Color Me In

by: Natasha Diaz

Delacorte, 2019

373 pages

Review by: E Broderick

Some books hurt to read. Some books are so full of raw and powerful emotion they clutch at the hearts of their readers leaving deep claw marks that will scab but never fade. Some books tell truths so pure they make me ugly cry on the subway.

Color Me In is that kind of book.

Following the tale of Nevaeh Levitz as she struggles to process her parents divorce, her belated bat mitzvah and the awkwardness of straddling two worlds, nothing in this book was familiar to me. I have never been to a black Baptist church. I have also never been in a swanky Westchester private school or a reform Synagogue. It is therefore a testament to the power of Diaz’s writing that I was pulled into these worlds seamlessly, effortlessly, from the first page.

As I watched Nevaeh learn to find her voice, even when that means letting someone else take center stage, I could only imagine the pain that comes from never truly knowing where you belong. The push and pull of having two cultures warring inside of you, each one trying to simultaneously claim and disown you all at once.

Diaz does not pull her punches. I was incredibly uncomfortable with Nevaeh’s father and the way he treated her and her mother. I was also incredibly uncomfortable by some of the things Nevaeh’s black cousins said to her. That’s kind of the point. To look at the world as it is and, like Nevaeh, learn to forge a new path within it.

Nevaeh finds her power with help from both sides of her heritage. Her Aunt Anita counsels her that one day she will find the magic within herself, and it is glorious to watch this prophecy unfold. However, Nevaeh cannot fully come into her own without the help of Rabbi Sarah, a woman who came to Judaism by choice and not by birth. These two strong women, and countless others, help Nevaeh become a woman in her own rite as she ascends the stage for her Bat mitzvah.

If this book makes you uncomfortable, if the truth it tells haunts you in the middle of the night, if you are too scared to read it because it shines a light on parts of yourself or your culture that you are afraid to acknowledge then I would suggest you are the person who most needs to read it. I never would have been given a book like this to read. I’m glad I found it on my own. Even if I did get a lot of side eye for ugly crying on the subway.

E Broderick is a speculative fiction enthusiast. When not writing she enjoys epic games of trivial pursuit and baking. She currently lives in the U.S. but is eagerly awaiting the day a sentient spaceship offers to take her traveling around the galaxy.

Anya and the Dragon

by: Sofiya Pasternack

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019

416 pages

Review by: E Broderick

There has been a theft in my home.

The burglar showed remarkable insight and discretion by selecting only one highly prized possession to make off with, my copy of Anya and the Dragon. It’s as if they knew I loved that book so much I read it AFTER I had already listened to the audio book.

Why am I so passionate about Anya and the Dragon? It’s the kind of Book I never got to read when I was in Middle Grade. When I grew up the only age appropriate Jewish literature available to me was the collection in the school library. It mostly consisted of bland stories with formulaic plots that were vehicles to convey heavy handed moral messages. The closest thing to exciting I could get my hands on was The Golem of Prague.

Having finished all the Golem stories and being uninterested in the rest, I turned to the public library. There I found tales of magic and dragons and unicorns and spaceships. I adored them with my whole heart but my child-self understood intrinsically that they were not Jewish. That I could enjoy them, but writing one was forever out of my grasp. Because I was Jewish. I had to write the boring stuff in the school library.

Anya would not have approved.

From the minute I met her, as she struggled with a goat and her lack of magic in the books opening pages, I knew Anya was going places. She was Jewish, gutsy and full of wit. Plus she had a house spirit. The child version of me would have devoured her story. The adult me certainly did.

Let me be clear. Anya’s story is not a tale that lacks Jewish morals. In fact, as Anya struggles to protect the world’s last dragon she faces many ethical dilemmas and she approaches them with a Jewish lens. She also combats antisemitism. However, she does all this while on a rip roaring adventure. Rather than the book suffering for their presence, they enhance the plot.

So why didn’t I do anything to stop the thief and protect this wonderful book? Let me tell you a story of my own.

A few days prior to the criminal incident, I had the Anya and the Dragon audiobook playing out loud to entertain the gaggle of children that can always be found in a large multi-generational Jewish home. One of them slyly looked at me and asked “Is this author Jewish? Because I recognize a lot of this stuff. She’s talking about Shavuot!”

I answered in the affirmative and the kids face glowed. The next day I found that same child surrounded by a pile of papers all covered in large loopy handwriting. I was informed the kids were writing their own book. “Because, Jewish people can be authors.”

The kind of authors that you find in the public library.

The book was stolen by a Jewish day school librarian. She had no idea how much it meant to me but I guarantee I know how much it is going to mean to her students. I can’t wait to see the Jewish magic they create once Anya shows them that it is possible.

It’s a Whole Spiel: Love, Latkes, and Other Jewish Stories

Edited by Katherine Locke and Laura Silverman

Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2019

320 pages

Review: by Lindsey Hewett

Last month, I realized I’d been using a Yiddish word my whole life without realizing it. I was at a Goodwill donation center.

“It’s mostly clothes, but there are some tchotchkes in there, too,” I said to an employee, handing him a garbage bag of stuff.

He paused, his eyebrows knitted together. “What’s…a tchotchke?”

“You know, a tchotchke. It’s a…thing. A decorative thing? Like a little porcelain bird, or umm…a useless bowl…”

He nodded and smiled in confusion as I waved my hands through the air, making a futile attempt to define what’s commonly known as a knick-knack. When I got home and Googled the word, I realized it was Yiddish. And then I felt a pang of guilt.

I didn’t grow up with Yiddish-speaking relatives and I’m not Orthodox, but the language is a huge part of Jewish culture. Why didn’t I know the word’s origins? I’m Jewish, so I should know, right? Granted, I do regularly use other Yiddish words like shtick, schmooze, schlep, nosh, and plotz. But there are plenty I don’t understand. What’s a kvetch? A cholent? Meshuggeneh is super fun to say, but yeah…no idea what it means without Google.

I constantly find myself in this strange place of guilt. A place where, despite my upbringing, I don’t feel “Jewish enough.” Logically, I know this is ridiculous. There’s no litmus test here. But all the same, the guilt nags at me.

That’s why I felt such a strong connection to It’s a Whole Spiel: Love, Latkes, and Other Jewish Stories, a YA anthology of short fiction featuring Jewish teens. Throughout the book, I saw myself reflected on the page. I groaned in sympathy as one character stumbled through telling the story of the Maccabees at a Hanukkah dinner. I clung the book to my heart when I read David Sedaris’ words, “Jewish is tikkun olam, and knowing the world is broken, and wanting to fix it through love and kindness,” a sentiment that has resonated with me since childhood. I laughed at another one of his lines, having said something similar many times: “I can still read Hebrew. As long as there are vowels. As long as you don’t ask me what it means.”

Then I came across stories where I saw no reflection of myself and felt no connection. Like the story of an Orthodox girl nervous about her NYU orientation. Or the story of two best friends at a Jewish convention for teens. I didn’t even know they had those. But as I continued reading, I didn’t feel that familiar pang of guilt.

In fact, it was comforting to immerse myself in the unfamiliarities. Reading variations of the Jewish experience in a condensed format reminded me of how deeply personal and unique Judaism is to each individual (as is any religion or culture). I imagined the book as a glass prism, and each character as a piece of refracted light. The characters and colors were unique, but they were all part of the same, broad spectrum.

It’s okay, I reminded myself. You are who you are, and that is enough. 

Reading this book was validating, but it also left me with questions. Why did I need this kind of validation? Why do I sometimes feel guilty? And why do others feel the same way, as clearly evidenced in parts of the anthology?  I can’t speak for anyone else, but I think it boils down to craving connection. I’m scared that if I’m somehow deficient or come up short, I’ll have a harder time connecting with my Jewish peers.

I often feel alone in my Jewishness. It’s a loneliness I’ve carried since childhood as I was one of two (two!) Jewish kids in my elementary school. The longing to connect with others about my culture and religion has stayed with me as an adult. But there’s good news—this anthology is proof my fears are unfounded. Without spoiling much, none of the characters end up feeling lonely or unworthy (even if they feel that way in the beginning). They all find connection and validation. And yes, they’re fictional, but they’re also realistic. Any Jewish reader can find themselves reflected on the page the same way I did. 

Mayim Bialik sums it up nicely in her forward when she writes, “Jews of all backgrounds need to find a common ground where we all can stand together…there are so many ways to live a Jewish life and feel Jewish.”

I’ll end with a Yiddish word I just Googled: Gevaldik, Mayim. I agree.

Find It: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

Lindsey Hewett is a high school English teacher and writer of middle grade fiction. In her free time, she enjoys watching movies, cycling, and scrapbooking. She’s also an avid outdoor enthusiast with an insatiable travel bug. She currently lives in Maine with her husband and labrador retriever. You can follow her on Twitter with the handle @LindsEWrites or on her website at lindseyhewett.com. 

The Dovekeepers

by Alice Hoffman

Simon and Schuster, 2011

504 pages

Review: by A.R. Vishny

For me, the experience of reading Alice Hoffman’s The Dovekeepers doesn’t begin with the book, but at Bat Mitzvah.

It was August, and my family was in Israel, in the hottest part of the summer,  in the hottest part of the country, less than eighteen miles from the shores of the Dead Sea. A war was raging on the northern border. To the south, I was to become a Bat Mitzvah on Masada, the location of Judaism’s most famous mass suicide, where near a thousand Jewish Zealots were said to have chosen death over slavery to the Romans.

Why Masada? Like much of Israel, the ancient history and biblical significance was but a backdrop for the quotidian. Masada might have been a place of war and Sicarii, a palace where King Herod was said to have heard the voices of his enemies in its walls, but it was also the location of my father’s Bar Mitzvah ceremony and where he worked his first summer job.  A close childhood friend of his and fellow Masada employee had made his career on the mountain, eventually becoming Director of the site, which made the logistics of planning across oceans and time zones much easier. Meaningful and convenient. 

Like my siblings, I became a Bat Mitzvah twice. Once in the US, where we live. The other celebration was to be in Israel, for the benefit of the friends and family my dad left behind when he married my mom and immigrated to the US. Unlike the big, formal parties we had in America, the celebrations in Israel were always intimate affairs. These celebrations were not unlike the smashed glass beneath the chuppah. Afterall, no Jewish life cycle even is complete without an acknowledgment of the broken connection, and the place left behind.

But where the mountain was inexorably part of my father’s life, here was another place I experienced in sharp, glittering fragments. When I think of that day, I remember it in pieces, face-melting heat punctured exactly once by a cool breeze, glimpses of family, some that I would see that one day and never again. I don’t remember a word that I said. My words weren’t the thing worth remembering. I remember looking out at the vast, craggy Negev stretching out endlessly beneath a hazy blue sky. Tiny bright pieces, enough to cut and imbed themselves beneath the skin and impossible to reassemble.

When I encountered The Dovekeepers, nearly ten years later, I hadn’t thought much of Masada, which had been added to so many other little things that had made their mark on me and yet were not mine: places I had not been, languages I could not really speak, history I had not witnessed, pain I had not endured,  bravery I could never possibly match.Which is why perhaps I had not anticipated being so moved by Hoffman’s epic reimagining of the siege.

Much can be said about the depth of research of this book, the ability of Hoffman’s writing to render life in an ancient fortress with immediacy and intimacy. The novel is gorgeous and completely immersive and heartrending.  But what makes the narrative simply unlike anything else that has been said of Masada, is it’s told through the eyes of its women. 

This simple shift in perspective entirely transformed my perspective on a history that I knew so well, the version where only the men ever had names. Rather than a mere recitation of historical facts, The Dovekeepers claims the pen for a perspective dramatically underserved in so many of the stories we tell of Jewish history. Especially Masada, where to me it seemed that everything had already been said, that the narrative had already been set in stone, Hoffman proved that this was not so.

In reading The Dovekeepers, I considered for the first time all these pieces that I had simply accepted were part of me and not mine. Not just Masada, but the hundred other fragments of place and history of which I’d been assembled. Where else had I come to accept that my words weren’t worth remembering? I had always assumed that that the narrative was for others to shape, that all I had was too fragmented and broken for anything whole. But if Hoffman breathed new life and a fresh perspective into an ancient ruin, what could I make out of all the history that made me? What would happen, if I were the one to claim the pen?

Find It: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

A.R. Vishny is a writer, attorney, and occasional television extra based in NYC. Her work has appeared in Alma. Though books will always be her first love, she also has a thing for cake and period dramas, and can be found talking about all that and more at http://twitter.com/AR_Vishny.

Cool for the Summer

by: Dahlia Adler

Wednesday Books, 2021

272 pages

Review: by E Broderick

There is a Jewish adage that roughly translates to “From all my students I have learned.” I believe this is true of stories as well. Every piece that I have written, be it a short story, novella or novel, has taught me something about writing or about myself. Sometimes both.

There was the book that taught me how to write first person close Point of View, and the notable first time I put a Jew down on the page and realized I wouldn’t implode. And then there was THE STORY. The one in which I finally found the courage to explore all of those things at once. The story clocked in just shy of 7.5k words, a little long, but damned if I didn’t loved it and damned if I don’t admit it scared the hell out of me.

It took a month of moving around the commas and the support of four different Critique Partners before I was ready to send it out. It came back shortly after with the sweetest, most encouraging personalized note explaining why it didn’t fit that particular market. It was validating and crushing all at the same time, because in that moment I realized I had done the impossible and written something decent but there might never be a place for it in traditional publishing. I questioned whether there would ever be a place for me. I tucked the manuscript away, where it could never hurt me again, and moved on.

But it wouldn’t let me go.

So I wrote another short story with the same characters. It was my guilty little pleasure. My #PassionProject that I assumed the world would never want, because YA + sci fi + orthodox Jewish girls is not exactly on anyone’s manuscript wish list. Except mine.

Progress was understandably, painstakingly, slow.

I was in that weird headspace when promo for Dahlia Adler’s Cool for the Summer first appeared on my twitter feed. The premise seemed fun, the cover was gorgeous, but it didn’t come with a spaceship or a dragon and my TBR pile was already huge. I didn’t envision reading it quickly. Until someone flagged me on an article in which the author spoke about writing a Jewish character. Two of them in fact.

Bingo! I was in.

The protagonist, Larissa, differs from me in almost every way conceivable. She is popular, hot, loves parties, and does all manner of things in high school that I still don’t have the guts to do despite being old enough to have a graduate degrees. I didn’t care. Larissa was Jewish and she was in a book. A popular book. A book that people who weren’t Jewish read. A book that was on the front display table at the bookstore.

Mind Blown.

I picked up my proverbial pen again.

Progress has been faster this time around. Thank you Larissa, thank you Dahlia. For teaching me that it’s okay to be myself.

Find it: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

E Broderick is a speculative fiction enthusiast. When not writing she enjoys epic games of trivial pursuit and baking. She currently lives in the U.S. but is eagerly awaiting the day a sentient spaceship offers to take her traveling around the galaxy.

My Name is Asher Lev

by Chaim Potok

Alfred A. Knopf, 1972

370 pages

Review: by Riv Begun

I rarely reread books, but I’ve read My Name is Asher Lev three times.

I read it first in elementary school, when my mother noticed I was stealing books from the library because my appetite couldn’t keep up with the title limit. She set out to feed my hunger herself, and Chaim Potok’s book was one of the first she handed me from her own collection.

 It grabbed me. I attended a Modern Orthodox day school but came from a conservative family. My great grandfather’s family had moved to Atlanta, Georgia at the beginning of the 20th century and since then, the family, still very much Jewish, was more likely to eat southern brisket on Passover and go out for pepperoni pizza on Friday nights than to follow Halakhah to the letter of the law.

 I was constantly grappling with the conflicting messages I received from home and school, and I was forming an identity as both a Jew and a creative person. At that age, when I read My Name is Asher Lev, I took a side. I was always rebellious in school. I didn’t understand why I had to learn Rashi text and Tanakh for half the day, and I hadn’t yet formed a value system outside of my own family.  I cared far more about my after school art class than my Hebrew classes. My mother had studied art history in Spain and I loved to come home and flip through the images in her Museo del Prado coffee table book.

At that point I hadn’t realized that many of the paintings in that museum were religious in subject and intention. It felt obvious to me that art came before all else–before religion, before family, before obligation.

In college, I reread My Name is Asher Lev. I’d since taken and absorbed what I’d learned at my Jewish day school and my community had changed from when I was a child. I attended orthodox services, kept kosher and Shabbat, and spent most of my free time in the Boston University Hillel Beit Midrash, soaking up all of the knowledge I had rebelled against when I was young.

Now, the book took on new meaning for me. I came more from the perspective of the Rebbe–and thought about how my own work and talents could serve the Jewish people. I had (and still have) a strong sense of Jewish identity and peoplehood, and I couldn’t think of anything more important than using the gifts I was given to push us forward. I used my writing (the creative tool I eventually chose to focus on) to write about Jewish life and Jewish values. I focused on honing my tools in service of my community.

Now, years after Jewish day school and years after college, I’ve found a middle ground that works for me. I may not practice as strictly as before, but I have a strong sense of Jewish identity and commitment, and together with my husband, we are creating our own Jewish household and figuring out what that looks like.

I recently reread My Name is Asher Lev. Perhaps at one point, I felt for Asher. At another, for the Rebbe. Now, when I read it, I can’t choose sides. I know what it feels like to be an artist in creation, where the whole world disappears around you and all that matters is the piece in front of you. I know what it’s like to want to give all that you have to your people, to use whatever you have to be a voice for them. But now, I also feel for the parents. I understand Aryeh the father as a man deeply committed to what he thinks is right–even when it hurts the people he loves. I understand Rivkeh the mother, as she tries to bring together two people who look at the world in such opposite ways. I understand that each character in the book is right in their own way–and that all of those truths can exist together.

Now, when I write Jewish stories, I think about all of the cast of My Name is Asher Lev–but I also think of all of the women I have been over the years. I think of the obligation I still feel toward my people to tell our stories, but I also realize that it’s ok to tell those stories as messy and complicated. I think of my obligation to my people, my religion, and to my art–but I also realize that I could read My Name is Asher Lev again and again and all of the women I have been will see different truths in the work. I hope that conflict never leaves me, that I continue to grapple with understanding different perspectives and truths. It can only make me a better artist and Jew. 

Find it: Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon

Riv Begun is a fantasy writer originally from Atlanta, Georgia. She is a POSSE Foundation alumni. She has been published in Format.Papier. Slippage Lit, and various Jewish publications. She writes strange things, weird short fiction, and Young Adult novels inspired by Jewish magic and folktales. She can be found on Twitter at @BegunRiv, Instagram at @RivBegun and at her website, rivbegun.com where she has a monthly newsletter.

Uncle Tungsten

by Oliver Sacks

Knopf, 2001

352 pages

Review: by E Broderick

I never write fan mail.

I do not read memoirs.

Except for the one time I did both.

I was a high school student so anxious about my future I probably resembled a bag full of nerves in a dress. Every day, I would rehash the same internal debate like a record on repeat. Did I want a career in the arts or the sciences? Humanities or maybe social work? Characteristic of my life up to this I turned to literature to help with the struggle. I combed the library searching for something, anything, that would help me find my path in life.

That’s when I found Oliver Sacks’s memoir, Uncle Tungsten.

Many readers are familiar with Sacks’s previous work detailing some of the more fascinating cases he encountered while working as a neurologist. His formidable backlist includes Awakenings which was adapted into an award-winning movie starring Robin Williams. I, however, had never even head of that body of work. I still haven’t read it. As previously mentioned, I do not read memoirs. In fact, I hardly read nonfiction at all. But something drew me to this book.

Perhaps it was the iridescent lightbulb on the cover, perhaps it was the subtitle “Memories of a Chemical Boyhood”.  Both of these things spoke to a fascination with science that bordered on the magical. I could relate. Other girls at summer camp hung posters of pretty landscapes above their beds or plastered their walls with photos of their friends and family. I had a handmade blow up the periodic table.

Turns out, the science wasn’t the only thing in Sacks’s prose I could relate to. In between Chapters with evocative titles like “Mendeleev’s Garden” Sacks discussed growing up in a Jewish household full of religion and politics, living in the shadow cast by a siblings misfortune and attending boarding school where the other children were not always kind. The details may have varied from his life to mine, but it was easy to see myself in those stories.

It did not come as a surprise when years later I learned that Sacks suffered from severe shyness as well as prosopagnosia and that his career path was not all smooth sailing. I already somehow knew these things about him. Much as Sacks describes his boyhood self experiencing kinship with the famous scientists he studied, I had come to feel a kinship with the shy boy depicted in the memoir who related to the world and those around him through science.

It was this sense of connection, of understanding, that led me to write my first and only piece of fan mail. I had no idea how to go about sending it to him but after googling I decided to mail my missive care of Sack’s publisher. I placed it in the post and hoped I wouldn’t regret it by the time it arrived at its destination. I was not entirely sure what people typically wrote in fan mail, what would be appropriate to send such a lauded and busy physician, but I wanted to thank him for writing a book that changed my life.

I must have done a decent job conveying how life altering this text was, because a few weeks later I received a reply. In fact, my ardent teen words of gratitude prompted Sacks to break one of his own rules. He intended to respond to my handwritten note with a hand-written reply of his own. He felt this was proper etiquette, however he had recently undergone rotator cuff surgery and therefore could not properly hold the pen. Therefore, he resorted to using a typewriter. He encouraged me on my journey and wished me the best in slecting a career. He did manage to sign the letter himself but asked me to forgive the uncharacteristic nature of the signature. In short, he was every bit the gentleman scientist.

That letter remained tucked in my school binder for several years, where I could look at it for inspiration when things got rough. It was a reminder that someone like myself, Jewish, shy and never quite fitting in, could indeed find their place place. I have long ago lost track of the letter but it’s content will remain in my heart forever. 

E Broderick is a speculative fiction enthusiast. When not writing she enjoys crossword puzzles, epic games of trivial pursuit and baking. She currently lives in the U.S. but is eagerly awaiting the day a sentient spaceship offers to take her traveling around the galaxy.