Summer 2024 Book Club Picks

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The Hebrew Teacher

by Maya Arad

In these three stirring novellas—comedies of manners with an ambitious blend of irony and sensitivity—author Maya Arad probes the demise of idealism and the generation gap that her heroines must confront. 

Across So Many Seas

By Ruth Behar

Spanning over 500 years, Ruth Behar’s epic middle-grade novel tells the stories of four girls from different generations of a Jewish family, many of them forced to leave their country and start a new life. 

A Winding Line: Three Hebrew Poets

by Maya Bejerano, Sharron Hass, and Anat Zecharia

A Winding Line gathers poems from the last decade by three of Israel’s most original and insightful women poets. Biblical and mythological allusions, political concerns, landscapes, and personal experiences figure throughout, while each poet brings her unique voice to the pages. 

Mazaltob: A Novel

by Blanche Bendahan, translated and edited by Yaëlle Azagury and Frances Malino 

In this classic of North African Jewish fiction, Blanche Bendahan evokes two compelling forces tearing Mazaltob apart: her loyalty to her home and her desire to follow her own voice. This edition is the first-ever English translation of a compelling work by a forerunner of modern Sephardi feminist literature. 

Jewcy: Jewish Queer Lesbian Feminisms for the Twenty-First Century

by Marla Brettschneider 

Marla Brettschneider illustrates the diversity of Jewish lesbian queer experience through a range of topics, voices, and genres, encouraging readers to rethink narrow conceptions of Jewishness. 

The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance

by Rebecca Clarren

What does it mean to survive oppression only to perpetuate and benefit from the oppression of others? By shining a light on the people and families tangled up in this country’s difficult history, The Cost of Free Land invites readers to consider their own culpability and what, now, can be done. 

Green World

by Michelle Ephraim 

In Green World, Michelle Ephraim finds herself in an idyllic place where Shakespeare’s heroines escape their family trauma. Green World reckons with global, historical, and personal tragedy and shows how literature—comic and tragic—can help us brave every kind of anguish. 

The Madwoman in the Rabbi's Attic: Rereading the Women of the Talmud

by Gila Fine 

In presenting us with archetypes that systematically break down, the Talmud imparts profound moral teachings about how to read the characters of a text and, ultimately, how to regard the people in our lives. 

City of Laughter

by Temim Fruchter 

The tale of a young queer woman stuck in a thicket of generational secrets, City of Laughter follows her back to her family’s origins, where ancestral clues begin to reveal a lineage both haunted and shaped by desire. 

 

When We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary

by Alice Hoffman 

Bestselling author Alice Hoffman delivers a stunning novel about one of contemporary history's most acclaimed figures, exploring the little-known details of Anne Frank's life before she went into hiding. 

The Color of Sound

by Emily Barth Isler 

Twelve-year-old Rosie is a musical prodigy whose synesthesia allows her to see music in colors. With help from a glitch in time—plus her grandparents, an improv group, and a new instrument—Rosie comes to understand her mother, herself, and her love of music in new ways. 

unalone

by Jessica Jacobs 

Deeply personal and yet universal in its truths, unalone draws on the Book of Genesis as a living document whose stories, wisdom, and ethical knots can engage us more fully with our own lives—whatever your religious tradition or spiritual beliefs. 

Sweet Malida: Memories of a Bene Israel Woman

by Zilka Joseph 

Who are the Bene Israel Jews of India? Where did they come from? How did they survive in India? Sweet Malida is a moving, multi-layered, and informative collection of poems and short prose inspired by this ancient community to which the poet herself belongs. 

Between Two Worlds: Jewish War Brides After the Holocaust 

by Robin Judd

Facing the harrowing task of rebuilding a life in the wake of the Holocaust, many viewed marriage between Jewish women and military personnel as a way to move forward after unspeakable loss. The stories Robin Judd tells vividly capture how the brides' romances coexisted with survivor's guilt, grief, and the challenges of starting a new life in a new land. 

Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream

by Francine Klagsbrun

Using Henrietta Szold’s copious letters, diaries, and essays, along with other archival documents, Francine Klagsbrun traces Szold’s life and legacy with an eye to uncovering the person behind the Zionist icon.

Places We Left Behind: A Memoir in Miniature

by Jennifer Lang 

In Places We Left Behind, Jennifer Lang puts her marriage under a microscope, examining commitment and compromise, faith and family while moving between prose and poetry, playing with language and form, and daring the reader to read between the lines. 

All-Night Pharmacy

by Ruth Madievsky 

With prose pulsing like a neon sign, All-Night Pharmacy is an intoxicating portrait of a young woman consumed with unease over how a person should be. As she attempts sobriety and sexual embodiment, she must decide whether to search for her estranged sister or allow her to remain a relic of the past. 

 

As a Burning Flame: The Dream of Regina Jonas

by Noa Mishkin 

As a Burning Flame is a graphic novel exploring the life and impact of Regina Jonas, the first female ordained rabbi in Ashkenazi Jewish history, written for readers of any religious background. The novel aims to introduce its audience to this long-forgotten chapter of Jewish feminist history and to inspire conversation about evolving female religious identities in our own time. 

The Goldie Standard

by Simi Monheit 

Hilarious and surprising, this unapologetically Jewish story delivers a present-day take on a highly creative grandmother trying to find her PhD granddaughter a husband who is a doctor—with a yarmulke, of course. 

Rimonim

by Aurora Levins Morales

Rimonim is a book of poems that are meant to be read and sung. Rooted in tradition and flowering in the tumultuous present, these poems offer clarity, inspiration, and balm as we engage in the sacred work of human liberation, where joy meets justice.

 

My Life in Recipes

by Joan Nathan 

A new cookbook from the best-selling and award-winning author Joan Nathan, My Life in Recipes uses recipes to look back at Nathan’s life and family history—and at her personal journey discovering Jewish cuisine from around the world. 

The Singer Sisters

by Sarah Seltzer 

With the richness of a beloved folk song, The Singer Sisters moves between ’60s folk clubs and ’90s music festivals, chronicling the ups and downs of stardom while asking what women artists must sacrifice for success. 

We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt's Lessons in Love and Disobedience

by Lyndsey Stonebridge 

We Are Free to Change the World is a timely guide on how to live—and think—through the challenges of our century drawn from the life and thought of political theorist Hannah Arendt, one of the twentieth century’s foremost opponents of totalitarianism. 

The Counterfeit Countess

by Elizabeth B. White and Joanna Sliwa 

The Counterfeit Countess is the astonishing story of Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg—a Jewish mathematician who saved thousands of lives in Nazi-occupied Poland by masquerading as a Polish aristocrat—drawing on Mehlberg’s own unpublished memoir. 

Tap Dancing on Everest

by Mimi Zieman 

Tap Dancing on Everest is a true survival story about the risks we take to become our most authentic selves. This inspiring coming-of-age travel memoir mixes hiking through Nepal and Zieman’s childhood as the daughter of Jewish immigrants—her father a Holocaust survivor—with adventure, medicine, and empowerment.  

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How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Summer 2024 Book Club Picks." (Viewed on November 21, 2024) <https://jwa.org/programs/bookclub/bookshelf>.