Bookishly Jewish

Christmas romance is flooding the shelves this time of year, including every variation from small town romance to some very salacious Santa’s, but I’m happy to report that Hanukkah romance is also thriving and creating its own niche in both trad and self pub. A prime example is the Matzo Ballers series, about a set of of friends who gather together every Hanukkah on a Manhattan cruise boat called the Matzoh Baller. The first two books of the series have released in time for Hanukkah and feature the parallel adventures of two of the eight friends.

You can read these books in either order, they don’t contain spoilers, but I started with Jessica Topper’s The Hanukkah Hook-Up because I received it first. On page one, we meet a very stylish but very bogged-down-at-work Nora, who is forced to miss the yearly Matzo Baller cruise in order to greet the team from the Midwest that is planning to buy out her company. Instead of partying it up on the boat with her friends and a who’s who of NY Jewry she’s stuck drinking eggnog and dodging mistletoe at the company “holiday” party which is largely Christmas themed. 

Nora is thrown together with the only other Jew present, Alex Beckman, by her obnoxious boss who seems to think it is hilarious there are two Jews at the party. When the aforementioned heinous boss cancels the expected holiday bonuses, Nora decides that enough is enough and flees the party for the boat, taking Alex with her. The two are obviously attracted to each other and Nora proposes a Hanukkah hook up in which they do not discuss work. Turns out this arrangement won’t work though, because new comer Alex is actually the head of the buy out team and everything in the office is not exactly kosher, which is why Norah has been so stressed about work lately. 

The office shenanigans are actually solved relatively simply, the book is only 172 pages after all, but my favorite part of the book wasn’t the drama. It was the rapid fire banter and Jewish humor. Never have I felt so fully immersed in Jewish jokes and puns. This book prioritizes the a Jewish gaze and it shows. The writer does not pause every few sentences to explain for the wider audience. Instead she revels in the niche market.

The Hanukkah Hook-Up is an adult romance and the characters are physically intimate several times, but there’s always a fade to black and nothing is explicit on the page. I’d call it medium heat. 

From the chapter, when Nora talks about her Hanukkah blue dress clashing with all the red and green on display at the office party, one gets the sense that this is a book written for Jews by Jews. There is enough here in context clues for a person who is not Jewish to understand what is happening, but the book does not beleaguer the point or write to the lowest common denominator. The inside jokes are fast and furious and I smiled so many times. Because this was a book written for me, just in time for my holiday, and I cherish it as such. 

Note: BookishlyJewish received a free e copy of this book from the author after she filled out our Suggest A Book form

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You’d think that living in a densely populated Jewish state would ensure that I was never the sole representative for my religion in any given group. You would be wrong. A Jewish person, even in the most Jewish of areas, often finds themselves in some isolating situations. Missing commencement dinner on Friday night, unable to eat the food at the office “holiday party,” or my personal favorite – the only writer in the critique group whose characters don’t use the same cultural touchstones as everyone else’s. With supportive peers, it can be a beautiful thing to represent Judaism to colleagues and have them share their own traditions in turn. It can also be exhausting. 

Which is all to say that when I met Noah, the love interest of Betsy Aldredge’s YA Hanukkah romance, Eight Dates and Nights, I really felt for the guy and what he was trying to do. The book is told from the perspective of Hannah, a New Yorker who comes out to Texas to visit her grandmother and ends up stuck there for the entire Hanukkah to weather issues. Hannah is feeling alone and sad when she stumbles into the Jewish deli run by Noah and his grandfather. She’s surprised to learn that this small Texas town was once home to a vibrant Jewish community, but now Noah and the deli are almost all that’s left of Jewish culture there. 

Does this get Noah down? No it does not. In fact, he’s a one man Hanukkah machine, spreading joy and Judaism so that the history of the towns Jewish community will not be forgotten. He’s so into his Hanukkah mission that he bets he can spread the holiday spirit to grouchy Hannah too. She agrees to help him out at the deli, which is in dire need of saving, and he shows her the Hanukkah magic with a new experience every night. 

This is grumpy sunshine relationship goals. Noah’s joy is infectious and Hannah learns that maybe life outside a large Jewish community is still worthwhile, albeit different from what she is used to. But what I loved most of all was Noah’s devotion to representing Judaism, and the towns history. It can be exhausting, and Hannah leaned to appreciate that, but Noah is determined to keep the spark of Judaism – and the deli – alive. 

Hanukkah is about making things last, about spreading light to the world, and sharing our miracle with others. Noah was a really great example of that. Sure, sometimes it may feel like the millionth time you have to explain something, but each person and each positive encounter is another small light to the world. May all our torches shine as bright as Noah’s this holiday and spread light and joy to the world. 

Note: BookishlyJewish received a copy of the book from the author after she filled out our Suggest a Book Form

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I am a sucker for Jewish monsters and demons. I devoured the Golem of Prague books as a kid, and while I avoided most horror novels, I delighted in the late night stories about Sheidim we kids would tell each other in the bungalow colony when no adults were watching. Still, my menagerie of Jewish monsters remained fairly small – a tiny flock in comparison to the hordes of mythical beasts and creatures I read about in non-Jewish books and stories. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that Jewish tradition is actually steeped in monster lore and many of the small traditions we practiced – like never fully boarding up a window – were rooted in demonology. Kids today have better reading options and far more access to these stories. 

In her debut, Naomi Teitelbaum Ends the World, Samara Shanker gave us a nice picture of golems and one or two other creatures. In the sequel, Rebecca Reznik Reboots the Universe, she dives right back into the well, displaying the fact that according to some passages in the Talmud, everything from stubbing your toe to wearing a hole in your sweater, can be attributed to magical beings up to no good. 

The main characters are the same trio of friends we have already come to know and love, but this time Rebecca takes center stage as the viewpoint character. This narrative choice results in two interesting developments for the reader. First, by seeing the former viewpoint character of Naomi through Becca’s eyes, we get a more nuanced feel for her than when we were inside her head in book one. Rebecca is keenly observant and the adage that nobody knows us better than our friends is very true in this case. It was fascinating to see the characters through this new pair of eyes. 

The second difference, which is more pivotal to the plot, is that Naomi and Becca’s heads work very differently. Naomi is presented a neurotypical, whereas Becca is neurodivergent. A label is never affixed to her in the text but we are given enough context clues to figure it out and experience Becca’s world her way. This is especially important when it comes to how she views the magical creatures vs. how Naomi does. There is nothing magical about Becca, the book does not fall into the common trap of romanticizing or mythologizing neurodivergence, but rather Becca’s unique viewpoint proves crucial to the plot and resolution. 

The creatures that appear in Becca’s home over the eight nights of Hanukkah are some of my favorites, and I guarantee they will be favorites of MG readers too. The shirika panda even appears! (Do not worry if you don’t know what that is. It’s one of the more obscure, but delightful or terrifying depending on who you are, creatures mentioned in Jewish demonology.  The trio approaches things with their usual charming optimism and friendship, and some old their allies from the last book make cameo appearances, as do Naomi’s moms who are indeed very different when viewed through Becca’s eyes. 

Another major difference between the two books, is that now that the friends are older topics like dating (none of them are interested), and bras now come up. Becca is also struggling to reconcile maturing emotionally with her neurodivergence. She describes feeling sometimes left behind by her friends, despite their reassurances, and a crucial part of the books conclusion is her realization that different is not necessarily a bad thing and that she too is maturing right along with her peers. 

I don’t know if we will get a third book from Eitan’s point of view. I’d certainly be interested to see how that shifts the dynamic, and there are plenty of magical creatures left. But in the interim, I’d recommend this one as a great Hanukkah gift to help young readers learn about some of our more entertaining creatures as well as seeing the world from different perspectives. And if that’s not enough, there’s a tiny creature-that-is-definitely-not-a-Hanukkah-goblin holding a dreidel on the cover. What more could you ask for?

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Coming of age in the 1960s, anti-Semitism is very personal to me. Corporate recruiters studiously avoided college placement day at Brooklyn College, even though it was one of the best colleges in the nation. Only a handful of companies controlled by Jews — like Macy’s and Gimbel’s were represented.

Two decades later, University Press of America published my first book, The Einstein Syndrome: Corporate Antisemitism in America Today. In it, I mentioned how one of our nation’s largest banks, Morgan Guaranty often held its officers’ picnic on Yom Kippur. The Jewish officers were welcome: they just couldn’t eat anything. Of course, there weren’t any Jewish officers — and even today, there are just a handful.

Back in the 1960s, three quarters of the lawyers in New York City were Jewish, but none of the huge “white-shoe” law firms had even one Jewish partner. Since, then, things have gotten much better on the employment scene, but violent attacks on American Jews are on the rise.

Jacqueline Seewald’s new book, Heart of Wisdom, provides a window on Jewish life during the two decades between the world wars, when conditions for Jews — especially recent immigrants — was considerably worse than it’s been in recent years. Indeed, some of the most successful Jews were gangsters. Newark had the second highest concentration after New York City. You’ll get to meet some of them in this wonderful page-turner.

Like immigrant groups before them, the Jews in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, were not just harshly discriminated against, but they, quite literally, had to be twice as good to get half as much. They were forced to take low-paying jobs, or else earn livings as criminals.

And yet, against heavy odds, the Jewish immigrants of Newark — and other Eastern seaboard cities — climbed the economic ladder, eventually gaining almost full American acceptance. Aside from its being a griping story, Heart of Wisdom provides a window through which to view American immigrant life almost a century ago.

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There were several flavors of science major in undergrad – the small few that were planning on academic research careers, those hoping to go into pharma and industry, and a large contingent of premed and nursing students. Each of these groups had their own little fiefdoms, but cross talk was common, especially when it came to dating. It was not uncommon for a premed to be in a serious relationship with a chemistry PhD hopeful and for the geologists to swap notes with the biotech bros. It was a happy little mash up of nerds. And then there were the dental students. For some reason, I could pick them out of a crowd easily and they never seemed to fully mesh in with the other groups. So when I heard that Mazey Edding’s debut adult romance, A Brush With Love, featured a Jewish dental student hoping to be an oral maxillofacial surgeon, I was game to dive in and get an in depth look at one of these mysterious creatures.

The dental student in question, Harper, is top of her class, has a crew of friends in the health sciences, and also suffers from rip roaring anxiety. As a senior, she is poised to match into her choice of oral maxillofacial residency programs, the result of years of hard work. All of this careful planning is turned upside when she meets freshman dental student Dan, who is what graduate programs refer to as a “non traditional” student, because he took several years off to work in finance before returning to complete his dental education. It rapidly becomes clear that Dan is way more interested in Harper than he is in dentistry. In fact, he has only enrolled in dental school because after the passing of his famous, but verbally abusive, dentist father his mother needs his help in running the family dental practice.

Harper and Dan flirt in the most unlikely of places – including the dental lab while making plaster molds of teeth. It is clear that this book is written by someone who, like Harper, has a passion for dentistry. It is therefore impressive that Dan’s misgivings are given equal weight and the reader is allowed to feel Dan’s ambivalence towards being bullied into a dental career just as much as we experience Harper’s anxiety that this relationship is throwing off the career trajectory that she has dreamed about since she was young. We witness a full blown anxiety/panic attack from Harper as well as some of the harsher memories that Dan has of his father. These subjects are handled delicately and they provide much nuance to the characters.

The banter in this book is fast and furious, however it relied on a little too many double entendres and crass humor for my taste. This is not because the jokes and wit are poorly done. In fact, they all land exactly as they are meant to and this obviously took a significant amount of skill. It will be appreciated by the right reader. I just happen to prefer a different style for humor (which is ironic in the extreme since I prefer high heat in terms of the physical aspects of the relationship). Which brings to my only other quibble with the book. There is a scene that involves a fight that gets physical between Dan and some of the other dental students that harass Harper. I was so very desirous of seeing Dan as a knight in shining armor, and I adored his willingness to step up for Harper, but I wish this hadn’t descended into unnecessary physical violence and that Dan hadn’t been the one to escalate it to that level. I just don’t find that sexy, although I know many people do and will love this scene.

Speaking of reader preferences – this seems a good place to insert my usual description of the books heat level. There are 1-2 explicit m/f sex scenes that are not safe for work.

By the end of the book, I felt like I did learn something about those mysterious dental students, but I also learned something about anxiety disorders, as well as how someone like Harper – who is proud of being Jewish but is not particularly desirous of a daily religious practice – expresses her identity. It was fun to spend some time in her world but also at times scary and even inspiring. She’s a wonderful character and I thought her well-roundness was the strength of this romance.

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A Round Up of Funny, Soviet-Jewish Books to Read While The World is on Fire

by: Alina Adams

The world is on fire. And what do Jews do when the world is on fire? Jews pray. Jews raise money. Jews march. Jews fight back. And Jews… laugh.

At least, that’s what I grew up believing. I was born in the former Soviet Union. In Odessa, USSR, in point of fact. Odessa Jews pride themselves on laughing. Especially when there is little to laugh about. (Did you hear the one about Abramovich…)

My family arrived in the United States in 1977. Growing up in San Francisco, CA, I read a lot of books where the protagonists were Jewish immigrants to the US from pre-revolutionary Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, etc… There was nothing from those who managed to escape afterwards. 

But now my generation, the one that left the Soviet Union, not the Pale of Settlement, is finally old enough to tell our stories. And many of us are choosing to do it the quintessential Jewish way: With laughter through tears.

While there is no question that Gary Shteyngart, starting with The Russian Debutante’s Handbook and moving through Absurdistan and the autobiographical Little Failure, kicked off the genre, I have to admit: I never quite got him. To me, it felt like those early books of his (I never read any of the subsequent ones) were a list of weird things Soviet Jews did, so that readers could laugh at them. I prefer stories where you laugh with the characters. Especially about those weird things that Soviet Jews do. Maybe it was because his narrators were men, and our experiences were markedly different. Maybe it was because the stories included a deep strain of self-pity, which I’ve never enjoyed. I like tales of people who rise above their unfortunate circumstances, not wallow in them. Maybe that’s a female thing.

Which is why my list of Soviet-Jewish books to read during troubled times include the following, all by women:

• Oksana, Behave! by Maria Kuznetsova. There is a tendency, in both fiction and non-fiction, to infantilize immigrants, as well as to turn them into saints. As if the process of becoming an immigrant keeps you from being a well-rounded human being, with noble impulses alongside selfish ones. Now, while it is true that trying to make oneself understood in a foreign language does tend to produce child-like sentences, it does not mean that the people behind those sentences are as innocent or simple as children. In Oksana, Behave! neither the immigrant in question, Oksana, nor any of her relatives are innocent, pure, or sexless. Which makes reading the book a much more entertaining experience. 

• Mother Country by Irina Reyn. In Oksana, Behave!, we follow the heroine as she grows up, from the USSR to the US. In Mother Country, the heroine Nadia is already a “woman of a certain age.” One who has lived and suffered through the breakdown of the Soviet Union, and is now trying to piece together a life in the United States at the same time as she fights to reunite with her grown daughter. And yet Nadia is also a well-rounded person. She gets angry. She gets frustrated. She gets horny. And she gets sarcastic. Which makes spending time with her worth the effort.

• The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield by Anna Fishbeyn. There is a certain path immigrant children are supposed to follow. First, you move into a community where everyone is exactly like you. You work hard at school. You go to college. You get certified in a lucrative, yet respectable profession. You marry someone from a community exactly like yours, who is also in a lucrative, respectable profession. You move into a community exactly like yours. You have children whom you raise in a community exactly like yours to follow a path exactly like yours. Being born in America doesn’t mean you’re allowed to plan your own life, like one of those uncouth, disrespectful Americans. This book is what happens when the heroine tries.

• Divide Me By Zero by Lara Vapnyar. I was one of those immigrant children who dared plan my own life, just like an uncouth, disrespectful American. Chief among my sins was my disinterest in math, followed by my utter inability to understand math. (I suspect a strong correlation.) I married someone who could do math. Alas, he was not from a community exactly like mine. However, he did come in handy when I was reading Divide Me By Zero, so he could explain all the ways in which math was used in this story to express lasting, passionate, and all-encompassing love. I did not know I needed the math equations of love in my life. I was wrong. And this book was what I needed to prove that.

Honorable Mention: Non-Fiction Titles by Soviet Jewish Women

• Parenting with an Accent by Masha Rumer. That man I married who could do math but wasn’t from a community exactly like mine also had the audacity not to speak Russian. So when it came to teaching our three children the language, we ended up with a hodge-podge of half-hearted attempts, compromise, resistance, and an older son who spent a year in Moldova to learn what I had failed to effectively teach him. Rumer’s book chronicles families like mine, as well as dozens of other examples, where simply teaching a heritage language proves to be not at all simple, when tradition, culture, and trauma are all added to the mix. And yet, you’re going to laugh!

• The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays by Irena Smith. So remember the work hard at school, go to college, get certified in a lucrative, yet respectable profession edict from a few paragraphs ago? What happens when you go ahead and diligently do that? And it doesn’t work out? What happens then? Well, you pivot and start telling other people how to make their children successful. While struggling to do the same with your own. That’s pretty funny. And so is this book.

These are my favorite Soviet-Jewish fiction and non-fiction titles? What do you have to add to this list? Tell us in the Comments!

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Find the books mentioned in this post:

The Russian Debutante’s Handbook: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

Absurdistan: GoodReads | Bookshop | Amazon

Little Failure: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

Oksana, Behave! : Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

Mother Country: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

The Matrimonial Flirtations of Emma Kaulfield: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

Divide Me By Zero: Goodreads |Bookshop | Amazon

Parenting With An Accent: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

The Golden Ticket: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

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A few years ago I wrote a YA novel about consent. Now don’t get me wrong, it was an exciting book with plenty of plot- epic fantasy love story, romantasy before romantasy became a thing, high heat, villains you love to hate, even twisty battle scenes. But at its beating heart was a discussion of consent in its various forms. Which is probably why nobody knew what to make of that particular story. It’s still one of my favorite pieces of writing, and I think about it often. Which is why I was delighted to find a very thorough treatment of consent as a plot topic (in a book that does NOT involve any non consensual sex) in Tori Anne Amos’s romance This Spells Disaster. 

Martin’s book is a spunky adult f/f romance, which could be equally comfortable on a new adult shelf had that genre ever really taken off. It takes place in a contemporary setting with one slight twist – magic is real and witches are integrated into regular society. The viewpoint character is a potion witch named Morgan who has a tremendous crush on fellow witch Rory, a competitive spell caster who has retired from competition for undisclosed reasons despite being an international sensation. Rory has moved to Morgan’s small New England town and poor Morgan can’t get out two words edgewise when they are together. 

Like all good romances, tropes are involved. In this case – to help Rory get her family off her back about returning to competition, Morgan offers to be her fake girlfriend. The idea being that if Rory’s family sees she is happy with her life choices and settling down they might agree to respect her decision to leave the competition circuit. Except Morgan really, really wants this relationship to be real. And so does the reader. Badly. The yearning is palpable and I was helpless to resist it. 

In the midst of all the fun “is that real flirting or fake flirting?” shenanigans an accidental love potion gets thrown into the mix and there enters the question of consent and what one should and shouldn’t do with a person under the influence of mind altering substances both magical and not (did I mention Rory works as a bartender?). It adds a layer of emotional sensitivity to what would otherwise feel like fluffy flirting and banter (although it really skilled fun flirting and banter. I was grinning like a two year old with an ice cream cone).  The book takes on depth and insight is given into the characters ethical and moral backgrounds.

Rory is clearly a badass. I developed just as much of a whopping crush on her as a Morgan did. I dearly want to know how she lights her Hanukah menorah with magic. However, she is also unfailingly kind and patient. Similarly, Morgan makes some mistakes but she is always ethical. They were a couple I could root for easily. Especially when their relationship also took on an aspect of protecting those around you from the unrealistic expectations of others. 

That book about consent I wrote? I don’t know what will ever happen to it. Maybe YA isn’t ready for that kind of thing. Maybe it will jump into the romantasy trend and be a bestseller. Maybe nobody will ever read it. Those things are outside my hands. But as Rory teaches Morgan, it is the act of creation, of doing something I love, that is what matters. Not national acclaim or meeting the goals and expectations of other. Consent is about respecting the autonomy of your partner, which only comes when you recognize them as a person independent of yourself with their own thoughts and desires. They are worthy as they are without any modifications needed. Rory and Morgan both need to experience that in order to become whole. The reader experiences it right along with them. Which is why I think it is worthy as it is too.

Heat level – the book has a lot of flirting and fantasizing with one explicit f/f sex scene.

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We talk about Jewish unity a lot these days, about recognizing Jews from across a spectrum of practice, but often these discussions feature the very necessary topic of giving equal respect to Ashkenaz, Sephardic, and Mizrahi traditions while omitting the specific perspectives of Jews of color that aren’t from a Mizrahi or Sephardic background. One such Jew is Mia, the main character of Emily Bowen Cohen’s middle grade graphic novel Two Tribes. When Mia brings up the topic of diversity, there is a rush to inform her of all the Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews attending her school. The only problem is that Mia isn’t from those backgrounds. Her mother is Ashkenaz and her father is Native American and it rapidly becomes clear that nobody is entirely sure how to process that, least of all Mia herself. 

Throughout the book Mia is embraced as a Jew, with the Rabbi’s wife even assuring her that she is “one hundred percent Jewish”, however this is besides the point. Mia’s father, from whom her mother is divorced, is a member of the Muscogee Nation. Mia wants to learn more about this part of her heritage but resources are scare and in the case of a school library book – offensive. She tries to express this to the adults in her life but they instead focus on her upcoming Bat mitzvah. In her plight, I recognized two common problems. Adults often disregard the views of children even as those children are trying to explain what they need in every possible manner available to them. Unfortunately, the same pattern is often repeated when a group in the minority seeks help from the majority. Their voices and requests are plowed over in favor of what the majority thinks they should have asked for instead.

When Mia is teased for being adopting by a classmate who assumes she can’t have been born to biologic Jewish parents because of her appearance, Mia is distraught to realize she can’t really talk about her father’s side of the family. Her mother, stepfather, and Rabbi try to protect her by assuring her she is Jewish and nobody should ever assume she is adopted because there are Jews with every possible appearance. This completely dwarfs and disregards Mia’s actual existential issue – she handled the bully just fine, but he awakened within her a desire to understand the Muscogee part of herself and nobody was willing to help her.

Mia’s father, in his own words, made some very big mistakes in Mia’s early years. The details are kept vague, but the reader is given the impression that at the very least he cheated multiple times on Mia’s mother and gaslit her about the entire situation. Understandably, Mia’s mother is hesitant to reopen communications even though Mia still receives cards and occasional phone calls from her father’s family. However, nursing old wounds does little to answer Mia’s questions and she grows so desperate, she cashes in her bat mitzvah money and runs off to her father’s house while lying to him about why she is there. 

When Mia finally connects with her father, he tell her that he accepts responsibility for his prior actions and has rejoined the church in order to be a better person. The reader will find proof of that change in the way he respects Mia’s Judaism and says he can’t take her to a fellowship meeting without first discussing it with her mother. Indeed, when Mia is so frustrated about the situation back home that she says he doesn’t want to be Jewish, it is her grandmother that tells her it would be a shame to let all her beautiful traditions go to waste. Mia learns that her grandmother had her own traditions taken from her in a boarding school that “re-educated” Native American children. It was therefore particularly moving for me to read this same woman encouraging her granddaughter to explore both parts of her rich cultural heritage.

Thanks to the trip, Mia meets her cousins, participates in a pow wow and forms a stronger relationship with her father, but when the truth about her visit comes out both her mother and her father both feel betrayed. It is fitting then, that resolution comes in the form of Judaism’s ultimate guide to repentance -the book of Jonah. Through studying Jonah, Mia learns how to repair the relationship between herself and her mother and how to mediate between her parents so she can experience both aspects of her heritage. She also finds the ability to make her voice heard and teaches something to the Rabbi who inadvertently hurt her in the beginning of the book with his comments. It’s a touching scene that shows none of us is above learning from the other. 

Often the voices we most need to hear are the ones we are in such a rush to speak over. Therefore, while I’m thrilled to share my experience of this book with you, I would much rather let it speak for itself. Pick up a copy and see what it has to show you. You just might be surprised. 

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There is one universal piece of writing advice that just about everyone agrees on: do not read your reviews. It is a one way ticket to despair – one star reviews for shipping damage, not getting reviews at all, and direct assaults against the writer – are all sadly common. But the real crux of the matter is that these are reader spaces and the writer just doesn’t belong in them unless invited. As a reader, I enjoy poking around reviews and am much more easily able to discard the egregious ones. When browsing some early reviews (trade and public) for Mari Lowe’s sophomore effort The Dubious Pranks of Shaindy Goodman, I found they highlighted exactly why such a book is needed.

Lowe has once again set her book in an ultra orthodox Jewish community, just as she did for her debut Aviva and the Dybbuk. The reviews – which are largely complimentary- display how very little most readers know about this population. There was confusion about why kids loved rollerblading so much, comments both pro and anti the time spent on religious exposition, and an overall fascination by the schooling system. As someone familiar with ultra orthodox Judaism, none of those things surprised me at all or even seemed worthy of comment. What did surprise me was seeing that reviewers thought all the characters were white, whereas several of them read as potentially sephardic or mizrahi Jews of color to me. Perhaps I just have a more broad view of orthodox communities.

Ultra orthodox communities restrict the use of cell phones and email. There is extremely limited access to TV or video games in Shaindy’s milieu. She, and children like her, need something to do. This is why rollerblading is very much alive and well in these communities. Similarly, an exploration of Jewish repentance is necessary exposition because it is so wildly different from the Christian version. Thanks to Christian hegemony we are all familiar with phrases like “Jesus died for our sins,” or the way a third act grovel works in a typical romance novel. However, Jewish repentance requires not just regret and forgiveness from God, it also demands the acquisition of forgiveness from the harmed individuals and concrete steps towards reparative action or a refusal to commit the sin again in a similar situation.

It is crucial the reader approach the book with that knowledge because repentance becomes truly necessary for Shaindy. She has long been the subject of benign neglect by her classmates and is thrilled to be given attention by her popular neighbor Gayil, even if it means assisting in a series of increasingly distressing pranks. Not only is Shaindy uncomfortable with the effects these pranks are having on the other girls, she begins to fear the fall out for herself. There’s a nice twist I won’t ruin, but let’s just say that as the holiday of repentance – Yom Kippur- approaches, Shaindy is in a position to both forgive and be forgiven. 

Orthodox readers will enjoy rolling their eyes right along with Gayil when the school principle gives a speech comparing Jewish student to Princesses and insisting they behave with a commensurate level of decorum. Seriously – that line has been going around since time immemorial and has very much lost its effectiveness in this age of democracy. Yet principles still insist on using it. It also has some visible effects on Gayil who suffers under the constant demands for perfection in a community where ones reputation is everything. I loved the descriptions of a community where “kids rule the streets” and a shul can be found on every other block. General public readers will sink right into Shaindy’s internal journey. Who doesn’t want to be recognized by their classmates? Who wouldn’t want attention from the most popular girl in school? Shaindy’s accessible emotional landsacpe will provide an easy inlet for anyone into this new world.

It is in the character of Gayil where I felt things coming apart a little. Since we cannot spend any time in her head – I realize this is necessary due to the nature of the plot twists – Gayil comes across as quite possibly sociopathic. I don’t believe all character in a book, even a MG book, need to have a tidy arc of repentance and improvement. Nor will they necessarily suffer consequences for their actions. The world doesn’t work that way. However, the reader is asked to have some sympathy for Gayil and it is really hard to do so. Her actions were not mistakes. They took meticulous planning and Gayil shows almost no remorse for the harm she has caused. Her only move towards reconciliation comes when she is threatened, and her actions are way out of proportion to the offenses she perceives herself as having received. I was proud of Shaindy for how she ended the book but I was thoroughly confused by Gayil. Perhaps she needs her own sequel.

At this point, I would be remiss if I did not point out that once again, Lowe has slayed me with her dedication. Before I even opened the book I felt like I was both seen and given an insight into the authors’ humor and grace. She addresses sixth graders everywhere with the old Hebrew adage “Gam Zeh Yaavor,” which loosely translates to “this too shall pass.” I laughed until I cried. Only a teacher and Jewish school graduate could truly understand how much kids in that awkwardly difficult year need those words of wisdom, how huge every difficulty seems at that time, and how trivial they now seem in the lens of hindsight. I will echo her sentiments. To all my readers currently struggling- this too shall pass, and as the book shows, there is the potential for all your mistakes to be forgiven. 

Ultra orthodox communities have their own printing presses and publishing imprints. I have enjoyed stories like this one printed there. However, in bravely taking her words to a mainstream publisher Lowe once again shows that our stories are valuable to the world. That Jewish themes like forgiveness and reparative action are universal. It’s good that reviewers are both confused and delighted by this, because we are a confusing and delightful people. I look forward to Lowe’s next work where I can once again feel seen.

BookishlyJewish received a physical arc of this book from the publisher after we wrote in to request one from the publisher.

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At first blush, A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar is not the type of book one turns to for comfort and inspiration in times of need. I describe it as “pulpy but with Holocaust features.” Not exactly the stuff of Hallmark movies. Going in, I prepared for a rough ride. Having read some of Tidhar’s short fiction before, and struggled with it, I was expecting shock value, an exploration of the erotization of travesty, and to be slightly disgusted by every single character. What I failed to anticipate was that this book would force me to rethink everything I knew to be fundamental about humanity.

The story is told in two alternating timelines. The first, where we spend the bulk of our time, involves an alternate history in which the Nazis never fully rose to power and Hitler is a refugee turned detective in an increasingly xenophobic London. He is hired to find a missing Jewish girl, encounters the usual gumshoe obstacles including a lot of grotesque violence directed towards him, and along the way is framed for the murder of numerous prostitutes.

In the second timeline we follow Shomer, a writer of the Jewish pulp novels known as shund, who is currently an inmate of Auschwitz. While this story line is certainly gory, the voice is fundamentally different from the pulp of the other timeline. It is the voice of a truth so abhorrent it can never be equaled by fiction. It is also the story of how people survived and processed this reality.

There is a featured debate between two Auschwitz prisoners about how to record these events. Most readers familiar with Holocaust literature will recognize them as stand ins for Eli Wiesel and Ka-Tzetnik 135633, survivors who later documented the Holocaust in their own unique ways. Shomer finds a different solution to this problem – inventing his own world to help his mind escape the physical horrors his body is enduring. It is a world with the distinctivelly pulp voice of shund, in which Hitler is a washed up detective.

The connection between the timelines is wonderfully spun, but it is not what I found so captivating about this book. I was indeed grossed out by many portions of the Hitler narrative. It is violent, full of ugly sex and unspeakable acts of humiliation and torture. My stomach turned numerous times and only later did I recall that the victim is in fact Hitler. This ability to force the reader into radical empathy for the worst possible human ever to exist, was the true brilliance of the work for me. We are made to watch our own revenge porn through the eyes of the original aggressor. And we do not like the picture that results.

I know what you’re thinking. So what if Hitler had a bad day? Cry me a river. But hear me out.

I admit, it is extremely repugnant to spend any time in that man’s head, hearing his vitriol towards Jews while he shows zero self awareness despite similar hate directed towards him by radical political parties rising to power around him. You will be made to feel guilty for finding it relatable and funny when he goes after the publisher that is quashing his artistic ambitions. However, this is necessary to bring the reader to a conclusion about the purpose of empathy and kindness. They are not for the benefit of the recipient, but rather for the rest of us, lest we lose our own humanity. Our feelings of revulsion at the violence committed against another human are there to remind us that these things should not be done. Even if that victim is the worst possible human ever to exist.

We live in an age where thanks to social media political ideals are rapidly turned into diatribes against individual humans. For example,the laudable idea of wealth equality somehow becomes lovingly detailed social media posts about the abduction, torture and cannibalism of named billionaires and their families. We, the global ‘we’ including Jews and gentiles alike, dehumanize people under the banner of various ideologies. We make life cheap in service of our lofty goals and revenge fantasies. In doing so, we lose our own humanity.

I found myself identifying with Shomer. There’s a reason I favor Jewish space ship stories – they allow me to envision a planet on which there is no antisemitism. A future in which being a Jew does not have to mean being immediately demonized and misunderstood. Likewise, Shomer has created an entire fictional world in which he can meet out justice to his oppressors and escape his ghastly present. As a master of shund, the world he creates is visceral and captivating, the perfect escapism. Yet, as a writer, this book showed me I could also aim for more.

For all my appreciation of Shomer, it is Tidhar’s writing that I want to emulate right now. I want to force the reader to walk in the shoes of even those they find most vile and still dredge up some empathy from their hearts. That is not just the work of a master author, but a master human, who realizes that we need those feelings to find within ourselves the means to move on. That only through living the other can we, all of us, as a human nation stop committing horrific violence against one another and justifying it the same way Hitler did – with political ideology and radicalization of both the left and the right.

It is a dream of mine that someday perhaps a person who views Jews as the root of all evil might pick up one of my works and realize that we are just people the same as they are. Maybe through reading we can learn to think of one another as complex, living, breathing, beings that are more precious than whatever the trendy ideology of the day is. Perhaps we can learn to value human life above all else, including our old wounds and hurts.

A Man Lies Dreaming is not pretty, but to me it was profoundly moving. It celebrates the power of the mind to triumph over the physical and took me on a journey that probed my deepest and most shameful places so that I could emerge with a new understanding of what it means to be a Jew and a human in this world at this time. For me, that encapsulates the ability to experience despair while still finding hope, to survive the unthinkable, and to move on with my humanity intact.

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