Spring 2026

JEWDAR

BOOKS / NON-FICTION On Display

AS A WRITER, DIRECTOR, actor, and contentious cultur- al figure, Lena Dunham has fused confessional intimacy, sarcastic comedy, and feminist criticism. Rising to promi- nence as the creator and star of HBO’s Girls, Dunham made

her name chronicling stories of youth- ful ambition, sexual discovery, and self- invention, a scope that also defined her bestselling essay collection Not That Kind of Girl. Marked by chronic illness, public scrutiny, and relentless drive, her career has blurred the line between self-expression and self-exhaustion. In her memoir, Dunham questions the physical and mental toll of success, and considers what it takes to survive a life lived so publicly. Sophia Hershfield her name chronicling stories of youth

FAMESICK Lena Dunham Random House April 14

BOOKS / NON-FICTION The Ante-Zionist

KNOWN SIMPLY as HaNadiv (Hebrew for The Benafactor, or, if you like, Daddy Warbucks ), Baron Edmond de Rothschild is famous both for being the son of a fabulously wealthy French banking dynasty and the father of Jewish colonization efforts in Ottoman Palestine. Beginning in

the late-19th century, Rothschild’s Jewish Colonization Association (ICA) underwrote the establishment of 39 Jewish farming colonies, including the most success- ful and longest-lasting communities of Rishon LeZion, Rosh Pinna, Zichron Ya’akov, and Petah Tikva.

EDMOND DE ROTHSCHILD: FINDING ZION James McAuley Yale University Press May 19

This scion of Paris’s upper class resists easy categorization in contemporary pro- or anti-Zionism camps, though. Rothschild was a fierce opponent of Theodor Herzl, and saw his nationalist fervour as a reckless endangerment of Jewish lives in the diaspora and in Palestine. He rejected anyone trying to impose their

grand political programs or rabble-rousing messianism onto his work, telling the young Zionists, “These are my colonies, and I shall do what I like with them!” Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, summarized him thusly: “He was rich, autocratic, and misguided, but he was animated by a fine and noble spirit.” Zachary Kauffman

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