A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen
When Andrei Kaplan’s older brother Dima insists that Andrei return to Moscow to care for their ailing grandmother, Andrei must take stock of his life in New York. His girlfriend has stopped returning his...
Jewish Book World Blog
PATHWINGS: Philosophic and Poetic Reflections on the Hermeneutics of Time and Language by Elliot R. Wolfson
These essays and poems by a leading scholar of Jewish mysticism explore the connections between sexuality, divinity, and textuality, working with topics such as the gender of the Godhead, Apocalypse in the Kabbalah, the...
The Orphan Queen by Ashley Nicole
Editor: Jan Ackerson Hadassah’s life has never been like that of other Jewish girls. Orphaned early and raised by her cousin Mordecai—a man with a dreadful secret—she longs to feel truly loved and to...
Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations by Ronen Bergman
The Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s...
On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah by Gershom Scholem
In the Zohar and other writings of the Kabbalah, Jewish mystics developed concepts and symbols to help them penetrate secrets of the cosmos that cannot be understood through reason or intellect. These ideas about...
Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe by Rebecca Erbelding
For more than a decade, a harsh Congressional immigration policy kept most Jewish refugees out of America, even as Hitler and the Nazis closed in. In 1944, the United States finally acted. That year,...
Where’s the Potty on This Ark? by Kerry Olitzky
Illustrated by Abigail Tompkins Uh-oh! The animals need to go. Not just on a journey on Noah’s Ark, but to the potty, too! Noah’s wife, Naamah, helps each animalowl, giraffe, monkey, raccoon, and even...
The Mystical Origins of Hasidism by Rachel Elior
The words ‘hasid’ and ‘hasidism’ have become so familiar to people interested in the Jewish world that little thought is given to understanding exactly what hasidism is or considering its spiritual and social consequences....
The Scholems: A Story of the German-Jewish Bourgeoisie from Emancipation to Destruction by Jay Howard Geller
The evocative and riveting stories of four brothers—Gershom the Zionist, Werner the Communist, Reinhold the nationalist, and Erich the liberal—weave together in The Scholems, a biography of an eminent middle-class Jewish Berlin family and...
The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli
Seventeen-year-old Molly Peskin-Suso knows all about unrequited love. No matter how many times her twin sister, Cassie, tells her to woman up, Molly can’t stomach the idea of rejection. So she’s careful. Fat girls...
