Our blog features essays, book reviews, coverage of FTB titles, and noteworthy news of American Jewish experience by our publisher.
Baseball, Judaism, and Literature
Posted on September 4, 2021
I’m a big baseball fan, so it’s not surprising that I have a collection of baseball cards of Jewish major leaguers or a library of baseball books that I turn to repeatedly, even though I know the score. You can understand, then, that I was intrigued by an article in the Jewish Journal about Chaim […]
Call for (very) short story submissions
Posted on August 11, 2021
On September 30, 2004 Philip Roth’s novel about what could’ve happened when a proto-fascist (Charles Lindbergh) is elected president of the U.S. was published. The Plot Against America was, of course, a brilliant piece of literary fiction, whose opening sentence, “Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.” could describe what many of us were […]
Fake News isn’t just a US problem – it affects Israel and Jews throughout the world
Posted on July 25, 2021
Ben-Dror Yemini has written a book Industry of Lies that needs to be read by Jews, regardless of where they live, especially since we are living through an era of anti-Semitism that hasn’t been seen since the 1930s. Some of this is disguised as anti-Zionism, but most people (except the the woke left) see these […]
Reply to The Rant
Posted on June 21, 2021
We received more comments for The Rant by Anonymous (Blog in the June edition of Fig Tree Lit) than we have for any other post. The following reply is from an individual who also wishes to have a name withheld. It is representative of most of the replies to that blog post. Reading The […]
The Rant
Posted on May 27, 2021
The following Guest Blog Post is from a person who has held positions in the industry on the publishing and editing side, and is also an author of both books and essays. You will understand after you read this, why this blog post was written under his pseudonym ‘Anonymous Rex’: As an author, I’ve been […]
Publication of Jacobo’s Rainbow
Posted on May 4, 2021
Fig Tree Books LLC Publishes JACOBO’S RAINBOW The Second Novel From Award-Winning Author David Hirshberg Advance Praise for JACOBO’S RAINBOW: “A beautiful novel set in the past but perfectly, scarily, relevant to our current moment.”—Gary Shteyngart, author of Lake Success “Blending together historical events and wonderfully imaginative settings, David Hirshberg explores the American […]
‘Liking’ and ‘Commenting’ on books on Facebook
Posted on April 22, 2021
This is an excerpt from an email I received from a fellow author. What follows it are some comments from me. “There are seven actions someone can do on Facebook when s/he sees a post about a book: 1. Not read the post. 2. Read it and do nothing. 3. ‘Like’ it. 4. ‘Comment’ on […]
Blog Tour Information for Jacobo’s Rainbow
Posted on April 12, 2021
We’re pleased to announce a Blog Tour for Jacobo’s Rainbow, the new novel from the multiple-award winning author of My Mother’s Son. Reviews, comments, discussions and the like (on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook) will be featured on the following dates in May with the organizations listed in the banner below. Find out why Gary Shteyngart (author […]
Meeting Mozart – Mini Book Review
Posted on April 3, 2021
I can’t get over Meeting Mozart (amzn.to/3llZBrb). This astonishingly wonderful multi-generation novel of Mozart’s librettist, the Jewish born, fallen away Catholic priest, Lorenzo Da Ponte, and his modern-day descendants is an extraordinary thrill ride through the centuries that seamlessly blends fact and fiction, opera and espionage, wars and romance, family and the cruel twists of […]
What should be the Jewish response to ‘Cancel Culture’?
Posted on March 6, 2021
It seems as if we read something new each day about cancel culture — the phenomenon that is about one group or another attempting to take down living or dead people for real or supposed sins committed against individuals or groups. Oftentimes, it’s not just cultural, it’s political. Should we remove statutes of Abraham Lincoln […]