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. I admit that I am a late comer to the romance genre, but I'm happy to say that I finally got here, and today I am excited to welcome Jean Meltzer to chat about her latest book, Magical, Meet Cute. Welcome Jean.
Thank you so much for having me here, Sheryl, I love hearing that you are a newcomer to romance, and specifically Jewish romance, because part of my mission is bringing Jewish romance to the entire world.
Well, it looks like you're off to a great start. So can you tell me about your book?
Sure, my book, it's my fourth book. It's called Magical Meet Cute. It is about what I like to call a Jewitch woman. So she is a Jewish woman who sort of engages in the spiritual side, the feminine the as I like to call it, the divine feminine side of Judaism, the witchcraft side of Judaism. She is living as a potter, a ceramicist in Woodstock, New York, and unfortunately, she hasn't been that lucky in love. We're in a romance novel. After all, one day she comes home from Single in the Sukkah and finds her entire town papered in anti semitic flyers, essentially a papering incident. And of course, being a potter, seeking comfort, we all know this feeling, she goes into her art, and she begins to craft a clay effigy, a clay man, which then, because she's drinking a little wine, living her best life here she goes into her backyard buries it beneath the Rose Garden at midnight. Well the next day, when a handsome, sexy stranger shows up with EV who checks every single box on her checklist of her little clay effigy man, she begins to wonder if she inadvertently summoned a Golem. So it has Practical Magic vibes. It's based in Jewish folklore and Jewish history, and it is a bonafide fun and swoony with some deep stuff rom com.
Yes, it is. So there are a bunch of things that, well, lots of things that I loved about it, and one of it is that Fey doesn't really speak Hebrew, but she does know the Aleph Bet and she kind of invokes that when she does her rituals. And it reminds me of the story, I think of the Baal Shem Tov of a boy who wanders into a synagogue. He doesn't know the prayers. He doesn't know Hebrew, but he knows the alphabet, so he recites the alphabet and hopes that God will rearrange the letters into the into the right words, into the prayer that's in his heart.
Sheryl, A plus for you. You are the first interview I've done that someone has picked up that little nuance. Yes, 100% I was, I was absolutely thinking of that story, that beautiful story where the where the words don't matter as much as the intention and the heart. But most people, you know, they think of me as very Jewishly educated, because I wound up going to rabbinical school and spent five years before my chronic illness forced me to withdraw. What they don't know is, before I went to rabbinical school, I was much like this main character, Faye. I could only do aleph, bet, bet, gimel, dalet hay. So for me, there was sort of like a double kind of entendre or a double joke. There a double meeting. It was the Baal Shem Tov. But I think for a lot of Jewish people, that's a very normal experience that you had a Hebrew school background, or a, as I like to say, shoddy Hebrew school background, and you just didn't get the education you needed that when you become an adult, you can have those access points to connect. So I was kind of speaking for both sort of sides. I wanted to talk to the community who was like me, and I also wanted to draw on that beautiful story from the Baal Shem Tov,
yeah, it was wonderful. So one thing that I found really fascinating is that Greg, this stranger, this possible Golem, has amnesia. So it's really interesting sort of the nature versus nurture argument. You know, who would you be if you could start over with a blank slate without remembering any. Of your past triumphs and traumas, so it's interesting to see kind of how he's developing.
You asked the best questions. Yes, I love mirroring and books, and I was completely fascinated by the idea of Faye being saddled by memory, that she kind of is stuck and stagnate because of a history of abuse and because of her own unluckiness and love. And I love the idea too, that Greg, on the opposite hand, was had no memory, and that he sort of fills himself up with Faye's world. And, of course, because we're in a romance and we're book lovers, what is more? What is more romantic than a man who reads all your books, right? So, so putting them together was part of the fun. But I think also, and I wonder you probably you're so clever, so you clearly got this, I'm assuming. But there's also in there about Jewish memory too, right? As a Jewish woman, I can't remember a time in my life where, for example, there wasn't a holocaust. I don't remember sitting down and learning about it. I just always, it was always a part of my story, right? It was always somehow in my but I I'm not old enough remotely to have been in the Holocaust or experienced the Holocaust, and the idea of sort of the way as we as Jews tell stories and transmit memories, and how memories almost become a part of us. They become our memories. I'm deeply fascinated by that question. As a Jewish woman,
yeah, I mean, in my family, it's not just the Holocaust because my family survived the Holocaust because they fled the pogroms, you know, 30 years earlier,
exactly, no, I mean, that's exactly it. It's all this trauma, right? That's layered on and and whether it's nurture versus nature, whether it's the epigenetic memory, right, this idea that trauma kind of can be passed down from our ancestors, and what does that mean as Jews in 2024 trying to move forward, or maybe we never will be able to. I mean, maybe that's, I don't know. I write Happy Endings, though, so in my story, everybody gets their happy ending in the end.
Yeah, so you mentioned that Faye had grown up in an abusive family, and because of that, she feels that she has to be perfect. You know, she was always trying to please her mother and be absolutely perfect and anticipate what would set her mother off. And, you know, try and do that, and that's how she grew to view her artwork also. But I'm not really an artist, but I do do quilting, and you know, a lot in the quilt community is you want to see that the hand of the the maker, you know, you want to see that this, you know that a person did this, it wasn't done by a machine, but she wanted everything to to be perfect, not understanding that The people who most loved her art loved the imperfections and the quirks that identified it as one of her works.
Absolutely, I think anyone who loves an art and engages in an art understands this feeling. I we have very big shoes we want to fill. We have role models we look up to. For me, I drew on the experience of being a disabled author. I have been very sick for most of my life. Since I was 18. I'm practically homebound. I spent two years bed bound. It's a whole other story. But there are times where I look at my books, or I'm very foggy, and I say to myself, ah, you know, if only I could write better. If only I wasn't sick, how different my writing would be, if only I and what I realized is that may be true, but at the same time, it wouldn't be my book. It wouldn't be the all the lessons I learned, the making meaning from suffering, the the quirks of my stories, the weirdnesses of the stories my my emphasis on joy, which comes out of my own personal suffering, right? None of that would be in my book, and that is sort of what Faye comes to learn. It's that the art that what makes art beautiful is the story attached to it.
I was going to ask you about that too. I haven't read all your books yet. I just binged three of them, and all of them have a protagonist that is dealing with either an injury or illness, and it seemed like, well, you just explained that this is part of your life dealing with chronic illness, but it seemed like it's also acknowledging the pain and suffering, but also bringing in joy that they're they're not mutually exclusive
that absolutely, mean, this is as Jewish as you can get. You know that we do not celebrate without remembering a little bit of our sadnesses. Absolutely, I think I want to be really clear about this. I write about these stories in this way with the disability or the illness, because when I was first diagnosed or when I was going through these experiences, there were no models and my entire life. And same thing with Jewish stories, I didn't have, you know, growing up, the bulk of my stories were Holocaust fiction, or a Jewish woman who was either a nagging harpy mother or a side character, a fun the funny girl with frizzy hair and a big nose, but never deserving of a happy ending on their own. And so for me, it was really important for a lot of reasons when I sat down to start writing stories that sort of talked about my own life, to create models for people, the models I never had that Jewish women could be beautiful and sexy, that our men were strong and powerful and not weak and emasculated. And also for chronic illness, chronic disability, I am a successfully married woman. I have a career. I was not able to have children because I'm just too sick for that. But just because my life looks different does not mean it's bad, and that journey to sort of accept my authentic self is in every one of my stories. And the reason it's in every one of my stories is because, after I published my first book, the matzo ball, I received hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of letters emails saying thank you for this book. I have finally seen myself and that's it. It became a mission not just to sort of support my own books, but to really uplift Jewish romance and books that center and uplift Jewish joy in general, and I fight every day now to make sure these books continue being on her shelves.
Yeah, that's wonderful. So you don't have to be... not you in particular, just even you in general, don't have to be the perfectly quote, unquote healthy body to be deserving of love and to find a partner who will support you and appreciate your whole package
absolutely Every Absolutely. And I always say this to people if they're if they don't know it, which is, I have been sick a very long time. I have lots and lots and lots of very sick friends. And anyone out there listening, I want you to hear this if you are very, very sick yourself and wondering if you will ever fall in love. Every single one of those friends of mine who want to be in relationships. Are in relationships. They found wonderful partners. They got married. Yes, life might look different, there might be challenges, but guess what? Every relationship has challenges. Whoever you're bringing in is not perfect either, and that's really the message of my book too. Like you are deserving a good, healthy and safe love. You are worth it. You are not invalid. Yeah,
I love that message. So to get back to the book again, and Faye is wondering if Greg could actually be a Golem, and she remembers from stories that the Golems often start out being extremely helpful, but then somehow managed to take it to an extreme and get out of control. So she kind of flips out that he might turn out to be dangerous, and finds a an expert in Jewish folk history and golems, and learns about the history of the golems. And I have known that the Golem story that we know about the Golem being created by Judah Loev of or Loew of Prague, had been written in the early 1900s and just attributed to the Maharal or Judah low but I hadn't known some of the other details about the Golem that you put in. Do you want to talk about those
absolutely so it's so funny to me. People often think that romance is very fluffy. We just sort of bang it out. I do tons of research for all my Jewish rom coms, not just because I'm an ex rabbinical student, but. Because I really enjoy learning and then teaching, right, or allowing people to have these access points. So the Golem, I began, much like they and I think, like many people out there, with a sort of idea of the Golem in my head, which is this story that, as you said, begins as a servant, and then somewhere down the line, goes berserk, goes awry, and destroys his the Creator smashes whatever that is actually based on an appropriation of the Golem story that was originally created by a man named Rabbi Yudl Rosenberg. It is a brilliant I won't give it all away here. You have to read my book to find out. But it's a fascinating, sort of interesting. You know, they say the more things changed, more things stayed the same. It's fascinating because what happened between those two stories. You could see, you could almost say it could happen today too, that there are books being written for the Jewish world and there are books being written for the broader world. And the way stories get sort of used and changed, between a Jewish writer writing for a Jewish audience primarily, or at first, versus a non Jewish writer appropriating a not a Jewish story, and writing for the broader world. So it's it's incredible, like when you learn these things and you get to share it with others. It's incredible. I will give one little information. I almost dedicated the book to Rabbi Yudl Rosenberg because I wanted, I wanted him to be remembered so badly, but I felt I needed to give it to the two biggest Jewitches I know, which were my sisters. So I dedicated it to my sisters instead. But I really hope everybody walks away learning about Rabbi Yudl Rosenberg and remembering him for his great contributions, not only to our Jewish folklore and Jewish fiction, but Jewish genre fiction, the original Jewish genre fiction writer. So yeah, definitely pick up my book and learn more about him. It's a fascinating story.
The story I remembered about him was that he saw that there were all these adventure stories for kids in the secular culture. You know, Jules Verne was sending people into space and underground and all over, and he wanted some Jewish adventure stories for kids.
I love that. That's I related to him so deeply because So historically, at that time, he was a Rav And historically, the only books being published for adults had to be intellectual books. They had to be about, halacha, Jewish law, right? Or or so he desperately, like you said, wanted to write this story about sort of a Jewish superhero. Unfortunately, he wasn't sure how to get it published. So he did something very clever. He was like, I'm going to write a book that seems or appears to be a found textbook. So almost like there are nowadays found footage in films, and it's like all shop from like shaky camera. He sat down and he did the same thing. So he just made it sound like the Maharal of Prague. I am the Maharal. I opened up, you know, I and people loved it. It became a best seller for in the Jewish community, because it was this absolutely beautiful story that people were reading like it was a real story, but it was, it was all from his amazing imagination and his ability to understand his community enough to create fiction that they would read. I feel like I do a lot of the same. I really do I relate to, look man,
Jews have a long tradition of that too. I mean the Psalms, you know, we attribute to David and Solomon. You know, who knows?
I think you know, we are born storytellers. We are a storytelling people, and we will find a way to tell our stories one way or another.
So I love that quote that you put in. Oh, the Jewish saying, God made man because he loves stories.
Yes you know what's so interesting about that has been attributed to Elie Weisel And to sort of a Yiddish folklore saying, I do not know. I could never find who actually it was attributed to. So if anybody knows, please hit me up. I have searched and searched and searched to sort of try to find where that quote actually came from. But as a writer, I It's one of my favorite code quotes. And just I think we can all look at our lives and be like, Wow, yeah, someone's writing this story. It's too many, too many ups, downs, peaks, challenges, surprises.
So one other aspect of your book you mentioned is that the the town is being flooded with these anti semitic leaflets, which unfortunately is a very timely, yeah. Uh, occurrence, yeah, um. And so it was interesting to see how the community did pull together, including the the non Jews in the community who came to pull things up and to clean things up.
And yes. So I think, you know, I It's interesting because I wrote this book before October 7, I had wanted to do a book on anti semitism for quite a while. I I think that, yeah, there. I think it's just like what we've experienced. There are allies, there are people who are silent, and there are people who are actively engaged in making the world worse, right? So I think that's reflected. I write rom com, so the happy endings are guaranteed. There's a certain level of fun and spiritedness you get to have in these types of stories. But I also think that it was my job to sort of reflect the real sort of experiences of anti semitism, including sometimes difficult language or problematic phrasing, and just the fear, the fear that comes with feeling under attack because of who you are.
And Faye had to make a decision if she wanted to kind of downplay her her public Judaism, to try and avoid some of this hatred, or stand up and be proud. And she chose the latter
Exactly. I think, I think one of the things I have come to firmly believe, which Faye believes in this story as well. I think Faye has come to realize, you know, one of the most powerful lines in the book is, I'm tired of apologizing, apologizing for surviving, and I think that that is Faye's sort of realization in the book, she's an abuse survivor. And what do abuse survivors do? They feel shame, right? I apologize. You. Apologize for surviving as a as a Jewish woman, she she she feels like same thing. Are we apologizing for surviving? And I think the moment I feel genuinely that one of the antithesis is the to anti semitism. One of the ways we fight back against anti semitism is by modeling Jewish pride, meaning that we can't always change anti Semites, right? We can't. We can't. We're not going to necessarily change people's views of hating Jews, but we can stand up taller, because when you know who you are and you you are strong in who you are, no one can knock you down.
Um, there was one other character... I'm trying to think how to phrase this... a lot of times, when it comes to any "ism, " you have your feelings about a whole group, and then when you meet a particular person, you know, if they don't fit the stereotype, you think, well, they're not really, you know. You know the you know a person of color isn't really a black person, an Asian person isn't really, you know. And so there was a character who liked Faye, but in the end, you know, we find out that he was actually anti semitic, but he just thought of her as somehow different from the other Jews.
Isn't, isn't that? I mean, you're AJL, so you probably have read lots of these types of stories or heard this quote, right? Every German had their good Jew.
You know, I haven't heard that quote, but that's fascinating.
Really. Wow. Okay, so that was the idea that there were, every German had that one, right? The one person who's like they're not like the rest of them. And I think there was even a story, again, I don't know if it's a myth or not, where it was either Hitler or one of the henchmen who sent a limo to rescue one Jewish person before the war started, knowing what would happen. And so I think I had that in the back of my mind, that in in his sort of deluted, crazy anti semitic mind, Faye, at one point, was the the good Jew, and then she started being loud and proud and She was no longer the good Jew. So, yeah, I definitely had that story in the back of my mind.
So to get back to the romance, that's one thing I've as an interviewer. It's it's fun to read romance, because it's not a spoiler. They get together at the end!
No. No, they always get together. It's the journey, right? So we always say it's very it would be very strange for a romance for you not to know who is supposed to get together at the end. I think a lot of romance readers would feel like if someone just came out at the last minute to date somebody, that would be a problem for many, many true romance readers. So it's usually the main bulk of the story. You should know exactly who's getting together at the end, but it's the fun and the journey. And I like to say, if you can, if you can guess what's going to happen in my books, brava, you should be writing them yourself, because I feel like I'm definitely a quirky writer.
So, well, their journey definitely had ups and downs and tangents and sidetracks and yes, yes, it was a lot of fun to follow, you know, as they were both getting to know each other and getting to know themselves, you know. And they both had to go through different personal growth to end up together
Absolutely. Both characters in my books always are Faye needs to learn that she is lovable and worthy. Greg needs to realize that he can put down roots. And also, you know, because he has amnesia, actually figure out who he is. So that's a big one for Greg. But I think, you know, it's so much what makes their journey so fun together, because he kind of becomes this repository for all her books, especially her self help books. And so it's like living with like a detective, and it's living with a therapist, and it's living with a motivational coach. And I think, you know, there's a beauty in having someone who can reflect back what you need. And I think they do that for each other.
One other thing that I liked about the book was that because Faye had grown up in this abusive family. She really had a chosen family around her, her cranky neighbor, cranky, nosy, pain in the tush neighbor, who was really, Nelly, who was really also kind of a surrogate mother, you know, someone that absolutely showed caring that her mother, her biological mother didn't and her best friend who married the Rabbi You know, were there as you know, sisters to support her.
I love secondary characters. I think most people who read my books will talk about the secondary characters and how much we grow to love them. There is no filter, Nelly, you you again. Hit it right on the head at the very beginning of the book, one of the things Faye says to Nelly is, I don't need a mother. And really what she comes to learn at the end of the book is that she does need a mother. She needs that person who loves her and holds her and supports her. And of course, like any good mother, she's a little bit of a nag, but she does it with love. She's not trying to really hurt bae. And then, of course, the friends, I mean, for me, I live in a Jewish community. I have a lot of I live in the Jewish world. So for me, I draw on the people that have been really important in my life. Obviously, I went to rabbinical school, so I have lots of clergy friends. They are all across the spectrum of Jewish experiences. So again, I love reflecting what our Jewish world looks like, especially sometimes the subculture of our Jewish world would stop Jewish community. It's an amazing community, and sort of that. Isabella Friedman, I know you're in I know you're in California, but in the northeast, it's kind of, I like to call them the big white hat Kippah wearing Jews, right? So it's sort of the hippies Jews, the Neo, Neo pagan Jews, the Bu-Jews, you know, you'll meet them at like retreats and things like that. And so I, I wanted to do a book that sort of showed this wonderful little subculture of Judaism, including Jew witches and and, of course, I mean, we, the beauty of being Jewish is our community,
absolutely. So you mentioned that you had to do some research for this. What did you need to research? And did you find anything that was surprising?
So I did a deep dive. Okay, so I'm a Bible nerd. I like nothing more than Safaria. Is my jam. I can go down a rabbit hole, like, Where was that when I was in rabbinical school, Sheryl, oh my gosh, it would have changed my life.
you know, especially the women's commentary just got uploaded.
Oh my really, I didn't even know that you just made Okay. Well, there goes the rest of my. Afternoon. But I love that stuff. So for me, it was a real deep dive. And I so one thing to know is that which romances are incredibly popular in the romance genre in general. So every October, you'll see a bunch of books come out, the x hex, things like that. The thing is, though those books are written, most people consider them secular, but they're not secular. They're actually written from a Christian worldview, meaning there are like devils, the demons might go to hell or not. And while we have things like satanim, right? They are Jewish lawyers. They are not Satan right? So, so the Jewish worldview on sort of the myth and mythology and superstition and folklore and magic is very different than the Christian worldview, including how we think about demons and things like that. So when I went to my publisher, I was like, I want to do a witch romance from the Jewish lens. So it was incredibly when and when they gave me permission, it became incredibly important to me to actually write it from a Jewish lens, to not just make stuff up that felt Jewish. So I went on a deep dive the the number one resource for for anyone listening, would be Joshua Tractenberg Jewish myth and magic, something like that. I always get it wrong, written 60 years ago. It is the it is not an easy read, but it is a the best sort of research on sort of the history of Jewish myth, magic and superstition on safari too. You can look through you can do an easy search. Ra mom said, which is practice in caves. Everything in the book is based on reality, so bagos to caves to practice. The Ballad or cakes are actually taken from a Talmudic recipe that was used by moms to help their kids in school become better learners. So that was actually the ballad, or cakes, are real cakes. It was actually used in Arab and Jewish medicine in the Middle East, and also in the cave when she does a 15 cent, when she does a divination ritual that actually comes from a German community, 15th century divination ritual. So all of these little bits in the story that you're going to read when you read magical meet you are absolutely real. And on top of that, as I always like to say, if you want to know how to make a Golem, if you need to create your own perfect man or a superhero, this is the book to read, because it'll tell you everything you need to know to get that to happen.
So in last month's episode, I interviewed Mickey Dubrow about his book The Magic maker, which was about a family who lived in an apartment which later became the Tenement Museum, who had been cursed and put into a time bubble. And so this is about someone in contemporary times who realized that something was going on, that there was a family stuck there, and found a magic maker to try and break the curse. So he mentioned that that book that that you did, also as a reference book.
Oh that sounds so good? I need it immediately. I love that concept.
I hadn't intended to do two magic books in a row, but oh my
gosh, no, it sounds so good. I love that whole idea. And like rescuing the family that's trapped in the Tenement Museum. I mean, yes, give me that I would love to spend a night in a Tenement Museum. So that sounds so much going
it was a great book, so lots of deep dives into the multitude of Jewish magic and Jewish experience. And I love
And I love it. I love it. And I love that authors just like me are taking real text and real source material and writing these stories from a true and authentic Jewish lens. I think that's incredible.
absolutely. Okay, so I was asking about research. You're talking about deep dives. Is there anything that you would like to talk about that I haven't thought to ask you about?
Oh, gosh, that's a tough question. You did such a good job. I mean, really, like, your questions are really on point. I What else should I talk about? I just think that, you know, Jewish romance is in this incredibly new sort of spot where, you know, we only have a handful of people writing Jewish romance. I would love to see more of these stories on the shelf. So I would just say, Go out support these books. It's really important that we have all types of stories on our shelves, and everyone, including Jews, deserve a happy ending.
Wonderful. Well, I don't know if that kind of anticipated my next. Question, which was going to be that it's a time for your soapbox moment, and if you could put out a call for tikkun olam for repairing the world, what would it be?
I love this question, because I am someone who spends every day trying to make the world better in small 2% increments. And 2% increments have fully changed my life. So I would say, Look around you. Sometimes it starts with ourselves, changing our own language in our mind. But also sometimes, don't be afraid to hold on to your joy. Don't be afraid to give joy smile at someone just because tell someone they look pretty, you know, help somebody with their groceries to the car, unless they look scared. Don't, don't help them then. But, but you know what? We live in a society that underestimates the value of joy, that sort of like breeds and loves its own toxicity. And I just think if I have any message that I can impart, it's that it's okay to be happy, it's okay to find your joy. It's okay to hold on to it, and definitely, once you have it for yourself, spread a little around,
that's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. So what is best way for people to contact you.
Super easy. You can find me on all my socials. Jean Meltzer, Instagram, Jean Meltzer, author, Facebook, jeanmeltzer.com, my website. You can also email me there. Do not send messages to my social media. I will never look at them if it's important, please. Please send my email and yeah, I'm all over online. We have a great Facebook group Jewish women talk about romance books, where we just talk about our love of these stories. So find me, say hello, come to an event we love nothing more. I love nothing more than spreading some Jewish joy around.
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much Jean Meltzer for speaking with me about Magical Meet Cute.
Thank you so much for having me here. Guys support AJL they are amazing. Thank you so much for Jewish authors and Sheryl. Thank you so so much for having me here. You're amazing.
It has absolutely been my pleasure if you are interested in any of the books we discuss today, you can find them at your favorite Board and brick or online bookstore or at your local library, thanks to Die 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 Henry Hertz. I'm an author and the editor of festival of lights, which features short stories from another people including Erica Pearl and Joanne Levy. Hi,
I'm Erica pearl. I am one of the authors that Henry mentioned, was featured in festival of lights, and
I'm Joanne Levy, another of the authors from festival of lights, and also the author of let it glow. And we would like to dedicate our episode to any Jewish kids or adults who have ever been overlooked or were made to feel less than around the holidays.
The Book of Life is the sister podcast of nice Jewish books. I'm your host. Heidi Rabinowitz and my podcast about Jewish kidlet Join me to hear my December 2024 conversation about Hanukkah with Henry hertz, Joanne Levy and Erica pearl. You
