By: Ruth Spiro, Illustrated by: Victoria Tentler-Krylov
August 27, 2024 Dial Books
40 pages
There is a lot broken in the world today, but for Jewish people that just means there’s more for us to fix. The concept of Tikkun Olam was not unfamiliar to me growing up, but it didn’t receive nearly as much focus in my particular upbringing as it does in many other forms of Judaism. It wasn’t until I was an author that I both rediscovered the concept and found personal meaning it. Kids today don’t need to worry – because a whole host of books are here to show them the beauty of Tikkun Olam. Books like One Small Spark, written by Ruth Spiro and illustrated by Victoria Tentler-Krylov.
Most kids I know love the playground. Which is why all the ones that I test drove One Small Spark with were immediately focused on the broken swing. Through each page, they tracked that swing just as much as they tracked the fun colors spreading from person to person as the joy of repairing that which is broken leaped through the neighborhood.
Smaller kids were laser focused on the swing set and when the little girl might get to use it, but older ones were genuinely intrigued by the communal repair project. Tikkun Olam tends to be popular, because it is one of the more feel good aspects of Judaism. Who doesn’t want to strive towards a harmonious world? But the work that it takes to get there is tough, and One Small Spark shows that real labor is needed, even if it is done with a smile. If we are to raise a generation taking up the hard work of fixing our world, I can think of no better way to start.
Note: BookishlyJewish received a copy of this book from the publisher
One of the reasons I became a science fiction writer was that I would dearly love to live on a planet other than Earth. I realize this is not a popular opinion, but as a Jew, I cannot help but look at centuries upon centuries of baseless persecution and hate and think I might be better off elsewhere. So I invent my own universes to inhabit (off world SFF or secondary fantasy are my faves). Which puts me in stark contrast to Judy Wallach-Stevens, heroine of Ruthanna Emrys’s queer norm, and deeply thoughtful, first contact novel, A Half-Built Garden. Judy’s roots grow deep into the Earth that she is trying to save and, unlike me, she has no interest in leaving despite offers of rescue from the aliens she inadvertently greets. Yet in our hearts, Judy and I share one crucial thing – we are both searching for ways to improve the future for humanity.
In Judy’s future, large corporations and governments have all been largely reduced to irrelevance by strong watershed networks of people who use mediation and collective decision making to steward the Earth and reverse climate change. It sounded idyllic until I found out these group decisions, which typically are subject to millions of confounding factors and are almost impossible to reach even on a much smaller scale, are made possible by use of dandelion networks. Each watershed has their own network on which members converse and share decision making by voting on various threads and questions. Their votes are given weight by an algorithm supposedly checking for their expertise and relevance on the topic as well as providing votes for what a tree, or river might want and need.
At this point, I remind readers the book was published in 2022 and written before some of our current AI and social media algorithm controversies reared their ugly heads. Right now, many of you might balk, as I do, at the idea that a computer algorithm should decide my future and how much worth my vote has compared to someone else’s – or compared to what its best guess for an inanimate object or force of nature’s vote might be. That’s a hard no from me, due to a significant amount of paranoia that has unfortunately proved to be founded in reality – which is why one of the novels biggest surprises came as no surprise at all to me. In fact I wondered for many chapters why nobody had figured it out yet. Because alas, humanity has proven itself just as devious as Emrys’s imagination suggested we could be, and AI and other advanced computer tools just as dangerous.
The story was still compelling, even if I don’t think such a universe would be a utopia. Our alien “saviors” have some interesting ideas about government and social hierarchies- namely that women (they define this strictly as those that actually bear children or lay eggs or whatever species equivalent there is) are actually the dominant member of the species and take all leadership roles. Which is why Judy, and my closest counterpart in the book – Viola St. Julien, employee of a long defunct NASA now thrust into the limelight – find themselves drafted as alien emissaries despite their complete and utter lack of training. They bore kids, which means the alien leaders are willing to talk with them. In addition, the aliens wonder why there are so few children in our media. Indeed aliens – this is a great question! A Half-Built Garden by necessity breaks that mold. When children are diplomatic props there ensues a large focus on child rearing, breast feeding, and even alternative parenting arrangements in a queer norm future. I was here for this!
Other things I was here for were the alternative gender presentations. The queer norm future of the watersheds allows for trans people to exist in much safer ways than they currently do, and pronoun badges are laid out at the front door like wine glass holders. Normal, expected, nothing of note. While this causes some very deep discussion between Judy’s household members on what to do with the aliens who have a stricter sense of gender roles, it was actually not my favorite form of gender displayed in the book. It is not a spoiler to say that corporations are the big bad in this future, and yet I found their variety of gender choices to be completely and utterly liberating. In the corporate world, members choose from a variety of gender presentations, can swap them out as easily as they can the clothes that signal to others what one is playing at any given moment, and they leave all of that at the office when they go home. When one intern attempts to explain it all to the confused watershed visitors, they say “I wouldn’t want to walk around with my soul on my collar, either. Here, my hormones are my doctor’s business. The shape of my body under my clothes is my lovers.’ … My true self, assuming I admit to having one, is for me alone.” I understand that for some people this would be a regression in rights they have fought for, for others a selfish or scared way to live, but for me it was like finally breathing again after being held underwater for ages. Why is it anyone elses’ business? Why can’t I be all and none if that is my desire? And shouldn’t we all get to chose which world we’d rather inhabit and who we’d prefer to share with? Which is another basic question lying at the heart of the book – why is it always one or the other, yes or no, with no room for “both.”
Yes, I know that was a deeply bisexual thing to say. I am a meme. I take no shame in it. “Both” will always be my answer.
Mediation between opposing factions is shown in fine form here, and it was best when the computer systems were entirely unavailable and a human had to step in and work through the process with both human and alien manually. It was brutal in the honesty it demanded, the forbearance in the face of insults and harm was monumental, and yet it was a thing of beauty to watch. The result – a shared decision based on values – was a testament to owning what we all truly want and need from a situation.
In that way, A Half-Built Garden is a deeply Jewish book. There are some Jewish holidays and traditions featured (Shabbat, kosher, and Passover to name a few) but also a very Jewish value system for Judy, and a fun set of offhand comments that set her well within her cultural inheritance. To opt out of an alien ceremony because she would like to consult a Rabbi first to ensure she is not the laughingstock of future iterations of Talmud scholars was a very, very Jewish neuroses to bring into the moment. I feel you Judy.
In keeping with some of my other reviews that include heat levels, I feel I should mention there is some alien sex in here. It’s mostly closed door, and honestly kind of hilarious, but if that’s not your thing just skip those couple of pages. This isn’t a romance novel. You’ll survive even if you hate romance novels. I promise.
I’m still not ready to let a computer have that much power over my life or my election options, I am more likely to find myself akin to where Viola St. Julien and NASA wound up at the end of the book than where Judy did, but I can see how this future might inspire admiration. Might make someone else want to stick to the Earth that has drank so much of my ancestors blood as humanity committed unspeakable violence upon each other and the soil we live on. A Half-Built Garden is a story of differing perspectives, and of hope, which I think is universal to us all. No matter what planet we wind up on.
“A story is a ship that takes passengers where they don’t know they are going,” says one character, a grandiose, young aspiring writer, in what could be a description of the collection Dying Man, Dead Mouse: a ship of fools whose passengers obsessively recount their agonies or deceptions or betrayals or quarrels with God. This is a book that will take you to places you don’t know you are going. That is the thrill of reading it. Don’t be put off by the tile; this collection of stories about death and dying is full of life.
Take for example the titular novella, Dying Man, the story of a hopelessly depressed 50 year-old academic named Issac Teppel with three PhD’s but not an ounce of sense who lives with his unflappable, ever resourceful Rebbitsin mother; she is determined to get him to rise not only out of his bed but to find him a wife to start a family! A strange stand-off between mother and son commences: Issac stubbornly refusing to leave his bed claiming he only wants to die, and the Rebbetsin’s ingenious series of deceptions designed to con a cast of neighborhood characters, from the mailman to a group of senior citizens, into being Isaac’s unwilling and unwitting students. The characters who show up in Issac’s bedroom for schnaps, cake and a lecture are vividly and affectionately drawn, though neither their comical quibbling nor the creepy promise by one old man to fix up Issac with his granddaughter can get Issac to choose life. In the end a fan letter from a scholar who has fallen in love with Issac through his academic articles promises a happy ending, but the one Simckes gives us is not the one we hope for, but a more mysterious and transcendent Passepartout that serves to open doors to yet other unknown destinations in this short but miraculous book.
These stories chronicle a lost Jewish world with one foot in Eastern Europe and the other in modern America, a world of junk men, unravelin professors, afflicted therapists, psychiatric patients, betrayed rabbis, treacherous cantors. Shuttling between fiction, parable and midrash, the cast of Simckes’ stories include the biblical Job (who gets the once-over from a tough cop), a talking moose, a hapless undercover narc who brings his wife and infant disastrously to one of his stake-outs, not to mention all the humans and animals on Noah’s Ark (who debate whether to save a drowning creature excluded from the ship’s manifest), and last but not least, God and Satan. While some of these stories are deeply satisfying, others present a rich, fictional world only to abruptly shut it all down, their plots left unresolved, an eerie reminder of God’s own dissatisfaction with creation. This risky strategy rewards the reader not with plotting but with the ancient joy of surrendering to a narrative voice that can hold their audience in suspense with language that seems always in the process of invention, informed by abiding affection and horror for humanity. Simckes’ narrative voice is a unique and unforgettable blend of midrash and Franz Kafka.
This collection heralds the return to fiction of L.S. Simckes, author of two previous novels Seven Days of Mourning (Random House) and The Comatose Kids (Fiction Collective) after a long hiatus during which he was a playwright translator from Hebrew, family therapist and teacher of creative writing. The return is auspicious, and I hope it will lead to more.
Mark Andres is a visual artist, writer and animated filmmaker living in Portland, Oregon.
The reviewer received a free copy of this book from the author.
by: Lauria Wallmark nd Illustrated by Adelina Lirius
July 11, 2023 Random House Studio
40 pages
I was an unusual child. My friends had collections of all kinds of things – pogs, stickers, pokemon cards. Me? I was into office supplies. Which probably should have been a sign about my future in publishing. Nothing made me happier than being surrounded by post it notes and staplers. My favorite time of year was back to school – even when I grew up and was no longer attending school! Because all the wonderful school supplies were out in stores in fancy displays. Which is why I found it weirdly crushing when Rivka, main character of Rivka’s Presents written by Laurie Wallmark and illustrated by Adelina Lirius, finds out she cannot start school as planned.
Rivka is growing up in NY’s lower east side in the early 1900’s. Conditions are not great, and since her father is ill her mother must go to work to support the family. This means Rivka will stay at home to take care of her baby sister instead of starting school. I was slightly concerned that todays kids would not be as gutted as I was about this, because many of them would love to stay home from school, or that they would fail to relate to the level of responsibility falling to such a small child’s shoulders. I should not have been concerned. All the children I read the book with seemed to empathize with Rivka’s situation, even if such a sacrifice was beyond them. In fact, many said they would also watch their little siblings if their parents were sick, which I found very sweet.
Rivka is determined to learn, and she finds a way to do so by assisting various neighborhood business’s in exchange for lessons from their proprietors. The kids really enjoyed this resourcefulness. They also had a good time keeping track of the various neighborhood characters. he color scheme is a nice cross between somber and cheerful and the illustrations gave a goo sense of the passing of seasons.
Not a single one of the kids picked up on the fact that 1918 was when the large flu epidemic was going on, and that they recently went through a pandemic which kept them home from school as well. A fact that I found profoundly intriguing, since as an adult I couldn’t help but grasp those similarities and ponder the repetitive nature of history. I guess, like Rivka, kids today are resilient. Whether it’s zoom school or learning how to write from the green grocer, they find their own ways to deal with the reality in which they find themselves. Which also explains why they enjoyed reading about Rivka so much, even if they don’t share my stapler obsession.
Jews are known as “people of the book”, and as a lifelong reader, I can definitely say that the Torah, our book, has always featured prominently in my life. As a kid, I enjoyed hearing the weekly portion in Synagogue. It contained way more plot twists and shocking reveals than any novel or TV show. As a teen, I searched for meaning. As an adult, I wondered where all the women were – why my POV was not as represented as I would have chosen – and learned to distinguish between the actual text and the views superimposed upon it by commentators. It’s been a long, and sometimes troubled, relationship. Something always pulls me back, and each time I am surprised. Which is why I couldn’t resist The Midwives Escape by Maggie Anton.
Starting from the exodus, and spanning numerous books of the Torah including the beginning of Joshua, the novel tells the story of the forty years the Jews spent wandering in the dessert. However, the author is clear that this is simply a piece of well researched fiction. Numerous Torah portions are glossed over as they wouldn’t contribute much to plot, and the choice of POV is as essential here as it is for any piece of literature. The narrators are actually two Egyptian/Hittite women who were not Hebrews, but chose to leave Egypt with them anyway. This large group leaving Egypt together with the newly freed Hebrews is the subject of many a mysterious midrashic commentary on the Torah where they are referred to as the “erev Rav” (mixed multitude) and often blamed for numerous ills in the dessert.
Side note for the hilarity of one of the midwives bemoaning the tenth plague and wondering ‘what they ever did to the Hebrews’ to deserve this, when just a few lines up she notes her husband regularly sexually abused the slave women. What did we do indeed? (Turns out she’s just as happy to be rid of the guy as readers are, but still. Oblivious much?).
Underscoring the work of fiction aspect here, one of the midwives is named Shifra and her aunt, who is also a midwife, is named Puah. These names are given in the bible as the names of the midwives who refused Pharaoh’s orders to kill male Hebrew children. However, many Torah commentators state that these are aliases for the Hebrew women Miriam and Yocheved – Moses’ sister and mother. Did I mind? No, because there are about a million commentators, often contradictory, and as we said this is fiction. So again, I remind readers to treat this as a novel and not a religious text.
In general, the mixed multitude has a bad rap. They get blamed for a lot by commentators, including being a bad influence on the Hebrews and instigating numerous complaints and revolts. The Midwives’ Escape takes the opposite approach. The mixed multitude, are presented as so immaculate they are practically saints (if Judaism had saints, which it doesn’t). They look down at the Hebrews and are shocked each time they misbehave or fail to trust and Moses. They are depicted as having perfect faith. If I’m honest – and I always am – this got a little annoying. I suspect the real truth is somewhere in between these two extremes. Both groups likely had their malcontents and idol worshipers, and both groups were likely prejudiced each towards the other. It would have made for nuanced reading to acknowledge the complexity of human nature across both groups and allow that grey area to grow and blossom in ways that are so scarce in the actual bible.
Where the novel succeeds is not in providing new ideas about the mixed multitude, but rather in giving familiar stories an emotional frame on which to rest. The titular midwives are a mother and daughter, and their family dynamics grab the readers attention and let us view these happenings through an entirely different lens. Plus, as members of the mixed multitude, they allow us to observe the various cultures of the time, as well as the survival skills needed in the dessert – from how to press oil to birthing a baby. The details are rich and provide context for what exactly those forty years might have looked like. Another side bonus for including some of the wilder midrashim – like how each male dug his own grave on the ninth of Av and slept in it, unsure if he would wake up in the morning.
There are some interesting choices made regarding Moses, Aharon, and Miriam that mash together some more obscure commentaries with the authors own inventions. They help make the plot more emotionally relevant, and as a woman I enjoyed the greater focus given to Miriam, but this is not a strict textual reading. Remember the framework – fiction not biblical scholarship. If that is going to bother you, just pick a different book and let the rest of us enjoy the story in peace.
The Midwives’ Escape actually ends with a sample from the next book, and I am both more excited and more apprehensive about this next story. The narrator is one of my favorite biblical characters – Serach BaT Asher the woman who never dies – but it takes place during the book of Judges which I think we can all agree was a pretty messy time. I am hoping for just a tiny bit more kindness towards the newly settled Hebrews than we have seen in The Midwives Escape, but as any writer well knows, this is all a matter of point of view.
Note: BookishlyJewish received an arc of this publication from the publisher.
January 30th 2024, Little, Brown, Books for Young Reader
384 pages
Writers differ in their approaches to handling the COVID 19 pandemic in literature. Many have eschewed mention of the pandemic altogether, preferring to leave their work as an escapist haven for readers. Others have dove in headfirst, going so far as to say that anyone who doesn’t include pandemic references in their work is writing either historical, fantasy, or science fiction. In Just Shy of Ordinary, author A. J. Sass finds the balance in the middle and considers what this time might have meant for the development of kids. COVID is not the focus of the book, but in a way almost served as the inciting incident.
As the story opens, we meet Shai, a nonbinary homeschooler about to transition to public school. This switch, which Shai is hoping helps them get control of their anxiety, can be viewed as a direct result of COVID. During the pandemic Shai’s mother lost her job in the hotel industry. The resulting financial fall out lead to the family moving in with close friends and Shai and their best friend Mille learning via an online program instead of directly from Shai’s mom who had to scramble and learn a new employable skill set. It’s a lot of change to take in, and somewhere along the way Shai starts picking at the hair on their arms to help control the feelings of anxiety and stress. They are hoping that public school, and the associated strict routine, will help them get control of this before anyone else notices.
In one of my favorite parts of the book, Shai has also recently come out as nonbinary and this is repeatedly shown to NOT be the cause of their anxiety or mental health issues. Actually, for Shai, owning their identity is a good and helpful thing. However, a new school means new friends and the possibility of coming out to all of them. We watch several characters come out in different ways to the different people in their lives, and the process is both normalized and also shown as never ending – each new person and experience is another choice to make re: how much information is shared and when.
Public school also brings Shai the desire to explore their Jewish heritage as part of an English project. Shai’s mother has herself chosen to be less observant despite being heavily active in her reform temple before college, and Shai can’t help wonder if that decision is directly related to their birth. Especially when their mother presents an odd sort of resistance to Shai’s growing connection to Judaism. One of the things I have noticed in Sass’s work, is that parents are often shown as human rather than perfect. Especially as relates to religion. Shai’s mother gives what I perceived as flimsy excuses for Shai not being allowed to explore certain aspects of Judaism despite a Rabbi literally inviting them today to do so. It causes Shai not a small amount of frustration, alienation over “not being Jewish enough,” and worsens the picking. All of which is exceedingly realistic. As is the eventual spilling of secrets on both sides when Shai finally gets the help they need.
With the worst of the pandemic over, but still ever present in hand sanitizer and choices to avoid huge public gatherings by Shai’s friends, the book can instead focus on the sequela of COVID on our youth’s mental health. For adults, we had decades of a different normal and are now adjusting to a new one. For kids, this mixed up reality is all they have ever known, and it was refreshing to see that explored. It is a choice to show the world as it is, very similar to the choice made to show characters as they are. It’s a nuanced approach, but at a level that can be understood by most MG readers. Because if you know kids, you know they can spot a lie a mile away. This book, to me, felt written from a deep place of truth and I suspect middle schoolers will appreciate that.
We are thrilled to once again be a stop on The Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour. Our Interview features A.J. Sass, and their MG Honor Book Just Shy Of Ordinary, which was a wonderful assignment because it will be our third book from this author reviewed on the website. Which means we got to meander our way through talking about A LOT.
BookishlyJewish: In JUST SHY OF ORDINARY, Shai makes a big transition from homeschool to public school. I think a lot of readers who made similar transitions over the COVID pandemic will find this extremely relatable. Did you have some home school experience that you drew from?
A.J. Sass: Kind of yes, kind of no. I was never homeschooled in the traditional sense, but a month before the end of my fall semester of 9th grade, my parents relocated the family from Georgia to Minnesota. Because my new school was on a nine-month academic schedule rather than a semester system, and because I hadn’t yet taken my finals at my school in Georgia, I spent two months studying and playing catch-up at home on my own, then had a proctor give me my finals so I could get grades for my Georgia high school classes.
I’m not sure if that counts, to be honest, but this, plus the fact that I’ve known several fellow figure skaters who were homeschooled to better fit with their athletic training schedules, always made me interesting in exploring the homeschooling experience in literature (it gets mentioned in ANA ON THE EDGE as well, although only in passing since that story took place over the summer).
I did a lot of my research via online sources to develop a deeper understanding of various homeschool practices and routines. I was also very fortunate that one of my editors, Caitlyn Averett, was homeschooled all the way through high school. Since Shai is choosing to enter public school not due to their dissatisfaction with their previous academic setup but for other reasons, I wanted to ensure I portrayed homeschooling in a positive light. Caitlyn was an invaluable resource and we had some great discussions on the positive aspects of homeschooling throughout the editorial process.
BookishlyJewish: Speaking of COVID, a lot of adult novels are simply pretending it never happened, but in JUST SHY OF ORDINARY it actually appears to be one of the triggers of Shai’s anxiety, and leads to a lot of changes in their life. How did you decide to include the pandemic in your story?
A.J. Sass: It’s certainly tricky to decide whether or not to pull from real life events when writing fiction, especially for younger readers. Also, given the way publishing works, I wasn’t entirely sure a pandemic story would even be relevant by the time this manuscript released. But I’d spent most of 2020 writing ELLEN OUTSIDE THE LINES and the first half of 2021 writing CAMP QUILTBAG, both stories that involve characters who are exploring new environments (and in Ellen’s case, an entirely new country). It felt quite surreal to be writing stories like that while I was at home sheltering in place. And I’d heard from friends with kids about how difficult it was to go from in-person schooling to virtual and sometimes back again, with no guarantee things would stay safe enough to keep schooling in-person.
I thought about writing a book set in the midst of the pandemic, but by the time Shai’s story started to form in my head, the first vaccine had been released in 2021. There was this feeling of hope at the outset. My partner and I even took a road trip (we weren’t comfortable hopping on a plane yet). One of the things that stayed with me from that time was defining what “normal” meant to me, an author who debuted when no in-person events were taking place, who never got to meet a reader face to face until March 2022, a year and a half after I debuted. I also heard from friends and acquaintances about how difficult the past two years had been, especially for those whose jobs required an in-person presence.
It was around this time that Shai’s story became clearer. Before I knew anything else about the story, I knew I wanted to set it in the small-town Midwest of my childhood. I kept coming back to Minocqua, Wisconsin. Known as the island city, it was a place I loved visiting on trips to see my grandparents in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Definitely a tourist town. But what if tourism slowed when businesses shut down in the middle of the pandemic, I wondered. How would folks who lived in a place like that year-round survive if their main form of income dried up?
That’s when my focus started to shift to a post-pandemic world and how a character with severe anxiety would handle (or not, as it were) the changes taking place around them. It allowed me to reference changes I’d noticed during my own pandemic experiences, like the barriers that were still up in Thierry’s hair salon between the chairs and how some people were still wearing masks, from Shai’s perspective.
The world is full of uncertainties. I dealt with different ones when I was Shai’s age, but I wanted Shai’s story to resonate with readers now. The pandemic wasn’t a large part of this story by any means, but it felt important to give a nod to the readers who might have struggled during it, as well as those who are still grappling with how uncertain the future feels.
BookishlyJewish: There’s significant tension between Shai and their mother when they decide to explore Judaism. As an Orthodox Jew, I actually had no problem with Shai exploring any aspect of Judaism they wanted to, but Shai’s mother tells them that some practices are “closed” to those outside a Jewish community. I wondered if Shai’s mother was actually concerned Shai’s exploration might be seen as offensive to some, or if she was finding an excuse to slow Shai down a bit for her own reasons.
A.J. Sass: My intentions for Shai’s mom’s reactions were definitely more of the latter. This is a conversation I’ve had with an authenticity reader, some of the editors who worked with me on this manuscript, and also readers. Their interpretations of the mom’s responses were varied. Some felt that Shai’s mom was acting too worried about offending the Jewish community when Shai, as a halachic Jew, should have been welcome to explore Judaism’s culture and practices. Others saw it more as Shai’s mom having a trauma response that happened to initially occur within her former synagogue– a few members were unhappy with a choice she made and, as a result, she left the community.
I thought about changing some of these scenes to make it clearer that Shai’s mom didn’t think Shai learning about Judaism was a bad thing, but if I were an intuitive but anxious 13 year old like Shai, that’s immediately what I would’ve jumped to if I’d been having the same conversation. It felt authentic to my own experiences with anxiety to include this uncertainty as to their mother’s reaction to Shai’s questions, which later get clarified.
Life isn’t always straightforward. People don’t always make sense. And reactions they have to upsetting events in their past might be interpreted by others in a variety of ways until the person clarifies and ultimately sets the record straight. If the scenes where conversations between Shai and their mom occur spark discussion among readers, I’m glad for it.
BookishlyJewish: Coming out is an important part of the plot for several characters, and we observe Shai do it twice. What was your aim in those scenes?
A.J. Sass: When I was younger, I assumed coming out was a one-and-done type of process – I’d figure out who I am, then tell everyone, and that would be that. In reality, I spent years exploring my identity. It was a long process and I tried out several different labels (and names!) before finding ones that resonate most with me.
For Shai, the coming out process is also ongoing. They know they’re nonbinary but have only told their closest friends and family by the start of the story. Starting public school introduces Shai to new friends, and when one of them shares that she is a lesbian, it makes Shai feel comfortable enough to share that they are pansexual … but that doesn’t say anything about their gender, which is something Shai struggles more with figuring out how to share. Of course, Shai’s new friend has different challenges associated with her identity – she’s not sure her family or everyone at school will be supportive. Shai’s long-time best friend is also going through a coming out process of his own, which – you guessed it – is also unique to him.
My goal in depicting various characters coming out in different ways is to reflect the diversity of experiences within the queer community. Not everyone has the same coming out story and sometimes you have to come out many times, whether it’s to new people or to those you’ve already come out to when you realize something new about yourself. Ultimately, only you know who you are and it’s okay if that changes as you gain a better understanding of yourself over time. There is no one right way to be nonbinary, or pansexual, queer, or otherwise. That’s one of the wonderful aspects of our community.
BookishlyJewish: Poetry plays a significant role in JUST SHY OF ORDINARY, and Shai mentions reading some novels in verse. Any chance we might see a novel in verse from you someday?
A.J. Sass: I hope so! I’ve actually started writing a middle grade story in verse not too long ago, and it felt so freeing to write in this style (verse novels are also what helped get me out of my initial pandemic reading rut back in 2020). It hasn’t been acquired yet, but I do hope to be able to incorporate different writing styles into my stories in the future including verse.
For the time being, I’ll be content with the upcoming launch of my debut picture book, SHABBAT IS … (Little, Brown, 9/2/25), which is a much shorter-form style than I usually write. I also look forward to seeing a poem in a picture book anthology I contributed to called NO BRAIN THE SAME release from Charlesbridge in 2026. My poem focuses on Lydia X. Z. Brown’s autism advocacy.
BookishlyJewish: A lot of kids are facing significant anxiety and mental health issues, and like Shai they are afraid to ask for help. How did you choose this as focus for the book, and how has it been received by the public?
A.J. Sass: I grew up struggling with severe anxiety that only worsened as I got older. In elementary and middle school, it was mostly social anxiety; I found it difficult to make friends or understand social cues, which made sense after I received my Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis as an adult. When I entered high school, I was flagged as academically gifted and went on to skip into 10th grade near the end of my 9th grade year after my family relocated from Georgia to Minnesota. I finished 10th grade in a handful of months and then enrolled in college courses as an 11th grader, effectively completing my AA degree around the same time I graduated high school.
My family was proud of my academic achievements and I put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed at any cost, which only compounded my anxiety. My own personal story always felt really complicated to share (it’s complicated to explain in this response now!), but I wanted to explore the experience of appearing outwardly successful while struggling to hold things together internally within a novel.
Shai’s story developed from this desire, and it seems to have been well received. A few folks have mentioned that there’s a lot going on in this story, and there is! Not only is Shai dealing with anxiety and coming out, they want to explore more about their Jewish heritage which they can tell is making their mom uncomfortable, plus navigating their first crush, public school, skipping a grade, and more. Real life doesn’t sit still for you to focus on one thing before moving on to the next, and that’s what I try to convey in my books.
BookishlyJewish: Shai’s friendship with Mille changes over time, but I found it meaningful that it was Shai’s oldest friend that finally ensures they get the help they need. Did you always know it would play out that way?
A.J. Sass: I always knew I wanted Mille to support Shai and have them realize that asking for help is nothing to be ashamed of, but I didn’t know how he would do that until fairly late in the editorial process.
That’s because my early drafts of this book were a complete mess.
Every book is different, but to date, Shai’s story has been my most time-consuming. For some perspective, I underwrote ANA ON THE EDGE and had to add almost 20,000 words by the final draft. I overwrote ELLEN OUTSIDE THE LINES and cut 15,000 words during developmental and line edits. CAMP QUILTBAG, on the other hand, was a joy to write and had minimal edits from start to finish.
Honestly, I thought I’d leveled up after CAMP QUILTBAG, that my next book would be fairly simple.
Ha.
JUST SHY OF ORDINARY was a complete rewrite between draft one and two. So, while the novel’s general vibes, so to speak, were there from the beginning, its execution changed drastically. That’s part of the magic of revising under the guidance of a fantastic editor. In earlier drafts, Mille chose to come out to Shai much sooner in the story, so the scene where they argue outside the fabric shop, which ultimately leads to the climax where Shai’s mom learns about Shai’s picking, didn’t initially exist.
When I received my first edit letter after submitting my initial draft, I sat with it for quite a while, mulling it over, trying to make the pieces fall into place more seamlessly than the disjointed way in which they were currently arranged. With my deadline fast approaching, I still didn’t have everything figured out, but I knew one thing: I needed to start from the ground up. So I opened a new Word doc and got to work, taking notes as I went along about realizations I was making during the re-drafting process. One of them was how Mille would help Shai, Now, I think that is among the strongest scenes in the story. The process wasn’t easy, but it felt worth it (but if my next book’s revisions could be less work, I wouldn’t complain!).
BookishlyJewish: One of the particular things I enjoy about several of your books is that you manage to write characters who have financial struggles, but that still have lives full of joy. Is this something you do consciously, or did it just happen organically?
A.J. Sass: It’s absolutely part of my brainstorming process, because a character’s home life or their family’s financial situation can determine how they react to situations and conversations in a story. This is quite apparent in ANA ON THE EDGE, where main character Ana lives in a small studio apartment in San Francisco with her mother and is acutely aware of the high cost to maintain her elite level of training as a figure skater. That was informed by my lived experiences as a figure skater moving up the ranks of the sport, as well as my knowledge of the sacrifices many families make to support their kids’ athletic dreams.
Since I wanted JUST SHY OF ORDINARY to take place in a somewhat post-pandemic world, and I am aware of how many people needed to pivot their careers to make ends meet when in-person work wasn’t possible, I decided to explore the loss of Shai’s mom’s job and the need to move in with family friends as the primary source of Shai’s anxiety. It’s not something Shai can do anything about, but it’s at the back of their mind a lot and determines some of the choices they make throughout the novel.
For example, after Shai’s mom lost her job at a local hotel, she started learning web design online to create a new source of income she could earn from home. Shai tries to emulate this in their decision to create a new normal by choosing to attend public school, among other things. They also know how hard their mom is working on her web design projects, with the hopes of one day receiving a full-time job offer, which is another reason Shai is initially hesitant to share with their mom that they’re struggling – Shai believes they don’t currently have enough time or money for a therapist so they decide to fix their problem on their own.
BookishlyJewish: Is there a particular message you wanted readers to take away from this book?
A.J. Sass: One message that I hope is conveyed strongly in Shai’s story is that no matter how bad a situation you feel like you’re in, it is only temporary. There’s a phrase in Hebrew, גם זה יעבור, which roughly translates as “this too shall pass.” It can have both positive and negative connotations, depending on how you interpret it, but I tend to focus on the positive. I say it whenever I’m struggling with something in my life.
The bad moments are temporary. Acknowledging them, then working to make things better, is how we can arrive at good moments – and often this is accomplished by asking for help or leaning on your friends, family, or other members within your community.
BookishlyJewish: I always end by asking if you have a Jewish book to recommend to our readers?
A.J. Sass: I have admittedly been in a bit of a reading slump lately, so I hope it’s okay to answer this by sharing some Jewish books I’m excited to get to read in the future:
Picture Book: Tov is Good by Richard Ho (Chronicle, fall 2026)
A. J. Sass (he/they) is the award winning and critically acclaimed author of books for young readers, including Just Shy of Ordinary, Camp QUILTBAG, co-written with Nicole Melleby, Ellen Outside the Lines, and Ana on the Edge. Many of Andrew’s books have also been Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selections.
Andrew’s debut picture book, Shabbat Is …, illustrated by Noa Kelner, releases on 9/2/25 from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. He is also a contributor to the upcoming anthologies Athlete is Agender (5/13/25) and No Brain the Same (summer 2026). His short stories and essays have appeared in the This Is Our Rainbow, Allies, and On All Other Nights anthologies.
When he’s not writing, Andrew figure skates, tinkers with typewriters, and travels as much as possible. He divides his time between the San Francisco Bay Area and northwestern Vermont with his husband. Visit him online at sassinsf.com and follow him @matokah on Bluesky and Instagram.
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.
Memoirs of a Jewish District Attorney from Soviet Ukraine
by: Mikhail Goldis
Translated by: Marat Grinberg
October 15, 2024 Academic Studies Press
Review by: Valerie Estelle Frankel
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.
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 Gorayby 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.
