Jewish Culture
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 ...
Is “Schmuck” a Dirty Word?
One of the points I make in my book is that what’s dirty in Yiddish isn’t always dirty in English, and vice ...
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 ...
Yoda’s Yiddishkeit: Jewish He Seems, Hmmm?
The month of May, known as “Liberation Month,” contains Cinco de Mayo (celebrating Mexico’s liberating victory over the French in ...
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 ...