Due to the relevance of the general contribution of Jewish people in different cultural and social fields throughout history, Mexico’s Jewish Documentation and Research Center (CDIJUM) and the Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE) publishing house, presented the International Jewish Book Fair 2019 (FILJU) , which will focus on examining the close relationship between science and literature.
The third edition of FILJU will take place in the FCE’s Rosario Castellanos bookshop from September 20 to 29. Physicist and writers José Edelstein , from Argentina, and Andrés Gomberoff , from Chile, as well as mathematician and writer Jacques Fux , from Brazil, will take part in the fair.
During the fair, the prize FILJU 2019 will be presented to Dr. Luis Rubio Freidberg for his contribution to the development of economic and political sciences in Mexico through his works as an analyst and international columnist. There will also be conferences, panels, and talks to commemorate two important dates: the 90 years of the birth of Ana Frank, and the 100 years of the birth of Primo Levi.
Enrique Chmelnik Lubinsky
, director of FILJU, explain that “this fair not only presents an important literary offer of Jewish authors and topics , it is hard to define what is a Jewish book; in the case of the fair, we followed the idea of considering both cases: Jewish literature by Jewish authors and of Jewish topics , but also of presenting a series of artistic and cultural activities that allow attendants to have a wider perspective of this multicolored spectrum.”
Withing the activities frame, different speakers will be present, such as Julieta Fierro Gossman, Judit Bokser Liwerant, Jacobo Dayán Askenazi, and Héctor Orestes Aguilar , among others, who will address different topics of historical, cultural, and social issues of Jewish life .
Likewise, six films will be screened as part of the cycle of Jewish cinema of FILJU 2019: Dough (2016), The Cakemaker (2017), Tel Aviv on Fire (2018), Pinsky (2017), Once in a Lifetime (2014), and To Be Child Again (2018) . These screenings will be free and open to the public.
During FILJU, Paco Ignacio Taibo II , who participated in the news conference, will offer and advance of his book “Mordechai Anielewicz: The True History of the Warsaw Ghetto Insurrection,” which tells the story of how a 23-years-old Jewish socialist adolescent leads an insurrection with 150 youths against SS members in year 43” says the CEO of FCE, about the book he has been working in for the last six months.
The FCE will offer a selection of over 20,000 volumes of books by Jewish authors or of topics related to Judaism, in Spanish, Yiddish, and Hebrew.
During his participation, Taibo II said: “The intellectual production of the Jewish world has filled, for centuries, our bookshops and is fragmented in some way. The intention of holding a fair is to put them all together and observe the show and variety of material,” he expressed during the news conference at the Belle Époque Cultural Center , where the fair was presented.
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