• A good summary of the more than 1,600 Palestinian documents leaked.

• Twitter is banned in Egypt to battle protests. Thankfully we can still get eyewitness accounts.

• Hitler’s former bodyguard, Rochus Misch, just doesn’t have the time to answer your fan mail anymore.

• “Adam Levin’s The Instructions and the Cult of the Child” at The Millions.

The post Daily Jewce: Palestinian Document Summary, No Twitter in Egypt, Hitler’s Bodyguard, Adam Levin And More appeared first on Jewcy.

The folks at The Jewish Book Council just announced the winners of the National Jewish Book Awards.  Cynthia Ozick and Gal Beckerman are among the big winners.  [Watch our interview with Beckerman here]

Everett Family Foundation
Jewish Book of the Year Award
When They Come For Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Gal Beckerman

Jewish Book Council
IMPACT Award
Harold Grinspoon

Jewish Book Council
Lifetime Achievement Award
Cynthia Ozick

American Jewish Studies
Celebrate 350 Award

Winner:

The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Princeton University Press)

Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman

Finalist:

Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora (Indiana University Press)
Rebecca Kobrin

Anthologies and Collections

Winner:

The Cambridge Guide to Jewish History, Religion, and Culture (Cambridge University Press)
Judith R. Baskin and Kenneth Seeskin, eds.

Finalists:

Promised Lands: New Jewish American Fiction on Longing and Belonging (Brandeis University Press/UPNE)
Derek Rubin, ed.

Jewish Cultural Studies, Volume 2, Jews at Home: The Domestication of Identity (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)
Simon J. Bronner, ed.

Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir
In Memory of Simon & Shulamith (Sofi) Goldberg

Winner:

Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company)
Ruth Harris

Finalists:

The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (The Toby Press)
Yehuda Avner

Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)
Abigail Green

Backing Into Forward (Nan A. Talese/Random House)
Jules Feiffer

Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Winner:

Under a Red Sky: Memoir of a Childhood in Communist Romania (Frances Foster Books/ Farrar , Straus and Giroux)
Haya Leah Molnar

Finalists:

Rabbi Harvey vs. The Wisdom Kid: A Graphic Novel of Dueling Jewish Folktales in the Wild West (Jewish Lights Publishing)
Steve Sheinkin

The Orphan Rescue (Second Story Press)
Anne Dublin

An Unspeakable Crime: The Prosecution and Persecution of Leo Frank (Carolrhoda Books/Lerner Publishing Group)
Elaine Marie Alphin

Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice

Winner:

Walking Israel: A Personal Search for the Soul of a Nation (Thomas Dunne Books/Macmillan)
Martin Fletcher

Finalists:

The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time (Random House)
Judith Shulevitz

Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues from Functional to Visionary (The Alban Institute)
Isa Aron, Steven M. Cohen, Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ari Y. Kelman

Education and Jewish Identity

Winner:

Sacred Strategies: Transforming Synagogues from Functional to Visionary (The Alban Institute)
Isa Aron, Steven M. Cohen, Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ari Y. Kelman

Finalists:

Ramah at 60: Impact and Innovation (National Ramah Commission)
Mitchell Cohen, Jeffrey S. Kress, eds.

Learning and Community: Jewish Supplementary Schools in the Twenty-First Century (Brandeis University Press/UPNE)
Jack Wertheimer

Fiction
JJ Greenberg Memorial Award

Winner:

To the End of the Land (Knopf/Random House)
David Grossman; Jessica Cohen, trans.

Finalists:

The Invisible Bridge (Knopf/Random House)
Julie Orringer

The Instructions (McSweeney’s)
Adam Levin

Nemesis (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Philip Roth

History
Gerrard and Ella Berman Memorial Award

Winner:

Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton University Press)
David B. Ruderman

Finalists:

Crown of Aleppo: The Mystery of the Oldest Hebrew Bible Codex (Jewish Publication Society)
Hayim Tawil and Bernard Schneider

The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership (The Toby Press)
Yehuda Avner

Untold Tales of the Hasidim: Crisis and Discontent in the History of Hasidim (Brandeis University Press/UPNE)
David Assaf

Holocaust

Winner:

Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp (W. W. Norton & Company)
Christopher R. Browning

Finalists:

The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)

Daniel Blatman; Chaya Galai, trans.

The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos During the Holocaust (Yad Vashem Publishers)
Guy Miron and Shlomit Shulhani, eds.

Illustrated Children’s Books
Louis Posner Memorial Award

Winner:

The Rooster Prince of Breslov (Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Ann Redisch Stampler; Eugene Yelchin, illus.

Finalists:

Modeh Ani: A Good Morning Book (EKS Publishing)
Adapted by Sarah Gershman; Kristina Swarner, illus.

Feivel’s Flying Horses (Kar-Ben Publishing)
Heidi Smith Hyde; Johanna van der Sterre, illus

Modern Jewish Thought & Experience
Dorot Foundation Award in Memory of Joy Ungerleider Mayerson

Winner:

The Koren Mesorat HaRav Kinot: The Complete Tisha B’Av Service with Commentary by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (Koren Publishers Jerusalem and the Orthodox Union)
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

Finalists:

The Ten Commandments: How Our Most Ancient Moral Text Can Renew Modern Life (Simon & Schuster)
David Hazony

Silver from the Land of Israel: A New Light On The Sabbath And Holidays From Rabbi Abraham Kook (Urim Publications)
Rabbi Chanan Morrison

Outstanding Debut Fiction
Foundation for Jewish Culture’s Goldberg Prize

Winner:

Rich Boy (TWELVE Books/Hachette)
Sharon Pomerantz

Finalist:

Displaced Persons (William Morrow/HarperCollins)
Ghita Schwarz

Scholarship Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award

Winner:

From Continuity to Contiguity: Toward a New Jewish Literary Thinking (Stanford University Press)
Dan Miron

Finalists:

Yehuda Halevi (Schocken Books/NextbookPress)
Hillel Halkin

Glory and Agony: Isaac’s Sacrifice and National Narrative (Stanford University Press)
Yael S. Feldman

The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, And Ecclesiastes: A Translation With Commentary (W. W. Norton & Company)
Robert Alter

Orthodox by Design: Judaism, Print Politics, and the ArtScroll Revolution (University of California Press)
Jeremy Stolow

Sephardic Culture
Mimi S. Frank Award in Memory of Becky Levy

Winner:

Yehuda Halevi (Schocken Books/Nextbook Press)
Hillel Halkin

Finalist:

The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks (Stanford University Press)
Marc David Baer

Women’s Studies
Barbara Dobkin Award

Winner:

Memoirs of a Grandmother: Scenes from the Cultural History of the Jews of Russia in the Nineteenth Century, Volume One (Stanford University Press)
Pauline Wengeroff; Shulamit S. Magnus, trans.

Finalists:

In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identities (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers)
Lori Hope Lefkovitz

A Jewish Feminine Mystique?: Jewish Women in Postwar America (Rutgers University Press)
Hasia Diner, Shira Kohn, Rachel Kranson, eds.

Writing Based on Archival Material
The JDC-Herbert Katzki Award

Winner:

The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Random House)
Jonathan Schneer

Finalists:

Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices (TWELVE Books/Hachette)
Noah Feldman

Syrian Jewry in Transition, 1840–1880 (Littman Library of Jewish Civilization)
Yaron Harel; Dena Ordan, trans.

The post Gal Beckerman And Cynthia Ozick Among The 2010 National Jewish Book Award Winners appeared first on Jewcy.

That led me and a few other folks to thinking what the best way to settle the dispute as to what exactly the most superior large book of last year was.  Of course since we did this over several pints of beer, we came up with the brilliant idea to take the books and shoot them — and to maybe include a few other notable titles as well.

Somehow, unlike 98% of all the other brilliant drunken ideas that seem to be slept off just prior to experiencing hangover, this one came to fruition.   The good folks at Electric Literature secured a location, and we were finally able to come to the conclusion that Witz by Joshua Cohen, is indeed the best book to have protecting your vital organs if you go into a bad neighborhood.

The post Which Big Book Will Keep You Safe? appeared first on Jewcy.

No matter how hard you try and fight it, 2010 will be remembered as Franzen’s year.  Freedom is the book that everybody talked about whether they were hating on it, or planning on making it the only book they were going to read.  Whether it be Oprah embracing him after his public shunning of her endorsement for The Corrections, or Lev Grossman’s profile on him making the cover of Time (we talked to Grossman about that here), Franzen left his stamp on all 365 days of the year that was.

We liked Franzen just as much as the next guy, but there were ten works of fiction we liked a whole lot more.

1. The Instructions by Adam Levin (McSweeney’s)

We loved The Instructions for reasons beyond the fact that it was over a thousand pages.  Levin’s book is #1 on our list because it’s a debut novel that was epic, ambitious and a hell of a lot of fun to read.

2. The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg by Deborah Eisenberg (Picador)

This was more than a collection, it was a blessing considering that Deborah Eisenberg is possibly the greatest living short story writer in the English language.

3. Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor (Harper Perennial)

Justin Taylor is like the Luke Skywalker of Jewish writers: he’s the next great hope, and this collection of short stories was a perfect introduction for what might be in store.

4. The Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer ( Spiegel & Grau)

Langer, who is on a book-a-year tear, gives us his best work yet with this Thieves.  It was hard to put down this highly entertaining and stylish literary caper.

5. The Ask by Sam Lipsyte (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

2010 will hopefully remembered as the year Sam Lipsyte became formerly recognized as one of the greatest fiction writers with this fantastic comic novel.  [Read our interview with Lipsyte]

6. The Melting Season by Jami Attenberg (Riverhead)

Attenberg got to the heart of so many different things with this novel: self-liberation, the dynamics of female friendships, letting go, and hitting the open road.

7. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (Random House)

Shteyngart gave us the the years best novel on the subject of a future where people don’t like books.  Encouraging?  No.  Great book?  Yes.

8. What He’s Poised to Do by Ben Greenman (Harper Perennial)

What Greenman was poised to do in 2010 was put out this collection of stories (as well as the hilarious Celebrity Chekov) and leave us asking what he’s poised to do next?

9. Something Red by Jennifer Gilmore (Scribner)

Family and country are the themes of Gilmore’s second novel; how those things can let you down are also themes.  [Check out our video interview with Gilmore and Gal Beckerman]

10. Bad Marie: A Novel by Marcy Dermansky (Harper Perennial)

An ex-con attempting to adjust to post-prison life becomes the nanny to a two-and-a-half-year-old.  We have to admit that we were lured in by the tag of “wickedly nihilistic,” but were sold by the time the book was closed.

Also of note: Witz by Joshua Cohen, Skippy Dies by Paul Murray, A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

The post Jewcy Top 10 Fiction Books Of 2010 appeared first on Jewcy.

• Ain’t no party like an Israeli Facebook party.  Am I right or am I right?

• Israeli documentary “Precious Life” was shortlisted for the Best Documentary Film category in the 83rd Academy Awards

• Bob Dylan played a harp.  Yup.

• The Rumpus interviews Adam Levin, author of The Instructions.

• Meredith Fineman interviews contestants from Millionaire Matchmaker.

The post Daily Jewce: Israeli Facebook Party, Bob Dylan Plays A HarpAdam Levin Speaks And More appeared first on Jewcy.

Once he tones down the self-aggrandizing, Cohen compares The Instructions to the Talmud (“there isn’t much plot, just water-fountain tattle, summaries, lists and, interspersed, charts and strange doodled maps that only distract.”), then goes on to say that David Foster Wallace is Levin’s “tutelary goy.” Finally, he gets around to more or less saying that he doesn’t like the book in what has to be the shortest word count I’ve seen from the Witz author.  What bothers me is the ethics question:  Cohen obviously has a stake in all this, so was it fair to let him review Levin’s book?  Wouldn’t another critic have been more appropriate to tackle The Instructions?  Maybe a critic shouldn’t be able to come out and try to essentially advertise his own book in one of the most respected forums around.  To put it in really simple terms, It’s almost like they let the author of Twilight review the Vampire Diaries.  Maybe big Jewish book writer on big Jewish book writer is a bad thing.

Still, the review itself isn’t at all bad. But the way Cohen starts the thing left a sour taste in the mouths of some book people on the internet.  Can you really fault Cohen for reviewing The Instructions this way?  He’s a critic, and one who has never been shy when it comes to being critical– especially of more contemporary titles.  Sure, we’ve seen Cohen court controversy with boisterous statements before, and maybe he felt his position as Big Jewish Book Guy was being threatened.  But at the very least, the prospect of a nice little literary feud isn’t so bad.  Even better, one between two fine writers such as Joshua Cohen and Adam Levin.  That’s a rivalry I can dig my teeth into.

The post Battle Of The Big Jewish Books: Joshua Cohen Vs. Adam Levin appeared first on Jewcy.

Jewcy has asked me to describe “the Jewish influence” on THE INSTRUCTIONS and I’m not finding it very easy to do. Even after all kinds of narrowing and qualifying, it seems impossible to get it down to just one person. I tried to pretend, for example, that by “the Jewish influence” on THE INSTRUCTIONS, what Jewcy really meant was, “the TWO BIGGEST Jewish-AMERICAN influenceS” on THE INSTRUCTIONS, and I still wound up with a four-way tie of influence between Sean Connery, Kate Moss, this guy Patrick who used to mow our lawn, and–obviously–Rutger Hauer.

Probably best to start out describing Rutger Hauer, since his influence is the one that gets me the most anxious. So. Although we look alike in the face, Rutger Hauer and I have different taste in clothing. I, for example, pretty much exclusively wear the standard Chicago fuck-you-I-don’t-have-to-dress-up-you-New York/Hollywood-pussies-who-are-always-trying-to-get-me-to-dress-up-and-plus-you-can’t-tell-if-I’ve-got-muscles-under-here-or-am-skinny-or-even-maybe-kinda-fat-or-deformed uniform of blue hoodie and blue jeans and brown sneakers with some occasional variance re. hoodie color, whereas Rutger Hauer’s is a no-hoodies-outside-the-gym policy. Also, he played a replicant in BLADE RUNNER, the screen adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP, a book I’ve never read, but–who knows–one day might, though I have seen the movie, enjoyed the movie, and also played a replicant in the movie.

Next up is Patrick who used to mow our lawn, aka “Patrick who used to mow our lawn in Buffalo Grove, IL and then in Highland Park, IL, which is roughly 20 minutes by car from Buffalo Grove, IL”: This guy, Patrick, moved all the way from Buffalo Grove to Highland Park so that he could continue to mow our lawn. He had a dog called Pony and a certain way about him, and Pony and the way both deeply affected me.

Sean Connery couldn’t get a date to prom, I once read, whereas I could, and did, though, like Patrick–and unlike Connery who, because he couldn’t get a date to prom didn’t have a prom-date who smoked crack–my prom-date smoked crack. True story. Kind of. The part you think isn’t, I mean. Unless the part you think isn’t is the part about Patrick. Or you want to get really dubiously technical about the distinction between crack and freebase, but we’re talking about Connery, who played Tony in Who’s The Boss, which I saw a couple times, but only a couple since it wasn’t as good as the book, which got me sad.

As for Kate Moss, I was totally fucken kidding. Kate Moss’s influence on THE INSTRUCTIONS was minimal.

The post Adam Levin Guest Posts On The Jewish Influence In <i>The Instructions</i> appeared first on Jewcy.

The chance to savor 1,000 + pages of a book that brings to mind a strange hybrid of David Foster Wallace and Philip Roth as an angsty Jewish kid in the Chicago suburbs, is one that we really suggest nobody miss out on.  Adam Levin was the man who took up the challenge of writing that book, and he will be guest blogging for us over the next week.

For his first post Adam discusses why the heck he’d want to write such a big novel.

Lately, people have been asking me questions like, “Your novel, THE INSTRUCTIONS, is over 1,000 pages, huh?” and “At least 3 other long novels have been published this year, haven’t they?” and “I haven’t read many books over 500 pages, do you know that?” To which I always say the same thing: Yes.

Some other questions with numbers in them to which I say yes are: “Is it true that THE INSTRUCTIONS took 9 years to write?” “Is it the case that, during those 9 years, you wrote, on average, for 6 hours a day, 7 days a week?” “You were smoking between 40 and 80 cigarettes a day that whole time, weren’t you?” “While it’s a stone cold fact that you quit smoking cold turkey 10 weeks ago Thursday, is it not also equally cold-stonely factual that you have gone from eating 1 to 2 ice creams per week, 0 to 1.5 watermelons per week, 2 to 3 pizzas per week, and haven’t, since you quit, written 1 sentence worth showing to anyone, present company and present sentence included?”

“You have blogged 0 times before, correct?” “6 days ago, you asked a good friend how exactly you–a delicate little flower of an ex-smoker who, even when things are going well for him, takes about 6 hours to write 100 words he can live with–could possibly write the 3 500-word blogposts for Jewcy that you agreed to write without spending at least 90 and maybe as many as 270 hours doing so, and this good friend, whose advice you would take/are taking, told you to pretend you were writing him an email, no?” “And this same friend also told you that 500 words didn’t always mean 500 words, stating that 500 words might, for example, mean 300 words or even 700 words, and at the thought of 3 700-word blogposts, you ate 2/3 of a watermelon, correct?” “Is it really true that blogs pay this many dollars: 0?” “You live with exactly 1 green Quaker Parrot, age 3, da?” “Your friend who told you to pretend this blogpost was an email remembered, right after he told you that, that you used to send him emails about your Quaker Parrot, and told you that you should not pretend that this blogpost was like one of THOSE emails, that your parrot was allowed a single–i.e. 1–shout-out, and then you had to ‘never ever mention the bird again, levin,’ true?”

“And isn’t it the opposite of false that you told Jewcy that 1 of the blogposts you would write for them would be about big books, about how there seem to be more of them than usual, and why that might be, and this was supposed to be that blogpost, but it turned out you didn’t have many coherent thoughts on that subject, that all you really had were a couple lines of praise for HBO’s The Wire, and some little riff about drawing from the pleasures of immersive video games that ceased to ring true the very moment you wrote it down, and that you have no idea at all why there seem to be more long novels coming out than usual, you dislike sociological approaches to art, and you feel especially ill-equipped to discuss recently published big novels because you haven’t read any recently published big novels other than THE INSTRUCTIONS, and you aren’t, in fact, a particularly big fan of big novels (though it’s true that a couple or three big novels are a couple or three of your favorite novels), and that what you would rather do, if you’re going to talk about recently published fiction at all is mention some recently published fiction that you love but which hasn’t received enough attention like THE AVIAN GOSPELS by Adam Novy, THE AWFUL POSSIBILITIES by Christian TeBordo, and THE TASTE OF PENNY by Jeff Parker?”

The post Guest Post: Adam Levin, Author Of <i>The Instructions</i> appeared first on Jewcy.

• Graffiti artist and Chicago activist William “Upski” Wimsatt’s (above) new book, Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs is discussed at Lit Kicks.

• Melville House turns down an Amazon award for the English translation of Israeli novel The Confessions of Noa Weber: “The point is, it’s clear to us that Amazon’s interests, and those of a healthy book culture, whether electronic or not, are antithetical.”

• New York Observer reviews The Instructions by Adam Levin.

• Mr. Franzen goes to Washington.

• Big Jewcy alumni Adam Whitney Nichols launches his multimedia project, Fortnight Journal.

• At NPR, Myla Goldberg’s newest novel, The False Friend, is discussed.

• David Rakoff talks to the Bat Segundo Show.  We really like the way Rakoff talks.  Is that weird?

The post The Weekly Yiderati: William “Upski” Wimsatt, Melville House Turns Down Award, Myla Goldberg, David Rakoff and More appeared first on Jewcy.