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The Secrets of Arab Men
Sayed Kashua has made a career out of being an anomaly: A Hebrew-speaking Muslim Israeli Arab. As a writer, he pens a weekly column for Ha’aretz, a major Israeli newspaper, and he writes the hilarious...
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Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
In the new novel Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews, Greg Gaines is a lucky high schooler. He gets to hang out with popular girls at school, and then retreat to the safety of his home,...
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Reasons for Cholent
Mark Kurlansky’s book Edible Stories (2010) is an indulgence for book-nerds and foodies: It’s a collection of 16 interrelated stories, each named after (and starring) a certain kind of food. Most of...
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The Jewish Mail Order Bride
These days, mail-order brides mostly reside in your spam folder, but in the 1800s, it was a booming industry in the American frontier, and an easy way for women to make it to the New World. And some...
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Having an Affair with your Synagogue
In the new novel The Invitation, by Anne Cherian, a successful computer engineer invites his three best friends to his son’s graduation from MIT. His friends accept, and then immediately regret it....
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In Grandpa’s House
Maurice Sendak illustrated over a hundred books, both his own stories and those written by others. The illustrated book In Grandpa’s House might be his most personal illustration project–the author of...
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Up the Down Staircase
In 1923, a 12-year-old Russian girl named Belle Kaufman immigrated with her parents to America and, not knowing a word of English, was enrolled in the first grade. She caught up quickly, and decided...
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Fagin the Jew
The antihero of Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist is the ”villainous-looking and sinister” Jewish moneylender, Fagin. Fagin is referred to as “the Jew” 257 times throughout the first two-thirds of the...
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Mudhouse Sabbath
Lauren Winner grew up in an interfaith family. As a Columbia University undergraduate she converted to Orthodox Judaism, and then, just a few years later, she dreamt about Jesus and converted to...
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Jews and Words
In his book The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel famously posits that Jews should build sanctuaries in time, so to speak, instead of focusing so much energy on physical structures. In their new book...
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Brooklyn Love
Ah, the guilty pleasure of the romance novel: bodice-ripping, smoldering glances, passionate sex . . . and Shabbos dinner. Yep, you read that right: a new genre of romance novel – the Orthodox love...
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Data: A Love Story
Amy Webb, in-demand internet consultant and math whiz had experienced one too many disastrous JDates. After one particularly awful one—on which the guy started taking phone calls from his wife—Webb...
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Bad Israeli Blood in a Holy Spanish City
In master novelist A.B. Yehoshua’s most recent book, The Retrospective (published in Israel in 2011), Yair Moses, an aging Israeli film director, arrives in the holy city of Santiago de Compostela for...
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How to Write to Your Long-Lost Love, In Yiddish
Imagine, esteemed reader: Your son has recently arrived in America from your shtetl, and you want to warn him about the temptations of the goldene medina. But how do you find the right words in the...
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A Forgotten Satire of Yiddishe Mamas and Soviet Fools
Stories of a bustling courtyard populated by hapless sages and wise young fools fill Moyshe Kulbak‘s classic satirical family novel of Soviet Minsk. It’s a compelling, tender read, newly translated by...
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Jewniverse Beach Reading!
Check back all week for our top summer reading picks from the archives! Monday’s pick: Shakespeare The Spy, a novel about an Israeli spy named Shakespeare by Joshua Sobol. Nothing else like this....
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A New, Digital Wonderland of Jewish Text
Imagine a digital wonderland where every Jewish text is available free and open-source, where the extraordinary expanse of our texts are waiting to be combed, prodded, and commented upon by interested...
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What Kind of Nice Jewish Boy Writes a Book About Santa Claus?
One day, Eric Kaplan’s son’s playdate to the zoo was canceled by his friend’s mother. It was almost Christmas, and the mother, knowing that Kaplan’s son didn’t believe in Santa, didn’t want him...
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A 1980s Classic That Turns Jewish American Princesses into Paper Dolls
The Official JAP Paper Doll Book is an artifact of bad taste and excellent value. Originally published in 1983, it is out of print but available via sellers like eBay; it boasts on its cover that its...
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The Holocaust-Memorializing Catholic Priest
If there was a distinction for modern-day Righteous Gentiles, Father Patrick Desbois would be the first to be honored. In 2002, sometime after learning that his grandfather, a French soldier, had been...
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