P’nai Or Book Club

Great Books with Jewish Themes

Please send book suggestions to Polina or the email distribution list.

Abbreviations: H = # hard copies; e = # electronic copies; A, Audio Available

Kantika, by Elizabeth Graver
A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family’s displacement across four countries, Kantika—“song” in Ladino—follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way—a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure and motherhood. Moving from Spain to Cuba to New York for an arranged second marriage, she faces her greatest challenge—her disabled stepdaughter, Luna, whose feistiness equals her own and whose challenges pit new family against old.

A Bintel Brief
For more than eighty years the Jewish Daily Forward's legendary advice column, 'A Bintel Brief' dispensed shrewd, practical, and fair-minded advice to its readers
Not in Library, Inexpensive used copies on Amazon. Not on Audio.

Boston Girl, Anita Diamont
Linda Lavin-best known for the title role in the sitcom Alice-brings warmth and charm to this story of a Jewish girl's coming of age in early 20th-century America. Lavin's Boston accent and Yiddish pronunciation lend authenticity to this first-person bildungsroman. Diamant's (Day After Night) latest has Addie Baum recounting to a granddaughter her attempts to leave the physical and cultural claustrophobia of her parents' tenement world. While attending a book discussion group at a settlement house, Addie makes several friends and begins to achieve liberation as women are winning the right to vote and deciding their own direction in life. VERDICT Detailed and charming, this work is recommended for fans of Boston, American history, and Jewish immigrant tales.
Availability: Mult 3 HC, 1 Ecopy, Audio

Bread Givers , Anzia Yezierska
The classic novel of Jewish immigrants, with period photographs. This masterwork of American immigrant literature is set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, who rebels against her father's rigid conception of Jewish womanhood. Sarah's struggle towards independence and self-fulfillment resonates with a passion all can share. Bread Givers is an essential historical work with enduring relevance. 16 black-and-white photographs
Availability Good but library does not have an audio copy. Mult Lib - many hard and ecopies. Audio available on Amazon for $5.99.

Crying in H-Mart, Michelle Zauner
From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American—“in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR). • CELEBRATING OVER ONE YEAR ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST
Availability: Many copies in library, hundreds of holds.
(This book does not have a Jewish theme but it’s something we’d probably like to read).

Fierce Attachments
Vivian Gornek
Hailed by the New York Times for the renowned feminist author’s “mesmerizing, thrilling” truths within its pages―has been selected by the publication’s book critics as the #1 Best Memoir of the Past 50 Years.
Mult H 4, E4, Audio on Amazon but not in library.

The Golem and the Jinni
Wecker, Helene
Chava, a golem brought to life by a disgraced rabbi, and Ahmad, a jinni made of fire, form an unlikely friendship on the streets of New York until a fateful choice changes everything.
Availability good. Mult. H 7, E 24, A

The Hidden Palace: A Novel of the Golem and Jinni
Wecker, Helene
Availability good. Mult H 8, e7, A

The Immortalists
Benjamin, Chloe,
NYT Best Seller. It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children -- four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness -- sneak out to hear their fortunes. Their prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco. Dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy. Eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11, hoping to control fate. Bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality. The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.
Availability good.

Kissing Kosher
Jean Meltzer
Two bakers on opposite sides of a longtime family feud must set aside their differences for a satisfying ending
F
Availability good. Mult. Cty Lib H 7, E 3, A

Leaving Eastern Parkway
by Matthew Daub
Brooklyn’s Hasidic community of Lubavitchers is turned upside down when family tragedy strikes and everyday life changes forever in the life of Zev Altshul. He is first placed into the care of the closed and close-knit community where he grew up, but soon realizes he can’t stay. His saving grace is handball; it’s his gift from God, and the one thing he can rely on as he is shuttled, chased, and abandoned by trusted elders, family, and friends. Even as Zev never fully escapes from the guilt of his choices, he sets course across the United States to discover where loyalty really lies and what it means. He seeks out his long-lost sister, only to find himself as unprepared for life outside the Lubavitcher community as he was unwilling to remain. Forced out of his second home, Zev plays handball to support himself in the goyische world, but obligations he doesn’t fully understand still tie him to Crown Heights and follow him to Chicago and New Mexico threatening always to return Zev to life among the Lubavitchers. Lyrical, vivid, and thoroughly engaging, this is certainly among the first novels of its kind.
not in library

Madame Fourcade's Secret War
lynne Olsen
Non-fiction
Historian and journalist Olson (Last Hope Island) vivifies the history of the French Resistance during WWII with a brilliant, cinematic biography of resistance leader Marie-Madeleine Fourcade. As Olson recounts, Fourcade was 31 in 1941, a mother of two by her long-estranged husband, wealthy, beautiful, and temperamentally born to lead.
Availability good.

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman
Harris, Eve
In London's strict Orthodox Jewish Charedi sect, girls are customarily matched up and married off at a young age. At 19, Chani Kaufman is almost on the shelf. It comes as a welcome relief for her to learn that Baruch Levi, a serious rabbinical student, would like to meet her. The news is less welcome to the parents of both young people, as it disrupts the business of matchmaking
Limited availability in library. Audio and many inexpensive copies on Amazon.

My Name Is Barbra
Streisand, Barbra
The long-awaited memoir by the superstar of stage, screen and recordings.
Availability limited. Hundreds of copies but hundreds of holds.

An Officer and the Spy
Robert Harris
Infamous Dreyfus affair told as a chillingly dark, hard-edged novel of conspiracy and espionage.
Availability: Limited. Mult E4, A
Amazon - many used copies from $1.00, kindle $10 12/18

Outwitting History, The Amazing Adventures of A Man Who Rescued A Million Yiddish Books
Aaron Lansky
Jewish Book Council: Lansky’s mem­oir fas­ci­nates as it recounts how his rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple quest for books, as a grad­u­ate stu­dent of Yid­dish in Mon­tre­al in the late 1970’s, turned into a res­cue mis­sion of his­toric pro­por­tions. In the author’s own words, it is an ​“adven­ture sto­ry” involv­ing capers with a truck (invari­ably in bad con­di­tion) and a friend or two, as they respond to late-night tele­phone calls about aban­doned Yid­dish books in base­ments or on the verge of being jet­ti­soned into dump­sters. But the adven­ture aspect of the book (told with sus­pense and humor) is inter­twined with pathos. As word went out about his inter­est in Yid­dish books, Lansky’s road trips took him to apart­ments in decay­ing neigh­bor­hoods, where elder­ly Yid­dish speak­ers wait­ed to entrust him with their lega­cy. Before he could load up on books, how­ev­er, he had to load up on kugel and tea, and lis­ten for hours to the old folks’ sto­ries. And what sto­ries they were!
Mult Library 1 hardcopy, 1 ebook
Amazon - many used copies from $1.25. Audiobook available.

An Unorthodox Match
Naomi Ragen
Novel of faith, love, and acceptance, from the international bestselling author of The Devil in Jerusalem
F
Availability limited. Mult. Cty Lib H 1
Amazon used copies, audio

Rivington Street
Meredith Tax
Historical novel follows the fortunes of four enterprising, courageous Jewish women on New York's Lower East Side.
not available in library, $5 e-copies on Amazon.

The Seamstress
Sara Tuval Bernstein
NF
Bernstein' s tale is clearly not a typical memoir of the Holocaust. She was born into a large family in rural Romania...and grew up feisty and willing to fight back physically against anti-Semitism from other schoolchildren. She defied her father' s orders to turn down a scholarship that took her to Bucharest, and got herself expelled from that school when she responded to a priest/teacher's vicious diatribe against the Jews by hurling a bottle of ink at him...After a series of incidents that ranged from dramatic escapes to a year in a forced labor detachment, Sara ended up in Ravensbruck, a women' s concentration camp, and managed to survive.
Availability limited. Library only has 1 audio copy, no hard or ecopies.
Inexpensive hard copies on Amazon.

The Tin Horse
Janice Steinberg
The Tin Horse is a rich multigenerational story about the intense, often fraught bond sisters share and the dreams and sorrows that lay at the heart of the immigrant experience.
Availability good. Library has 3 ecopies, 1 audio . No holds.

Women Holding Things
Maria Kalman
From the critically acclaimed artist, designer, and author of the bestsellers The Principles of Uncertainty and My Favorite Things comes a wondrous collection of words and paintings that is a moving meditation on the beauty and complexity of women’s lives and roles, revealed in the things they hold.
Availability good BUT no audio. Mult. Cty Lib H 5, E 2

The World That We Knew: By Alice Hoffman
Desperate to get her 12-year-old daughter, Lea, out of 1941 Berlin, Hanni Kohn trusts Ettie, the teen daughter of a rabbi, to create a golem--a clay figure brought to life by Ettie's magic. Unusually, Ava is shaped as a woman, and her raison d'être is to keep Lea safe.
Availability Good.

The Zookeeper's Wife, a War Story

Ackerman, Diane,
The true story of how the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands. When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw--and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Żabiński began smuggling Jews into empty cages
Availability Good.