Five Books That Counter the “Negative” Narrative of Jewish Literature
Devorah Baum for Jewish Book CouncilGrace Paley – Collected Stories
Everyone should read Grace Paley. She deals with tough stuff with wit, vitality and grace and she tempers what many would consider tragic storylines with an insistence that where there is life there can always be ‘enormous changes at the last minute’. Unlike the dominant male voices in American Jewish letters, who’ve tended to resist the labeling of either themselves or their fictions as Jewish, Grace Paley showed no such commitment phobia: “I like being Jewish” she once – shockingly – said.
Hélène Cixous – Reveries of the Wild Woman, Primal Scenes
Jews vs Aliens (Volume 1)
Review by Inger Saphire-Bernstein for Jewish Book Council
Two companion collections of short stories edited by Lavie Tidhar and Rebecca Levene explore interactions or collisions between Jews and aliens and Jews and zombies, respectively. The editors invited accomplished science fiction writers to submit new stories related to the open-ended themes. Inclusion of Jews (or Judaism), aliens and/or zombies were the only expectations. As a result, the stories vary widely in subject matter, accessibility, and tone.
A New JBC Book Club Kit and Paperbacks
Jewish Book Council
Every month, JBC Book Clubs offers weekly email subscribers a dedicated email with special book club features that will enhance a book club or add to your personal reading experience.
Whether your book club is formal or informal; social or educational; interested in reading only books of Jewish content, just a few Jewish books throughout the year, or good literature that happens to have Jewish themes, JBC has a book for you and the resources to take you to the next level.
Jewish in America: Living George Washington’s Promise By Richard L. Rubin
By Leah F. Finkelshteyn for Hadassah Magazine
Jewish in America is a work of history that is as much about the future as it is about the past. In much of the book, author Richard Rubin details American Jewish history from colonial times to the present, highlighting the uniqueness of the American Jewish experience. He deftly intersperses his own experience with anti-Semitism—as a child, when applying to college and while serving in the army in the mid-20th century—with historical observation and social science data.
Five Jewish Authors Who Influenced The Fix
By Sharon Leder for Jewish Book CouncilSharon Leder is the author of the recently published novel The Fix: A Father's Secrets, A Daughter's Search. She will be blogging here all week for the Jewish Book Council's Visiting Scribe series.
I had the privilege in 2008 of teaching a seminar at the Wellfleet Library on Cape Cod on the father-daughter relationship in Jewish literature. The American Library Association sponsored the program, “A Mind of Her Own: Fathers and Daughters in a Changing World.” My teaching American Pastoral by Philip Roth, Tevye the Dairyman by Sholem Aleichem, Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska, O My America! by Johanna Kaplan, and Bee Season by Myla Goldberg helped me find my own character, Sara Katz, eight years later. And in May 2017, my revised novel, The Fix: A Father’s Secrets, A Daughter’s Search was published by KiCam Projects.