7 Books that Reflect US Jewish Experience

Jewish American Voices

indievoices
As Fredric Price, publisher of Fig Tree Books writes, Jews have been part of the fabric of American life since its founding. They are not new here. As George Washington indicated, they are among the various people by whom, and for whom, the United States was cultivated. These seven book recommendations from small publishers help show the depth of the American Jewish experience.

The Sea Beach Line

Book Cover
Ben Nadler
Fig Tree Books
Softcover $15.95 (336pp)
978-1-941493-08-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon

A brilliant and profound tale of one young man’s search for identity, and the stories we tell ourselves.

Brooklyn novelist Ben Nadler returns with a fabular coming-of-age novel that is both a love song to New York City and a Jewish son’s search for identity. The Sea Beach Line tracks Izzy Edel on his journey to find the hustler whose sketchbooks portray a mysterious history. An unhurried plot brilliantly captures Izzy’s transformation from a dropout to a young man forced to confront his own illusions.

When Izzy, a drifter and dreamer, receives news that his father, Alojzy, has disappeared, he’s determined not to accept it. With no way to verify the rumored death, he assumes the roles his father once held in hopes of discovering what happened. Much of the book centers on Izzy’s efforts to take over Alojzy’s book-selling business, his dealings with gangsters, his search for the faces his father repeatedly sketched, and his friendship with Rayna, a runaway. Memories of Alojzy intersperse with Izzy’s reflections: fragments of fiction he’s read, moments with his sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law, and scenes with fellow used-book sellers. The novel skillfully merges religion, a haunting painting of a woman, imagination, family, and perception, revealing its secrets one by one. Yet for all its intrigue, the story’s heart is a simpler, more profound account of delayed grief.

Izzy’s characterization is deft. Vulnerable, determined, an escapist, overly awed by his mythologized version of Alojzy, protective, an antihero whose heroics land him in trouble—he’s a complicated figure who fascinates. Rayna, one of the book’s pivotal figures, is presented as an ethereal woman who doesn’t stand out to the same degree, though the stories she tells convey necessary wisdom. Other noteworthy, minor characters include a strongman turned right-hand man to a don, a rabbi, and an opportunistic artist whose Coney Island museum serves as the site for several of Izzy’s reckonings.

The Sea Beach Line explores themes of self-reliance, solitude, loyalty, and the stories people weave to diffuse pain. With its colorful immersion into the mind of an unstable narrator, the work speaks to the powerful tide of memory.

KAREN RIGBY (November 27, 2015)

Prayers for the Living

Book Cover
Alan Cheuse
Fig Tree Books
Softcover $15.95 (384pp)
978-1-941493-00-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon

The careful dance between the worthy and the regrettable helps the narration maintain balance, even as its characters careen toward their own ruination.

The latest novel from NPR contributor Alan Cheuse draws its inspiration from the true tale of a rabbi who fell from grace with shocking finality. Prayers for the Living is an emotionally raw exploration of how people learn to heal or live with the jagged edges of their pasts.

The novel is narrated by the Bloch matriarch, Minnie, who speaks like a Yenta but who soon proves to be the formidable backbone of her hurting clan. In response to prodding questions around her son’s demise, Minnie lays her story bare—but beginning where she thinks is proper, in the old country, where she saved her family from the gas by latching onto the driver of an oxcart.

The tale that follows is tinged with good humor and regret. Symbolic of its progressions is a shard of glass, shaped like the Magen David, that resides in the rabbi’s pocket. It is a continual reminder of the day he lost his father and met his haunted future wife, Maby.

In troubled times, Rabbi Manny rubs his fingers raw on those memories, and trouble abounds. First with Maby, who inherits alcoholism and untreated family trauma, and then with his daughter, Sarah, whose heartbreak mimics her mother’s, and whom Rabbi Manny proves equally inept at helping.

Minnie’s narration is nonstop, even when the events she recounts are preceded by apologies for frankness and vulgarity. She shares Sarah’s angst with sympathy— “they never let the me beneath my skin come out,” the girl complains—and then details Sarah’s vengeful plans. She expresses love for her son, though naming his best sermon as a silent one, and even while exposing the dubious and selfish choices that pushed the women in his life toward madness.

Prayers for the Living troubles notions of righteousness and forgiveness, madness, and fate, providing no easy answers while still leaving readers feeling edified. Cheuse’s is a challenging and intelligent novel, replete with beauty and heartbreak, and perhaps even containing a measure of redemption.

MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (February 27, 2015)

Six Memos from the Last Millennium

A Novelist Reads the Talmud

Book Cover
Joseph Skibell
University of Texas Press
Hardcover $24.95 (264pp)
978-1-4773-0734-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon

Approaching seemingly impenetrable passages of rabbinic discourse with artful inquisitiveness, Skibell brings early authorities back to life.

Joseph Skibell shifts his incisive gaze from fiction to the Talmud in Six Memos from the Last Millennium, a learned, interdisciplinary dance through Judaism’s theological legal canon.

Skibell begins the project with the frank admission that many of the passages in the Talmud are strange on their face, but he indicates that great beauty resides there, too. A rabbi looks up from the story of Ulla after being asked what’s this about?; his “I don’t know” prompts Skibell’s careful textual journeying.

Approaching seemingly impenetrable passages of rabbinic discourse with artful inquisitiveness, Skibell brings early authorities back to life. The undulations of their stories often veer toward the mythical: gazes that set the world afire; years spent hiding in the sand up to one’s neck; walls held up by sheer force of will, that bend inward as the sacred moves out. To such elements, Skibell adds reflections on the needs and foibles of even the most spiritual human beings: jealousy, fear, and resentment all factor in, as do moments of forced growth, as leading rabbis mature from reactionary to cautious beings, if bent there by the will of God.

The lessons that are drawn from such stories are poignant. Heaven and earth, one’s ancestors and descendants, one’s self and others: these are the foci of the Talmud, Skibell discerns. These dualities become the rabbis’ everythings, as they learn—often in the midst of traumatic narratives—to live betwixt and between. And because these are universal dynamics, connections are drawn between these ancient tales and the words of modern writers and artists, from George Harrison to Proust, with some Shakespeare thrown in for good measure. The holistic nature of Skibell’s project will draw even skeptics in.

The Talmud is a closed canon, and so the insights of Six Memos cannot be added to the milieu of its margins; this comes to seem a loss. At times both as enigmatic and as spiritually attuned as the text upon which it comments, Skibell’s is a gem of a theological exercise.

MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (May 3, 2016)

Lily of the Valley

An American Jewish Journey

Book Cover
Xianna Michaels
Alcabal Press
Hardcover $19.99 (64pp)
978-1-941067-01-7
Buy: Amazon

Lily of the Valley is an elegantly bound poetic volume that celebrates the varied inheritances of Jewish American women with poignancy.

Lily of the Valley is Xianna Michaels’s graceful and affecting poetic saga, the story of five generations of Jewish American women navigating the promises of the New World.

The volume opens on a pogrom that rips through a shtetl, rending families irrevocably. Young Laili is sent with her her sister Basya to New York, with the hope that they’ll be able to enjoy more freedoms there. Laili’s name is anglicized by Ellis Island officials; now known as “Lily,” she finds work in a sweatshop sewing clothing. As she sews, she dreams of an easier life for her children, preferably in the golden valleys of the West.

Though tragedies continue to fall upon her family—a shop fire kills one matriarch; a son abandons his tradition and family to pursue life on his own; a daughter returns to Europe, too near to the Holocaust for safety—so, too, do the generations that follow Lily find their fortunes in America increasing. They become business owners, college graduates, parents, and the pursuers of old family dreams. Their Judaism ebbs and flows in proportion to the challenges they face—work on Shabbat gives way to the avoidance of the mikveh, compromises are made with the observance of mitzvot, especially around kashrut. Yet through it all, they maintain a sense of connection to their tradition, and to the family members who sacrificed so much to provide them with opportunities.

Lily of the Valley is written in English sestet form, a rhyme scheme that initially requires some getting used to; the violence of the opening pogrom fits uneasily with the apparent jauntiness of the poetic formula. Conjunctions are employed a bit too freely, and not every end rhyme is a comfortable fit. Related misgivings give way beneath the charm of Michaels’s verses, though. These lines breathe life into the women they focus on: the first Lily is a determined dreamer, her daughter Molly a believer, her daughter Lily a stylish girl who dusts off family aspirations. Each woman, in the limited lines allotted to her, is fleshed out well, particularly in relation to the decisions she makes around religious observance.

The intrafamily loyalty and support conveyed throughout Lily of the Valley is inspirational without being cloying, and the book moves from generation to generation with significant emotional prowess. This book is impressive for the balances it strikes: managing to be feminist, even as Lily’s great-granddaughter moves back toward observance, to the surprised delight of her nonobservant family; achieving a well-rounded picture of Jewish American history, though in the span of a few stanzas each on just fifty pages. The end result is a project certain to woo readers with its loveliness. Its beautiful, classic packaging, paired with the delicate, scene-setting illustrations that run throughout, make the project an all the more likely candidate for family treasure status.

Lily of the Valley is an elegantly bound poetic volume that celebrates the varied inheritances of Jewish American women with poignancy.

MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (February 10, 2016)

These Things Happen

Book Cover
Richard Kramer
Unbridled Books
Hardcover $24.95 (272pp)
978-1-60953-089-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon

In New York City, a lot can happen in a day. So discover the characters in this exquisite debut novel by Richard Kramer (writer for My So-Called Life). Teenaged Wesley’s family is quintessentially new New York. He’s ensconced in a prestigious prep school and splitting outside time between the two apartments of his happily broken home. The new semester finds Wesley with his prodigious father, Kenny, an in-demand LGBT lawyer with whom he’s meant to be forming a normal relationship. In Kenny’s frequent absence, Wesley instead finds himself bonding with George, Kenny’s long-term boyfriend, and assisting his eternal best friend, Theo, with his student government campaign.

Theo’s spontaneous decision to come out during his victory speech forces Wesley to confront the probable facades in his outwardly privileged life—particularly after Theo passes through him a question for Kenny and George. Is orientation a choice? Wesley’s hesitant inquiry triggers a round of introspection in all of those closest to him. So begin probes of otherwise avoided subjects: of intimacy and desire, of prejudice and acceptance, of privilege and marginalization, and of what constitutes a family. The general security that Wesley’s diverse clan had otherwise taken for granted becomes obsolete when Theo and Wesley are viciously attacked after school. The aftermath finds a family in tumult, forced to redefine themselves from the foundations up.

These Things Happen is greater than the tactility of its descriptions and the tragicomic vivacity of its characters. This is a novel of the sort that defines generations. Weaving together the individual struggles of his various characters with profound empathy, Kramer asks the reader to consider the limitations of genial political correctness, and even the very notion of love. That Theo is able to transition from closeted to openly gay without being rejected by anyone in his immediate circle represents progress; that, after a decade together, George and Kenny still feel obliged to engage in self-negation amongst others reminds us of the lengths left to travel.

Still, Kramer’s characters tackle their social confines with remarkable alacrity and, where appropriate, the right measure of regret. Beauty and tragedy, adoration and resentment perch simultaneously on single sentences, and readers will be hard-pressed to resist the resultant emotional pull. If, as Wesley muses, “everything is practice for conversations that haven’t happened yet, with people [we’ve] yet to meet,” then wandering the pages of Kramer’s novel may be a crucial warm-up exercise for us all. A dazzling tour de force, alternately exhilarating and devastating, and, at all turns, revelatory.

MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (December 3, 2012)

Max Baer and the Star of David

A Novel

Book Cover
Jay Neugeboren
Mandel Vilar Press
Softcover $19.95 (206pp)
978-1-942134-17-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon

A former boxer crosses paths, and lines, with the notorious Max Baer, in this imaginative semihistorical novel.

With Max Baer and the Star of David, Jay Neugeboren creates a pair of distinctive fictional characters and deposits them into the life of the legendary Depression-era boxer. The writing is strong and the characters memorable, though the novel focuses little on its presumed subject.

Despite the title, Baer is only a side character in the story. The book includes the key milestones in his boxing career—the fight that killed Baer’s opponent Frankie Campbell, the clash with German fighter Max Schmeling from which the book gets its title, the surprise loss to James Braddock—but little time is spent on these events. The same is true of Baer’s romances with famous actresses, and even the career of his actor son. Instead, Baer’s life is mostly used to provide an outline for the story of Neugeboren’s fictional narrator, Horace Littlejohn.

The book really belongs to Horace. A former small-time boxer, he poses as the husband of his sister Joleen, and their relationship crosses the line romantically. The duo meet Baer and become his friends and lovers, living with him and observing the details of his career. Meanwhile, secrets between Horace and Joleen, including family trouble from their childhoods, challenge their relationship.

Though the “historical” part of the historical fiction is a selling point for the book, it serves as a double-edged sword at times. Baer’s real-life exploits provide great fodder for a story, but they’re sidelined here, so there isn’t much for the audience looking for a Max Baer story. Much about his character, such as his pansexuality and the affairs with the Littlejohns, is fictional rather than historical. On the other hand, Neugeboren writes a charismatic, quotable, and memorable version of the boxer who could justify far more focus than he gets in this story.

Still, Neugeboren’s prose is strong, and the characters feel believable despite heightened circumstances. The Littlejohns are well developed. The real story of Max Baer and the Star of David is Horace’s. He confronts family patterns and fights some important battles outside the ring. The author tells this story well.

JEFF FLEISCHER (February 29, 2016)

A Kosher Dating Odyssey

One Former Texas Babtist’s Quest for a Naughty and Nice Jewish Girl

Book Cover
Van Wallach
Coffeetown Press
Softcover $12.95 (194pp)
978-1-60381-132-3
Buy: Amazon

Van Wallach is a Texan-born, Baptist-raised, Jewish man on a quest for love. His slim memoir documents this journey with both humor and insight.

Wallach, now in his fifties, has had a lifelong preoccupation with record-keeping and maintaining years-old correspondence and journals regarding his youthful impressions about love, whether they’re scenes in movies or notes received from a school crush. While this may seem obsessive, it provided valuable fodder for this memoir of looking for love in all the wrong—and right—places.

Wallach was raised in a small town in Texas. While both of his parents were Jewish, his mother rejected her background and raised both him and his brother to be Baptists. She assimilated into her small-town society and never looked back. When Wallach’s parents divorced and his father left for New York, it left the boys without any connection to Judaism.

Eventually, though, while in college at Princeton, the author rediscovered his Jewish roots. In the memoir, he glosses over a marriage and divorce and focuses more on his journey for love, which parallels his journey back to Judaism.

With the perfect mixture of self-deprecating humor and introspection, Wallach describes, both via anecdotes and in a more extended narrative, his experiences in the world of online dating. He joined several Jewish dating websites and made thousands of connections. Distance was not a factor; he traveled as far as Brazil to make a potential love match.

One of the more fun chapters is entitled, “What I Liked and What They Said.” In it he reprints some of his favorite responses to his ads. For example, one woman started her email by saying, “I’ve always liked bald men.” And another, “…your face bears a resemblance to my ex’s and that’s something I cannot feel comfortable with at this juncture in my post divorcehood.”

Another funny episode occurred when he allowed an out-of-town woman stay with him at his apartment and ended up hating her practically before she walked in the door. [She] “….launched into a stunning recitation of all my personality problems. She railed against my lack of fun, my rigidity, my financial concerns….Forget about cuddling with a stranger; could I stand the sight of her?”

After countless dates and thousands of dollars spent, the author ultimately discovers that love can’t be reduced to a formula, though one suspects he knew this all along.

HILARY DANINHIRSCH (March 20, 2012)

Hannah Hohman

Load Next Article