The Newsletter of Fig Tree Books

January '25: Issue #62 --- Fredric D. Price, Founder & Publisher

NEW BOOK RELEASE:

It Takes Two to Torah,

by Abigail Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer -

Interview with CNN's Bianna Golodryga

She is a journalist and former president of a leading Reform synagogue in New York, Central, who some years ago published a book on her personal journey through the festival calendar, My Jewish Year. He is president of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York, which lies at the modern end of the Modern Orthodox family.

It Takes Two to Torah is based on their discussions, five to six pages each, on the weekly Torah portion. They met at a Jewish conference called the Conversation 15 years ago - “we started talking and haven’t stopped”, said Pogrebin. From 2018 to 2020 they did a podcast on the parashah for the Tablet magazine, an audio equivalent of chavruta, the time-honoured Jewish method of studying texts with a partner. The book is the print version of the podcast.

ABIGAIL POGREBIN is the author of My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew—a National Jewish Book Award finalist—and Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish. She’s written for the Atlantic, the Forward, and Tablet, and moderates conversations for the Streicker Center and the Jewish Broadcasting Service. 

RABBI DOV LINZER is the President and Rosh HaYeshiva (Rabbinic Head) of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, an Orthodox rabbinical school and Torah center, which promotes a more open and inclusive Orthodoxy. He has written for the Forward, Tablet and the New York Times, published widely, and hosted highly popular Torah podcasts.

BOOK: Zibby Owens takes aim at antisemitism

in her new anthology

Seventy-five writers had three weeks to write an original essay about being Jewish in a post-Oct. 7 world. This is the result.

A SUPPLEMENT TO THE COLUMBIA FALL BULLETIN:

by Steven Brett Shaklan

The past year has seen a groundswell of political activity on the Columbia campus. The education you receive at Columbia aims to be inclusive, and responsive to the sensitivities surfaced by these tumultuous times.

To that end, we’re offering a supplementary list of courses this semester which we believe will heighten respect for diversity on campus, and provide a forum for healthy intellectual discussion.*

*Many thanks to Tamim bin Hamad al Thani and the glorious Emirate of Qatar for making this possible! Go Lions!

Steven Brett Shaklan has worked as a reporter, copywriter, university instructor, and instructional designer. He is currently shopping his first novel, Fundamentals of Rage for the Modern White Male. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife and two children. r inserting phrases like "for a limited time only" or "only 7 remaining!"

THE DILEMMAS OF A JEWISH BOOK REVIEWER,

by Susan Blumberg-Kason

When Ta-Nehisi Coates went on his broadcast media tour, and I learned more about his book—based on a ten-day trip to Israel and the West Bank—that was the turning point. When Roxane Gay posted that there is no justification for Israel fighting back, I felt my throat close in. When Sally Rooney started a petition that’s grown to more than twenty-five pages of authors who want to ban Israeli writers, I felt my heart race when I saw names I recognized. There were many.

JEWS OF DIFFERENT HUES: Anti-Semitism Helped Make Me a Jew - A convert’s story, by Kassy Akiva

“If you finish your conversion to Judaism, are you prepared to deal with anti-Semitism?”

This was the question posed to me by a rabbi during my second meeting with the Rabbinical Court of Massachusetts, which was considering me as a candidate for conversion to Judaism.

The gravity of the question was not lost on me, especially as it came from a man whose early years were spent in a Nazi concentration camp, and who now had the authority to make others—and their descendants—vulnerable to evil by accepting them into the Jewish tribe.

RABBI RICK JACOBS' PODCAST: 'We Show Up in Places That Some of the Jewish Community Has Abandoned

President Joe Biden's decision to impose U.S. sanctions on a right-wing settler group was a "right and necessary call," said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism on the Haaretz Podcast, while one that could have been easily averted by the Israeli government by curbing the "hateful and violent" behavior by West Bank settlers that brought it on.

On the podcast, Jacobs spoke with host Allison Kaplan Sommer about the ongoing challenges for liberal and progressive American Jews who support Israel, as the war has frayed long-standing coalitions with their allies in social justice circles. He insisted that despite the disaffection of many young American Jews over the past year of conflict, he still believes that in the Reform Movement "the overwhelming majority of young people, and their parents and their grandparents, are actually still in solidarity with Israel."