I haven't checked the weather yet, but I know it is the perfect day to chat about adult Jewish literature. I'm Sheryl Stahl, thanks for joining me here at Nice Jewish books. Everyone has their favorite award season, but for me, it's not necessarily the Oscars or the Grammys. It is the association of Jewish libraries fiction Award. This award was established in 2017 and has been underwritten by Dan Wyman books to show off excellence in Jewish literature. So today I am thrilled to have with me the chair of that committee, Rena Citron, to tell me about this this year's award winners. So welcome, Rena.
Hi, Sheryl. Thanks so much for having me and spending time with really important Jewish books. That's great.
So I thought what we would do is tell me the names of the winners, and then we'll talk a little bit, and then you can tell me more about the actual books.
Okay, sound good.
Okay, so I'm going to insert a drum roll or something. I'll see what effect I can find. So who were the latest batch of winners?
Well, we we had a hard time choosing because our committee reads over 70 books in the course of our award season, but the four that we found and that we agreed upon and were the absolute, absolute, outstanding books that people should pay attention to and and put on their nightstand. Big winner is Songs for the brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari. And then we have three honor books, the Hebrew teacher, which is a series of three novellas by Maya Arad, Displaced persons, which is a collection of short stories by Joan Legant and Rules for ghosting, a novel by Shelley J shore,
all wonderful choices. I had the pleasure of speaking with Maya Arad earlier in the podcast, and I'm hoping that we'll get something with Ayelet Tsabari in the near future, and I read the Rules of ghosting and ... ah-mazing book. So let's back up a little bit. Can you tell me about the award.
Okay, well, the Association for Jewish library fiction award is given every single year to books that are outstanding literarily and also have significant Jewish representation. And we're not looking at books that just have a minor Jewish character who is not central to the story, or a fleeting Jewish experience in a in a novel, we're looking for something that is significantly Jewish. And we look at books that are published in the previous year, and they could also be translated from another language. In fact, Maya Arad writes in Hebrew, and her wonderful book was published this past year, and that's how we have that's how it came to us,
right? So, so you mentioned that it has to have significant Jewish content. So what makes a Jewish Book?
Well, you know, that's hard to say. It's like, you know what are the Supreme Court say when you see pornography, you just know it. When you see it, when you say Jewish Book. I think, I think most people who who who are readers and have a, you know, fair amount of experience with Jewish writing, and doesn't have to be the author, does not have to be Jewish. By the way, for our award, you kind of know it when you see it, that in all of the books that we honored this year, something new is being done. And we're not necessarily looking for somebody who goes off the charts, but some new contribution, some significant contribution to our understanding of the Jewish experience, either in the United States or anywhere in the world. And we think that's pretty important. And I think we all think it's worth honoring and bringing to the attention of of like minded readers.
Yeah, that's wonderful. One test that I have for the podcast is if I switched out the character and said, Okay, this character is not Jewish, does it change the story? And if the answer is no, it doesn't change anything. Then. For me, that's not enough Jewish content,
That's an interesting test. I'll have to try it.
So tell me more about the winners themselves.
Okay, well, before we go there, though, Sheryl, I want to acknowledge the people on the committee, and these are really hard working readers who are all librarians, or retired librarians, as I am, and who spend a lot of time throughout the course of the year reading and evaluating and thinking very, very critically and sharing their views with with each we share them with each other. So I want to give a shout out to Deborah Abacasis, who is a professor of literature at McGill University in Montreal, Nicole Coover Thompson, who is a school librarian in the suburbs of Chicago, but also is the librarian for her congregation, Etz Chaim, Sarah Feldman, who works for the Jewish Braille Institute in New York, Dina Herbert, who's a past president of AJL, who works for the Library of Congress and is also involved in her synagogue library. And Hannah Srour Zackon, who's an archivist at congregation. Shaare ha-Shamayim in Montreal, Quebec. So we really come from all over the country, and really all over North America, and you'll be the first to know, or among the first to know we are looking for a new member. So if any of the people are listening to your podcast are, I guess you should be a former librarian in some way. It's somehow connected to the library biz. Since we are AJL, contact me at AJL fiction award@gmail.com and we'll talk. And we really want to find somebody who likes to do what we do, and that's read a lot of books, and help bring the best ones to the top, like cream and bring them, bring them to the notice of readers all over English readers all over the US and the world.
That's great. I should mention that I had the pleasure of being on the committee for two years before I started the podcast, and it was a lot of fun and a lot of work. We read a lot of wonderful books, but also some not so wonderful books. So, you know, as you said, we do have to find the cream to push to the top
right. You know that you, you characterized it very well. We read a lot of things, and one of the things that we do, do and I and it makes the process easier, is that our committee meets periodic periodically on Zoom, where we talk about, what's the best thing you read recently in the last, you know, couple months, and it helps to really direct our reading so that we're all not wasting our time on things that we know don't deserve the recognition of the AJL fiction award. So it really helps make it a little bit more efficient. But you got a letter, you got a lot like to read and and to read critically, and you have to love Jewish books, and everybody on the committee does, and especially given this past political year where so many Jewish authors have been neglected and have been displaced and dissed, our work is, I think, even more important.
Absolutely. Okay, so you're going to tell me about more about the winners, sure.
Well, songs for the brokenhearted, I think, is the best book I read in 2024 and I read a lot of good books. It's by Ayelet Tsabari, who is Israeli of Yemeni descent, and she's interesting in so many ways. Many of your listeners I know are familiar with her memoir, The Art of leaving, and her short story collection, the Best place on earth. And this is her first novel. And Tsabari is interesting in so many ways. She writes in English. She doesn't write in Hebrew, and her English is really elegant and superb. And she her stories are centered around the Israeli experience. And this book, her first novel, is particularly extraordinary for several reasons. One is that it delves into the Yemeni displacement from from Yemen to Israel, and what happened to this community when they were really rescued and came to Israel and and their integration, or lack of integration, into Israeli society. And also, she covers a true but little known, at least to me. I had no knowledge of this before, and people on our committee said the same thing. It's it may be more known in Israel among the older generation, what happened. And it was not insignificant to some Jewish babies from Yemen Yemenite families who got sick were taken to the hospital, and suddenly they died. And people didn't know, you know they died, and you accepted it. It turns out that not an instant, insignificant number of them were adapted out to Ashkenazi families who were not able to have children. And this is a story that goes through it's a thread that goes through her story, tells songs for the broken hearted. And it really is a it's a fascinating book because it covers three generations of Yemeni family, and our narrator is zohara, who, in a way, is channeling AJL Sabari channels her own voice. I mean, it's not exactly her story, but it it's based loosely on some of her family's experiences. And she is a very talented young Yemeni woman who's displaced from her own family. She is sent to a an Ashkenazi boarding school. She's a very, very talented young woman, and kind of does not recognize the value of her own cultural background. And she comes back, she's in New York pursuing a PhD in Israeli poetry, and she's something's not working. She's just can't write it. She can't get it together. She goes through a bad marriage. All that really breaks up due to her own, her own fault, and her mother passes away in Israel, and she comes home, and her mother was the Yemeni immigrant, and she never really had that much respect for her mother. Her mother was always cleaning and cooking and singing, and she didn't understand her mother's songs, and she didn't understand her mother's life. And when she comes back and her own life is in tatters, she confronts herself through her mother's experience, and it is just a fascinating, fascinating story in the third generation, as her nephew, who is becoming radicalized in Israeli politics, and is kind of going in a very dangerous direction. So you have these three generations coming together, and it's, it's just a, just a fascinating story, and if it takes you more than a couple days to read, you know, then you you probably had a major, major interruption. It's one of these books you can't put down.
Yeah, I totally agree. I thought it was really beautiful. And I loved how much she got to got to know her mother posthumously. It was, you know, beautiful and sad, and how she and her sister were able to talk about their different experiences growing up and to find a way to connect again.
Yes, it was very important piece, and the whole thread of the singing of Yemenite women who from her mother's generation were illiterate. People came from Yemen, from from very rural situ, living situations, and they came barefoot, and they came illiterate, and but they came with a very strong cultural background, which as many children do, they dismiss the experiences of their family. You know, I wish I could go back now and ask my mother lots of questions about her growing up and about her parents growing up. But at the time, I wasn't interested. I should have been, but I wasn't. And Zohara was not interested at all. And when she comes back to Israel for her mother's funeral and to close out her mother's apartment, and all of those things, she's confronted with this whole breadth of life and culture she didn't know her mother had. And it's it's just so engrossing. And I don't know of anyone who's read it who hasn't been completely mesmerized by this book.
Well, it's a well deserved winner for for her. So what were the honor books,
alright? Well, we have three honor books, the Hebrew teacher, and I know you've spoken to Maya Arad, which is three novellas, and it's really about the experience of Israelis who come to America, ostensibly, for a short time, a year or two or three, either to start business or to go to school or pursue higher education, and then, you know, the great startup and and become a part of that startup culture, and wind up staying in the US for very extended periods of time. And so there's a dissonance in all of these people's lives. And Arad does a masterful job of describing that dissonance in the most profoundly human way. And the three novellas are very, very different. And the first one I related to because, not because I'm a Hebrew teacher, the first novella is called the Hebrew teacher, but because it's about an older woman, and I can relate to the older woman part, who spent her life developing a Hebrew Language and Culture Program at a Midwestern College, and the program thrives, and it's doing well, and It's expanding, and she even works hard to bring in a scholar to join the program from Israel, who's written on a very scholarly level about Israel, Israeli literature and and relating it to other literature. And a young man, and it turns out that he has absolutely no regard for her life's work. In fact, he works hard to eliminate her from the program. And if anybody know, people have been in the workplace, as all most of us have been, and you know what those kinds of conflicts are like, but how she deals with this very, very difficult job situation and her own life and her own children, and her husband had just recently retired, and her daughter, who'd been trying to have a child for many years, suddenly, not suddenly, she's pregnant, successfully pregnant. And what we what we have, is a look at a woman who spent 45 years developing a program in Hebrew literature, and she winds up questioning her place in in her workplace and in her family's life, and she asks all the good questions. And I'm not going to give the ending away. It's delightful and realistic and just perfect. The second novella has to do with an Israeli woman whose son went to Israel. I went to America years ago in the got had a very successful startup, you know, one of these dot coms, and he marries a younger Israeli woman. And they live in Silicon Valley, and they have a child, and she wants to come and see her grandchild, her only grandchild, and she comes, I kind of unannounced, for two weeks, and while she is in America, trying to spend time with her grandchild and understand her her son in his new life, and also understand her daughter in law, who basically wants to know part of her and and sees the cracks in the facade of her son and her daughter in law. And it's, it's really a very profound insight into what it means to change your place. And the third story is so contemporary. It's about an Israeli mother who's raising a family in California, and her daughter's American, and it seems out of place, and she gets ... the mother makes the grave mistake, if anybody is ever considering this, read this story. It's a cautionary tale, and she makes the mistake of getting involved in social media, to impersonating her daughter in social media, to get her friends. It really is a profound story. And,
And, yeah, that's one that really got to me,
Wasn't it great?
Yeah, and the role of social media and cell phones and connectedness and right in real life, versus, versus, and social media life,
all of those things. But the part of it that got me is that, you know, to be a mother is to be a mother is to be a mother. Yeah, only as happy as your least happy child and her her daughter is, you know, negotiating some tough stuff socially. But is. Doing it, but the mother inserts herself and in not a good way, and it's a cautionary tale, and is so contemporary and speaks so much to our time. The next one, I don't know. Do you like short stories Sheryl?
I love individual short stories. I don't actually like reading books of short stories. I like being engrossed in a world that I can read for hours and hours and get to know the characters and think about them. And with short stories, you know, you read it, and then it's it's done so it's hard for me to like switch tracks, to go on to the next story and then switch tracks again.
So, you know, just to show how they're different kinds of readers, that's good. I'm glad, I'm glad you said that, because my feeling is the opposite. I love short stories. I love that little it's like a burst of of an idea and a world, and it's so contained in a short space. And I'm always looking for I run a book group for seniors, and I'm always looking for good short stories. So I'm a big fan of short stories. And have you read displaced persons by Joan Legant?
No, I haven't.
Oh, it's worth it, even if you only read a few of her stories, they are so good. She writes extraordinary short stories that made me catch my breath while reading many of them. And the her collection is divided into two parts. The first seven stories are grouped into part one, called East. And all of these stories take place in Israel. And Joan Legant is American, but she spent a lot of her adult life, spending portions of major portions of her year in Israel, and then teaching English and and literature, and then the rest of the time in in America. So she really knows these two cultures very well. Least the first part east the stories take place in Israel and envelop us in the lives of American Jews who find themselves displaced in a place that is not their home. At the same time trying to find home in a culture that is not completely theirs, and there are just so many great stories in it. In in the first one, an American Adjunct Professor in Tel Aviv learns how to parent from a didactic immigrant from Baghdad. Beautiful souls follows two pretty American teenage girls who naively wander where they shouldn't in Jerusalem shook and in Wonder Women, a blended family on the brink of crumbling, is saved by the instincts of three generations of Jewish women. Now you gotta read this. They're and they're from a woman's, you know, woman's point of view. The second part of the collection, which she calls West, takes place in the United States. The innocent is, is a great story. The narrator's dying 86 year old father wants to make restitution to the woman he refused to marry 70 years earlier, and the daughter agrees to take him. You know, they go on a road trip to find this, this old woman, and I don't want to give away anymore, but when they get there, she's demented. She doesn't remember the Father. But what's the effect on the father? What's the effect on the daughter, who's just gone through her own very difficult relationship, breakup, breakup in wild animals, four generations of an extended Jewish family meet for dinner with dysfunction and love, losing from every collective poor. And the final story is called after and looks at Franny, who's 30 year struggle with mental illness, ends with a failed bone marrow transplant and family reconciliation. So look at does this great job of taking real people's experiences, real Jewish people's experiences, from a broad gamut of Jewish life in America, in Israel, and in all the stories there, you meet fragile, heroic, flawed, searching, confounding and complicated characters. And they are us. That's who we are as a people. And all 14 stories in displaced persons, I think, Merit any the reader's time and effort, and I guarantee you will not be disappointed.
Okay, I will check it out.
Alright, good. Our final story is a little bit different. It's called Rules for ghosting by Shelley J Shore, and this is her debut novel. And everybody on the committee was completely captivated by the story because it it it's funny, it's clever, it's extra-ordinarily, well written. It's very contemporary in his characters. And I was completely surprised, and I didn't want to read it first, because I don't like supernatural stories. I'm not a science fiction person, and I don't, you know, really, I'm not drawn to ghost stories or any of that stuff. But I was drawn to this. I was drawn into this by her very clever writing. And it's the story of a strong, connected Jewish family contemporary. It takes place today. The main character who's telling us the story is a trans man. And what is so wonderful about this? Well, there are many wonderful things. Is that the Jewish family, they support each other, and they support this, this son, who lived first part of his life as is the daughter. And Ezra is completely Ezra, and Ezra is always referred to as Ezra. And the family embraces Ezra as Ezra. The family owns ... now this is where it really gets kind of kind of interesting, and makes it a little bit more intriguing .... owns a funeral home. It's been in the family for a few generations, and Ezra wants no part of it. Ezra is a doula, which is very interesting for a man to have that job. And Ezra is also a ...
Well for people who don't know what that is,
okay. A doula is a person who is not a doctor or a nurse, but assists, assists a woman who's giving birth. And lots of people hire doulas to be with them, to kind of advocate for them, and to help them breathe, you know, and, and, and be that extra voice, that extra person at the time of giving birth. And Ezra does this mainly for same sex couples or transgender couples and and he's good at it. And you see a little, you get insight into that life. We also get insight into what what it is to run a Jewish funeral home. The the piece that I didn't think I'd like, but it's actually very intriguing, is that Ezra has the ability, and has since, since he was young, to see ghosts, and the ghosts play an important part in the story. One is of his grandfather, who was a Holocaust survivor who lost most of his family in the Holocaust, who comes to America and builds this Jewish funeral home business that and we learn a lot about what what it takes to run a Jewish funeral home. What is a Tahara? What is the respect that one gives a person who's passed away, and it's just, it's just so good. And so the ghosts speak to Ezra and help him understand his life. And there are various ghosts that come to him in various places. Sometimes they're people who have passed through the funeral home. And then there's a love interest for Ezra, who happens to be a widower, and he speaks to Ezra. I don't know if I'm expressing this properly. It's not off putting. The ghosts are not off putting to me, right?
No, they're not, they're not spooky ghosts.
They're insightful, yeah,
one of our committee members wrote really eloquently about this book, and I'm going to read what she said. She said, Shore's debut novel expertly weaves together the experiences of Jewish family life and the transgender journey, authentically portraying Jewish traditions, while exploring complex themes of family dynamics, grief and love as Ezra navigates his transition, the expectations of his family, and a blossoming romance. His journey offers a poignant and at times humorous reflection on identity and belonging with a richly detailed cultural backdrop and sensitive portrayal of both biological and chosen families. This book is a heartfelt celebration of self discovery and the enduring connections that shape us. Let me make sure that everybody knows who wrote that. That's Nicole Hoover Thompson, who's from the Chicago area, and I think she says it really well. One of the things that I found so charming about the book is the humor there's really it doesn't take itself so seriously that it's grim or dry or there's lots and lots of humor in this book. And in fact, one of the most humorous parts of it comes in the beginning. And the story opens with the Passover Seder, and the family gets together. And there is a big reveal from the mother at the Passover Seder, which we won't give away. And you know, everybody stays is is at the Seder. It's important for the family, for everybody to be there. It's, it's an important touch tone for them. And then there's this announcement that up ends the family, and up ends ezra's life as well, to a certain extent, and the way that it's resolved is very nice. It's a very Jewish Book and a very respectful book.
Yeah, I thought so too. I really enjoyed it, and what the reason I picked it up was because I like fantasy and science fiction, so that the ghosts were what drew me in. But I thought it was a beautiful story, and I loved that it wasn't a coming out story. You know, it was someone who's a trans person, living his life, being active in the community, and it was just an accepted fact from the beginning, exactly, wasn't an issue,
right? It wasn't a it wasn't a struggle, it wasn't a fight, and it just was a wonderful portrayal of a loving Jewish family, yeah, you know, with all the courts, you know, all of the, all of the things that all families have, you know, we're not talking about, you know, Leave It to Beaver or father. You know, these are things that we can probably relate to in our generation, but not this kind of of idealized, unrealistic Jewish family, right?
So wonderful. Thank you so much for telling me about the award winners. Is there any other book you'd like to mention that to give a shout out for sure,
one book that we all loved very much was Leah Lapids On her own. Have you read that yet?
No, I It's on my list, but I haven't read it yet.
.Okay, this is another book we read in translation. Lapid is a Israeli journalist and a photo journalist, and she's the wife of Yair Lapid, who was prime minister for about 15 minutes, and it is a wonderful, wonderful novel set in Israel that looks at a young girl whose mother comes from The Soviet Union, so she's raised in that environment. And she's a very bright girl, but she wants a lot that her mother can't give her, and she finds herself getting mixed up with a a Jewish gangster, and she witnesses a murder, and she runs away. And she runs away quite accidentally, to the home of an older Israeli woman who is becoming demented, and she thinks that this young woman is her granddaughter, whose son lives in the United States, and finally, the granddaughter is going to come and visit her, and it's, it's centered around Israel Remembrance Day, and her oldest son had been killed in one of the wars. And she's the mother. Grandmother is very, very focused on getting to the cemetery, and our protagonist is focused on staying alive, but also understanding who she is in relation to her mother and the new immigrant and how she wants to live her life. And so we have all of these different forces coming together. And eventually, the son, who lived in America for many years and seems to have neglected his mother comes back, and everybody's finding their way. It's a very complex, interrelated story that's also a great page turner,
Great. I'll have that move up on my my pile. So I forgot to give you advanced warning about this, but in every podcast following stealing from my podcast mentor, Heidi Rabinowitz, who does the book of life, which focuses on children's literature, Kid lit, it's Tikkun olum time, if you would like to put out a call for some healing in the world. What would it be?
Oh, my goodness, there's so many ways to go with that. I think Jews at this particular time need to be particularly strong and aware of their Jewish identity and proud and stand up. Because when we are proud of who we are, other people relate to it. And you know, we see it in literature, how Jewish voices have been deliberately stifled this past 18 months, the publishing world has caved. The entertainment world has caved. It seems as though the cultural world is afraid to bring Jewish voices to the fore, and it's important for all of us, not those, not just those people who are fortunate enough to be talented, to be artists, in in any way that they are artists. And I admire those people very much, but for all of us, it's a simple Jew, and that's who I consider myself, a simple Jew to be proud and loud when I need to be loud about it, and just to wear my face in the world. Is it you?
That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that well. Rena Citron, it has been a delight and a pleasure to talk with you about the association of Jewish libraries award winners. Thank you so much for joining me.
Well. Thank you very much, Sheryl, for having your podcast and for giving me time to share my thoughts,
that's great. Thanks. If you are interested in any of the books we discussed today, you can find them at your favorite board and brick or online bookstore or at your local library. Thanks to Di Yan Kee for use of his Freilich, which definitely makes me happy. This podcast is a project of the Association of Jewish libraries, and you can find more about it at www.jewishlibraries.org/nice Jewish books. I would like to thank AJL and my podcast mentor, Heidi Rabinowitz, Keep listening for the promo for her latest episode.
Hi. This is Mary leshempelle, author and illustrator of a Feather a pebble, a show. I'll be joining you soon on the bookoflife podcast, and I'd like to dedicate this episode to my parents, whose love of nature has always inspired me.
The Book of Life is the sister podcast of nice Jewish books. I'm your host. Heidi Rabinowitz and I podcast about Jewish kidlit join me to hear my conversation with author illustrator Mary lesham Pelley about a feather, a pebble, a shell at thebookoflifepodcast.com.
