Jewish Book Month Is Coming!
It’s that time of the year: time to prepare for Jewish Book Month, which takes place during the month preceding the Hanukkah holiday. (This year, that means that Jewish Book Month begins November 18 on the secular calendar.)
And I am ready—with something fun for all of us:
Presenting the #JewishBookMonth Reading Challenge!
(I hereby grant you permission to count any 5783 reads to date for this challenge—and to continue the fun beyond the first candle. Don’t feel pressured by the pre-Hanukkah month window, as worthy a “container” as it may be! Also, if you’re not sure where to start: I’ll simply observe that November is also Mizrahi Heritage Month.)
And, just in case you’re seeking titles to check off the “Short Story Collection” or “Poetry” boxes—or perhaps to help someone else do so—may I humbly suggest:
In any case, I’d love to hear about your #JewishBookMonth reading as it may connect with this challenge. Please bookmark this page and leave comments throughout the month. (I’ll do the same.)
Just finished David Grossman’s most recent novel, More Than I Love My Life (Jessica Cohen’s English translation published in 2021). A harrowing tale of multigenerational trauma, whose roots are in a Yugoslavian prison camp in the early 1950s, while the present timeline is contemporary, more or less, and takes place both there and in Israel. Would fit either non-Holocaust novel, or Diaspora experience.
Thanks very much for posting this Jewish books reading challenge!
Thanks for sharing!
I love this chart and am thinking about what I have already read over my lifetime that would count…
P.S. Including “Quiet Americans,” which I read quite a while ago and have recommended to friends.
Thank you!
I love this board. A great frame for a reading list.
I’m so glad that you like it!
I just now purchased a copy of Birthright. It should arrive in the mail by the 18th of November. I also fashioned this year a new set of book shelves with cinder blocks and wooden planks. I have many Jewish books on these shelves which I have not yet read. One is a novel called Lone Wolf in Jerusalem. I believe the author, Ehud Diskin, wrote it in Hebrew and translated it himself with some help into English. Now I simply have to read both of them.
Thank you for your comment (and for the purchase!).
How about a non-Holocaust book written by the daughter of two Holocaust survivors? My novel, Rebecca of Salerno: A Novel of Rogue Crusaders, a Jewish Female Physician, and a Murder is the story of what Rebecca, a heroine from Walter Scott’s 1820 novel Ivanhoe does after she flees England at the end of that novel. Heartbroken and determined never to marry, she is thrilled to discover and study at the medical school at Salerno — where Jews, Christians, and Muslims — women and men — could study together. However, soon the political situation in Salerno worsens for Jews. When a rabbi is accused of murdering a crusader, Rebecca and the man who loves her, Rafael, pursue justice in an atmosphere of increasing danger.
Thanks for sharing.