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The best Jewish books I read in 2023
(JTA) — When I spoke with novelist Elizabeth Graver in August about her novel “Kantika” — inspired by her own Turkish Jewish family — I asked her how she managed to breathe life into a tired genre like the Jewish family saga.
“I want the characters to be flawed and complex, and for the turns that they take to come out of their intersections with both history and their own very particular circumstances,” she told me.
The flawed and the complex; the historic and the particular. These are the qualities that I look for in a good book. Below are some of the Jewish books I read and enjoyed in 2023. Nearly all reflect Jewish reality before Oct. 7; I suspect next year’s list will include a slew of books dealing with the crisis in Israel or will be read through the lens of the war.
Nonfiction
Jonathan Rosen’s memoir, “The Best Minds: A Story Of Friendship, Madness, And The Tragedy Of Good Intentions,” deserves all the accolades it has received. The former arts editor of the Forward writes about his friendship with Michael Laudor, a Yale Law School graduate whose brilliance and schizophrenia made him a sort of poster child for the successful mainstreaming of the mentally ill until it all went tragically, shockingly wrong. It’s also a beautifully told story about growing up precocious and Jewish in suburban New Rochelle, New York, and how Judaism can be both a balm and an astringent for those under the throes of psychosis.
In “Happily,” fairy tales are the prompts for a series of dreamy and rigorous biographical essays by Sabrina Orah Mark on “motherhood, and marriage, and America, and weather, and loneliness, and failure, and inheritance, and love.” And, as the New York Times noted, Mark deals with raising two “Black Jewish boys in a time of rising antisemitism.”
I also enjoyed another collection of biographical essays, “Immigrant Baggage,” by Boston College professor Maxim Shrayer. A former Soviet refusenik who immigrated to the United States in 1987, Shrayer writes about life as a “translingual” father, husband and writer who finds wisdom and the absurd in all the languages that he speaks.
“Bruno Schulz: An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History” is a page-turning literary detective story by Benjamin Balint, exploring the all-too-short life and unlikely legacy of enigmatic Polish-Jewish writer and artist Bruno Schulz. Balint’s book prompted me to finally read Schulz’s best-known book, the hallucinatory “The Street of Crocodiles,” and two contemporary works of fiction that draw on Schulz’s biography: “The Prague Orgy” by Philip Roth and “The Messiah of Stockholm” by Cynthia Ozick.
In “The Literary Mafia: Jews, Publishing, and Postwar American Literature,” Joshua Lambert debunks the myth that Jewish intellectuals had an iron grip on what was read and reviewed in the post-war years — even as he celebrates the era’s undeniable burst of Jewish creativity and influence. One of those influential figures was Robert Gottlieb, the legendary editor at Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf and The New Yorker, whose charming, gossipy memoir, “Avid Reader,” I avidly read (actually, listened to: Gottlieb narrated the audiobook) after he died in June. That led me to Gottlieb’s 2013 biography, “Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt,” which helps the reader understand the appeal of the beloved French Jewish actress in the context of the theatrical conventions of her day.
Bernhardt’s florid stagecraft couldn’t have been more different from the naturalistic acting style that Isaac Butler describes in “The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act.” The Jewish acting teachers Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg and Harold Klurman play central roles in Butler’s engaging history of the modern theater.
And just before the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, I read “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” by the Jerusalem-based Jewish writer Nathan Thrall. The book, a challenging account of a deadly school bus crash in East Jerusalem, is a forensic examination of the inequalities and indignities that stateless Palestinians face on a daily basis. You don’t have to agree with Thrall’s politics to learn from the realities and complexities that he describes.
Fiction
Many of the short stories in Iddo Gefen’s collection “Jerusalem Beach” start with a high concept — What if a start-up could manufacture dreams? Or a radio could pick up the thoughts of passers-by? — but they are always grounded in the Israeli reality. Indeed, one of his concepts, about a geriatric soldier who returns to the front, foreshadowed a real-life event, when retired general Noam Tibon raced from Tel Aviv to Kibbutz Nahal Oz to rescue his son’s family from Hamas terrorists.
James McBride’s “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” was inspired by his own Jewish grandmother, who ran a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Pottstown, Pennsylvania in the 1930s and ’40s. McBride’s recreation of the place and time is a rollicking story of two communities coming together around a common, racist enemy.
I love how “The Golem of Brooklyn” starts with a summary of a novel that Adam Mansbach decided not to write, then literally lurches into a hilarious imagining of an avenging Jewish Frankenstein’s monster coming to life in one of the less-hip neighborhoods of Brooklyn. It’s a Jewish road trip novel that confronts the persistence of antisemitism.
If you are yearning for a sprawling satirical novel about a liberal Jewish family making spectacularly bad choices, then “Hope” by Andrew Ridker is the book for you. Set in Brookline, Massachusetts, “Hope” has good, smart fun with synagogue social justice committees, Birthright Israel trips and Obama-era optimism.
Authors
I interviewed a number of authors this year about their books:
Eric Alterman took a deep dive into the political and personal relationships between American Jews and Israel in “We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel.”
Jenny Caplan’s book, “Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials,” deals with the way North American Jewish comedy has evolved since World War II, with a focus on how humorists relate to Judaism as a religion.
In “Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew,” Jeremy Dauber describes the parody Brooks mastered as “nothing less than the essential statement of American Jewish tension between them and us, culturally speaking; between affection for the mainstream and alienation from it.”
In “The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War,” the religion reporter and writing professor Jeff Sharlet chronicled his recent journeys across America interviewing QAnon acolytes, Christian nationalists, proud misogynists, unrepentant January 6ers, armed militia men and strict anti-abortion activists — all still in thrall to Donald Trump.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s latest book, “Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy,” is about a generation of Jews and new Americans “bent on saving face and determined to be, if not exemplary, at least impeccably respectable.”
Rabbi Diane Fersko wrote “We Need to Talk About Antisemitism” in response to congregants who were experiencing anti-Jewish hatred as they never had before.
In “Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair,” art conservator Rosa Lowinger, uses the tools and materials of her profession — stone, tile, metal, marble — as metaphors to tell how her Jewish family came to Cuba and fled after the revolution, and what they found and lost when they settled in Miami.
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The post The best Jewish books I read in 2023 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
The post Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
The post Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
The post Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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