses a deceptively casual style for his very short, absurd, often comical stories.
Join Eric Alterman, author of We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel, for a look back at the early years of this important relationship, how support for the Jewish state has changed with each new generation of Jews in America.
With eminent translator/critic Robert Alter, we take an in-depth look at a few of Amichai’s poems and unlock the secrets of their lasting appeal.
Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland, author of The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World joins former CBS News correspondent and Moment contributor Dan Raviv for a conversation about the heroic efforts of Vrba and why his report did not achieve its goal—of ending the Nazi slaughter of the Jews.
Qian Julie Wang came to America with her parents when she was seven years old, living in the shadows and always looking over her shoulder throughout her childhood. Learning English and surviving the harsh realities of being undocumented, Qian Julie eventually made her way to Swarthmore College and Yale Law School, marrying and converting to Judaism. Wang is in conversation with Moment editor Sarah Breger about her family’s search for the American dream, her connection to Judaism and the struggles and antisemitism faced by Jews of Color from within the Jewish community.
This program is part of a Moment series on antisemitism supported by the Joyce and Irving Goldman Family Foundation.
Today’s Senate looks very different from the Senate of the 1960s and 1970s, a time when those serving in Congress put “country over party.” Ira Shapiro, a former longtime Senate staffer and author of the new book The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America, discusses the many functions of the Senate, how it’s failed to provide leadership and what lies ahead of the 2022 elections and beyond. Shapiro is in conversation with Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President Emeritus of the Union of Reform Judaism about how we can return to a time when Senators worked across the aisle.
Barney Frank was the first member of Congress to voluntarily acknowledge being gay in 1987. Frank joins his former congressional aide, Eric Orner, author of the new graphic novel Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank, in conversation about growing up Jewish, his lifelong crusade for civil rights and his 30+ years in the U.S. House of Representatives. With Ann F. Lewis, a champion for women’s rights, a former White House Director of Communications, and the congressman’s sister.
What really happens when a country resolves to end white supremacy? Eve Fairbanks, former Daniel Pearl Investigative Journalism Initiative Fellow and author of the new book, The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa’s Racial Reckoning and Steve Friedman, political scientist at the University of Johannesburg and author of Race, Class and Power: Harold Wolpe and the Radical Critique of Apartheid, speak about the tumultuous three decades since the end of Apartheid, the role Jews played in ending Apartheid and the nation’s triumphs and ongoing troubles. In conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Frankel, author of Rivonia’s Children: Three Families and the Cost of Conscience in White South Africa.
