Yakov Bok News Today

  (JTA) — Even before Joanna Sargent had read “The Fixer,” she knew about it.  A middle-school librarian in South Carolina, Sargent first heard of Bernard Malamud’s novel about antisemitism during her professional training. Budding librarians often study Island Trees School District v. Pico, the only U.S. Supreme Court case to address the holdings of […]

On an oft-unseen battlefield of the culture war over books in states and school districts around the country, there are panels of judges that may feel more like a book club

"The Fixer," a 1966 novel about a blood libel, was banned in a South Carolina school district. Then a review committee came along and actually read it.

The novel is about a Jewish day laborer in Kyiv accused of murdering Christian children to make matzah in 1913.

Inside the South Carolina committee that reviewed “The Fixer” without Jewish expertise after a parent challenged its presence in school libraries.