Thursday, October 8th 2026   |

Books

How Arnold Horween, an unsung Jewish Harvard hero, changed American sports

By JACOB GURVIS

(JTA) — Decades before Sandy Koufax sat out the first game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, and 18 years before Greenberg chased Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record in the late...

In a first, Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature goes to Hebrew-language author and translator

By GABE FRIEDMAN

(JTA) — For the first time, the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature was given to the author of a book in Hebrew and its translator, in a sign of the award organization’s desire to expand the...

Judy Blume is having a moment. Here’s why Jewish women love her work.

By SARAH ROSEN

(JTA) — As a young teenager growing up in Manhattan, Nina Kauder found it nearly impossible to ask her mother difficult questions about puberty or her Jewish identity, for two reasons.

Her mother had fled the Holocaust as...

Agatha Christie novels edited by HarperCollins to remove offensive references to Jews

By GABE FRIEDMAN

(JTA) — HarperCollins has revised multiple novels by the famed British mystery writer Agatha Christie to remove references to Jews and other minorities deemed offensive by sensitivity readers.

The edits, which the British Telegraph first reported on...

Are the goblins in ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ antisemitic? The Harry Potter video game renews criticism.

By JACOB HENRY

(JTA) — When people enter the world of “Hogwarts Legacy,” the blockbuster video game that was officially released on Friday, they will find themselves immersed in the fictional universe of “Harry Potter” — and face-to-face with an...

Michael Twitty’s ‘Koshersoul,’ a memoir of food and identity, named Jewish book of the year

By ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL

(JTA) — “Koshersoul,” chef Michael W. Twitty’s memoir about his career fusing Jewish and African-American culinary histories, was named the Jewish book of 2022 by the Jewish Book Council.

Subtitled “The Faith and Food Journey of an...

The sequel to the Holocaust novel ‘Boy in the Striped Pajamas’ is here. Its author has no regrets.

By ANDREW LAPIN

(JTA) – At one point in John Boyne’s new novel “All The Broken Places,” a 91-year-old German woman recalls, for the first time, her encounter with a young Jewish boy in the Auschwitz death camp 80 years...

Hadassah to host daylong ‘Living Fully’ session with renowned Rabbi Kripper

The Greater New Orleans Chapter of Hadassah will host a special daylong workshop with Rabbi Daniel Kripper, the author of  “Living Fully: Keys to Spiritual Growth and Happiness” on Sunday, December 4.

The live, in-person event will take place from 9:30...

Before WWII, Jewish mobsters kept Nazis at bay in the US — with their fists

By HOWARD LOVY

(JTA) — The way author Michael Benson tells it, one day in 1938, New York judge and Jewish communal leader Nathan Perlman sat at a bar and thought, “How come these Nazis get to march down 86th...

The ‘queer, disabled’ Zionist who challenged the conventions of Israel’s founders

By ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL

(JTA) — It’s hard to find a poster promoting early 20th-century Zionism that doesn’t depict a tanned, chiseled man toting a shovel or a gun. The posters were visual reinforcement of the “Muscle Jewry” valued by Max...