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Menachem Kaiser
8 / 14 / 22
SRP: What part of your book was the most challenging to write and why?
The chapter on conspiracy theories took the longest, because there was so much research involved. That was like six months of research.
The most conceptually challenging was the last chapter, because to a certain extent it subverts or even undermines the stakes of the whole book.
Archive
Menachem Kaiser
Aug 14, 2022
Lisa Leff
March 1, 2022
Michael P. Kramer
May 24, 2021
Pamela S. Nadell
Feb 4, 2021
Daniel Torday
Dec 30, 2020
Rabbi David Wolpe
Dec 8, 2020
Haim Watzman
Oct 29, 2020
Jewish Book Carnival
Oct 15, 2020
Josh Lambert
Sep 22, 2020
Sara Yael Hirschhorn
Aug 16, 2020
Sarah Hurwitz
July 28, 2020
Mikhal Dekel
July 5, 2020
Benjamin Balint
June 18, 2020
Yaakov Katz
June 7, 2020
Ilana Kurshan
May 22, 2020
Ayelet Tsabari, Matti Friedman, Evan Fallenberg
May 14, 2020
Michael David Lukas
April 30, 2020
Erika Dreifus
April 20, 2020
Anne Landsman
April 12, 2020
Nessa Rapoport
March 26, 2020
Austin Ratner
March 12, 2020
Evan Fallenberg
Feb 27, 2020
Sarah Abrevaya Stein
Feb 13, 2020
Carolyn Starman Hessel
Jan 28, 2020
Rabbi David Wolpe
12 / 8 / 20
SRP: How is being a Rabbi for such a large congregation different during the pandemic? What are your biggest challenges?
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DW: The biggest challenge we face is coherence without community – how do we keep people feeling close to one another when they cannot meet in person?
Josh Lambert
9 / 22 / 20
As a critic, I'm happy not to have to predict (or request) what novelists will write about--I wouldn't trust me to come up with an idea for a novel! Good fiction can't be written to order, either. That said, I will be very happy to see more fiction by and about BIPOC and trans Jews; there are a handful of worthwhile examples I can think of, but there's certainly a pressing need for many more such stories
Sara Yael Hirschhorn
8 / 16 / 20
My new book project, tentatively entitled “New Day in Babylon and Jerusalem: Zionism, Jewish Power, and Identity Politics Since 1967,” is a sequel to the first book, considering the fate of Jewish Zionists who remained in the United States after 1967 and found that the war(s) in the Middle East brought new battles over their own identity home to America
Mikhal Dekel
7 / 5 / 20
It started as a casual conversation when an Iranian-born colleague asked me if I knew anything about Holocaust refugees in Iran and ended a decade later with a 417-page book. The book is about my journey in the footsteps of a quarter million Polish Jews who survived World War Two in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, India and Eretz Yisrael.
Benjamin Balint
6 / 18 / 20
One of my most meaningful encounters with the work of Franz Kafka did not make it into Kafka’s Last Trial. From 2011-2014, I taught a “great books” seminar to Palestinian students at the Al Quds-Bard College for Arts and Sciences in East Jerusalem, the only dual-degree liberal arts program in the Middle East.
Ayelet Tsabari, Matti Friedman, Evan Fallenberg
5 / 14 / 20
On Sunday, May 10th, the 2015 Sami Rohr Prize winner Ayelet Tsabari and the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize winner Matti Friedman participated in a literary conversation moderated by Sami Rohr Prize judge Evan Fallenberg as part of the Jerusalem Writers Festival's first digital edition.
Michael David Lukas
4 / 30 / 20
Not too long ago, in what feels like an entirely different world, a prominent Jewish organization invited me to give a speech. I was asked not to say anything too "political" in my speech, for fear of offending their donors. I thought I would share with this forum the short preamble I added as a response:
Anne Landsman
4 / 12 / 20
“I’m an extrovert in an introvert’s profession,” Rabbi Joseph Telushkin said, at our biennial Sami Rohr Institute a few years ago. I found myself nodding in agreement. As a child, I fell in love with the sound and weight of words, what it felt like when they were spoken out loud, or read in silence. Even though I could disappear into...
Austin Ratner
3 / 12 / 20
When I tell people I got my M.D. and then left medicine to become a fiction writer, they often say, “That was brave.” This is, I think, another way of saying, “You are obviously insane.” It’s perhaps particularly hard to walk away from medicine as a Jew. In Jewish families going back to Maimonides and before...
Evan Fallenberg
2 / 27 / 20
Hanoch Levin is often called Israel’s greatest playwright, whose absurdist style drew acclaim and criticism and was often compared with Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett. During his foreshortened life (1943-1999) he wrote more than 60 plays, many of which became instant classics...
Sarah Abrevaya Stein
2 / 13 / 20
Determining when a book is done is a struggle for any writer. Realizing that a work of history is still unfolding is a revelation. It is in such a state that I find myself two months after the publication of my most recent book, Family Papers: a Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century...
Carolyn Starman Hessel
1 / 28 / 20
The format in which you are receiving this message is one I could only have dreamed about when the Sami Rohr Prize was established. Appropriately, this website is being launched at the beginning of a new year: a time of new beginnings, exciting initiatives and a fresh image as SRP enters the digital arena...