Erika Dreifus

Well, you *are* promoting it, I guess?

Jewish Literary Links - Erika Dreifus A lot to share this week.

Among this week's gleanings on My Machberet: the arrival of a brand-new print creation (pictured). www.erikadreifus.com/2025/08/jewi...

22 Eternity Months

22 endless months in captivity.

They must ALL come home NOW 🎗️

#UntilTheLastHostage
#BringThemHomeNow

(Image/text from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum account elsewhere.)

Tell Congress: Protect Synagogue Security Funding Donald Trump blocked funding to protect synagogues, Jewish institutions, and other places of worship. Call on Trump and Congress to continue security grants that protect synagogues, Jewish schools,…

Trump is making Nonprofit Security Grant funding harder for Jewish institutions to access by conditioning grants on compliance with his anti-DEI and anti-immigrant agenda.

This is extortion, plain and simple.

Tell Congress to protect synagogue security funding:

Clayton fire being investigated as antisemitic hate crime No one was injured in the fire, which damaged three vehicles. The Regional Bomb and Arson Squad and the FBI are also investigating

At a time of rising antisemitism yesterday's attack in St. Louis - where cars were lit on fire and anti-Israel messages graffitied on a residential street - creates greater fear in Jewish communities across the country. We cannot let this kind of violence become normalized.

I don't usually get there until later in the day--thanks for the cheerful heads-up!

670 days have passed since October 7th. 50 hostages are still being held captive by the terror organization Hamas.

#LetOurPeopleGo
#AllTogether
#UntilTheLastHostage
#BringThemHomeNow

Image: Hostages and Missing Families Forum

And some further thoughts (mine): www.erikadreifus.com/2025/08/poet...

YouTube video by American Jewish Committee War and Poetry: Owen Lewis on Being a Jewish Poet in a Time of Crisis

Such a necessary conversation. www.youtube.com/watch?v=enJB...

Gd help us.

If I am not for myself, they will sing my praises and call me one of the good Jews, one of the ones who understands that our survival must not inconvenience or harm any other people. I will be invited to speak about why I support the calls to end the existence of the state of Israel at luncheons and conferences, and literary journals will clamor for the pieces I write denouncing not only the nation, but the people who dwell there.

From the beginning of a must-read (*all the way through* before commenting, please) essay by Sarah Einstein, on Judith Magazine today.

cc: @awpwriter.bsky.social, @pw.org, @clmporg.bsky.social, @publisherswkly.bsky.social

judithmagazine.substack.com/p/if-i-am-no...

And some further thoughts (mine): www.erikadreifus.com/2025/08/poet...

(Partial): We were asked to agree that Israel was not merely a nation at war that sometimes made the wrong choices, or even a nation making extremely bad choices, but that what we were seeing was effectively the Holocaust in reverse, with Jews in the role of Nazis. We were asked to do soul-searching about how it felt that now JEWS were the bad guys, in some kind of cosmic sense, often from people who seemed to relish this. We were asked to join up with a cultural-ideological movement effectively fetishizing Palestine and Palestinians. Some of this may have been more true in Toronto (or my neighbourhood, or my block) than elsewhere, but it certainly became a whole thing: beautifully-designed posters in commercial and residential windows, keffiyehs and watermelon motifs, literary magazines devoting themselves to Palestine, emojis and backpack pins for Palestine, this general all-purpose Palestine Palestine Palestine that seemed to require something above and beyond the correct and necessary recognition of Palestinians as human beings. There was, and most certainly is, a genuine humanitarian issue, but one that got mixed up with a fad. It is not clear to me that the faddishness has benefited Palestinians, but it has made many diaspora Jews ill-at-ease in ways that are hard to articulate. We were invited to join a ‘peace’ movement that was, much of the time, an activist group aimed at a specific side winning the conflict. We were then treated as monsters who for some bizarre reason don’t want peace, when peace was not what was being advocated for. As I wrote last month, there is no prize for having been ‘first’ to say this war has gone on too long. There were people saying this before Israel had had a chance to respond, and we should not conflate callousness in the face of Hamas’s attacks with prescience. The problem with the anti-Gaza-war movement in Canada has been the opposite of too-little, too-late. There was too much, too early. The calls for Israel to lay …

"Too much, too early: how the Oct. 8 ‘peace’ movement silenced Jewish moderates." There is much within @phoebebovy.bsky.social's new @thecjn.bsky.social piece that seems, to me, to transcend its Canadian context. (Note the #litmag reference.) Full piece: thecjn.ca/opinion/too-...

Happy New Years Yes, it’s been almost twenty years since I came to America, and Israel has changed beyond recognition. Everything looks so modern and advanced: three-lane highways, tall buildings, stores selling prac...

Happy #BookBirthday to Maya Arad, Jessica Cohen, & @newvesselpress.bsky.social! Can't wait to read this. #WITMonth newvesselpress.com/books/happy-...

YouTube video by American Jewish Committee War and Poetry: Owen Lewis on Being a Jewish Poet in a Time of Crisis

Such a necessary conversation. www.youtube.com/watch?v=enJB...

669 days have passed since October 7th. 50 hostages are still being held captive by the terror organization Hamas.

#ReleaseThemAllNow
#AllTogether
#UntilTheLastHostage
#BringThemHomeNow

Image: Hostages and Missing Families Forum

Markets and Jobs for Writers - Erika Dreifus Latest fee-free, paying opportunities.

Btwn monthly newsletters, I provide weekly #MondayMotivation supplements. In the latest:

*litmag, anthology, & magazine calls;
*a remote social-media gig w/a small publisher;
*several teaching jobs—including one that’s also an MFA program directorship

www.erikadreifus.com/2025/08/oppo...

Hi Everyone. I'm Becky's agent and can verify that this is NOT Becky. Please do not fall for scams like this.

Now open for submissions and applications:

Markets and Jobs for Writers - Erika Dreifus Latest fee-free, paying opportunities.

Btwn monthly newsletters, I provide weekly #MondayMotivation supplements. In the latest:

*litmag, anthology, & magazine calls;
*a remote social-media gig w/a small publisher;
*several teaching jobs—including one that’s also an MFA program directorship

www.erikadreifus.com/2025/08/oppo...

Bon appétit!

From the Hostages and Missing Families Forum: Hamas's announcement about their willingness to cooperate with the Red Cross to deliver food to hostages, cannot hide the fact that we are dealing with an evil terrorist organization that has been holding innocent people in impossible conditions for over 660 days. We demand the immediate release of all 50 hostages. Until their release, Hamas has the obligation to provide them with everything they need. Hamas kidnapped them and they must care for them. Every hostage who dies will be on Hamas's hands. The shocking reality is that the Red Cross has never had access to these hostages during this entire horrific period. Our loved ones have been denied medical care, food, and all communication with us for over 660 days. The international community must demand the immediate release of all 50 hostages and ensure that until their return home, they receive the medical care they desperately need. The recent release of horrific videos showing Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, emaciated and barely clinging to life, confirms what we've feared: they may not survive the next few days without immediate help. These heartbreaking images reveal hostages who are starving while their captors remain well-fed. We welcome the possibility of Red Cross access for the first time, and we urge that medical checks and food be delivered without delay. However, we must be clear: while Red Cross assistance is desperately needed, only the immediate release of all hostages can truly save their lives. At the same time, we are gravely concerned by reports of an expansion of fighting in Gaza, which puts the hostages' lives in even greater danger. We are now nearing one year since six hostages were tragically killed while IDF forces were reported nearby. We must do everything possible to secure a comprehensive deal that will bring all the hostages home and end this war.

Today is Day 668.

Israel Reels on October 666 Hostages condition is perilous and Steven Witkoff shows up

On this Day 667—the incomprehensible second #TishaBAv of the hostages' captivity and torture—I reiterate the pleas to #LetThemAllGoNow. And share Vivian Bercovici's latest, important post. #BringThemAllHomeNow #AllTogether www.stateoftelaviv.com/p/israel-ree...

banner for "Jewish Women in Translation" list, with representative book covers

It's taken me a couple of days to catch up with the fact that it's #WomenInTranslation Month, and therefore worth re-upping this #WITMonth list on @bookshop.org for the occasion. bookshop.org/lists/witmon...

Believe me--I am by no means unaware of/untroubled by the unraveling of my American homeland. But from what I see each time I log on here, Bluesky has that covered.

For the most part, I aim to contribute information that I do not find widely shared here.

Israel Reels on October 666 Hostages condition is perilous and Steven Witkoff shows up

On this Day 667—the incomprehensible second #TishaBAv of the hostages' captivity and torture—I reiterate the pleas to #LetThemAllGoNow. And share Vivian Bercovici's latest, important post. #BringThemAllHomeNow #AllTogether www.stateoftelaviv.com/p/israel-ree...

The Lost Information War Why do it?

“I call on all non-Jewish allies to share Hamas’ videos of the starving hostages.…

We need your help. We need your voices. We need your strength. We need your hand.”— Ellen Ginsberg Simon
ellenginsbergsimon.substack.com/p/the-lost-i...

Day 666.

#LetThemAllGoNow
#BringThemAllHomeNow
#AllTogether

Happy August, everyone!

665 days have passed since October 7th. 50 hostages are still being held captive by the terror organization Hamas.

95 weeks.

#AllTogether
#UntilTheLastHostage
#BringThemHomeNow

Image: Hostages and Missing Families Forum