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THE BOOK OF LIFE - A Walk on the Jewish Side | Otter.ai

THE BOOK OF LIFE - A Walk on the Jewish Side

AJL Holly Zimmerman41min

Heidi Rabinowitz

00:00

[COLD OPEN] I kind of wish people would stop trying to define other people. I wish people would let people be who they are. But I also think that the desire to define others stems from a desire to define yourself. If you can find the rules to a system, then you can find where you fit into this system. But I think as you get older, you realize that these rules don't really exist. You don't need to fit into these isolated boxes, and you can be whoever you want, which means that everyone else can be whoever they want.

Heidi Rabinowitz

00:25

[MUSIC, INTRO] This is The Book of Life, a show about Jewish kidlit, mostly, I'm Heidi Rabinowitz. Jewish identity can be complicated, especially for people who come from a mixed background. We are starting to see this reality acknowledged in middle grade and young adult fiction, with characters who are working to figure out what being Jewish means to them, or who are trying to better integrate the different parts of their heritage. For this episode I've called together three authors whose novels explore this topic, Primrose Madayag Knazan, author of the YA novel Lessons in Fusion, and middle grade authors Aimee Lucido, who wrote Recipe for Disaster, and Amanda Panitch, who wrote The Two Wrong Halves of Ruby Taylor. Here is our virtual panel discussion, "a walk on the Jewish side."

Heidi Rabinowitz

01:30

Aimee, Amanda, Primrose, welcome to The Book of Life.

Primose Madayag Knazan

01:34

Thanks for having us.

Heidi Rabinowitz

01:35

Thank you so much. We're excited to be here.

Amanda Panitch

01:37

Yeah, thank you so much.

Heidi Rabinowitz

01:39

So I'd like to ask each of you to tell us what your book is about and what inspired you to write it, just briefly. So let's start with Amanda.

Amanda Panitch

01:47

So my book is called The Two Wrong Halves of Ruby Taylor. And it's about a 12 year old girl who is a patrilineal Jew. Her father is Jewish, and her mother is Christian, and she was raised Jewish. But she faces a lot of discrimination, not so much from her community, but from her grandmother who feels that she isn't Jewish enough and doesn't belong in the community, even though Ruby has been raised as a Jew and feels very strongly that she is Jewish. The book follows her and her perfect cousin Sarah, who is perfectly Jewish on both sides of her family. And when Sarah accidentally gets possessed by a dybbuk, an evil spirit that possesses somebody in order to complete some task, Ruby's the only one who can stop her. But as it turns out, a dybbuk can only be exorcized by a "pious Jew," quote, unquote. And if Ruby isn't a pious Jew enough for her own grandmother, how can she possibly be Jewish enough to face the dybbuk?

Amanda Panitch

02:45

So this is my second middle grade fantasy book, and the first one involves a golem. And so I just had a lot of fun playing around with the different creatures in Jewish mythology and setting them in our world. You can still say a lot about our world, even if all the elements aren't quite of our world. And so I really liked using that fantasy element and the elements from our history in order to explore very contemporary issues. And I think the thing that especially grabbed me about the book is because in all of the reading that I did, and the research that I did, it specified that it needed to be a "pious Jew," quote, unquote, to be the one to expel the dybbuk and rescue the person who is possessed. And so I knew that this book wanted to explore a character who wasn't quite sure of her identity. And so in reading that I was thinking like, well, this is a conflict right there, like she needs to be a pious Jew in order to save her cousin and expel the dybbuk. But she, she needs to feel confident in herself and who she is, in order to do that, that's the subplot in the conflict right there. I am not a patrilineal Jew, but my family was mixed a little bit in that my father is ethnically Jewish, but he was not really raised Jewish, his family celebrated Christmas and didn't really celebrate any of the Jewish holidays or or take part in any Jewish culture. It was like my grandparents on that side were embarrassed to be Jewish. And so when my father married my mother, who is very strongly Jewish and identifies very strongly with the Jewish community, it distanced us a little bit from that side of the family. And my grandmother actually favored our cousins in kind of a reversal of the situation in the book, where my other uncle married a Christian woman, my cousins were Christian, and she very clearly and strongly favored them. And so this book kind of stemmed from those feelings. That's what inspired me to write Ruby and her, you know, her story of not quite fitting in on either side of the family.

Heidi Rabinowitz

04:38

All right, thank you, Amanda. Aimee, tell us about your book.

Aimee Lucido

04:42

So my book, Recipe for Disaster is about a 12, almost 13 year old girl named Hannah Malfa-Adler, who comes from a family that has a complicated Jewish background. Her mother was raised Jewish but doesn't practice, her father was raised Catholic but doesn't practice, and Hannah kind of doesn't have much connection to either religion in her family, with the exception of the fact that her grandmother Mimi lives with them, and she identifies very strongly as Jewish. And so the only connection that Hannah has to any sort of family culture whatsoever is her grandma Mimi, and also her best friend Shira, who just turned 13 and has a blowout bat mitzvah like it's, it's big, it's festive, it's expensive and involves a dance with the boy that they both like, and Hannah starts to get jealous. And so she decides that she's going to have a bat mitzvah too. The only problem is her parents and her grandmother can't agree on whether she's Jewish enough for one. And so Hannah decides to go behind everyone's back and give herself the bat mitzvah that she craves, although things do not go as planned.

Aimee Lucido

05:52

And this was very much inspired by my childhood, I was also raised in a very secular household that was half Jewish, half Catholic, but really nothing because we we only kind of celebrated the fun holidays, if even that. I remember when I was 12 going on 13 I really, really wanted a bat mitzvah and I felt like I deserved one, right? I had the, I had the right to have one because I was Jewish, not really understanding kind of the work that went into having a bat mitzvah and that commitment that it required. I never ended up having a bat mitzvah. As I got older, I sort of thought of not having a bat mitzvah as kind of a thing that was preventing me from being Jewish. And so when people asked me if I was Jewish, I would say, Well, I kind of am, my mom's Jewish, but I never had a bat mitzvah. And then as I got older and started to get more connected to my Jewish roots, I still kept coming back to the bat mitzvah thing, which at some point started to feel kind of silly. Like, you know, I was the one out of all my friends that were Jewish, that all had a bat mitzvah, that was that was keeping Passover, like everyone would come to my house for Passover, I was the one that was getting us to fast on Yom Kippur, I was hosting Rosh Hashanah parties and all these things. And so I was like, Well, why am I so stuck on this thing? The book really came as an exploration of what is a bat mitzvah? What does it mean? What does it mean to be Jewish without having a bat mitzvah? I just really explore and kind of giving myself the permission today to be Jewish the way that I am and not look at my past and use the ceremony that I didn't have when I was 13 as the thing that would have made me Jewish. I'm Jewish today because I am.

Heidi Rabinowitz

07:29

Okay, great. Thank you. Primrose?

Primose Madayag Knazan

07:33

My book is Lessons in Fusion. It's about a 16 year old food blogger who is Philippinx and Ashkenazi Jew. She enters this televised cooking competition, where the producers only want her to cook Filipino food instead of her bubbe's recipes. She knows nothing about the Filipino culture. So she has to learn not only to cook the cuisine, but learn more about her culture. And as she does so she learns about her identity, her food, her family, and why her mother kept it all from her in the first place.

Primose Madayag Knazan

08:09

The reason why I wrote this book is during the pandemic in 2020, my son and I actually got into an argument, because he refused to read. He was extremely stressed out, he was extremely anxious because he was isolated, he didn't have his friends. And he retreated into video games and YouTube videos, and that upset me greatly. My son is also Ashkenazi Jew and Philippinx; I'm, I'm a Jew by choice. So my children had been raised in both worlds. I asked him, Why aren't you reading? And he said to me, Well, I don't want to read the books that we have. And he had a stack of books next to his bed. All the books, first of all, were about dystopian stories, he was 12 at the time, that's all the stories that were out there. He didn't want to read about that, right in the middle of the pandemic. And the second thing he said is that None of these characters relate to me. And I looked at them, and I thought to myself, you're right. None of these characters in any of these books are anyone that you could relate to. So if I write a book for you about you, will you read it? And he said, Yes. And together, we came up with the basis of the story, and I wrote the book.

Heidi Rabinowitz

09:26

Wow, that's fascinating that your son actually helped you come up with it.

Primose Madayag Knazan

09:31

Yeah, it was really born out of the fact that we were watching so many cooking competitions on Netflix, and just on TV, because there was really nothing much to watch. There were no new television stories. So this was something we kind of got obsessed with. And I thought, well, let's work with this. And together as we talked about it, he actually helped me realize that it actually worked better if we set it during the pandemic, the entire television competition actually takes place through Zoom. And that was his idea. And it really, really helped, because it grounded the character so that she would have her support system with her rather than her being distant from them in Toronto filming a cooking competition. And as we talked more, he helped me develop the characters' voices. He eventually got bored of that, because he went back to school, but I just kept going and really dived into this character, and created something that wasn't just for him, but for anybody who had a foot in both worlds.

Heidi Rabinowitz

10:34

Wonderful, thank you. So you've each written a story about characters who are struggling to define their identity in the face of judgment from other people, even including family members. I'm really noticing a current throughout all of these books of people wanting to tell other people what their identity should be. And I just wonder why. I mean, obviously, you're not going to know the answer to this. This is a big philosophical question. But just, I'm just wondering, why do you think people have such a strong urge to define each other? Do you have any thoughts on why we do that to each other?

Aimee Lucido

11:13

I have a lot of thoughts. And, I'm gonna gather my thoughts. Someone else should go first.

Heidi Rabinowitz

11:22

Sure.

Primose Madayag Knazan

11:24

In my book, main character, SAH-rah, the producers are constantly calling her SEH-rah, they just don't seem to understand, this is how she wants her name to be pronounced. And she gives in because she's trying to now squeeze herself into this box that the producers want to put her in. She has to find her voice and try to say no, this is who I am. This is actually a message I tried to tell my children. Don't let other people define you, be yourself.

Heidi Rabinowitz

11:52

I kind of wish people would stop trying to define other people. I wish people would let people be who they are. But I also think that the desire to define others stems from a desire to define yourself, I think that people want there to be rules, because you can understand rules. Like if you can find the rules to a system, then you can find where you fit into this system. And I think that when you do that, in order to come up with a consistent set of rules, sometimes you end up defining others in the process. But I think as you get older, you sort of realize that these rules don't really exist. You don't need to fit into these isolated boxes, and you can be whoever you want, which means that everyone else can be whoever they want.

Amanda Panitch

12:34

But then I think some people never quite grow out of that, like the grandmother in my book, and like some real life grandmothers, kind of see themselves as the gatekeepers. Like the grandmother in my book, she thinks that she is in the right, she looks at the rules. And she's like, okay, the rules I grew up with say that if your mother is not Jewish, and you didn't convert, then you are not Jewish, therefore you are not Jewish, no matter, you know, what the rules of your Reform synagogue say, and no matter how you feel, no matter how you were raised. And so I do think some people just like being gatekeepers, and keeping people out of the group too.

Heidi Rabinowitz

13:08

I think that's so true. And I think that comes from kind of an insecurity within themselves where like, if the rules that they learned no longer exist, then their entire foundation of who they are suddenly disappears, too. And so because they've only defined themselves against these roles, they kind of need to cling to them, or else like the fundamental foundation of who they are, is suddenly gone.

Primose Madayag Knazan

13:34

Because that's part of what they interpret themselves to be. When people are like that, and they're fixed in their own ways, that's their way, I suppose, of saying that's who they are. And I think that's something that everyone n eeds to learn that when one person is a certain way, in a certain personality and a certain person, that doesn't affect who you are. They don't have to bleed into each other, everyone can be themselves.

Heidi Rabinowitz

14:00

In Recipe for Disaster, and in The Two Wong Halves of Ruby Taylor, the characters are struggling with feeling Jewish enough. And in Lessons in Fusion, Sarah is comfortable with her Jewishness, but she's struggling with feeling Filipino enough. So do you think that every mixed heritage child is destined to go through this process of figuring out how to feel like enough? And do you have any advice about getting through it?

Heidi Rabinowitz

14:26

These are good questions. My gosh, so thought provoking.

Amanda Panitch

14:29

I feel like I can't speak for every mixed heritage child, I would say that the ones I know have kind of gone through this journey of feeling like they don't quite belong on either side. But again, those are all anecdotal experiences.

Heidi Rabinowitz

14:44

I really hope that every child from a mixed heritage is not destined to go through this. My husband was raised Greek Orthodox, and I have my own blend. And I really want our children to know that they're both, and like to feel very comfortable being both and I know that's maybe hopelessly naive and optimistic. But I would really like for them not to struggle, the same way that I did. It can potentially be very complicated, but I feel like creating an open dialogue about it and sort of making it a thing that people are allowed to talk about and think about, and maybe even change how they feel about it over time, makes it so much easier.

Primose Madayag Knazan

15:21

I think if you're mixed heritage, you're not going to live your life 50%-50% It's just... life isn't like that. There's no black and white and everything blends together. And sometimes you go one way, and sometimes you go another. With our children, we try so so hard to raise them with both sides. And we try to do equally but we know there's no such thing. We're trying to raise them with the Jewish culture and the Jewish religion, like we actually go to synagogue. Pre pandemic, when they actually had a family service, my family and my children were so involved with the synagogue and my oldest son actually had a puppet show, he had a puppet character that he did during the family service. And it was very well known and everyone loved this character. Then the pandemic happened, and we went to online services, and my kids lost touch and we're trying to bring that back. But they went to a Hebrew bilingual school. And at the same time, we took them to folk dance lessons and they performed in Filipino folk dance festivals in the summertime. And so we try to balance both, but there's going to be disconnect. My parents celebrate Christmas, and my cousins celebrate Christmas. And I have to be very careful when my cousins talk about Santa Claus. And when my parents decided to have Easter dinner, invite us and they have a big old ham in the middle of the table. We don't keep kosher at all, but it always falls during Passover and at this time, we don't eat ham. But there's these disconnects. And we have to raise my children to speak up how they feel about it. It's a constant battle of trying to balance both worlds. And it'll shift in one direction or the other.

Heidi Rabinowitz

17:10

All right. Cooking and baking plays a role to a greater or lesser extent in all of your stories. So I'd like to ask each of you to talk about the role of cooking in your story and why this theme is important to you.

Amanda Panitch

17:25

I mean, I think cooking and baking is important to me in relation to my Jewishness, because it's a lot of how I feel Jewish in my life, because I'm not super observant. I haven't been to synagogue, you know, since the holidays. But I do like to bake challah and bake babka and like try all sorts of new flavor combinations in my babka, some that are more successful than others. French Onion babka is delicious.

Primose Madayag Knazan

17:47

Oh, yum.

Aimee Lucido

17:49

Oooh!

Amanda Panitch

17:50

And you know, and so I think it always ends up playing kind of the same role for my characters. Although actually, it's kind of the opposite in The Two Wrong Halves of Ruby Taylor, which is not usually how it is in my books, where cooking helps them feel connected to their heritage. But in the book, the grandmother owns like a catering business where she cooks kosher food, and Ruby's cousin Sarah, who is the overly perfect one, is always asked to help out. And meanwhile Ruby always just messes everything up. The opening scene of the book is actually Ruby dropping a big container of the grandmother's matzah balls down the stairs. So I think in this book, it really symbolizes how she doesn't feel like she belongs, you know, in her mind, she should be able to like cook these matzah balls, she should be able to help with the cooking of this kosher food. And because her family doesn't keep kosher, and because she sees herself as so unsuccessful in helping with all of the cooking and the baking it just contributes to the feeling of her not belonging. And so she has to kind of come to the realization that that's not her way of fitting into her culture. She gets other ways of fitting in and feeling part of the Jewish people than you know, being able to successfully carry the matzah balls up the stairs.

Heidi Rabinowitz

19:02

And now I really want matzah ball soup. Yeah, I feel like food is such an integral part of Judaism, at least it is in my version of Judaism, like the times I feel the most Jewish are around very specific dinner tables, the Passover Seder table or the break fast dinner table. When I thought of the idea of Recipe for Disaster, I kind of backed into it, because I knew I wanted to write about food and I wanted to write a book where recipes were treated as poems. And I can't think about food without thinking of the most important food to me, which is the food that my family has every year at Passover, the latkes we make at Hanukkah, or the hamantashen we make at Purim. Food and Judaism are so intricately linked. For me it was impossible to write a book about food without it also being about Judaism.

Primose Madayag Knazan

19:50

I agree, it's, food is so important to Judaism. In almost all cultures, I've always thought of food as a gateway to culture almost the first thing you think of when you think of any culture is the cuisine. In my novel Lessons in Fusion, I actually have recipes at the beginning of each chapter. And they are formatted like a food blog because Sarah is a food blogger. And I also kind of backed into the story through wanting to have recipes in the book. And when we started to put together this story about this cooking competition, I started to create these fusion recipes. And for those who don't know what fusion is, it's basically taking two types of cuisine and trying to intertwine it together into one dish. And I love that as a metaphor for Sarah, who is Ashkenazi Jew and Philippinx. And so I really wanted her to realize that when she was asked, Cook Filipino food for us, and the only thing that she had in her repertoire really, were these beautiful memories of her cooking with her bubbe, and she couldn't share that in this competition, so she had to kind of push that aside. And then she had to learn to cook Filipino food and realize she only knew three dishes. And by realizing she knew nothing about the food, she knew nothing about that side of her culture, and so she dove into learning about culture through food, and eventually learned how to integrate both sides of her cultures, not only into herself and into her life, but also into her cooking. And that was so important to me to incorporate those two halves, and this gorgeous metaphor of food on a plate and putting it together. We're raising our children this way trying to put these two cultures together on a plate and in a child. So I was just fascinated with that as a metaphor for my story.

Heidi Rabinowitz

21:48

I love that as a metaphor. That's great.

Primose Madayag Knazan

21:50

Thank you.

Heidi Rabinowitz

21:53

And now that we've made the listeners hungry... Is there any particular dish or recipe that was in your story that you would like to recommend that people should seek out and try?

Primose Madayag Knazan

22:06

I have a really fantastic recipe for brisket caldareta in the book, it was one of the first recipes I thought to put together because caldareta is a Filipino stew, beef stew with olives and peppers, and it's it's very briny. And there's brisket, and our bubbe's recipe for brisket was onion soup mix and brown sugar and a lot of salt and put that into an oven forever. And I thought, what if I combine both? And the first time I tried it was so succulent, so divine, I actually wanted to serve it for one of the seders. I was turned down, but I would love to do that one day, someday when I get to govern the seder, I get to be the primary cook, rather than my mother in law. She cooks incredibly, so I am not going to take that away from her. But one day, one day, I gotta cook that for a seder.

Heidi Rabinowitz

23:03

Awesome.

Heidi Rabinowitz

23:03

I think my favorite recipe that I included in the book is probably the one for sufganiyot. I love to make sufganiyot because I love donuts, but I'm very picky about them. Like I want them to be warm. I like them to be cream filled, which I know is not technically sufganiyot but I like them with cream and not jelly. And so I very much recommend that, it has become my go-to for Hanukkah, because like we were definitely like a latke family. And then I was started researching for this book. And I was like, Oh, let me try this sufganiyot recipe and it was so good. And so now the last I think like three or four Hanukkahs, we've done the sufganiyot.

Primose Madayag Knazan

23:38

I gotta try that!

Amanda Panitch

23:39

I was gonna say if you have a recipe for like a Passover dessert that tastes good, definitely want that.

Heidi Rabinowitz

23:44

I have those too, The flourless chocolate cake that we have had since I was 13 or 14, I don't have in the book, but I have a very good flourless chocolate cake recipe if you'd like it.

Amanda Panitch

23:53

I can always go for a chocolate cake recipe.

Heidi Rabinowitz

23:56

It's so good that it doesn't even need to be Passover. It's just like any excuse to... it's so rich. Because there's no flour. It's like just chocolate and it's delicious.

Primose Madayag Knazan

24:03

Well, I'm just a sucker for matzah brei during Passover and we make it every day. But what I add to it, I always add it to it, and I put that as a recipe my book, is that I do avocado, mango and condensed milk on top.

Aimee Lucido

24:18

That sounds good.

Primose Madayag Knazan

24:19

Those flavors are very Filipino. And I thought I'm gonna put that together with the matzah brei, and chef's kiss.

Heidi Rabinowitz

24:26

That sounds amazing.

Amanda Panitch

24:27

That would be good on like a latke too.

Aimee Lucido

24:29

It probably would.

Primose Madayag Knazan

24:30

Oh yeah, I put that in everything.

Heidi Rabinowitz

24:33

Right1 So I know Amanda, your book isn't quite as heavily cooking related as the other two titles we're talking about here. But did you have any particular dish that you wanted to recommend?

Amanda Panitch

24:44

Most of the scenes in the book that involve food are not happy about it. But there is a scene where they have the Hanukkah party and it features all of the Hanukkah food. And even though the scene itself might not be that happy, I feel like the associations of the food are happy so I guess like latkes with sour cream and applesauce. I sit on the fence but I guess I'd have to go with that unless I can go with the recipe that's not in the book in which case I go with my French onion babke because that is really delicious.

Heidi Rabinowitz

25:10

You'll have to send me the recipe for that, we'll have to trade. I really want to try that.

Primose Madayag Knazan

25:13

I want that too!

Aimee Lucido

25:15

Also, I always thought I was like an applesauce latke person, but then not during Hanukkah I had them with sour cream, and they were so good, but I'm still like an applesauce during a Hanukkah person. But all the rest of the year I do sour cream.

Primose Madayag Knazan

25:27

In my book, I actually have one of the first recipes, a sweet potato latke but with Indian seasonings, and she makes it with like yogurt green apple and cucumber raita, so like yogurt and put that instead. And when I finally nailed down the recipe, because I tend to just make up recipes when I cook, so actually when I nailed it down. Oh my gosh, it turned out so well.

Amanda Panitch

25:52

It sounds so good. I like a parsnip latke with cranberry sauce. Like a little horseradish in the cranberry sauce. Very good combination.

Primose Madayag Knazan

25:59

Parsnips! What a great idea.

Amanda Panitch

26:02

To be fair, it wasn't my idea. I got the recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

Aimee Lucido

26:10

I'm like gonna find a way to make matzah ball soup tonight or order it or something because I really craving it now.

Heidi Rabinowitz

26:18

All right, well, let's let's move on. The granddaddy of interfaith kidlit or maybe it should be the grandmama of interfaith kidlit, is Are You There, God, It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. And it's coming out as a movie after all these years. When it was published in 1970 it was a very rare example of an interfaith book. But now it's common as with your books, it's common to see both casual and in depth explorations of this identity. Why do you think it took so long for that to happen?

Primose Madayag Knazan

26:53

I feel like there is a real want, just in general, not even just children, but for people to see Jewish characters that aren't just framed as victims. And they want to see Jewish characters that are like them, like in their own worlds. And the interfaith example is such a perfect, perfect framing for that. Because like I've had many Filipinos read my book, who know nothing about Jewish people, other than the Holocaust and all the stereotypes, unfortunately, but they read my book and they're like, Oh, I get it. Because I have the mother's story, her conversion story as part of the book, just to show that it's not a rejection of religion and the rejection of culture, it's an embracing of something else. I think this right now especially is just a time for people to want to see those stories more and embrace those stories more, because people are so much more conscious of the media they're consuming and of the stories they want to read. Everyone wants to see diversity and they want to see different stories.

Aimee Lucido

28:08

I also wonder if it's taken time for Judaism itself to evolve to a place where it can handle these sorts of conversations, because I like I wasn't alive in the 70s. I was born in 1990. But I was not privy to these kinds of conversations until much later in my life. And I don't know if it's social media, or if it's just the people that I personally associate with or if it's just my own awareness of things. But I feel like some of these conversations, or at least like the openness around the conversations, and the acceptingness of the conversations is newish. And so 50 years ago, when Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret came out, that might have been the first time some people were ever even thinking about what it meant to be interfaith. In that way, I think I'm very grateful that the book existed when it did, because if that really was people's first time thinking about it, then it clearly needed to be talked about. And I feel like that maybe started the conversation in some ways. And you know, here we are 50 years later, talking about it so much more freely, and so much more comfortably. Hopefully, it continues.

Heidi Rabinowitz

29:14

All right. Since we are all here together, do you have any questions for each other?

Aimee Lucido

29:21

I would love to know if everyone... is writing books that are quote unquote, "Jewish" something that you intentionally choose to do, or is it something that just sort of happens naturally for you?

Amanda Panitch

29:32

My first book came out in 2015. And it started off being something that I kind of threw in just because I was Jewish and so the main character is Jewish. And then I actually got some pushback from my publisher, because I had something about like, she spent all of her bat mitzvah money on something. And my publisher came back and was like, I don't know if people are gonna really know what a bat mitzvah is. Can we change this? And I was just sitting there like, well, if it was like she spent all of her Easter money or something you wouldn't ask me to change that. And so after that it kind of became something that I included in my books just kind of out of spite. I felt like that's what like, you know, a very powerful motivation. And so yeah, my books kind of became more and more Jewish since then. And I've had a lot of fun with it. I think someone already mentioned that a lot of the books when we were younger and growing up were sad Jewish books like Holocaust related, a lot of victims. And so I had a lot of fun writing funny books about Jewish kids where they got to be the heroes in the end, and nobody died horribly.

Primose Madayag Knazan

30:32

I like that! Lessons in Fusion is my first novel. Prior to that I actually have a long history of being a playwright. And my plays have always been about identity in some form. I've written a lot about Filipino identity, identity as a mother, identity as a woman. And I started to, of course, write about being Jewish as well. My most recent play that I'm currently working on and finishing, Precipice, is about a Filipino woman who has converted to Judaism, and trying to reconcile that with her very, very strongly Catholic, very Filipino mother, both stories kind of go hand in hand, I wrote them both at the same time. So I feel like the play is almost Sarah's mother's story. I write about what I know. And I wanted to write about my Jewish side as well, and not just about my Filipino side, because I wanted my children and my audience to see stories of Judaism that aren't just about the Holocaust, and also about interfaith, interreligious, inte cultural stories that showed diversity. I was actually very lucky, I'm gonna plug myself, that my play Precipice actually won the Canadian Jewish playwriting competition.

Heidi Rabinowitz

32:01

Mazel tov!

Primose Madayag Knazan

32:02

Thank you. And I think that it shows that people want to read these stories. And so I want to explore them further.

Heidi Rabinowitz

32:11

Aimee, can you answer the question that you asked so we can hear what you have to say about it?

Aimee Lucido

32:16

Well, I think the reason that I asked is because for me, it's very conscious when I make my stories Jewish, because I was not raised in any particularly Jewish way. When I write my books, I try to go back to when I was at age and sort of live the experience, I guess. And because I really did not have many markers of Judaism at that point in my life, it tends to not come out in my stories, unless I put it there. I'm always just curious what it's like for other people. But for people who were raised in very Jewish households, you can't not write it because when you're going back to your 12 year old self, the Judaism is there.

Heidi Rabinowitz

32:49

Okay. Did anybody else have a question for the rest of the group?

Primose Madayag Knazan

32:53

What are your next projects?

Heidi Rabinowitz

32:55

Yeah, that's actually that was something I wanted to ask too. I want to know what everybody's working on next.

Aimee Lucido

33:02

As of right now, I have three books coming out in 2024, one of which is a Jewish chapter book, one of which is a picture book called Pasta, Pasta, Lots of Pasta, and one of which is a middle grade, that is not Jewish called Words Apart, but the scheduling is possibly going to get shifted around. But as of this moment, three books in 2024, which I'm very excited for.

Primose Madayag Knazan

33:22

Mazel Tov on that!

Aimee Lucido

33:23

Thank you. Are there any, there's a good chance that one of them is going to end up in 2025. But we'll see.

Heidi Rabinowitz

33:28

Okay, good work, Aimee!

Aimee Lucido

33:31

It's funny, because so many of these we sold like, ages and ages ago. And it just happens to be that because publishing is chaotic, that they just happen to be stacked on one after the other.

Heidi Rabinowitz

33:41

Okay, and Primrose, you mentioned that you're working on a play, and is there anything else that you're working on?

Primose Madayag Knazan

33:47

Well, I'm finishing that play Precipice, and I've been approached by my publisher to start the next story, I just have to finish promoting this one. I'm toying with the idea of writing a story about my mother who had gone to Holland from the Philippines to sew; she was young at the time, she was about 18 years old. And I'm going to toy with the idea of a story about her lying about her age, because she said a lot of the girls had done that, in order to go to Holland to sew. I'm fascinated with that story. And I was actually going to take one of my plays and adapt that to a novel. But my mother and her friends, like this group had gone to Holland, are getting older, and I think I need to write this story sooner rather than later. But I really want to explore that next.

Primose Madayag Knazan

33:47

Interesting. Amanda, how about you?

Primose Madayag Knazan

34:02

So I actually just had an adult book come out that's called Best Served Hot, an adult romance under the name Amanda Elliot, and that is actually a lot more food focused.

Amanda Panitch

34:44

Congratulations! Those are all so exciting.

Heidi Rabinowitz

34:47

All right. So it's tikkun olam time. I want to ask each of you what action you would like to call listeners to take to help heal the world. Amanda, go ahead.

Amanda Panitch

34:59

So I came I'm with both an organization and an action. I like to donate and follow the Malala Fund, which funds girls' education around the world. They've found a very good way to lift girls out of poverty and people out of poverty is through education. And as far as action, it's kind of vague, but I guess do something every day to leave the world a little bit better than it was before. Holding the door for someone, just like anything that puts more good into the world than there was before, I think is worthy.

Heidi Rabinowitz

35:29

Okay, very nice. Aimee?

Heidi Rabinowitz

35:32

So the organization that I wanted to highlight is an organization that has helped me so much over the last couple years with discovering who I am as a Jewish person, as well as specifically helping me write Recipe for Disaster. And that is the group Judaism Unbound. They're a group that supports grassroots efforts, specifically by disaffected American Jews, to help them redesign and reimagine what their Jewish life can look like. They have a weekly podcast, which I've been on a couple times, which is also called Judaism Unbound. And I think for me, it's really given me a sense of sort of permission, that, that I do, in fact, belong in the Jewish community. And that this is a place where I fit in, and that it can mean whatever it means to me, because I'm the one that gets to define my Judaism. They also have a really cool program called UnYeshiva, which is like a digital center for Jewish learning. It's open to anybody who wants to dig deeper. So the action is to check them out. I think they are spectacular. And they've done just so much great work for me personally, as well as for so many other people in the world. So I really want to pay it forward, because they're the reason that I have the book, that I'm here, I owe a lot to them.

Heidi Rabinowitz

36:37

Excellent. Primrose?

Primose Madayag Knazan

36:40

With my book being so centered around food, I also have a food blog, Peg on a Plate on Instagram. Food is an important part of my life, my family's life. And especially recently, because I've been doing a lot of cooking demonstrations. So food has become part of my persona. I am privileged to be able to afford good food and healthy food and to be able to cook food regularly. So I encourage everyone to support your local food bank, donate money, donate food, whatever you can. Because when people cannot eat, and they have that insecurity around food, they cannot live. That is a right to have food, it shouldn't be a privilege. So it's very important to me and my family, that we put money aside to ensure that we can provide food for people who don't have it.

Heidi Rabinowitz

37:31

Excellent. Is there anything else that anybody would like to talk about that I haven't thought to ask you?

Heidi Rabinowitz

37:39

I feel like I feel like we got really deep into some really important things.

Amanda Panitch

37:43

Yeah!

Heidi Rabinowitz

37:45

Well, good. So let's tell where people can learn more about your work. So we heard peg on a Plate is Primrose's food blog. Do you have any other online presence that you want us to know about, Primose?

Primose Madayag Knazan

37:57

Primrosemk on Instagram, and that will actually have more information about my upcoming gigs and podcasts and other writing events that are coming up.

Heidi Rabinowitz

38:09

Okay, Amanda, how about you?

Amanda Panitch

38:11

I am Amanda Panitch P A N I T C H on Instagram. And I'm also Amandapanitch.com. I have a newsletter. I send it out once a month or once every other month, where you can learn about upcoming books or events or other things going on.

Heidi Rabinowitz

38:27

Okay, and Aimee?

Heidi Rabinowitz

38:29

I am Aimee Lucido on Twitter and Instagram. That's a good way to follow me. And then also my website, Aimeelucido.com. I'm also very Googleable, I'm the only Aimee Lucido in the world as far as, as far as I know; my first name is French, my last name is Italian. And so it is a strange combo and it's very easy to find me if you if you know how to spell my name.

Heidi Rabinowitz

38:57

Perfect. Aimee Lucido, Amanda, Panitch, Primrose Madayag Knazan, thank you so much for speaking with me.

Heidi Rabinowitz

39:03

Thank you so much for having us.

Aimee Lucido

39:07

Thank you for having us.

Primose Madayag Knazan

39:09

Thank you so much.

Heidi Rabinowitz

39:10

All right, wonderful.

Susan Lynn Meyer

39:15

[MUSIC, DEDICATION] Hi, this is Susan Lynn Meyer, author of A Sky Full of Song. I'll be joining you soon on The Book of Life podcast. I'd like to dedicate my episode to all the Jewish kids who are fascinated by the Little House on the Prairie series.

Heidi Rabinowitz

39:31

[MUSIC, OUTRO] Say hi to Heidi at 561-206-2473 or bookoflifepodcast@gmail.com Check out our Book of Life podcast Facebook page, or our Facebook discussion group Jewish Kidlit Mavens. We are occasionally on Twitter too @bookoflifepod. Want to read the books featured on the show? Buy them through Bookshop.org/shop/bookoflife to support the podcast and independent bookstores at the same time. You can also help us out by becoming a monthly supporter through Patreon. Additional support comes from the Association of Jewish Libraries, which also sponsors our sister podcast, Nice Jewish Books, a show about Jewish fiction for adults. You'll find links for all of that and more at BookofLifepodcast.com Our background music is provided by the Freilachmakers Klezmer String Band. Thanks for listening and happy reading!

Susan Lynn Meyer

40:43

[MUSIC, PROMO] What if David and Goliath were actually lovers and con artists? What if the Scots turned out to be God's chosen people? What if Ilan Ramon had been on the Columbia ground crew instead of on the shuttle? Andrea Lobel and Mark Shainblum collect an intriguing collection of what ifs in Jewish history, and modern Midrash or Jewish fanfiction of the Bible. I had a fascinating conversation with the editors and two of the collections authors, Esther Alter and Eric Choi. Join me for this conversation at JewishLibraries.org/NiceJewishBooks.

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