| | The Newsletter of Fig Tree Books | | January '26: Issue #74 --- Fredric D. Price, Founder & Publisher | | |
When looking for help navigating my own organization, Longhorn Students for Israel, I often find that the voices I lean on are those who share the same identity as me. And as time goes on, I have found a common denominator between many popular college campuses: their outspoken pro-Israel advocates and leaders are commonly children of Persian-Jewish immigrants.
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During the creation of Our Campus United, we met with students all across the country at the forefront of fighting antisemitism and anti-Israel agendas on campuses. One of the most common concerns we heard again and again was that Jewish and Zionist students—and their perspectives—were being excluded from college newspapers.
Our belief? These students should not be silenced. Enter The OCU Chronicle—a quarterly newspaper on Substack designed to uplift and amplify their voices.
The OCU Chronicle will cover everything from news and opinions to entertainment and campus life. It’s a space where Jewish students and allies can share their experiences, explore their interests, and speak out on topics beyond antisemitism.
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NOVEL: Songs for the brokenhearted, by Ayelet Tsabari
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A young Yemeni Israeli woman learns of her mother’s secret romance in a dramatic journey through lost family stories, revealing the unbreakable bond between a mother and a daughter—the debut novel of an award-winning literary voice.
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD’S JJ GREENBERG MEMORIAL AWARD
1950. Thousands of Yemeni Jews have immigrated to the newly founded Israel in search of a better life. In an overcrowded immigrant camp in Rosh Ha’ayin, Yaqub, a shy young man, happens upon Saida, a beautiful girl singing by the river. In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, they fall in love. But they weren’t supposed to; Saida is married and has a child, and a married woman has no place befriending another man.
1995. Thirty-something Zohara, Saida’s daughter, has been living in New York City—a city that feels much less complicated than Israel, where she grew up wishing that her skin was lighter, that her illiterate mother’s Yemeni music was quieter, and that the father who always favored her was alive. She hasn’t looked back since leaving home, rarely in touch with her mother or sister, Lizzie, and missing out on her nephew Yoni’s childhood. But when Lizzie calls to tell her their mother has died, she gets on a plane to Israel with no return ticket.
Soon Zohara finds herself on an unexpected path that leads to shocking truths about her family—including dangers that lurk for impressionable young men and secrets that force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, her heritage, and her own future.
| | | | Ayelet Tsabari is the author of The Art of Leaving, finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019. Her first book, The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and has been published internationally. She’s the co-editor of the anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language and has taught creative writing at Guelph MFA in Creative Writing and The University of King’s College MFA. |
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MONTHLY BLOG: The Dawn of the Postliterate Society,
by James Marriott
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The smartphone hasn’t just distracted us. It’s dismantled the habits of thought that built our civilization.
By James Marriott
It’s no secret that young people today are desperate for meaning. A recent report found that 58 percent of young adults experienced little or no sense of purpose in their lives over the past month. Some attribute this to social media. Others, to a lack of religion.
In the following essay, James Marriott explains why the stakes couldn’t be higher. Our liberal democracy, he writes, was built by widespread literacy—the same widespread literacy that is now being dismantled by screens. Unless we start reading again, he says, our civilization may not survive.
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James Marriott is a Times columnist, covering society, ideas and culture. He also reviews podcasts. Previously he worked as an assistant on The Times's books desk. Before joining the paper he worked in the rare book trade. | | |
VIDEO: Pass the Trauma, Please by Todd Diamond
Descendants of Survivors of the Holocaust
| | Born in Queens, New York, Todd Diamond delivers narratives that are unapologetically raw and darkly humorous––a reflection of the borough that raised him. Whether it’s sordid tales from his advertising career or stories about his family’s Holocaust experiences, he resonates with those who prefer their prose served with a healthy dose of cynicism and unsweetened insight. | | They didn’t vote for him because of policy. They voted for him because, in their ideology, “that’s what good people do.” Voting is no longer about competence and credentials; it’s cartoon politics. | | |
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There is a particular kind of ideological possession sweeping through the West — one that convinces people that compassion means cruelty, that justice means double standards, and that moral clarity comes prepackaged in slogans.
It has claimed professors, students, politicians, and influencers.
And last Thanksgiving, I learned that it claimed my littlest sister. Not all at once. Not with a dramatic declaration. But in the casual confidence with which she said something she would’ve condemned in anyone else, unaware that she was speaking a language she didn’t create and defending a worldview she was brainwashed to choose.
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Joshua Hoffman is a 36-year-old Los Angeles native and long-time entrepreneur, living in Tel Aviv since 2013. He has written three books, all available on Amazon:
- “Reimagining Israel”
- “Future of Jewish”
- “Journeys of the Jewish Spirit”
Currently, he leads a nimble team of researchers and guest writers who are dedicated to bringing you the best of Judaism, Israel, and the Jewish world on a daily basis.
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ESSAY: The Moral Collapse on Campus Is a Result of the Hollowing Out of the Humanities, by Alexander Duff
| | Who needs any more proof of the awful decay of higher education in America than the unveiling of its effectual truth, would-be pogroms in Morningside Heights and on campuses from coast to coast? More common, though perhaps not less unsettling, is the characteristic boredom and confusion of the recipients of the great privilege of the baccalaureate in America. This boredom is as important to explaining the successful revival of violent anti-Semitism as is the ideological indoctrination that more directly causes it. | | | Alexander S. Duff studies the history of political thought and teaches in the School of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin. | | |
NON-FICTION BOOK: It Takes Two to Torah,
by Abigail Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer
| | | This book is the product of two people literally meeting in the middle to bring us their most honest intellectual and relevant understanding of the Torah. Pogrebin and Linzer engaged in short dialogues on a podcast forTablet Magazine, and they have now been collected and edited so that the full, fascinating exploration can be found in one place. | |  | | |
INTERVIEW - NOVEL: Hunting in America, by Tehila Hakimi,
translated by Joanna Chen
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Tehila Hakimi’s Hunting in America is a dark tale about a woman who moves from Israel to America to leave her past behind. In this new country she becomes increasingly obsessed with hunting. Originally published in Hebrew, Hunting in America won the Jewish Book Council’s 2023 Paper Brigade Award for New Israeli Fiction. In addition to being a novelist, Hakimi is an accomplished poet. The novel has been translated into English by Joanna Chen.
Anna Stolley Persky: First off, I’d like to say how much I was influenced by your novel, particularly your ability to weave a complex story through a series of deer hunting trips that grow increasingly disturbing. When you began writing this book, what did you set out to accomplish? Did you start with the idea of hunting trips or something else?
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Tehila Hakimi is a Jewish Book Council Award–winning fiction writer and poet. She was a participant in the 2018 Fulbright International Writing Program Fellowship at the University of Iowa, and is a recipient of the 2015 Bernstein Prize for Literature. | | |
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