Join us in celebrating Jewish Heritage Month, which takes place during the month of May. First recognized by presidential proclamation in 2006, Jewish American Heritage Month celebrates the accomplishments, community, and culture of Jewish Americans.
The following booklist features history, biography, novellas, historical fiction, and more, all commemorating the breadth of experience and wide-ranging accomplishments of Jewish American individuals. This list is by no means comprehensive, but is rather meant to serve as a starting point for learning and understanding.
Fiction
The Hebrew Teacher by Maya Arad: An intelligent triptych of novellas that showcase Israeli women navigating their professional and family relationships in the U.S. Intensely readable and beautifully observed . . . full of wisdom, generosity, humor, and sharp insights.
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride: A skeleton discovered in a small Pennsylvania town unearths the intertwined histories of Jewish and Black residents living side by side and sharing ambitions and sorrows.
I Made It Out of Clay by Beth Kander: In this darkly funny and surprisingly sweet novel, a woman creates a golem in a desperate attempt to pretend her life is a rom-com rather than a disaster.
The Matzah Ball by Jean Meltzer: Hiding her career as the best-selling author of Christmas romance novels from her family, chronically ill Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt, a “nice Jewish girl,” needing inspiration for her Hanukkah romance, must attend a high-end Jewish music celebration. A sparkling holiday romance told with both honesty and heart.
Morningside Heights by Joshua Henkin: Award winner Henkin (Swimming Across the Hudson) travels to Morningside Heights, NY, where Pru faces the decline of husband Spence, once a celebrated Shakespeare scholar. The only person able to help is Spence's son from his first marriage, a wealthy biotech entrepreneur who has come to live with them. Morningside Heights is a sweeping and compassionate novel about a marriage surviving hardship.
Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner: A multi-generational novel exploring family, ambition, and identity through the lens of contemporary Jewish American life.
One Good Thing by Georgia Hunter: Set in WWII Italy, a story of survival, love, and the unexpected bonds formed during crisis.
The postcard By Anne Berest: Fifteen years after the arrival of an anonymous postcard with the names of her maternal great-grandparents and their children—all killed at Auschwitz—Anne Berest is moved to discover who sent it and why, embarking on a journey to learn the fate of the Rabinovitch family.
Rooms for Vanishing by Stuart Nadler: A prismatic, mind-bending family epic following a fractured Jewish family across generations, shaped by war, loss, and memory.
The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kaddish: A historical epic connecting a 17th-century scribe and a modern historian through a trove of long-hidden Jewish documents.
Nonfiction & Biography
Anne Frank's Diary: the Graphic Adaptation by Ari Folman: A graphic adaptation of the diary of Anne Frank
Bad Jews by Emily Tamkin: Drawing on over 150 interviews, the author of The Influence of Soros examines the history of Jewish people in America and their impact on American politics, culture and identity.
Ethel Rosenberg by Anne Sebba: This biography of a wife and mother executed for espionage-related crimes tells how despite the flimsy evidence against her, she refused to incriminate her husband and faced the death penalty for a crime she didn’t commit.
How to Share an Egg by Bonny Reichert: A moving culinary memoir exploring the ties between food, family-sustenance, and survival, written by a chef, award-winning journalist, and daughter of a Holocaust survivor.
The Incorruptibles by Dan Slater: A gripping nonfiction account of Jewish gangsters and the vice squad that pursued them in early 20th-century New York.
Kissing Girls on Shabbat by Sara Glass: No longer able to conform to her controlling Hasidic community, the author walked away from the world she knew and onto a path of self-acceptance as she, after a divorce, custody battle, remarriage and a shocking sexual assault, decided to finally be true to herself and embrace her queer identity.
The Money Kings by Daniel Schulman: The extraordinary saga of the German-Jewish immigrants who shaped the destiny of American finance—now familiar names like Goldman and Sachs, Warburg and Schiff and Lehman and Seligman—traces the interconnected origin stories of these financial dynasties, chronicling their paths to Wall Street dominance.
My name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand: In her own words, the living legend tells the story of her life and extraordinary career.
Squirrel Hill by Mark Oppenheimer: A portrait of the struggles and triumphs of one of America’s renowned Jewish neighborhoods in the wake of unspeakable tragedy that highlights the hopes, fears, and tensions all Americans must confront on the road to healing.
We Are Not Strangers by Josh Tuininga: Inspired by the author’s own family experiences, this graphic novel follows Papoo, a first-generation Jewish immigrant, as he settles into an America gearing up its war efforts where he helps his Japanese neighbors while they are unjustly imprisoned during WWII.
Zabar's by Lori Zabar: Historian Zabar, granddaughter of the eponymous New York City landmark’s founder, provides a fascinating history of “one of the most famous delicatessens in the world.” Includes family recipes.