Reading with the Rabbi

The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family by Joshua Cohen

7:30pm Wednesday, November 20, in the Rabbi's study
Zoom can be arranged if requested.
RSVP for Nov 20 Reading with the Rabbi

"Absorbing, delightful, hilarious, breathtaking and the best and most relevant novel I’ve read in what feels like forever."  
—Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times Book Review

Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959–1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.

WINNER OF THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION
2021 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD WINNER
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021
A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2021
A KIRKUS BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2021

In its heyday, The Golden Hotel was the crown jewel of the hotter-than-hot Catskills vacation scene. For more than sixty years, the Goldman and Weingold families – best friends and business partners – have presided over this glamorous resort which served as a second home for well-heeled guests and celebrities. But the Catskills are not what they used to be – and neither is the relationship between the Goldmans and the Weingolds. As the facilities and management begin to fall apart, a tempting offer to sell forces the two families together again to make a heart-wrenching decision. Can they save their beloved Golden or is it too late?

Long-buried secrets emerge, new dramas and financial scandal erupt, and everyone from the traditional grandparents to the millennial grandchildren wants a say in the hotel’s future. Business and pleasure clash in this fast-paced, hilarious, nostalgia-filled story, where the hotel owners rediscover the magic of a bygone era of nonstop fun even as they grapple with what may be their last resort.

Like the other women in her Brooklyn Hasidic community, Raizl expects to find a husband through an arranged marriage. Unlike the other women, Raizl has a secret.
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With a hidden computer to help her complete her college degree, she falls down the slippery slope of online pornography. As Raizl dives deeper into the world of porn at night, her daytime life begins to unravel. Between combative visits with her shrink to complicated arranged dates, Raizl must balance her growing understanding of her sexuality with the more conventional expectations of the family she loves. 

A singular, stirring, and compulsively readable debut novel, Shmutz explores what it means to be a fully realized sexual and spiritual being caught between the traditional and modern worlds.

Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, it doesn't have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn all the young people from their village to America. When one of those young emigrants goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her.

Along the way the angel and demon encounter humans in need of their help, including Rose Cohen, whose best friend (and the love of her life) has abandoned her to marry a man, and Malke Shulman, whose father died mysteriously on his way to America. But there are obstacles ahead of them as difficult as what they’ve left behind. Medical exams (and demons) at Ellis Island. Corrupt officials, cruel mob bosses, murderers, poverty. The streets are far from paved with gold.

In Run You Down, the sequel to her Edgar Award finalist Invisible City, Julia Dahl has created a taut mystery that is both a window into a secretive culture and an exploration of the demons we inherit. Aviva Kagan was just a teenager when she left her Hasidic Jewish life in Brooklyn for a fling with a smiling college boy from Florida- then disappeared. Twenty-three years later, the child she walked away from is a NYC tabloid reporter named Rebekah Roberts. And Rebekah isn't sure she wants her mother back in her life.

While at UCLA, Fogle published a feature article based on ethnographic research with the descendants of Spanish Inquisition fugitives living in the Old City of Jerusalem. These true stories inspire her novel City of Liars, recalling the intrigue and lethal jeopardy of a rescue mission and forbidden love in 15th Century Barcelona.

Detective Peter Decker of the LAPD is stunned when he gets the report. Someone has shattered the sanctuary of a remote yeshiva community in the California hills with an unimaginable crime. A woman was brutally raped as she returned from the mikvah, the bathhouse where the cleansing ritual is performed.

When a controversial celebrity rabbi drops dead over his matzoh ball soup at the famed Canter's Deli in Los Angeles, retired private eye Amos Parisman— a sixtyish, no-nonsense Jewish detective who lives with his addled wife in Park La Brea—is hired by the temple's board to make sure everything is kosher. As he looks into what seems to be a simple, tragic accident, the ante is raised when more people start to die or disappear, and Amos uncovers a world of treachery and hurt that shakes a large L.A. Jewish community to its core.

The Rabbi Who Prayed with Fire is a mystery novel that explores a key question at the heart of progressive, traditional Jewish life: How do we balance the needs, hopes and fears of those within the four walls of our Jewish community versus those in our broader geographic context? It’s a mix of Torah, politics, a queer love story, and the trappings of a classic whodunnit.

Congregation Beth Abraham expected their newest rabbi to "sing some songs and go to an environmental rally." But Vivian Green has other ideas. She wants her flock to engage meaningfully with their city-special mayoral elections, interfaith breakfasts, fights for affordable housing and all. Also, she would like just one night off to go dancing in the leather boots that make her look like her finest gay self.

Taking on the city's old boys' club is already proving difficult...but then Beth Abraham bursts into flames. Fingers get pointed, and everyone's biases rise to the surface. It turns out that wasn't the only fire burning in town. Vivian sticks to her instincts, raising tensions with her boss, her community, and a certain hottie in a power suit. And she learns that knowing whodunnit is only half the battle.

Ariel Samson is just your run of the mill anomaly: a 20-something Black Orthodox Jewish rabbi looking for love, figuring out life, and floating between at least two worlds. Luckily, it gets worse.

Finding himself the spiritual leader of a dying synagogue, and accidentally falling into viral internet fame, Ariel is suddenly catapulted into a series of increasingly ridiculous conflicts with belligerent college students, estranged families, corrupt politicians, hippophilic coworkers, vindictive clergymen, and even attempted murder. (And also Christian hegemony, racism, anti-Semitism, toxic Hotepism, and white Jewish privilege. Because today ends in "y.") But all that's the easy part.

Because whether Ariel knows it or not, he's due for a breakthrough. Several, in fact. And he's about to find out whether or not he's strong enough to re-evaluate everything he thought he knew about himself, and own up to the things he didn't.

Thought leader and provocateur MaNishtana turns his eye to fiction in this imaginative, semi-autobiographical novel, making Ariel Samson, Freelance Rabbi the most dazzling debut of an Orthodox Black Jew born on a Sunday at 2:24AM in a Brooklyn hospital in 1982 that you will ever have the privilege of reading.

In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. Priceless and beautiful, the book is one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images. When Hanna, a caustic loner with a passion for her work, discovers a series of tiny artifacts in its ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—she begins to unlock the book’s mysteries. The reader is ushered into an exquisitely detailed and atmospheric past, tracing the book’s journey from its salvation back to its creation.

In Bosnia during World War II, a Muslim risks his life to protect it from the Nazis. In the hedonistic salons of fin-de-siècle Vienna, the book becomes a pawn in the struggle against the city’s rising anti-Semitism. In inquisition-era Venice, a Catholic priest saves it from burning. In Barcelona in 1492, the scribe who wrote the text sees his family destroyed by the agonies of enforced exile. And in Seville in 1480, the reason for the Haggadah’s extraordinary illuminations is finally disclosed. Hanna’s investigation unexpectedly plunges her into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics. Her experiences will test her belief in herself and the man she has come to love.

Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is at once a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity, an ambitious, electrifying work by an acclaimed and beloved author.

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin meets The Marrying of Chani Kaufman in this cinematic novel about the birth of Israel and the true story of the marriages of convenience that were arranged to smuggle Jewish women out of Nazi-occupied Europe.

On the eve of World War II, a ship bearing twenty young men sets sail from the Palestine Territory toward Europe. Eagerly awaiting them on the other side are twenty young women, whom the men have never met. They have been set up in arranged marriages to enable Jewish women to escape Nazi Germany and enter Palestine without being turned back by the British.

But when Yaacov Markovitch, a thoroughly unremarkable man, finds himself married to Bella Zeigerman, the most beautiful woman he has ever set eyes upon, things start to get complicated. Yaacov’s fake marriage is the beginning of a lifelong obsession, as he vows to make his beautiful bride, Bella, love him, despite her determination to break free. Their changing fortunes take them through war, upheaval, terrible secrets, tragedy, joy, and loss.

Vital, funny, and tender, One Night, Markovitch brilliantly fuses personal lives and epic history in an unforgettable story of endless, hopeless longing, and the desperate search for love.

Nofar is an average teenage girl---so average, in fact, that she's almost invisible. Serving customers ice cream all summer long, she is desperate for some kind of escape.

One afternoon, a terrible lie slips from her tongue. And suddenly everyone wants to talk to her: the press, her schoolmates, and even the boy upstairs. He is the only one who knows the truth, and he is demanding a price for his silence.

Then Nofar meets Raymonde, an elderly immigrant whose best friend has just died. Raymonde keeps her friend alive the only way she knows how, by inhabiting her stories. But soon, Raymonde's lies take on a life of their own.

Written with propulsive energy, dark humor, and deep insight, The Liar reveals the far-reaching consequences of even our smallest choices, and explores the hidden corners of human nature to reveal the liar, and the truth-teller, in all of us.

Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders... but her father isn't a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has loaned out most of his wife's dowry and left the family on the edge of poverty--until Miryem steps in. Hardening her heart against her fellow villagers' pleas, she sets out to collect what is owed--and finds herself more than up to the task. When her grandfather loans her a pouch of silver pennies, she brings it back full of gold.

But having the reputation of being able to change silver to gold can be more trouble than it's worth--especially when her fate becomes tangled with the cold creatures that haunt the wood, and whose king has learned of her reputation and wants to exploit it for reasons Miryem cannot understand.

When oral historian Ellen Margolis and her girlfriend decide to get married, Ellen realizes that she can't go through with a wedding until she tells her grandmother. There's only one problem: her grandmother is dead. As the two young women beat their own early path toward marriage equality, Ellen's longing to plumb that voluminous silence draws her into a clandestine entanglement with a wily Holocaust survivor--a woman with more to hide than tell--and a secret search for buried history. If there is to be a wedding Ellen must decide: How much do you need to share to be true to the one you love? Set in ebullient, 1990s Dot-com era San Francisco, Paper is White is a novel about the gravitational pull of the past and the words we must find to make ourselves whole.

When free-spirited Batsheva moves into the close-knit Orthodox community of Memphis, Tennessee, the already precarious relationship between the Ladies Auxiliary and their teenage daughters is shaken to the core. In this extraordinary novel, Tova Mirvis takes us into the fascinating and insular world of the Memphis Orthodox Jews, one ripe with tradition and contradiction. Warm and wise, enchanting and funny, The Ladies Auxiliary brilliantly illuminates the timeless struggle between mothers and daughters, family and self, religious freedom and personal revelation, honoring the past and facing the future. An unforgettable story of uncommon atmosphere, profound insight, and winning humor, The Ladies Auxiliary is a triumphant work of fiction.

"Intricately crafted, gorgeously rendered...full of heart, history, and enchantment." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Captivating and boldly imaginative, with a tale of sisterhood at its heart, Rena Rossner's debut fantasy invites you to enter a world filled with magic, folklore, and the dangers of the woods. In a remote village surrounded by vast forests on the border of Moldova and Ukraine, sisters Liba and Laya have been raised on the honeyed scent of their Mami's babka and the low rumble of their Tati's prayers. But when a troupe of mysterious men arrives, Laya falls under their spell - despite their mother's warning to be wary of strangers. And this is not the only danger lurking in the woods. As dark forces close in on their village, Liba and Laya discover a family secret passed down through generations. Faced with a magical heritage they never knew existed, the sisters realize the old fairy tales are true...and could save them all.

​​From the international bestselling author of Last Train to Istanbul comes a novel based on true events that explores the depths of pride, devotion, and persistence as four generations of a family struggle to forge their destinies. As Hitler's reign of terror begins to loom large over Germany, Gerhard and Elsa Schliemann--like other German Jews--must flee with their children in search of sanctuary. But life elsewhere in Europe offers few opportunities for medical professor Gerhard and his fellow scientists. Then they discover an unexpected haven in Turkey, where universities and hospitals welcome them as valuable assets. But despite embracing their adopted land, personal and political troubles persist. Military coups bring unrest and uncertainty to the country, intermarriage challenges the cultural identity of Gerhard and Elsa's descendants, and anti-Semitism once again threatens their future in the place they call home. From World War II to the age of social media, one family's generations find their way through love and loss, sacrifice and salvation, tragedy and triumph--with knowledge hard won and passion heartfelt.

Bedford-Stuyvesant is a Brooklyn neighborhood with a storied Black history. Now, its magnificent brownstones are in demand, police presence has increased, young white families and professionals are moving in and populating the parks and streets, new restaurants and stores are opening, and tensions ensue. This book focuses on the complex and conflicted lives of six Bed-Stuy inhabitants on one fateful and tragic Rosh Hashanah. Neighborhood tensions rise after a twelve-year-old Black boy is shot ten times by police. A demonstration erupts into a riot. Shots are fired and murders are committed. The ugliness escalates, buildings burn, stores are looted, and dangerous crowds assemble. Bed-Stuy is Burning offers a suspenseful, well written, and empathetic story filled with wit, wisdom, and hard truths. It stands as an examination of people caught up in today’s urban realities. The impact of this debut novel is unsettling. While the characters endure darkness, grief, and challenges, there are many unresolved issues and no easy answers. Bed-Stuy is Burning is an engaging, timely, and provocative read.

Immortality has always fired the human imagination. Homer’s Odysseus spurned eternal life so that he could go home to his wife. The Christian parable of the Wandering Jew sees immortality as a curse: a Jew who mocks Jesus is punished by being unable to die until the Second Coming. Today, high-tech leaders in Silicon Valley are pouring billions of dollars into anti-aging research, hoping to defeat death. 

A novel both adventurous and wise, Eternal Life imagines two immortals as old as the Wandering Jew who dwell among us today. Their lives retrace the journeys of the Jewish people, from Jerusalem to Antioch to Pumbedita, in Alexandria and Aleppo, through Spain and Poland, to America and Israel. Yet this is no allegory—it’s a love story, or many love stories, with the same conflicts and joys and heartbreaks that are part of any life.

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street encompasses many stories, intertwining the rise of a woman ice cream mogul with an immigrant’s story, the twentieth century American Jewish desire to assimilate, women’s rights issues, poverty, world wars, McCarthy­ism, the youth movement of the Sixties, Reagan’s trickle-down economics, and the overreach of government. Young Malka’s family immigrates to New York City to escape the pogroms. Crippled by an ice cream cart, Malka is abandoned by her own parents but is taken in by the family who caused the accident. Through wit and cunning she learns the secrets of the trade from her rescuers, an Italian family, and after falling in love and eventually marrying Albert, a hand­some, dyslexic Jewish man, she transforms herself from a crippled dependent girl into Lillian Dunkle, ice cream tycoon.

Drawing on characters from Jewish and Arab folklore, The Golem and the Jinni tells what the author calls an immigrant story of two supernatural creatures who meet in New York City in 1899. Shaped from soil or clay, the golem (the model for later undead characters such as Frankenstein’s monster) usually serves its creator or protects a Jewish community but plays a less traditional role in Wecker’s story. The jinni, or genie, a mischievous creature formed from fire, is summoned from a flask in Little Syria, an area of lower Manhattan.

The novel arose from short stories Wecker wrote in part about being a Jewish woman with an Arab American husband. She has said, "We come from different (and, in many eyes, opposing) cultures. But I've always been struck by similarities between our families, the way that certain themes echo between them." The Golem and the Jinni won the 2013 Nebula Award for excellence in science fiction or fantasy published in the United States.

“Dazzling . . . A profound novel about the claims of identity, history, family, and the burdens of a broken world.” ―Maureen Corrigan

Unfolding over four tumultuous weeks, Here I Am is the story of a fracturing family in a moment of crisis. As Jacob and Julia Bloch and their three sons are forced to confront the distances between the lives they think they want and the lives they are living, a catastrophic earthquake sets in motion a quickly escalating conflict in the Middle East. At stake is the meaning of home―and the funda mental question of how much aliveness one can bear. Showcasing the same high-energy inventiveness, hilarious irreverence, and emotional urgency that readers loved in his earlier work, Here I Am is Foer’s most searching, hard-hitting, and grandly entertaining novel yet.

Told from the point of view of Michal, King Saul’s daughter, this work of historical fiction is a distinct version of the Biblical novel. Action focuses on the early days of the Kingdom of Israel, specifically the reigns of King Saul and King David. Readers can enjoy the book whether or not they have a strong knowledge of the times in part because the book’s focus is on storytelling. The novel includes newly retold stories of the Biblical past and raises questions about how history is shaped by those who narrate it. Born in Haifa to a family of Hasidic rabbis, Brandes is a Judaic studies lecturer, essayist, and popular novelist in Israel.

In the tradition of the acclaimed graphic memoirs Fun Home and Persepolis, Phoebe Potts's Good Eggs is a funny, insightful, and deeply moving book about learning to appreciate what we have...even when we can't seem to get what we want. In Good Eggs, Phoebe's quest to conceive a baby forces her to come to terms with her lapsed Judaism, her aspirations as an artist, her neurotic family, and her depression—happily, all with the support of her true loving husband. Potts's clever, charming, and wonderfully detailed graphic novel evokes the intimacy of Alison Bechdel and the humor of New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast.

"A triumph of the imagination. Rich, complex, impossible to put down." Alice Hoffman

In the middle of the twenty-first century, life as we know it has changed for all time. Shira Shipman's marriage has broken up, and her young son has been taken from her by the corporation that runs her zone, so she has returned to Tikva, the Jewish free town where she grew up. There, she is welcomed by Malkah, the brilliant grandmother who raised her, and meets an extraordinary man who is not a man at all, but a unique cyborg implanted with intelligence, emotions--and the ability to kill....From the imagination of Marge Piercy comes yet another stunning novel of morality and courage, a bold adventure of women, men, and the world of tomorrow.

An unforgettable coming-of-age story about family, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of Addie Baum, a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston's North End in the early 20th century. Born in 1900 to immigrant parents unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters, Addie's intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can't imagine of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture and new opportunities for women. 85-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her 22-year-old granddaughter beginning in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naïve girl she was and a wicked sense of humor.

A dazzling novel of mothers and daughters, stories told and untold. Gabriela's mother Luna is the most beautiful woman in all of Jerusalem, though ever since Gabriela can remember, the two have struggled to connect. Desperate to understand their relationship, Gabriela pieces together the stories of her family's previous generations—from Great-Grandmother Mercada the renowned healer, to Grandma Rosa who cleaned houses for the English, to Luna who had the nicest legs in Jerusalem. Set against the Golden Age of Hollywood, the dark days of World War II, and the swingin' '70s, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem follows generations of women as they forge their own paths through times of dramatic change. With great humor and heart, a powerful story of love and forgiveness.

When the greatest female mathematician in history passes away, her son, Alexander "Sasha" Karnokovitch, just wants to mourn his mother in peace. But rumor has it the notoriously eccentric Polish émigré has solved one of the most difficult problems in mathematics, and spitefully taken the solution to the grave. As a ragtag group of mathematicians from around the world descends upon Rachela's shiva, determined to find the proof --even if it means prying up the floorboards for notes or desperately scrutinizing the mutterings of her African Grey parrot--Sasha must come to terms with his mother's outsized influence on his life. This unexpectedly moving, uproariously funny novel captures humanity's drive not just to survive, but to achieve the impossible. ​