"His books have not just been good for the Jews; they have been great." – Joel Yanofsky, Literary Review of Canada
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Michael Wex reads from his new novel The Frumkiss Family Business.
In this first of four extracts we meet the Frumkiss children's grandfather Elyokim Faktor - Yiddish author and the voice of dodo puppet star Yankee Gallstone.
Thanks to the Ashkenaz Festival for hosting the book's launch.
The Frumkiss Family Business Part 1... Read more here
I might be wrong, but I think that Rosh Hashana has made me a hero.
I’m gabbai––a synagogue valet––at an orthodox shul in Toronto where I’m in charge of kibbudim, the distribution of such honors as opening the ark, being called to the Torah, and so on.
On the second day of Rosh Hashanah this year, a candidate in the forthcoming provincial elections burst into shul with a police escort instead... Read more here
We are thrilled to announce that The Frumkiss Family Business went straight onto the bestseller list the week it was published.
BookNet Canada's list from the Quill & Quire lists Frumkiss as #13 on the extended bestseller list for the two weeks up to 29th August 2010.
This happy news coincides with Michael's birthday today.
Thanks to everyone who's been buying the book and posting their reviews on... Read more here
This is the fifth of five guest blog posts I wrote for Powell's Books.
Michael Wex at Markham St. shul in Toronto
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins tonight, and for me — possibly the only person in the world who looks at the High Holidays this way — it's time for window wars, pitched verbal battles over whether the windows in the synagogue I described in the first Powell's blog should be kept... Read more here
In case you missed it in this Saturday's Globe and Mail, here's Wex's piece he wrote as part of the Globe's My Books, My Place series.
As someone who can only read in bed if he's under the covers with a flashlight, a posture too apt to be translated as, “Darling, the honeymoon's over,” I've never been much for hopping into the sack with a volume in my hand. I spent 23 of the last 25 years in a cute... Read more here
We like to help people who've half-remembered a Yiddish expression they heard in their family. Here's one example.
There is a saying my family and I can't find and hope you can give us the meaning. I'll try to get it out....sounds like goota or guta nishuma. Can you help?
Guteh neshomeh (or neshumeh) means "good soul." Atlhough you can say that somebody has one, it's much more common to describe a person... Read more here
Along with the shone toyves that I’ve been sending out to friends and family this year, I’ve been receiving New Year’s cards of another kind from politicians and Jewish communal figures whom I’ve been peppering with what are best described as instructional letters and e-mails. These cards implore me to be sure to go to shul this year, in order to be sure to have a chance to gey shray khay ve-kayem,... Read more here
