Tuvia Tenenbom visits the Five Towns

Tuvia Tenenbom, the Israeli born best-selling author, journalist, dramatist, and the founder of the Jewish Theater of New York, will speak on Sunday, July 23 at 7:30 p.m. at Congregation Beth Shalom at 390 Broadway in Lawrence.

Tenenbom, born into an ultra-Orthodox family in 1957, moved to the U.S. to study and practice a secular lifestyle. He studied for his doctorate in English literature at St. John's University, earned his master’s of fine arts in playwriting at CUNY-Brooklyn, a bachelor’s of science in mathematics and computer science at Touro College, and finished his rabbinical studies in Jerusalem. He also studied Christianity and Islam in Israel and New York as well as journalism, acting, theater, and finance at New York University.

A columnist for Die Zeit, a German newspaper, his column, “Fett wie ein Turnschuh,” appears twice a month. He is the author of the Spiegel top-10 best-seller “Allein unter Deutschen (I Sleep in Hitler's Room in English),” and the No. 1 best-seller in Israel, “Catch the Jew!” In 2003, Die Zeit named Tenenbom and Professor Harold Bloom, “the best minds” in America.

Named a “founder of a new form of Jewish theater” by the French newspaper Le Monde, “founder of The Theater of Catastrophe” by Die Zeit and “The New Jew” by the Israeli news service Maariv, Tenenbom’s theatrical work was described by critic D. J .R. Bruckner reviewing for the New York Times as “irresistibly fascinating.” Alisa Solomon, writing for the Village Voice, called it “theater of integrity, inquiry and chutzpah.”

As a journalist, Tenenbom writes essays and op-ed articles for various publications. His articles and essays have been published in leading Western media including Corriere della Sera of Italy, Yedioth Ahronoth of Israel and by Fox News.