maus now by hillary chute

Book Review | The Maus That Roared

The latest cycle of public panic over book-banning—as distinct from the constant, threatening drumbeat of book-banning itself—kicked off last January when The New York Times reported that a school board in McMinn County, Tennessee, had withdrawn Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel/memoir Maus: A Survivor’s Tale from the eighth-grade Holocaust education curriculum.

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Dirshuni by Tamar Biala

Book Review | Studying Talmud with Beruriah

When the ancient rabbis had a question about the Torah—an important detail that seemed to be missing, an inconsistency between two passages, even a redundant word or verse—they would often solve the problem by writing a midrash, or story, filling in the missing piece or reconciling the seeming contradiction.

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a display of Jewish children's books

New Jewish Kidlit: Beyond the Holocaust and Holidays

In a recent article in School Library Journal, news editor Kara Yorio observes that for a long time, “[children’s] books about Jewish people or by Jewish authors fit into two categories: the Holocaust and holidays,” while Jewish secondary characters often seemed stereotyped.

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