Category: Uncategorized

Like many Jewish women, I know the name Doña Gracia Nasi. I’m vaguely familiar with the fact that she was a Sephardic Jew of note, but I was embarrassingly unaware of the details of her life until this year when a few books featuring her bio sketch appeared on my TBR. By far, the cutest of these books is Doña Gracia Saves Worlds written by Bonni Goldberg and illustrated by Alida Massari, because it is a picture book. 

Like most of my picture book reviews, I tried to gather a small flock of children to help me take Doña Gracia Saved Worlds out for a test drive. The littlest among them had some difficulty following that “Doña” is a title and not a name, and that Gracia ages over the course of the book. It became a bit of a Where’s Waldo adventure as she searched for Doña Gracia on every page. She was also a big fan of Doña Gracia’s hats. At the end, she asked to take the book home wit her, which is always a good sign. (Yes, permission was granted. Who can refuse a kid a book?)

The slightly older kids only interrupted the reading once to ask questions, and generally seemed engaged. They had many thoughts about crypto Jews and what life was like in different countries at the time. Plus, they too liked the hats. 

As the grown up reader, be prepared for questions and get your voice ready. This isn’t a board book. There’s enough text on the page that smaller kids will interrupt, and bigger ones might want to hear it a few times to parse the different themes. The somewhat muted color scheme suits the story and time period well, and I learned something about a historical figure right along with the kids. Bonus: I also very much enjoyed the hats. 

Doña Gracia Saved Worlds is a good book for story time or circle reads. It will be equally useful at home or in a classroom. Discussion from all the kids was lively, and I, the adult, was not bored. Which is always a picture book win. 

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Find It: Bookshop | Amazon

A compelling new book shows post-Holocaust life in the Ukraine through the day-to-day struggles of one Jewish lawyer. Mikhail Goldis (1926-2020) worked as a detective and district attorney for 30 years in Ukraine and wrote these memoirs in safety, after immigrating to the US in 1993. Many modern readers have no idea the constant threat someone in his position was under and will thrill at the suspense and danger. As the book reveals in one critical scene: 

“Soon thereafter my boss called me in. He told me that he had received a directive from the regional party committee to remove me from the regional attorney’s office because I was a Jew; he also swore me to secrecy. The higher-ups couldn’t care less about my successes and professional abilities. They were administering their policy of frenzied antisemitism, incomprehensible even to such faithful servants of the regime as the region’s chief attorney.“

The contrast between big-city and rural, the unwelcome attentions of the Soviet government—all complicate the characters’ lives. Criminals sometimes do their acts on behalf of the party, strongly complicating matters. Meanwhile, those who want justice must often struggle through prejudice, a callous government, and many other hurdles to be heard—an increasing problem in society today. Corruption and cruelty are common, as are surprise revelations. Through it all, Goldis struggles to defend the lives and dignity of his fellow Jews. Likewise, the memoir breathes life into their individual struggles, memorializing them against a background of neglect, indifference, and outright cruelty. 

The protagonist goes into intense detail, bringing family stories to life—these are intertwined with the dark history of the region, of course. In one tale, the family discovers the remains of children buried twenty years previously—children massacred in Krasyliv during the war. In fact, they were mixed Jewish-Ukranian children shot by the Nazis and Ukrainian collaborators. The echoes of the Holocaust continue, with new relevance for today’s readers as well as the hero of the book. He, in fact, investigates criminals, even as their lives are complicated by the shifting regimes and threats of death. As he concludes, “From the distance of all these years, I think that if a monument were to be erected to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, those words should be engraved on it: ‘And what does the constitution have to do with it?’”

Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney in Soviet Ukraine is published in the Immigrant Worlds and Texts series from Boston’s Academic Studies Press. As such, it shares such vital narratives with the readers of today, showing how much these events influence present reality and bringing the individual journeys into prominence. The translation is smooth and easy to follow. Plenty of photographs bring the distant world to clear, vivid life. This will appeal to readers of memoirs, mysteries, detective thrillers, and stories of survival through adversity. Mikhail Goldis’ amazing story has finally reached the English-speaking world, and it’s astounding. 

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Find It: Bookshop | Amazon

A few weeks ago we reviewed NEXT STOP, the debut dystopian novel from Benjamin Rsenick. The book was challenging, and moving, but left me with so many questions. I decided to attempt emailing the author and asking for an interview. And he said yes! Below are the answers to my burning questions, and hopefully some of your too.

BookishlyJewish: I actually read NEXT STOP over the course of one Shabbat, but it stayed with me for much longer. When did the concept of this story first come to you?

Benjamin Resnick: I started on a first draft in the summer of 2021—toward the tail end of the pandemic when life for a lot of people was starting to get back to normal but wasn’t all the way there yet. My wife and I have two fairly young children, about Michael’s age in Next Stop, and being stuck at home with young kids through Covid was obviously its own specific kind of challenge. As I began writing I was thinking a lot about parenting under difficult and unpredictable circumstances and about how we try to keep our kids relatively happy and relatively safe regardless of what is going on in the world

There are, of course, many parents who contend daily with challenges far worse than what my wife and I faced as middle-class American Jews during lockdown—we had access to resources and our health and the health of our loved ones remained intact and I am very grateful for that. But it wasn’t easy, to say the least. So that whole experience was still very present for me when I started thinking about Next Stop. I knew I wanted to tell a story about parenting through a drastic disruption and about how our routines (and the assumptions that they are built around) are really very fragile. That is fundamentally true all of the time for everyone (and as a pulpit rabbi I often have a window into that reality), but I also think, historically, it has been particularly true for Jews, in large part because of antisemitism. And I wanted to tell a story about that as well.

BookishlyJewish: We get a very detailed and harrowing description of Ethan’s journey across town during a time of violence, and this served to both humanize him and also show how very tiny and powerless he is in the grand scope of things. However, when it is Ella’s turn to fight her way back to the Pale and rejoin her family, we see her triumphant return but have no idea what led to it. This made her feel superhuman to me. I am wondering if these choices were intentional?

Benjamin Resnick: What a great question! Ethan’s journey across town is one of my favorite episodes in the book. It was inspired, in part, by this wonderful section in Ursula LeGuinn’s magnificent The Left Hand Of Darkness, during which the two main characters go on a perilous journey across a vast, icy terrain. It’s phenomenally gripping and beautifully written and I guess I’m drawn to road stories in general. 

You’re actually only the second reader to ask, specifically, about what Ella had to do in order to get back. In my mind, it’s likely that her journey looked a lot like Ethan’s—she made it back through a combination of determination and good fortune. The reason why I didn’t include it in the book—a fairly prosaic one—is simply that I thought it would be repetitive for readers, i.e. we already accompanied Ethan on one long journey through the city and we didn’t need to accompany Ella on a journey as well. It’s so interesting that, for you, that absence made Ella seem superhuman. I don’t see her that way, necessarily, but I also think that she is tougher than Ethan and there are probably things she would do to get back that he would not. That aspect of her characterization was absolutely intentional. 

And she is also Michael’s mother. As close as Ethan and Michael become—and in many ways I see Next Stop as a love story between Ethan and Michael as much as it is a love story between Ethan and Ella—he is not Michael’s father.

BookishlyJewish: As someone who takes the subway to work every day, NEXT STOP has added some interesting feelings to my commute. I am wondering how you chose to feature subways so prominently and what the symbolism is there?

Benjamin Resnick: I don’t take the subway to work everyday anymore, but I’m a New Yorker and I did for many many years. I think a lot about the subway in general—about how it looks and feels and sounds, about the experience of going down in one place and coming up in a place that looks entirely different. It’s just a very unique and, for me, important experience.

Trains are also a pretty overdetermined and (pun intended, I suppose) freighted symbol in the Jewish imagination. Recently they recall the Kindertransport, of course, and also the sealed train cars to the camps. 

There are also earlier resonances in midrash—I doubt many readers will think about those but they are present for me. One of them is the very strange and somewhat macabre image of Jewish bones rolling through underground tunnels on their way to Jerusalem for resurrection. Another is the ancient rabbinic idea, expressed in a few different ways, that unlike the people in Plato’s cave allegory (who need to ascend into the light to find truth) Jews find true illumination by exploring the dark depths.  

So in my mind the subways are a hopeful symbol, but also a terrifying one. 

BookishlyJewish: Obviously the book ends with a lot still unanswered. I won’t ask you to explain the anomaly, or what happened to the “OG Hole” jumpers, but I am curious if you yourself know those answers or if you are as much in the dark as the rest of us. 

Benjamin Resnick: I’m not one hundred percent sure, but (quick spoiler alert) I think they might be somewhere down in the tunnels, i.e. in the same place that Ethan, Ella, and Michael go in the last section of the book. In my imagination there is a really big world down there and we really only see a small corner of it. There are probably places you can’t escape from and places that are hidden and inaccessible or that are governed by different kinds of rules. 

Or they could just be gone, vanished entirely. I sometimes think about how because of the Holocaust I really know very few Jews who are able to trace their families back more than a couple of generations. Some can, but not many. In an amazing prose poem called “Alphabet of My Dead” Robert Pinsky, who is so brilliant, has a line that goes “X the unknown ancestors of my eight great-grandparents, unseen multitudes who have created my body, thousands of them reaching back into time, tens of thousands, kings and slaves, savages and sages, warriors and rapists, victims and perpetrators.” All of us have these secret, unrecoverable parts of ourselves. Where do they go? What kind of lives did they lead? I’ll never even know their names. There is something haunting about that.

I’ll also say that, symbolically, I think about the anomalies as physical manifestations of antisemitism—a dark presence that we Jews schlep around with us as an eternally haunted and hunted people. That’s not all we are, of course—we’re also a joyful, resilient and endlessly creative people—but schlepping around darkness has been a core part of our story for millenia and it remains so. My overall view of antisemitism—and I’ve said in other places—is that it’s like a monster under the bed. Sometimes it sleeps, but inevitably it wakes up and when it does it wreaks havoc. And in a lot of ways, Next Stop is one long footnote to the line in the Haggadah: “This is the promise: That not only one arose to destroy, but in every generation they arise to destroy us…” So the holes are a way of concretizing that in the story. 

But I also think that the persistence of antisemitism—and its protean nature—is mysterious. That’s part of what makes it so scary, almost like Stephen King’s It, which can take many forms. Just recently, for example, several American voices blamed the Jews for the fires in L.A. and at least two groups suggested that their proliferation is the result of American support for Israel and the war in Gaza. That’s a pretty wild move—completely divorced from reality, of course, and deeply unsettling. And if you ask me where those kinds of bizarre ideations come from I’m going to say that honestly I don’t know. Jews have been trying to explain antisemitism for thousands of years and I could offer a few theories, but none of them are really satisfactory, at least not to me. So in that sense I’m as much in the dark as anyone.  

BookishlyJewish: I’m never shy about how I mostly avoid horror and other heavy topics – I’m more of an escapist or “Jewish Joy” reader- but I’m glad I made an exception for NEXT STOP. I won’t pretend it didn’t keep me up at night, but it was also deeply moving and laced with moments of joy. Particularly right now, when so much is so uncertain, how did you walk that fine line between despair and hope?

Benjamin Resnick: Some of the most gratifying feedback I’ve received so far—and I’ve gotten it pretty consistently—is that despite a very heavy premise, Next Stop is not a horrific, grim slog. There is a place, perhaps, for gorgeously rendered grim slogs (Cormac McCarthy’s The Road comes to mind) but I didn’t want Next Stop to be like that and for the most part I don’t think that’s how readers have experienced it. To the contrary, I’ve heard from a lot of readers that it moves very quickly and easily, that it pulls them along, and that there is a lightness to the book despite the fact that some pretty terrible things happen to the characters, objectively.  That’s been very rewarding to hear because it was a very conscious goal on my part. 

In many ways, Next Stop is a domestic story. It’s a love story and story about parenting and those aren’t easy subjects but they are beautiful and consoling ones. Reflecting again on our experience during the pandemic (and this describes the experience of most parents that I know), it was a very difficult and trying time. But it wasn’t unremittingly horrible. We were all together. We laughed, we fought, we watched Tiger King, we built this really cool sukkah on a tiny balcony. My older son learned to read. Like most people I know, I have good memories from that time as well. 

And I think life is almost always like that. So we try to spend about a month every summer in Israel. And we went last summer, as usual. When we got back a lot of my congregants, many of whom haven’t yet been since October 7, wanted to know how it felt, what the atmosphere was like, etc. I always said that on one level it was very sad. You couldn’t walk ten feet without a reminder of everything going on. There was and still is a sense of sadness and trauma that pervades everything. But on another level, it was as it always is—a bustling, vibrant place, very much alive and full of people going to work and going to the beach and people out partying and so forth. And that’s normal and probably always is. Even in wartime people go out to eat or to the theatre; they read, laugh, and have children. Right now, for instance, there are people sitting in cafes in L.A. So for me the consoling elements in Next Stop reflect the basic reality that life is a pretty mixed bag, for most of us, most of the time. And it often remains that way even in extreme situations. Writing a book that was only despairing just wouldn’t have felt authentic to me because I don’t experience the world that way. Sometimes I despair. But I don’t only despair. Far from it. 

BookishlyJewish: The timing of NEXT STOPs submission and publication is a shining example of what many writers call the “luck” portion of the process (although I realize it feels really awkward to use that term surrounding global tragedies). Do you think the book would have had a different reception if it was submitted at a different time? Do you think it would even have landed with the same publisher?

Benjamin Resnick: I think about these questions all the time. I like to imagine that the book would have found its way into a world without October 7 (it was submitted to my editor just a few days before). But I don’t live in that world so I ultimately don’t know and never really will. The disquieting aspect of my “luck” is also something that I think about constantly. I wrote a book that met the moment in a lot of ways and it was a horrible, tragic moment for our people and it is still ongoing. And I benefited from it in a very real way. I am still struggling to understand that. It haunts me. 

BookishlyJewish: Speaking of reception, how has the public been viewing NEXT STOP? Any surprising moments for you?

Benjamin Resnick: So far the reception has been really positive overall and the book seems to have sparked a fair amount of conversation, which is, of course, very rewarding. And most of the reviews (including yours!) have been very nice and have engaged seriously with what I was trying to do. 

It’s definitely not a pareve book. I knew when I wrote that it had a pretty strong taste, but maybe I’ve been a little bit surprised by how consistently it engenders strong feelings. I just haven’t gotten that many meh responses—people either seem to really like it or to really not like it. Of course I would prefer that all readers love it, but the fact that it consistently inspires strong reactions of whatever sort is gratifying, in a way. 

BookishlyJewish: I was interested to learn you are also a Rabbi, how has your chosen profession impacted your writing?

Benjamin Resnick: Rabbis are storytellers and repositories of stories on many levels. And I often tell people that I basically talk for a living. My rabbinic job, as I see it, is primarily about building and maintaining relationships, so all day long I’m listening to stories and telling other stories and when you’re a rabbi people tend to open themselves to you and invite you into their lives. Sometimes my whole workday is spent on three or four coffee dates and that’s a day really well spent. I consider myself very lucky in that regard, especially when, in my imagination, I compare that kind of workday—a series of fascinating conversations with fascinating people—with some other kinds of work days I might have if I had a different day job. Though I’m not necessarily conscious of it as I write, I’m sure that all of that influences my writing in profound ways—not the details of people’s private lives, of course, which I keep in strict confidence, but the fact that my job requires me to engage deeply with so many different kinds of people, all of them endlessly interesting. It’s just a real privilege to move through the world that way. 

Having said that, it’s also the case that my job as a rabbi feels very distinct from my work as a novelist. I wanted to be a writer long before I wanted to be a rabbi and I’ve been working at it for much longer and in many ways it’s much harder for me. My rabbinic work is very important to me and I take it very seriously, but I could have wound up doing something else and, who knows, perhaps I will do something else someday in the future. But it’s hard for me to imagine not being a writer and that’s been true for a long time, since I was a child. It’s the first thing I can really remember wanting, which is kind of weird but true.  

BookishlyJewish: This is an embarrassing admission, but when reading about the fringe group the “Rabbits” I did not realize it was supposed to be pronounced like the animal, which makes a lot of sense given what the group stood for. Instead, in my head, it was pronounced Rabbi-it’s. Which is ridiculous and makes no sense at all, and yet it happened. It probably says something about how I was raised, where I live now, and where my head has been this past year. Do you think different readers are having different experiences with NEXT STOP based on their connections – or lack thereof to Judaism?

Benjamin Resnick: Yes, absolutely. And I tried to include some of that in the book itself. Ethan and Ella come from very different Jewish backgrounds and that certainly influences how they interpret what is going on around them. In some ways the argument of the book is that it doesn’t really matter in the end—what they share, as Jews, far outweighs what they don’t share. I believe that’s very often true in the real Jewish world as well. 

But I think it’s likely the case that someone who goes to shul twice a year (just for example) will experience the book differently from someone who is shomer shabbat, just as American Jewish readers and Israeli Jewish readers will likely experience it differently.  And that’s great! But that’s always how it is no matter who we are—we can’t help but bring pieces of ourselves to our reading. For example, one thing that’s been interesting to me—not surprising, really, but certainly notable—is that readers who are parents tend to experience the book very differently from readers who do not have kids, and, hey, I just realized that’s part of the next question!

BookishlyJewish: The theme of parenting through crisis was very strong for me, and I appreciated your take on the pandemic which is a time many writers and readers are still shying away from. How did you approach that topic?

Benjamin Resnick: I’ve already talked about this (unprompted!) in a few of my answers, but I’ll just add (maybe it comes as no surprise) that parenting is probably the thing that I spend the most time thinking about. It’s just such an intense, all-consuming endeavor—I’m definitely not breaking any new ground with those proclamations!—and it’s also hard to write about without falling into cliche because it’s exactly how everyone says it’s going to be and it’s really the only thing I know of that is like that. It’s just as scary and just as wonderful and just as surprising and just as boring and just as inspiring and just as exhausting and just as revelatory on and on. So I’m glad I was able to write a novel about it and I’m planning to write more novels about it!

In terms of the pandemic? Well, the pandemic definitely informed some of the atmosphere of the book and it is present in the story in a somewhat attenuated way, sort of like a ghost or maybe like a healed wound. But Ethan and Ella were kids during their pandemic, about the same age my children were during Covid, so it’s a hazy memory for them. What do I really remember from first grade? Not much. I didn’t set out to write Covid novel and the pandemic is not a huge, defining moment in the lives of the main characters, just as I don’t think it will be a huge, defining moment in the lives of my own children. But it was such a generationally defining experience for me, for my wife, and for our friends (mostly millennials who have young kids now) that it just would have felt weird (and maybe impossible) not to address it in some way.

BookishlyJewish: Is there anything in particular you are hoping readers take away from the book?

Benjamin Resnick: That being Jewish is a precarious and sometimes dangerous thing to be, but that at the same time it is extraordinary and wonderful and a great privilege. Also that our children can save us.

BookishlyJewish: I always end by asking if you have a favorite Jewish (B.R: I assume you meant book?) to recommend. 

Benjamin Resnick: Satan In Goray by I.B. Singer. It’s absolutely incredible—elemental, intense, highly troubling and very beautiful. 

If you meant “favorite Jewish author” I’d probably go with Bernard Malamud.

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Find NEXT STOP: Bookshop | Amazon | BookishlyJewish Review

It is a rare delight to see the author of the book I am currently reading win a National Jewish Book Award for another one of their works which I have reviewed. Last week, while rapidly making my way through The Jake Show by Joshua S. Levy, his latest middle grade novel – Finn and Ezra’s Bar Mitzvah Time Loop – got the nod for MG fiction. I am not surprised. That book was so delightful I went back and found the author’s prior book. Also not a surprise – it too is delightful!

Jake is an epic TV fan. He also has several aliases. As he toggles between living with his orthodox mother and his secular father, he is called Yaakov or Jacob respectively. It’s clear his parents love him, but they each expect Jake to want the same religious practice as they do. Since he doesn’t want to hurt either of them, he lives a double life, practicing orthodoxy with his mother and eating cheeseburgers with his father. It’s like starring in three different TV shows – the striving yeshiva Bochur who wears a black hat and spends his days poring over a Talmud, the up and coming scientist watching television while coding, and the kid who doesn’t want to make friends because the courts keep forcing him to switch schools anyway. Too bad Tehilla and Caleb, two kids from Jake’s new modern orthodox school, didn’t get the memo. 

As Jake starts to get close to his two new BFFs, his family life gets worse and worse. Neither of his parents realize how he desperately molds himself to the life of the parent he is with at any given moment. Keeping this a secret is getting harder and harder. How is he supposed to figure out what he wants for himself with all this fighting and pressure? So he concocts the worlds wildest plan to trick his parents into sending him to summer camp with Tehilla and Caleb – a space where he can just be himself for a change. 

Levy is particularly strong when it comes to writing madcap hi-jinks. The Shira Club is enough to have anyone rolling in the aisles, and the entire camp episode is one large comedy of errors. Plus, the ridiculousness of color war in a Jewish summer camp seen through the eyes of a first time, thirteen year-old camper is pretty priceless. Yet at the heart of all that hilarity is a core of seriousness. Clearly Jake and his family have some communication issues, but Caleb and Tehilla have a lot going on too – even if Jake is too wrapped up in himself to notice. Particularly brave and moving was the depiction of the fall out for a kid in a modern orthodox school to come out as a gay. 

The Jake Show is a quick read, and middle schoolers will fly through it. Even the ones who are reluctant readers, because it is so funny. However, the more contemplative readers will have something to invest in, and maybe even to start a conversation with their parents about. It’s not just a book for children of divorced parents, or gay kids, or poor kids. It’s a book for all kids striving to become compassionate adults – sometimes in spite of inadequate role models. Jake and his friends find their way, but in true camp fashion they do so together, before the parents arrive to pick them up. 

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Find It: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

How Jewish should I make this story? How much Yiddish can I get away with? How much Hebrew? How many random references to Jewish holidays or summer camp before this book becomes unsaleable to even my fellow Jews? It’s a question all Jewish writers ask themselves. Even when we are comfortable in our choices, we get asked to “make things more relatable” by agents, editors, and publicists. Translate all the ‘foreign’ words, stop being ‘so ethnic.’ Otherwise, we are told, we will terrorize readers who aren’t used to the world not catering directly to them. 

I didn’t grow up in either of the communities that Casey, the protagonist of Corie Adjmi’s novel, The Marriage Box, inhabits. That might surprise some people, since it’s a very Jewish book, but there are about a million ways to be Jewish, as Casey herself finds out. She starts off in New Orleans, where her family practices what she thinks of as reformed Judaism, although I’m not entirely sure her personal definitions of reform practice would pass muster with a reform Rabbi. That’s because Casey’s parents are in fact Syrian Jews from Brooklyn, where everyone is more or less considered orthodox even if their definition of orthodox is not what an Ashkenazi Jew would consider orthodox. Confusing? It is, and it leads to some pretty hilarious lines in the book when Casey’s best friend Tracey from New Orleans tries to understand her boyfriend from Brooklyn. 

Casey’s prep school, New Orleans world might be familiar to mainstream Americans, but it was violently disorienting to me. I was never more glad to have grown up elsewhere than when I was reading about what Casey and her friends did to and with each other while their parents weren’t looking. None of that “foreign-ness” stopped me from “relating.” I was relating so hard I was physically sick from worry for her.

When things go too far in New Orleans, Casey’s parents decide they need to make a drastic change. To preserve Casey’s reputation, they schlep her back to Brooklyn to restart an orthodox Syrian life. Translation – they want her married by eighteen at the latest, without any dreams of attending college. This was a bit more similar to what I’m familiar with, but also still incredibly foreign. When Casey takes us through various community customs – like eating fish and vegetarian foods in non kosher restaurants, women wearing bikinis, and more Arabic slang than Yiddish – I was obviously not in my world. And yet? It was still relatable. 

At the end of the day, it’s these specific details that make Casey’s story so universal. We all struggle when moving from one community to another, having to code switch our manner of dress and speech in order to fit in. We all wonder what life we would like to choose for ourselves if we could. It doesn’t matter if it’s New Orleans or Antarctica. So long as the story is grounded in something that feels authentic and real, readers will recognize the emotions behind it. 

I don’t necessarily agree with anyone’s choices in the book. In fact, Casey’s mother seemed just as much a child as her daughter. Miserable, yet pushing her children down the same path that failed her. Casey’s chosen forms of rebellion – both in New Orleans and back in NY as a married woman- were very ill advised and involve firearms. There are some side characters that feel almost thrown away given their lack of depth despite promising starts (I’m looking at you Rochelle, anybody that can be at their friend in crisis’s house in 30 minutes is a fave of mine), but the narrative runs along at a steady clip, and I can vouch for the authenticity behind Casey’s Brooklyn life. The Syrian community is a unique one, and Adjmi doesn’t pull her punches in showing its flaws, along with its beauty. Ultimately, the reader is left hoping Casey finds a way to take the best of both of her worlds without fully returning to either, as they both seemed fairly toxic for her. Indeed, while Casey looks to Tracey as having the life she wants, it was imminently clear to me that Tracey might be just as miserable as Casey is – simply in different ways. 

The Marriage Box immerses the reader in two new worlds (or familiar worlds, if you happen to be from these communities), but it’s power is not in watering down those worlds for outside readers. It is in showing them fully, for what they are, without filing down the sharp edges to make them palatable for mass markets. Indeed, such an editorial mandate would have taken the teeth entirely out of the book and rendered it unreadable to anyone. And I personally prefer my books with some bite. 

Note: BookishlyJewish was offered a copy of the book, but we already owned it!

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Find It: Goodreads | Amazon

Poor Maya, the protagonist of Mosaic, has to contend with heat, dust, bugs, and various other creepy-crawlies when she moves into a rural Israeli farming community. I could definitely relate – not so long ago, I made my own transition to a moshav in Israel’s south and encountered my first “wolf” spider up close and personal. I could also sympathize with Maya’s initial dismay at
her radically new surroundings: no malls and no movie theaters, but plenty of dust, bugs, and vegetation.

Maya’s parents are both loving, but work long hours to stabilize their economic situation (this part rings especially true in today’s world), so Maya is left much to her own resources. All the moshav kids have grown up together and there are very definite cliques. She finds herself in the middle of a rivalry between two girls, both of whom she likes, but they are ex-best friends and each is competing for her friendship. These two rivals are Ashkenazi and Ethiopian Jews, respectively, but the conflict between them has nothing to do with their different ethnic backgrounds, just the differences in their personalities and temperaments. This acceptance of one another’s identities is my idea of a perfect world.

The setting of the rural community does feels authentic. This Israel, however, is completely normative – there is no war, looming or otherwise, no demonstrations, no hostages, and no strife. In other words, it’s the world of the average middle school student, and it’s average-ness is refreshing, and in my opinion, much needed. The only battles fought here are preserving integrity
to friends, family, and self. This Israel could be anywhere. There are school projects, malls, clothes, bus rides, and pop stars, and even non-Jewish readers can relate to the story.

I was charmed by the novel’s depiction of Maya’s experiences during the Rosh Hashanah holiday. Maya and her family are hosted for the holiday meal by the family of Melessa, an Ethiopian girl, whose great-aunt reminisces about Ethiopian Jewish culture and history and the great hardships her family endured to get to the Promised Land.

Maya is insecure in the way of all middle school girls, but she has a strong sense of self. As she figures out the new and complicated social network, she finds herself showing true leadership qualities as she orchestrates a big school event (think American Idol meets Crash Karaoke with a sprinkling of Dance Moms) that reconciles the strained friendships. There’s enough excitement and humor to keep a middle grade reader hooked. And a life-affirming message about personal responsibility, loyalty, and going the extra mile for friends and community.

The titular “mosaic” is reflected in the mosaic that Melessa and Maya construct for a school project. Melessa shows Maya how each piece, of different size and color, can be placed with care to create a beautiful and harmonious whole. In a sense, the mosaic reflects both the macrocosm of the different communities living in the moshav, and the microcosm of the circle of friends.

In Mosaic, Maya isn’t forced to confront the big issues of our time (unless you consider social media an issue, which I do); she undergoes a personal journey in which she summons inner resources that I wish we all could find. Would love to see a sequel with these same characters

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Adina Moryosef is a semi-retired text editor who specializes in academic and other works by non-native speakers. She holds in MA in religious studies from UC Santa Barbara. She and her family made aliyah in 2003.

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Find It: Goodreads | Amazon

The traditional publishing timeline is not immediately obvious to people not working in the industry, so I’d like to provide some background before diving in to Benjamin Resnick’s debut dystopian novel Next Stop. Typically speaking, once a writer has their completed fiction manuscript (nonfiction is different) they spend a whole lot of time querying agents to represent them. Those lucky enough to find representation then go through some revisions before submitting to editors who can, and often do, take over a year to respond. Then the acquired book is slated for publication in 1-2 years from the date of acquisition.

Sound like a behemoth? It is.

Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to understand that the book I am currently holding in my hands is a literal unicorn. Except maybe I should choose a less happy mythical creature, because Next Stop is kind of bleak – in a good way.

People looking to understand how recent world events have affected the fiction publishing landscape often forget that the books coming out at any given time were acquired way before the political and social moments in which they release. There might be some shifts in marketing priorities, but it’s much more pertinent to look at acquisition announcements, or announcements that an author has found representation.

Next Stop, on the other hand, manages to hit the current moment in time like a sledgehammer. In part this is due to the author realizing the tenuous nature of Jewish existence, especially as it relates to the diaspora, way before most of us caught on. However, it is also a testament to publishing being able to move a whole lot quicker than usual when a book in the submission pile actually rises to meet the occasion.

Next Stop follows Ethan and Ella, who fall in love and raise Ella’s young son against a backdrop of an increasingly antisemitic world. A huge black hole deemed the ‘anomaly’ has engulfed the state of Israel and smaller anomalies are popping up around the globe. Since the anomalies began in a geographical area the general public associates with Jews, the world very quickly gives in to their underlying antisemitism and blames Jews around the world. A wave of restrictions that mirrors both Hitler’s Germany and numerous previous government sponsored Jewish persecutions – that everyone who isn’t a Jew often forgets about – sprout up. It’s a story that has played out time and again, and I believe it is not without intention that Resnick chose to use terms from persecutions of the past – the Jewish Ghetto is called “The Pale” for example – to remind us that none of this is new.

Resnick is prescient in not just predicting the future, but also in analyzing the past. When his characters look back on the time of the pandemic, their emotions touch on what is becoming a new reality for many of us. I found myself uniquely moved by the mother who states that during the pandemic, for all its uncertainty, we were “living like kings in Odessa,” but simply didn’t know it. She’s not referring to an abundance of riches. She’s referring to an emotion that many of us who struggled to raise children during that critical time now share. With hindsight comes the knowledge that we and our children did not die, and thus the ability to realize that it was a unique time when we were all actually together. Sure, we were so together we sometimes erected cardboard structures in our apartments to give everyone their own space. Sure we cycled through obsessions like Cosmic Kids Yoga and bread baking. But memory is a malleable thing, and so now our minds focus on the fact that we did these things as a family in a way we are so rarely able to achieve anymore. It’s hard to parse, because many people actually did lose their lives, but there it is. A grain of joy amongst the horror.

This emotional poignancy runs through the entire book. Even the smallest moments, that are unrelated to the overarching plot, are treated with care and an understanding of the fragility of humanity – especially minority populations.

I was not surprised to learn that Resnick is a Rabbi. If you’ve ever met a competent Rabbi, you’ll have discovered that they are uniquely analytic. Jewish spiritual leaders are not here to give us all the answers. They’re here to help point out the questions we ought to be asking ourselves.

Next Stop is possibly the bleakest thing I’m going to read all year – or maybe all century, my readers know I’m kind of a lightweight in terms of tolerating horror and the like. However, it is also uniquely hopeful, and no that is not a contradiction. The ending I was dreading actually caps off the second portion of the book and there is a third section that I was not entirely expecting but was extremely grateful for. The many mysteries about the anomaly are not revealed, nor is it apparent to me that the author even knows the answers to those questions, but instead Resnick pulls hard on the thematic strand of children and the hope they represent. Judaism is a religion uniquely focused on the next generation – our communal next stop so to speak – and this comes through in the ending.

I was shaken, and terrified, and had some trouble sleeping, but I was also deeply moved and deeply seen. I do not regret reading it and I look forward to reading whatever Resnick produces next. Rabbi, you have this readers attention.

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Find It: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

If you read my gushing review of The Pomegranate Gate, you know I’m a fan of author Ariel Kaplan. I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to interview her, and hope you find our conversation as intriguing and thought provoking as I did.

BookishlyJewish: I loved The Pomegranate Gate so much! It had so many interlocking pieces and connections that came together at the end. How long did it take you to write?

Ariel Kaplan: Thank you so much! According to my files, I started the draft in the middle of 2018 and worked on it for around two years. The bulk of the book was written over the covid shutdown, so it was slow-going.

BookishlyJewish: Did you go in with an outline or did the book develop on its own?

Ariel Kaplan: I always go into a book with an outline—and then I jettison the whole thing. I’m not sure why I bother writing them up at this point; I go in with the best of intentions and beautiful ten-page outlines I never use beyond the first couple of chapters. In the original outline for Pomegranate Gate, the Old Woman was in exactly one scene (and was never heard from again) and Elena disappeared after chapter three. I’m always a little surprised how much things change in the writing.

BookishlyJewish: I was particularly intrigued by the Dream World and the experience of shared dreaming. Where did this idea come from and what do you think it adds to the lives of the characters that experience it?

Ariel Kaplan: I didn’t invent the concept of shared dreams, but I was intrigued by the idea that this could be a fundamental trait of an entire race. The Maziks are never asleep in the sense that we think of it, in that their dreams aren’t private. They try to mitigate some of the stress of that by making it taboo to discuss what happens in the dreamworld, but of course that only goes so far. The dreamworld also allows people to have relationships that they can’t have waking because of physical or social constrictions, so in that way it makes the world a much richer place for them. And in the case of the half-Maziks, it means that people in the mortal world can communicate with the Mazik world whenever they close their eyes. 

BookishlyJewish: The way Toba Bet was created from Toba reminded me of the way some people talk about Adam and Eve with Adam being more worthy, or more of a person, than Eve because he came first. Can you talk a little bit about Toba Bet’s personhood and the choices you took with her arc?

Ariel Kaplan: That’s a really excellent perspective, and honestly it’s one that hasn’t occurred to me until now. Toba Bet begins as a bit of accidental magic, but none of the other characters are cognitively consistent about what she actually is—Asmel even says she and the original Toba are functionally indistinguishable and yet he initially rejects the idea that Toba Bet is a real person. I thought those contradictions were interesting to play with. And of course Toba Bet’s arc continues into the next two books. The fact that she was created rather than born is something she has to wrestle with for a while.

BookishlyJewish: While reading I found myself absolutely gravitating towards the mirror world rather than the “real” world. Was one world easier to write than the other?

Ariel Kaplan: Certain characters are easier to write more then the world, I think, because they just play well off each other. Any scene that had Barsilay in it was very much fun to write because he plays well off anyone. 

BookishlyJewish: Do you have a favorite character? 

Ariel Kaplan: As I said, Barsilay was probably the easiest character to write. But I think both of the old women characters—Elena and the Old Woman herself—are probably my favorites, because their perspectives are so different, and because fantasy is so often a younger-person’s narrative. 

BookishlyJewish: In my review, I said that I would dearly love to see how this book was narrowed down into a one page synopsis for the purposes of querying because I just didn’t think it was possible. Is there such a synopsis? And if yes, how did you manage it?

Ariel Kaplan: You know, I was fortunately enough not to have pitch this myself, which meant that Hannah Bowman (my agent) had to take on that task. This was long enough ago that I don’t remember the details of her pitch letter, but I think it was not dissimilar to the flap copy on the finished book. 

BookishlyJewish: Is there anything in particular you hope readers take away from the book?

Ariel Kaplan: I wrote Pomegranate Gate and the sequels, with a deep affection for the Jewish folklore I drew from in writing them, and I hope that comes through. I would love it if these stories piqued an interest in readers in going back to explore those stories, and of course in looking for more Jewish fantasy books.

BookishlyJewish: I haven’t read The Republic of Salt yet, so no spoilers, but what should readers prepare for? Do you have a plan for how many books there will be in the series?

Ariel Kaplan: There are three books in this series; The Republic of Salt is out now, and Book Three (scheduled for 2026, but I don’t think the title has been announced yet) both expand the world of the books. Republic of Salt takes place mainly in the trade city of Zayit (a fantasy analogue of Venice). So we get to see how Maziks are living outside of Rimon, in a city that is culturally distinct and also has a completely different political structure which our characters have to navigate. Without spoiling Pomegranate Gate, I’ll also say that Tarses’s ambitions are grander now, and we see a lot more of his lieutenants, especially the Courser, the Peregrine, and the demon Atalef.

BookishlyJewish: I always end by asking if you have a favorite Jewish book to recommend to our readers.

Ariel Kaplan: I feel like we’re living in a really exciting time for Jewish fantasy… I realized that publishers were willing to take a chance on this after reading The Golem and the Jinni and Spinning Silver, and I haven’t stopped thinking about When the Angels Left the Old Country since I read it.

Side note from BookishlyJewish – it’s a good sign when we’ve read and reviewed all three recommended books!

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Find It:

The Pomegranate Gate Amazon | Bookshop

The Republic of Salt: Amazon | Bookshop

There is a bond that comes through shared life experiences. I have seen it in my given profession, but also in writing circles. I am closer with some of my writing friends than I am with some people I went to high school with. We have turned to each other in crisis, we pull each other through. It was this idea of joined communal interest that drew me to Sisters in Science, by Olivia Campbell.

It’s a weird right time right now in the world for a lot of people. Friendships are being tested, and long lasting relationships are dissolving in the blink of an eye, while others are rapidly forming. This is seen a million times over for the four women physicists featured in Sisters in Science. These women pushed against a misogynistic world that was extremely unfriendly to female scientists to build meaningful careers and find fellow scientists they could form productive relationships with. Despite all that, they still find their work and their lives in peril from a new and unforeseen threat – the third reich.

It is notable that only one of the four profiled scientists was a person who considered herself a Jew. Lise Meitner, arguably the most famous of the bunch, came under threat because her ancestors were Jewish despite she herself not having any Jewish affiliation or thinking of herself as such. Two others were under threat for their anti-nazi sympathies, and having the gall to desire a career as a woman. One surprising thing I learned was how in addition to the horrific antisemitism, the Nazi government was also vehemently anti-woman. Women were for the home and church, birthing babies to further the Aryan race. German women were victims – but at the same time, also often wholehearted participants in oppression and cruelty of “lesser” people. Indeed, some of the only jobs open to them were assistants in Nazi “science” in which Jews (and other undesirables) were ruthlessly experimented upon.

Also complicated is the way every single friendship and professional relationship these women forged was put to the test. It is heartwarming to read of the colleagues who worked tirelessly to help them escape, but shocking to see the ones that sat back and let it happen. I’m not going to lie – sometimes I sit up at night wondering who would help me if things got bad. Would I have a tireless team of colleagues trying to help me survive? Or would I have my Nobel prize stolen by a supposed “friend” like Lise Meitner did, and then be told that I am selfish because I only had to endure the first five years of Nazi rule, while they had to endure all of them. As if she should feel bad for the colleagues who stayed behind and worked for the Nazi government, completely overlooking the fact that had she remained, she would have been shot in the back into a mass grave (the true fate of a butterfly biologist featured in book). And yet through it all, Meitner herself refused to participate in the Manhattan project, rejecting the idea of weaponizing her science.

These four women were lucky to escape, mostly due to their esteemed resumes and colleagues who pushed to save them. Their lives are a testament to the friends that refused to stand idly by, but also to the ability of the human mind to adapt to new circumstances. While this is a Jewish book, my favorite character was Hurtha Sponer, who was not Jewish but fled due to her anti-nazi sentiments, and then tirelessly worked to bring over her fellow scientists to safety. It is not a surprise to discover she lost a sister who was killed as part of the resistance. Some family values run deep.

I flew through Sister in Science at top speed and was left with the piercing agony of all the brilliant minds that were lost because their stories had less happy endings. How many families were torn apart, how much potential mercilessly cut off? I was moved by those who stood up to this regime and hope that through my interactions, I show that Jews are people just like anybody else, inspiring others to step forward. We need more Hurtha Sponers. May the memories of all we lost be for a blessing.

Note: BookishlyJewish received a copy of this book from the publicist after we reached out to ask for one.

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Find it: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

2024 was a big year of growth for BookishlyJewish. I set a goal of two posts a week and unless I was on vacation, we accomplished it. We rolled out four new features, which are looking like they might become annual staples. 100 Nights to Hanukkah was a huge hit driving both traffic and reader engagement so we would love to run a version of this next year, right along with out Hanukkah Gift Guide. Cookbook Week is selfish – I love cookbooks and will blab about them endlessly, but it also came with one of my favorite authors telling me she loves the exact same recipe as I do, which was a moment I never though would happen in my life. Reader’s Choice needs a bit of tweaking, but that’s what trying things out is for!

This was also the first year I kept good records. Therefore, it was exciting to look back and find 16 books with queer rep, 5 with BIPOC rep, 6 with disability or neurodivergent rep, and increasing sephardic, mizrahi and orthodox rep. We can only review what’s being published but please we would love to receive more of these. If I know a book contains this rep I will jump it to the head of the line.

There’s no breakdown of self pub, indie, trad because when I tried I got really confused as to who I should be counting as small press/indie. Suffice it to say, we have some of every category in there. We welcome them all. We even had our first book in translation and two books of poetry!

Here’s to hoping 2025 brings even more wonderful expansion for us. We always love to hear your thoughts and suggestion so please fell free to comment or email us!