Literature

Sami Rohr Prize 2026 shortlist highlights family survival and Jewish history

The annual award — which alternates each year between works of fiction and nonfiction and which honors emerging Jewish writers — is considered one of the most prominent awards in Jewish literature.

The four finalists for the 2026 Sami Rohr Prize are, from left, Shaul Kelner, Amir Tibon, Jordan Salama and Laura Hobson Faure.
Reading a torah scroll

'The Sacrificial Service': Leviticus has been mistranslated for centuries - review

Rabbi Danny Tropper, founder of Gesher.

'Agents of Change': American Jews and the transformation of Israeli Judaism - review

Title page of first edition of the Zohar, Mantua, 1558. (Photos: Wikimedia Commons)

'The Wisdom of Truth': Reaching the attic with a ladder to the Zohar - review


The most prolific couples from history, mythology, and fiction - explainer

In many spheres of endeavor, people pair up to maximize their efforts to achieve their goals. So let’s take a look at some dynamic duos.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in a lobby card for the 1935 film ‘Top Hat’

'Articles of Faith': Faithful to tradition, open to complexity - book review

A recurring theme in Articles of Faith is the delicate balance between upholding rabbinic authority while acknowledging the realities of a post-modern, digitally saturated world.

 Learning in Jerusalem’s Midreshet Lindenbaum, 2018

'Yoko: A Biography': Have we underestimated Yoko Ono all along? - review

As more of her albums have been released and the number of art exhibitions has mounted, however, Ono has increasingly been recognized for what one critic called “the breadth, charm, and brilliance."

 JOHN AND Yoko on their honeymoon at the Hilton Amsterdam, March 1969

Terms of enrichment: Wandering into the wonderful world of words

When it comes to cleverly crafted fine lines in prose or poetry, a palindrome is a word, phrase, or sequence of words that reads the same backward as forward, such as 'Madam, I’m Adam.'

Reading a book (Illustrative)

'Letters from Home': Exploring tension among Jews in in the Second Temple era - review

The relationship between the Jewish communities of Egypt and Israel created an underlying tension, not unlike the modern-day relationship between world Jewry and the Jews of the State of Israel.

 A RECONSTRUCTION of the blue-tiled Ishtar Gate, the northern entrance to Babylon, on display at the Pergamon Museum, Berlin.

Rescued from the archives and wrestled into print: Behind Chaim Grade's last Yiddish novel

Finished or not, “Sons and Daughters” is a vivid, Tolstoyan examination of what Kirsch calls “a family struggling with the meaning of Jewishness in the twentieth century.”

Chaim Grade’s "Sons and Daughters" was originally serialized in the 1960s and '70s, in New York–based Yiddish newspapers.

Canarit Audiobooks: An Israeli firm making books more accessible for busy consumers

A new Israeli venture makes literature more accessible and alluring for busy consumers.

 An illustrative image of headphones around books.

Yossi Avni-Levy wins Sapir Prize for Literature

Avni-Levy will receive NIS 180,000 ($50,000) and his novel will be translated into Arabic and another language of his choosing, broadening its reach and fostering cross-cultural dialogue.

 FROM LEFT, winner of the 2024 Sapir Prize, Yossi Avni-Levy, Mifal Hapais chairman Avigdor Itzhaky, former president of the Supreme Court Esther Hayut, Mifal Hapais CEO Benjamin Dreyfus. and winner of the 2024 Sapir Prize for a debut book, Ayal Hayut-Man.

'Dictionary of Fine Distinctions': A book on subtle differences in the English language - review

Dictionary of Fine Distinctions merits study at your leisure. Burnstein describes his little volume as “Nuances, Niceties, and Subtle Shades of Meaning.

 An illustrative image of an excerpt from an English dictionary.

Rebecca Makkai, whose grandfather drafted a Nazi-era antisemitic law, is writing a novel on fascism

Bestselling author Rebecca Makkai, whose grandfather wrote WWII-era laws that Jews from public spaces, will be writing a book on fascism.

 Selection of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz-II-Birkenau in German-occupied Poland, May/June 1944, during the final phase of the Holocaust. Jews were sent either to work or to the gas chamber.