Fig Tree Books

06/05/2025

Fig Tree Lit May 2025 Issue #66 is now available at https://conta.cc/3GIfUgD. Includes:
JEWS OF DIFFERENT HUES: Typical Scottish Jewish girl makes home in Zambia after dumping legal career in UK
REVIEW: 'The Message' by Ta-Nehisi Coates, by Mike Coté - Coates the Charlatan
BOOKS: the post-Holocaust trilogy - The Golems of Gotham, Second Hand Smoke, and Elijah Visible, by - In honor of Yom HaShoah, 27th of Nisan April 25
ESSAY: Unlock Sephardi Culture and Connection with these 10 Ladino Phrases, by Ellie Rudee
MEMOIR: Internee Number 6, by Maria Eisenstein
PODCAST: Jewish Crossroads with Tamar Ish Shalom - Conversation with David Wolpe - Jewish Identity in Times of Crisis
REVIEW: Tablets Shat­tered: The End of an Amer­i­can Jew­ish Cen­tu­ry and the Future of Jew­ish Life, by Joshua Leifer
COOKBOOK: Sabor Judio: The Jewish Mexican Cookbook, by Ilan Stavans and Margaret Boyle

07/04/2025

Fig Tree Lit April 2025 Issue #65 is now available at https://conta.cc/3R7AtoD. Includes:
JEWS OF DIFFERENT HUES: Meet 4 Black Jewish leaders
NOVEL: Counting Backwards, by
ESSAY: The vanishing Stars of David, by Austin Reid
NOVEL: The Trade Off, by Samantha Greene Woodruff
MEMOIR: Under A Red Sky, by Haya Molnar
ESSAY: The Man Whose Name Lived On, by Michelle Clark
SHORT STORY: A Game of War, by Douglas Chait
BOOK: One Little Goat, by

06/03/2025

Fig Tree Lit March 2025 Issue #64 is now available at https://conta.cc/4haebwT. Includes:
JEWS OF DIFFERENT HUES: Tani Prell
GUEST COLUMNIST: , Cause and Effect
NOVEL: The Baker of Lost Memories, by
ESSAY: Is it the end of a Jewish Golden Age? by Stephen Daniel Arnoff
ARTICLE: Finding his faith - The Mayor of Providence converts to Judaism, by Stephen Machado
NOVEL: The Midwives' Escape From Egypt to Jericho, by
ESSAY: Why I won't teach at Columbia, by
ARTICLE: How a Jewish teen’s description of New York life in 1945 is going viral on TikTok
NEW BOOK RELEASE: It Takes Two to Torah, by &

05/02/2025

Fig Tree Lit February 2025 Issue #63 is now available at https://conta.cc/4gsjxUa. Includes:
JEWS OF DIFFERENT HUES: Kelly Lynch, GEN Z
NOVEL: Viva, Violetta & Verdi, by Howard Jay Smith
SHORT STORY: The Walker, by Haya Molnar
ESSAY: The New Jewish Question at CCNY, By Michael Gold
NOVEL: Adam Unrehearsed, by Don Futterman
POETRY, PHILOSOPHY AND A GAMBLING RABBI: A colorful history of Venice’s Jewish ghetto, by Rich Tenorio
ADAPTATION OF A CHAPTER FROM A NOVEL: The pet rabbit and the year that Rabin died, by Ephrat Huss
NOVEL: The Last Dekreptizer, by Howard Langer
NEW BOOK RELEASE: It Takes Two to Torah, by Abigail Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer

06/01/2025

Fig Tree Lit January 2025 Issue #62 is now available at https://conta.cc/40pOHH2. Includes:
JEWS OF DIFFERENT HUES: Anti-Semitism Helped Make Me a Jew - A convert’s story, by Kassy Akiva
RABBI RICK JACOBS' PODCAST: 'We Show Up in Places That Some of the Jewish Community Has Abandoned"
THE DILEMMAS OF A JEWISH BOOK REVIEWER, by Susan Blumberg-Kason
A SUPPLEMENT TO THE COLUMBIA FALL BULLETIN: by Steven Brett Shaklan
GUEST COLUMNISTS: Replies: to Robert Lehrer's December column - It's Mike DeWine's Fault and Other Truths about the Catastrophe
POETRY: from Jennifer Anne Moses
NEW BOOK RELEASE: It Takes Two to Torah, by & ; Interview with CNN's
BOOK: Zibby Owens takes aim at antisemitism in her new anthology

25/12/2024

and Dov Linzer, authors of It Takes Two to Torah [https://amzn.to/46mODZC], write about Hanukkah in today’s edition of The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/25/opinion/hanukkah-jewish-tradition.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

We follow the wisdom of the ancient rabbis in approaching both the holiday and this era.

04/12/2024

Fig Tree Lit December 2024 Issue #61 is now available at https://conta.cc/3ZA9k2F. Includes:
JEWS OF DIFFERENT HUES: My Family’s Grind­ing Stone: Jew­ish Cook­ing in Ahmedabad, Esther David
GUEST COLUMNISTS: It's Mike DeWine's Fault and Other Truths about the Catastrophe, by Robert Lehrer; The 2024 Election and the Disappearance of Adulthood, by Paul Schwartz
SPEECH: The Old World is not Coming Back, by Bari Weiss
BOOK: Chutzpah Girls, by Julie Silverstein and Tami Schlossberg Pruwer
BOOK: Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew, by Emmanuel Acho and Noa Tishby
NEW BOOK RELEASE: It Takes Two to Torah, by Abigail Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer - Interview
ISRAELI ACTORS FACE A NEW BIAS IN HOLLYWOOD: But They Are Determined to Keep Fighting, by Howard Lovy
BOOKS FOR HANUKKAH GIFTS: Jacobo's Rainbow by David Hirshberg; My Jewish Year by Abigail Pogrebin; Safekeeping by Jessamyn Hope; Saving Free Speech by Thane Rosenbaum

09/09/2024

Want to bone up on the Torah without going to a class? Take a look at a remarkable book that is out now — It Takes Two to Torah — in which the authors (one an Orthodox rabbi [Dov Linzer] and the other a Reform journalist [Abigail Pogrebin]) go through the Five Books of Moses via a lively back and forth conversation that is filled with insight, meaning, and yes, humor and wit. You can read all about it here: https://amzn.to/3XxvRfw as a hard copy (where it is an Amazon Best Seller #1 in Jewish Theology) or here: https://amzn.to/3MBk89q as an e-book (where it is an Amazon Best Seller #1 in New releases in Jewish Sacred Texts). Please note that you can read the Foreword from Mayim Bialik for free here: https://bit.ly/4gay2w. And if you do read the book and like it, post a review on the Amazon page. It is really helpful for other readers.

It Takes Two to Torah: An Orthodox Rabbi and Reform Journalist Discuss and Debate Their Way Through the Five Books of Moses

06/09/2024

Fig Tree Lit September 2024 Issue #58 is now available at https://conta.cc/3z9BbMC . Includes:
JEWS OF DIFFERENT HUES: The first female rabbi was not who you'd expect
JUST PUBLISHED from FIG TREE BOOKS LLC & MANDEL VIALR PRESS: It Takes Two to Torah, by Abigail Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer - Foreword by Mayim Bialik
PODCAST: Rabbi-Shmuly Yanklowitz interviews Abigail Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer
BOOK REVIEW & SUMMARY: The Forgotten Italian Restaurant, by Barbara Josselsohn
SHORT STORY: Broken Glass, by Mark Russ
THE WRITER: Josh Gad and the Berkowitz brothers talk penning ‘The Writer,’ a Boston-set comic book rooted in Jewish folklore
POEM: April, 2024, by Harriet Shenkman
BOOK CHAPTER: Did you have the life you wanted? by Andrea Simon
EXCERPT: Shabbirthday, from “Fifty-seven Fridays: Losing Our Daughter, Finding Our Way” by Myra Sack

You don't want to miss this!   The Newsletter of Fig Tree Books September '24: Issue #58 --- Fredric D. Price, Founder & Publisher OUR MISSION: Through published books, essays, chapters of unpublished

09/08/2024

Fig Tree Lit August 2024 Issue #57 is now available at https://conta.cc/3WVRV35 . Includes:
JEWS OF DIFFERENT HUES: A roundtable discussion with Jews from the former Soviet Union about their experience as immigrants, where they fit into the American Jewish community, how they view rising antisemitism after Oct. 7, and which customs and recipes they’re passing down to the next generation.
COMING SOON: It Takes Two to Torah, by Abigail Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer - Foreword by Mayim Bialik
BOOK EXCERPT: The Moon in a Paper Bag, by Lila Kalick
MEMOIR: In Bad Faith, by Dassi Erlich
BOOK Foreword: The Pawnbroker, by Edward Lewis Wallant, Foreword by Dara Horn
PARSHA: On Leadership - Pacing Change, by Rabbi Sacks
BOOK: Adam Unrehearsed, by Don Fetterman
BOOK REVIEW: 100 Jewish Brides, by Barbara Vinick & Shulamit Reinharz
CONVERSATION: The Diary Beyond Anne Frank: A Con­ver­sa­tion with Nina Sie­gal and Yael van der Wouden

You don't want to miss this!   The Newsletter of Fig Tree Books August 2024: Issue #57 --- Fredric D. Price, Founder & Publisher OUR MISSION: Through published books, essays, chapters of unpublished b

08/07/2024

Fig Tree Lit July 2024 Issue #56 is now available at https://conta.cc/3Ydm1jR . Includes:
JEWS OF DIFFERENT HUES: The Blue Butterfly of Cochin, by Ariana Mizrachi, illustrated by Siona Benjamin
COMING SOON: It Takes Two to Torah, by Abigail Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer
BOOK EXCERPT: A Lakota and a Jew Walk into a Bar, by Alan Klein
ARTICLE: Yossi Halper's Beloved Tel Aviv Bookstore and October 7
BOOK REVIEW: Bylines and Blessings, by Judy Gruen
GUEST COLUMNIST: Eve Barlow - Breaking the Habit
ESSAY: You want context? Here's context, by Micha Danzig
GUEST EDITORIAL: Thane Rosenbaum - 9/11 + 10/7 = Boom!
ESSAY: Hamas has a secret weapon no one talks about: Western stupidity, by Dr. Casey Babb

You don't want to miss this!   The Newsletter of Fig Tree Books July 2024: Issue #56 --- Fredric D. Price, Founder & Publisher OUR MISSION: Through published books, essays, chapters of unpublished boo