Why We Should All Be Reading Jewish Books

Hey GOLDA gang! 

I’m excited to tell you about our first partnership. For the month of November, all of GOLDA’s newsletters will be sponsored by our friends at the Jewish Book Council in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Jewish Book Month. 

In 1925, Fan­ny Gold­stein, a librar­i­an at the Boston Pub­lic Library, set up a dis­play of Jew­ish books and ini­ti­at­ed the first Jew­ish Book Week. Her idea caught on, and soon Jewish Book Week became an established event across North America, celebrating Jewish writers and thinkers. But it wasn’t just for Jews: the idea of spotlighting these stories was as much about introducing Jewish life and culture to the wider world. 

A century later, we have Fanny Goldstein to thank for Jewish Book Month every November (we’re the People of the Book, after all—one week was never going to be enough!), which is overseen by the Jewish Book Council, the longest-run­ning orga­ni­za­tion devot­ed exclu­sive­ly to the sup­port and celebration of Jew­ish literature. GOLDA readers heard from Jewish Book Council CEO (and one of my favorite people!) Naomi Firestone-Teeter back in February, when she shared her favorite books coming out this year, and again in June when she added her recommendation to our summer reading list. 

The Jewish Book Council is pulling out all the stops for Jewish Book Month 100, and we’re excited to be part of the festivities. You can find ideas for how to celebrate in your community, at your school, and with your kids here. We’re especially excited about the Jewish Book Month 100 Pop-Up Bookstore coming to New York City’s Lower East Side November 16-17. GOLDA will be hanging out there Sunday, November 16 from 2-3 p.m.—we’d love to see you! 

The Jewish Book Council also recently launched Nu Reads, a curated book subscription series. It’s the perfect Hanukkah gift for the book lover in your life—or for you! What’s exciting to me about Nu Reads is that it’s about more than just discovering great new books: It’s designed to build community, strengthen the Jewish literary market, and ensure Jewish voices are heard. Just as Fanny Goldstein understood the power—and importance—of sharing Jewish stories back in the 1920s, we can do our part to champion Jewish writers and their work today. 

GOLDA subscribers can get 20% off your first year of Nu Reads with code NUGolda. Check it out here.

Today’s newsletter features my conversation with acclaimed Israeli writer Maya Arad, whose newly translated novel Happy New Years is the inaugural Nu Reads selection.

What does it mean to you to have your novel Happy New Years selected as the first book Nu Reads subscribers will receive?

Nu Reads is such a wonderful project! When they called me, I was amazed by the idea—how had no one thought of that before? When I was growing up in Israel, we had something similar: people subscribed to book series offered by certain publishers, and those books were always steady sellers. So I am honored and overjoyed to have Happy New Years chosen as the first Nu Reads selection.

The novel is brilliantly conceived as fifty years’ worth of letters, written by an Israeli immigrant to America annually on Rosh Hashanah for friends back in Israel. It’s a fascinating way to both stretch and compress time. It’s also entirely one-sided, told solely from Leah's perspective. What was the most appealing part of presenting one woman’s life in this way?

The greatest challenge—which was also what most appealed to me in writing this book—was giving a complete picture of one woman’s life through the annual letters she writes. It was challenging to make the book compelling because Leah’s life is quite ordinary, and the letters are full of everyday details. But if you read between the lines, you can see the drama unfolding (divorce, financial problems) long before she does. The greatest joy for me was writing about someone who is extremely optimistic—as a pessimist myself, it was wonderful to switch modes!

I love the tradition of sending Jewish New Year’s cards, which was once quite popular in the U.S. Was that a tradition you grew up with? Was writing letters more broadly part of your literary upbringing?

I don’t know if I’d call it part of my literary upbringing, but yes, we wrote Rosh Hashanah cards when I was growing up—with pictures from Kibbutz Nahal Oz, where I grew up. In my teens, I also had many pen pals, both in Israel and abroad. We exchanged letters regularly. These weren’t literary works, but they definitely gave me the habit of writing.

Our protagonist, Leah, lives between two worlds—Israel and the U.S.—and doesn’t seem to quite fit into either. Was there a particular element of the expat experience you wanted to convey through her story?

Every person and every immigrant is unique, so Leah’s experience of not fitting in (not even within the Israeli expat community in Northern California) doesn’t necessarily reflect what others feel. If I had to pick one aspect of the expat experience that’s expressed in the letters, it’s the way Leah “explains” America to her friends in Israel. When she writes about her life, she always touches on ways in which life in America differs from life in Israel. In her first letter, she tells them about the tall buildings and large stores. In a later letter, she mentions that her partner, Les, explains how you can’t invite your golf friends and work friends to the same gathering, and she complains: “I’ve been living here for over thirty years, and sometimes I feel I don’t really understand how things work here.” I can sympathize with that!

In the materials that Nu Reads subscribers receive along with your book, you write that you’re part of the Israeli diaspora in America—and that until recently, it was frowned upon to leave Israel to move abroad. How has your experience of that unique diaspora changed over the past thirty years of living in the U.S.?

By the time I decided I wasn’t coming back to Israel (after graduate school and postdocs in the U.S.), the stigma around Israeli expats had thankfully mostly disappeared. If anything, in recent years many Israelis have become curious about living in America and often express a desire to do so. Unfortunately, much of that curiosity has to do with the current state of Israel.

You write in Hebrew, so it’s only through Jessica Cohen’s translation that this book is available to English-speaking readers. In a funny way, that feels like a piece of the story—another layer of correspondence needed to bring the book to us. Does that feel true, or am I totally off base?

It does feel true. You could even say that I “translated” Happy New Years from a rough idea in my head into a book written in Hebrew, and Jessica translated it masterfully into English. It was a difficult book to translate, but Jessica managed to capture Leah’s bubbly personality and distinct voice in English, and the translation reads seamlessly, in my opinion. I feel very lucky to have been translated by Jessica.

The novel plays with the idea of what is considered “literary.” After all, Leah’s personal correspondence might be the most quotidian writing of all. It feels like the ins and outs of women’s lives are often chronicled in their letters, rather than in the historical records of their day. Were you hoping to recover—or maybe even celebrate—something about this period of time, or about women’s lives during it?

It wasn’t my initial intention when I conceived the book, but as I was writing, I realized that the fifty-year period it covers marks major changes in the status of women (and LGBTQ+ people, and Israeli expats). So I felt that had to be reflected in the story. And yes, even the small details of everyday material life—a dress from Bloomingdale’s, Tupperware dishes, a microwave oven, a computer—are celebrated. When I was working on this book, I spoke with Israelis who lived in America in the 1960s and 1970s. They often had trouble remembering how things were, but when I asked them about their first car or their first computer, they always remembered.

What are some Jewish books you’d recommend for GOLDA readers?

Pogrom, by Steven Zipperstein, offers a close-up of the 1903 Kishinev pogrom before zooming out to explore the broad sweep of history from which it emerged—and to which it gave rise. It is a compelling page-turner, precisely because it avoids dwelling on horror for its own sake, instead focusing on the surprising details that make up the fabric of history.

My Name is Stramer, by Mikołaj Łoziński, also approaches trauma from an oblique angle. This novel tells the story of a Jewish family in a small Polish town during the interwar years—a tender portrayal of simple human life, shadowed by the looming threat of catastrophe.

Stockholm, by Noa Yedlin, is a brilliant dark comedy that offers both a sharp observation of Israeli social mores and a hilarious farce. Written in 2016 and translated into English in 2023, the novel now reads unavoidably in the shadow of present-day Israeli realities—a reminder that we, as Jews, must not lose the old skill of viewing horror obliquely.

Thanks to Maya Arad for her thoughtful answers, and to the whole team at the Jewish Book Council. Each of this month’s newsletters will feature one of their book suggestions alongside your regularly scheduled GOLDA content. 

Happy Jewish Book Month 100! 

Stay GOLDA,

Stephanie