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Dec
2
2022
Weekly Roundup - 12/01/22
This week: From the Summer 2022 issue, Raphael Margarik reviews Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob. A poem by Brandon Shimoda that revisits the murder of James Hatsuaki Wakasa, an issei man who was shot and killed at Topaz concentration camp in 1943.
Plus, from the newsletter, Alex Kane reports on the question human rights advocates want the US government to answer about Israeli soldiers’ killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, and Mari Cohen interviews journalist Sam Kestenbaum on the Black Hebrew Israelites.

Review
The Prophet with Eyes
In Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob, based on the real life of a self-proclaimed Jewish messiah in 18th-century Poland, theological energy competes with the liberal novel’s finely wrought machinery.
Raphael Magarik

Poetry
Hinotama
“The women were coyotes / in the early hours of night // blood already forming / on their teeth”
Brandon Shimoda

Newsletter
What the FBI’s Investigation of Shireen Abu Akleh’s Killing Won’t Resolve
The probe is the first by a US agency into the death of the Palestinian American journalist.
Alex Kane

Newsletter
Black Hebrew Israelites in the Spotlight
The journalist Sam Kestenbaum on the history of the religious tradition embraced by Kyrie Irving and Kanye West.
Mari Cohen