6 Jewish Books On My Summer Reading List

Every summer Hebrew schools go on vacation and weekend teachers like myself recover their Sunday mornings. This extra bit of time, if you ask me, is the perfect opportunity to explore new books at the library. With so many texts to choose from I like to prepare a list of "top picks" before driving downtown. Here are the titles I put together for this week:

1. People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks
   Several friends have recommended this book to me and since I loved Brooks’ first novel, “Year of Wonders,” this newest offering is at the top of my list. In “People of the Book” rare book conservator Hanna Heath is invited to inspect the Sarajevo Haggadah, which is one of the oldest Sephardic haggdot in the world and the earliest Jewish religious work to be illuminated with images. It disappeared during a siege in 1992, but now it has been found and Hanna is the lucky woman called in to verify its authenticity. As she inspects the haggadah she finds tell-tale signs of all the people who protected it during centuries of purges and wars: a white hair, an insect wing, salt crystals, a wine stain. Moving backwards through time these remnants bring the experiences of these guardians to life, from a young girl escaping the Nazis, to a rabbi living in the Venice Jewish ghetto, to a girl’s relationship with her mistress in a harem. Altogether this sounds like a fascinating novel.
2. The Septembers of Shiraz, by Dalia Sofer
   Set in modern-day Iran, “The Septembers of Shiraz” tells the story of a Jewish family struggling to preserve their identity in a country where Muslim fanaticism is growing. In September of 1981 the father, a gem trader named Isaac Amin, is imprisoned because he is Jewish and wealthy. In jail he witnesses the brutal treatment of his fellow prisoners, while outside the prison walls his wife slips in and out of depression and his daughter steals files from the home of a friend whose father is in charge of Isaac’s prison. Meanwhile, the son tries to make ends meet without his family’s money in Brooklyn, NY, where he falls in love with the daughter of his Hasidic landlord. Each character deals with their Jewish identity in their own way, making this book a vivid exploration of what it means to be Jewish.
3. Sarah: Women of Genesis, by Orson Scott Card
   Although Card is better known for his science fiction and fantasy books, this novel brings the story of the Jewish matriarch Sarah to life. The book is told from the point of view of Sarah and her sister Qira (whom Card imagines as Lot’s wife) and I’m curious to see how the author depicts events in Sarah’s life. For instance, her emotions when Abraham asks her to pretend to be his sister, as recounted in Genesis 12:10-20. In this brief section of the Torah, Abraham is afraid the Egyptians will kill him because his wife is so beautiful, but his plan backfires when the pharaoh decides to make the seemingly unattached Sarah a member of his harem. Sarah’s relationship with Hagar should be another interesting segment of this story, as will Card’s apparent use of Mormon theology to interpret some aspects of the biblical characters lives.
4. Those Who Save Us, by Jenna Blum
   Jenna Blum worked for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation and in “Those Who Save Us” she tells the story of the Holocaust through two main characters: Trudy, a present-day history professor who is collecting the oral history of WWII survivors, and Anna, who is Trudy’s grandmother and left Germany when she married an American solider. As antisemitism intensifies in 1930’s Germany, Anna is forced to hide her affair with a Jewish doctor who is soon imprisoned at Buchenwald. By this point Anna is carrying the doctor’s child and finds refuge for a time with a baker who smuggles bread to prisoners in the camp. But this relationship is short-lived as well, since eventually the baker is caught and executed. Anna then unwittingly captures the attentions of a high-ranking Nazi officer, who forces her into a relationship that she endures for the sake of hers and her daughter's safety. All of this leads, of course, back to Trudy and her WWII project. Reviews on Amazon.com call “Those Who Save Us” a “poised, hair-raising debut” that seamlessly overlaps the present and past.
5. My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq, by Ariel Sabar
   The ancestry of Kurdistani Jews can be traced back nearly 2,700 years and for centuries their community was so isolated that they spoke the ancient language of Aramaic and knew nothing of pogroms or the fate of Jews in Europe during the Holocaust. In this book, a modern day journalist attempts to reconcile his identity with that of his father, Yona Sabar, who was born a Kurdistani Jew in 1938 in a mud-shack in the remote Iraqi village of Zakho. Eventually Yona made his way to Los Angeles, where he raised a family and became a professor at UCLA, specializing in Aramaic. For most of his life the author didn't relate to his father, but after the birth of his own son in 2002 he decided to use his journalistic training to close the gap between his identity and that of his father. The project takes him on an unexpected journey, including an attempt to track down his father’s oldest sister, who was kidnapped as an infant. I'm intrigued both by the author's unique background and his father's story, which sounds like an adventure in and of itself.
6. All Other Nights, by Dara Horn
   We all know the question "Why is this night different from all other nights?" that is part of the Passover seder each year. In "All Other Nights," author Dara Horn takes this question and spins a Civil War espionage story that explores the intersection of race and religion in 19th-century America. Jacob Rappaport is a 19-year-old Union soldier who joined the army in order to avoid an arranged marriage, but when his superiors discover his connections in the Jewish community (his father is a wealthy importer-exporter) they make him a spy. Why is this night different from all others? I haven't read the book yet, but if the media releases are any indication I imagine the title has something to do with Jacob's assignment to assassinate his uncle in New Orleans on Passover, or his assignment to marry the Confederate spy Eugenia Levy. Seen first and foremost as a Jew by his superiors yet caught in a web of top-secret political intrigue, I'm eager to see how Jacob balances his dual identities while trying to discover who he truly is.

What about you? What books are on your reading list?