• This complex profile of 1960s radical-turned-conservative-provocateur David Horowitz is a must, must, must read.

• The Weird Al-inspired sub-genre of music, by genre.

• Of course there are kosher food apps.

• Jacob Silverman talks to Margaret Atwood about her 2008 book, Payback, which is the basis of a new documentary featuring the author.

The post Daily Jewce: The Weird Al Revolution, Visiting David Horowitz, 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.

• Gal Beckerman, Annie Cohen-Solal, Barry Hannah, Joshua Ferris, and a bunch of other writers and their books make it to The New Yorker’s 2010 “best of” list.

• Howard Jacobson finds himself on Slate’s list.

• America Abroad Media speaks to David Grossman about his newest novel, To the End of the Land, and the complexities of life in one of the world’s most contentious regions.

• Avi Steinberg guest blogs over at the Jewish Book Council.

• Sam Lipsyte gives a roundup of things he’s read in 2010 at The Millions.

• A Fran Lebowitz wish list.

The post Weekly Yiderati: Jews Dominate “Best Of” Lists, David Grossman Videos, Fran Lebowitz Lists Avi Steinberg Blogs And More appeared first on Jewcy.

This year was a kind one to three great Jewish writers; two of which seemed to never get the respect they deserve, and another who has unjustly fallen into the honorable mention category of the great writers of the 20th Century.  Saul Bellow, I.J. Singer, and Bruno Schulz have all had some of their works re-released or reassessed in 2010.

Saul Bellow is a victim of the underrated/highly rated trap.  He’s a big name–even the sound of it has resonance and power–but I wonder sometimes if anyone is really even reading him anymore.  Heck, Harper’s just asked that this month.  He has two books to be released this year, so hopefully the answer will once again be, “yes.”

A lot of fanfare has been made in anticipation of the release of Saul Bellow: Letters, and for good reason: Bellow was a great correspondent who wrote to cache of literary lions from Philip Roth to Bernard Malamud.  In Letters, Bellow writes inspiring notes to younger writers, who no doubt looked up to him, as well as admonishing fellow Nobel laureat, William Faulkner, for being anti-communist, and for supporting the anti-Semitic poet, Ezra Pound.  You get the full spectrum of the man, from the testier moments to his lighter side.  His sincerity and goodness is best illustrated by a letter to Isaac Bashevis Singer, congratulating –in Yiddish, no less– the writer on a Nobel award that Bellow himself had won two years prior.  A letter in September of 1966 to colleague Richard Stern, sees Bellow make mention of a memoir of D. Schwartz — that book would not come out until 1975 Pulitzer Prize winning (fictonal) novel, Humboldt’s Gift.

Humboldt’s Gift is included in Bellow: Novels, 1970-1983.  Whether you want to buy three novels in one, or simply want to adorn your bookshelves with another Library of America title, these three late-period novels are all worth your attention.

Bellow himself was an admirer of Isaac Bashevis Singer.  Bellow first translated Singer’s story of the simple old country dweller, Gimpel The Fool, in 1953.  But Bellow was also in on the secret of Isaac’s older brother, Israel Joshua Singer.  Bellow’s name adorns the cover of the newest reissue of I.J. Singer’s, The Brothers Ashkenazi, calling it “a wonderful novel.” With all due respect, Mr. Bellow, that is something of an understatement.

After reading The Brothers Ashkenazi, it’s clear that I.J. Singer was the stronger writer of the two brothers; as the book moves beyond the shtetl tales of magic and evil that his brother would become famous for.  It’s a picture of greed, tradition and family; losing faith and longing for the past, as well as providing a fine sketch of shtetl life in the early days of the 20th Century.  While Isaac had the flair of a master storyteller, Israel was the better writer.  I thought of Tolstoy, or even Dickens, throughout so much of this The Brothers, but all the while, I.J. Singer is nostalgic in a way even Proust would have admired.  This is not a book just for fans of Jewish books, but for readers of all kinds of great literature.

Finally, here is to hoping that 2010 will be remembered as the year that Bruno Schulz, one of the greatest Polish Jewish writers of the 20th century, finally gets an audience worthy of his work.

While the tragic story of Schulz’s death during WWII is just one of millions, his works need to be celebrated as masterpieces by an audience wider than than fellow writers John Updike and Philip Roth — or as inspirations for the Brothers Quay stop motion animation films.

In the last year, Jonathan Safran Foer has became the latest writer to champion Schulz; going as far as to using the late writer’s book, The Street of Crocodiles, as the starting point for his own own book/art project, Tree of Codes.  Schulz’s work has flirted with capturing the attention of a larger audience in the past, soliciting nods from Cynthia Ozick and David Grossman.  Unfortunately, neither of them had the crossover appeal of Safran Foer, who might finally bring the man (who should be considered Poland’s Kafka) to the audience he’s deserved all these years.

The post Saul Bellow, I.J. Singer and Bruno Schulz: Revisited appeared first on Jewcy.