Celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month with this staff-curated selection of fiction and nonfiction titles spotlighting Jewish authors, stories, and experiences.
Fiction Books | Nonfiction Books
Anne Berest's The Postcard is an enthralling investigation into family secrets, a poignant tale of mothers and daughters, and a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life. January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne is moved to discover who sent it and why. Aided by her chain-smoking mother, family members, friends, associates, a private detective, a graphologist, and many others, she embarks on a journey to discover the fate of the Rabinovitch family. What emerges is a moving saga of a family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling that shatters long-held certainties about Anne's family, her country, and herself.
Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of control, by way of obsessive food rituals. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting--until her therapist encourages her to take a ninety-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting. Early in the detox, Rachel meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam--by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family--and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey.
Imagine if tiny Sitka, Alaska, had been annexed as a temporary territory for homeless Jews after World War II. This odd proposition makes for a wonderfully surreal setting populated by rabbis, chess masters, and ultra-orthodox gangsters. In the midst of all this is Meyer Landsman, a depressed, alcoholic, and irreligious Jewish homicide cop who's only got a couple months to figure out who murdered a heroin-addicted former chess prodigy and gangster before Sitka reverts to Alaska and Sitka's Jews find themselves homeless once more.
When her beloved granddaughter asks her about their family history, 85-year-old Addie Baum gladly obliges. The youngest daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, Addie describes growing up in a tenement in Boston's North Shore, frequenting the local settlement house, and spending summers at Rockport Lodge, a seaside inn where she formed lasting friendships with other young working-class women whose dreams encompassed more than marriage and motherhood. Addie's coming of age coincides with World War I, the Spanish influenza epidemic, and the women's suffrage movement, among other historical events, and her engaging narration provides a detailed look at immigrant life in early 20th-century America.
Hilarious, energetic, and profoundly touching, a debut novel follows a young writer as he travels to the farmlands of Eastern Europe, where he embarks on a quest to find Augustine, the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis, and, guided by his young Ukrainian translator, he discovers an unexpected past that will resonate far into the future. By turns comic and tragic, but always passionate, wildly inventive, and touched with an indelible humanity, this debut novel is a powerful, deeply felt story of searching: for the past, family, and truth.
Curated by New York Times bestselling author Tod Goldberg, this collection of twelve delightful and twisted Hanukkah capers will entertain you through all eight nights of the Festival of Lights. This captivating collection, which features bestselling and award-winning authors, contains laughs aplenty, the most hardboiled of Hanukkah noir, and poignant reminders of the meaning of the Festival of Lights. Includes stories by David L. Ulin, Ivy Pochoda, James D.F. Hannah, Lee Goldberg, Nikki Dolson, J.R. Angelella, Liska Jacobs, Gabino Iglesias, Stefanie Leder, and Jim Ruland, plus a foreword and story by Tod Goldberg.
A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family's displacement across four countries, Kantika follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way-a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure and motherhood. Moving from Spain to Cuba to New York for an arranged second marriage, she faces her greatest challenge-her disabled stepdaughter, Luna, whose feistiness equals her own and whose challenges pit new family against old. Exploring identity, place and exile, Kantika also reveals how the female body-in work, art and love-serves as a site of both suffering and joy.
When octogenarian Leo Gursky was a teen, he fell in love and wrote a book. Both book and love were lost to him during World War II, and now Leo struggles every day not to become invisible to his New York neighbors. Not far away, 14-year-old Alma watches over her rather odd younger brother while her mother tries to work away her grief and loneliness. There is a connection between them, though neither knows it yet--and it all has to do with Leo's book, published years before under another man's name in Chile...where Alma's father found and fell in love with it. If you've ever been truly affected by a book, you'll enjoy this reflection on reading, writing, and the impact that books can have.
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows.
In the grand storytelling style that is his signature, James Michener sweeps us back through time to the very beginnings of the Jewish faith, thousands of years ago. Through the predecessors of four modern men and women, we experience the entire colorful history of the Jews, including the life of the early Hebrews and their persecutions, the impact of Christianity, the Crusades, and the Spanish Inquisition, all the way to the founding of present-day Israel and the Middle-East conflict.
In a world... where a benevolent alien presence known as The Seep has transformed human society into a peaceful, post-capitalist utopia where now-immortal people can "recreate" into any form they wish, Trina Goldberg-Oneka, a middle-aged trans woman, mourns the loss of her wife, who has chosen to be reborn as a baby. A strange new elegy of love and loss, The Seep explores grief, alienation, and the ache of moving on.
In a cluttered rent-controlled apartment in the middle of Manhattan, Barbara Rosenberg - old world yenta, committed homophobe, accomplished jazzercizer - is terminally ill, high on opioids, and writing the story of her life. Forget about her late husband, her career as the receptionist for an Upper East Side plastic surgeon, and her failed aspirations to be an actress. What she really wants to talk about are her unhinged thoughts on gender, Karl Marx, Jewish diaspora, and her two great disappointing loves: an estranged trans son and a long lost best friend whose betrayal haunts Barbara still. As she descends further into delirium and illness, Barbara's theories get wilder, and her circumstances put her on a crash course with these intimates once again.
Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portnoy (1933-)]: A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Portnoy's Complaint tells the tale of young Jewish lawyer Alexander Portnoy and his scandalous sexual confessions to his psychiatrist. As narrated by Portnoy, he takes the reader on a journey through his childhood to adolescence to present day while articulating his sexual desire, frustration and neurosis in shockingly candid ways. Hysterically funny and daringly intimate, Portnoy's Complaint was an immediate bestseller upon its publication and elevated Roth to an international literary celebrity.
We Are Not Strangers explores a unique situation of Japanese and Jewish Americans living side by side in a country at war. Marco Calvo always knew his grandfather, affectionately called Papoo, was a good man. After all, he was named for him. A first-generation Jewish immigrant, Papoo was hardworking, smart, and caring. When Papoo peacefully passes away, Marco expects the funeral to be simple. However, he is caught off guard by something unusual. Among his close family and friends are mourners he doesn't recognize--Japanese American families--and no one is quite sure who they are or why they are at the service. How did these strangers know his grandfather so well?
After her creator dies en route to America, Chava, a golem from a Polish shtetl, must navigate the streets of 1899 New York City by herself -- her only ally is a rabbi unsure whether to destroy her, or allow her to fulfill her destiny as the harbinger of destruction. Ahmad, a jinni from Syria's deserts has been released from his thousand-year-old glass bottle by a tinsmith but has little intention of remaining a metalworker, despite his uncanny talent for it. Chava and Ahmad meet and discover that they're soul mates, but a dangerous adversary threatens their future. This vibrant blend of myth, adventure, and romance will enchant fans of stories based on folklore.
In Peter Beinart's view, one story has long dominated Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of sacred Jewish tradition and history, and also warps our understanding of modern history. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, he argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: what does it mean to be a Jew? Beinart imagines an alternate story that would draw on other nations' efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish history: a story in which Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety are not mutually exclusive but intertwined.
Everyone knows Judy Blume. Her books have garnered her fans of all ages for decades and sold tens of millions of copies. But why were people so drawn to them? And why are we still talking about them now in the 21st century? In The Genius of Judy, her remarkable story is revealed as never before, beginning with her as a mother of two searching for purpose outside of her home in 1960s suburban New Jersey. This is the story of how a housewife became a groundbreaking artist, and how generations of empowered fans are her legacy, today more than ever.
From the first Asian American to be ordained as a rabbi, a stirring account of one woman's journey from feeling like an outsider to becoming one of the most admired religious leaders in the world. Angela Buchdahl was born in Korea and grew up in Tacoma, Washington, the daughter of a Korean Buddhist mother and Jewish American father. Despite the naysayers and periods of self-doubt - would a mixed-race woman ever be seen as authentically Jewish and entitled to lead a congregation - she stayed the course. Angela Buchdahl has gone from outsider to officiant, from feeling estranged to feeling embraced-and she's emerged with a deep feeling of being bound to a larger whole and mission. Here, she has written a book that is both a memoir and a spiritual guide for everyday living, which is exactly what so many of us crave right now.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg never asked for fame—she was just trying to make the world a little better and a little freer. But along the way, the feminist pioneer's searing dissents and steely strength have inspired millions. Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, created by the young lawyer who began the Internet sensation and an award-winning journalist, takes you behind the myth for an intimate, irreverent look at the justice's life and work. As America struggles with the unfinished business of gender equality and civil rights, Ginsburg stays fierce. And if you don't know, now you know.
A groundbreaking haggadah that presents the Exodus narrative in its entirety and highlights the actions of its female characters. Falk's commentaries invite us to bring personal reflections to the story; her revolutionary blessings, in Hebrew and English, offer a nonpatriarchal vision of the divine; and her kavanot--meditative directions for prayer--introduce a new genre to the seder ritual.
With nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never before spoken in detail about her past. Then she met Michael Frank. He came to her Greenwich Village apartment one Saturday afternoon to ask her a question about the Juderia, the neighborhood in Rhodes where she’d grown up in a Jewish community that had thrived there for half a millennium. Neither of them could know this was the first of one hundred Saturdays that they would spend in each other’s company as Stella traveled back in time to conjure what it felt like to come of age on this luminous, legendary island in the eastern Aegean.
Bob Dylan arrived in New York one winter morning in 1961. His music and spirit would go on to capture the hearts and minds of a generation, but what no one knew then was that, like so many before him, Dylan was concealing his Jewish origins. For Harry Freedman, Dylan's roots are the key to grasping how this complete unknown burst onto the scene and reinvented not only himself, but popular music. In this insightful biography, Freedman traces the heady atmosphere of the 1960s and the folk-rock revolution spearheaded by Dylan. Right up until the moment in 1966 when Dylan stepped out onto the stage and went electric - exploring how his musical decisions, genius for reinvention and his Jewishness go inescapably hand in hand.
The Principles of Uncertainty is an irresistible invitation to experience life through the psyche of Maira Kalman, one of this country's most beloved artists. The result is a book that is part personal narrative, part documentary, part travelogue, part chapbook, and all Kalman. Her brilliant, whimsical paintings, ideas, and images--which initially appear random--ultimately form an intricately interconnected worldview, an idiosyncratic inner monologue. Kalman contends with some existential questions--What is identity? What is happiness? Why do we fight wars? And then, of course, death, love, and candy (not necessarily in that order).
Since ancient times, the Jewish people have recalled the story of Exodus and reflected on the implications of having been slaves. Did the tradition teach that Jews should act against slavery everywhere, or act cautiously to protect themselves in a hostile world, or both? Journalist and historian Richard Kreitner sets this question at the heart of the Civil War. Using original sources, he tells the intertwined stories of six American Jews who helped shape a tumultuous time, including Judah P. Benjamin, a slavery skeptic; Morris Raphall, a Swedish-born rabbi who defended the practice of slavery as biblically justified; Isaac Mayer Wise, who urged Jews to stay out of the slavery controversy, and David Einhorn, a fiery abolitionist. We also meet August Bondi, a Yiddish-speaking veteran of Europe’s 1848 revolutions, and the Polish émigré Ernestine Rose, a brilliant feminist, atheist, and abolitionist.
From Rosh Hashanah and Passover to Hanukkah and weekly shabbat dinners, this joyous celebration of all the Jewish holidays offers a treasury of 130 recipes gathered from 30 influential chefs and food professionals around the globe, whose shared stories illuminate the diversity of the Jewish diaspora and its cuisine. As contributor Mitchell Davis puts it, the meal is the holiday. Whether it's the Seder plate or a cheesecake for shavout, Jewish holiday foods tell the story of what it means to be Jewish and cook Jewish food. The Jewish Holiday Table illuminates the common Jewish story of seeking a home-through exodus, immigration, or simply moving on-and finding it in the food traditions shared across borders and generations.
Cartoonist Art Spiegelman pioneered comics as an art form, and then won unprecedented recognition -- a special Pulitzer Prize -- for his memoir Maus, which explains how his Polish Jewish parents survived the Holocaust and how their experiences affected their later lives and the lives of their children. Using animal figures to suggest the nature of the characters -- Nazis are cats, Jews are mice, Americans are dogs -- Spiegelman movingly portrays his parents' experiences and, by extension, the widespread horrors of the Nazi campaign to exterminate the Jews in Europe.
Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are based on Holocaust survivors? And how has Yiddish, a language without a country, influenced Hollywood? These and other questions are explored in this stunning and rich anthology of the interplay of Yiddish and American culture, edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert.
Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To him, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them. The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. Jews of Color are not outliers, Twitty contends, but significant and meaningful cultural creators in both Black and Jewish civilizations.
Published in conjunction with the eponymous Sendak retrospective touring museums in the United States and Europe in 2022-24, Wild Things Are Happening emphasizes Maurice Sendak's relationship to the history of art and the influences of his art collecting on his images. It features previously unpublished sketches, story boards and paintings that emphasize Sendak's creative processes. Bringing together a broad diversity of perspectives on the award-winning artist, the book includes an extended essay by the renowned art historian Thomas Crow that traces the genesis and cultural contexts of Sendak's most famous book, Where the Wild Things Are. It also includes interviews and appreciations by many of Sendak's key collaborators, including Carroll Ballard, Michael Di Capua, John Dugdale, Spike Jonze, Twyla Tharp and Arthur Yorinks.
An excavatory collection of poems tracing the connections between Jewish transfemininity, queer desire, and cultural histories. Selected by Sean Hill for the National Poetry Series, this collection is a scrupulous chronicle of individual and cultural knowledge. In an exceptional debut, Ava Nathaniel Winter challenges our concepts of the beautiful and the sacred, delving not only into the historically marginalized, but also into the chilling subconscious of supremacy. From Łódź, Poland, to predominantly white suburban America, from the space shared by queer lovers to antique cabinets filled with Nazi memorabilia, from Talmudic depictions of genderqueer rabbis to archival lynching photos, she regards the tender and the difficult with equal gravity, commemorates the fraught gift of survival.