Nice Jewish Books

During the Holocaust, desperate Jewish parents placed their children with Christian families and in convents in the hope that the children would survive the war. After the war, Jewish organizations went to reclaim these children to be raised in the Jewish community. But how did the children deal with yet another displacement. Join me for a conversation with Jennifer Rosner.

Follow along with the transcript.

Find out more on the author's website

Support the author, AJL, and independent book stores by buying their book here.

Thanks to:

• The Association of Jewish Libraries
• Heidi Rabinowitz, podcast mentor
• Dee Yan Key for use of their Freylekh (downloaded from https://freemusicarchive.org/home)
• Donate to support the podcast

If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also like the AJL sister podcast, The Book of Life, a podcast about Jewish kidlit, mostly.

We start in a familiar place, in contemporary Chicago, where Jennifer, a museum curator, is asked to go to Belarus to create a living installation of Jewish life there before the Holocaust. She invites a distant cousin to participate, and she brings with her an old Yiddish literary magazine to use as a prop in the installment. In each chapter we move backward in time. As the settings become less familiar to us, we see the cousin relationships getting closer and see that there is a poem in the journal that is directed at three brothers in the family. The triplets had been separated at a young age. To find out why, and what the poem has to do with it, we must travel back further in time. Join me on this journey of Our Little Histories by Janice Weizman

Check out her Jewish fiction website which focuses on literature from small presses.

Follow along with the transcript.

Support the author, AJL, and independent book stores by buying their book here.

Thanks to:

• The Association of Jewish Libraries
• Heidi Rabinowitz, podcast mentor
• Dee Yan Key for use of their Freylekh (downloaded from https://freemusicarchive.org/home)
• Donate to support the podcast

If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also like the AJL sister podcast, The Book of Life, a podcast about Jewish kidlit, mostly.

Adam is a twelve year old boy preparing for his bar mitzvah in Flushing New York in the early 1970. In many ways, he is a typical kid, trying to fit in at school, but also trying to find himself and find ways to stand out. But his year is off to a difficult start when his parents decide to move the family to a different neighborhood and at the same time his best friend decides to ghost him. Can Adam make new friends, find his people, and survive his bar mitzvah? Join me for a conversation with author Don Futterman about Adam Unrehearsed.

Find the author's website and podcast.

Don supports the residents and rebuilding of Kfar Azza and the Israel Center for Educational Innovation.

Follow along with the transcript.

Support the author, AJL, and independent book stores by buying their book here.

Thanks to:

• The Association of Jewish Libraries
• Heidi Rabinowitz, podcast mentor
• Dee Yan Key for use of their Freylekh (downloaded from https://freemusicarchive.org/home)
• Donate to support the podcast

If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also like the AJL sister podcast, The Book of Life, a podcast about Jewish kidlit, mostly.

While the body of Yiddish literature is vast, many people still think of Tevye the milkman, trudging along with his lame horse and arguing with God. But the many new translations of Yiddish fiction show the breadth and depth of the settings, characters, and topics covered as well as the many different voices of the authors.

This past fall, Nice Jewish Books in conjunction with AJL presents, gathered three amazing scholars to speak about the past, present, and future of Yiddish literature and especially Yiddish literature in translation. Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, poet, writer, and translater; translator Mindy Liberman, and Ellen Cassedy, a translator, author and activist, discussed the resurgence of interest in Yiddish literature and their own particular projects.

Follow along with the transcript.

Support the author, AJL, and independent book stores by buying their book here.

Links from the chat:

Yermiyahu's website : https://yataubdotnet.wordpress.com/bio/

Ellen's website: https://ellencassedy.com/translations...

Mindy in geveb: https://ingeveb.org/people/mindy-libe...

https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/tra...

https://yivo.org/Irena-Klepfisz

Thanks to:

• The Association of Jewish Libraries
• Heidi Rabinowitz, podcast mentor
• Dee Yan Key for use of their Freylekh (downloaded from https://freemusicarchive.org/home)
• Donate to support the podcast

If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also like the AJL sister podcast, The Book of Life, a podcast about Jewish kidlit, mostly.

Leah is not your typical Chinese-Jewish owner of a kosher Chinese restaurant. She is also a woman on the run from Yuk-Wong, a drug lord determined to marry her against her will. And if that wasn't enough drama in her life, she is also the host/recipient of the Spirit of Water with all the powers that entails. When Yuk-Wong's minions find her in New York, she decides to return to China and face her figurative and literal demons. Join me for a conversation with graphic artist Fabrice Sapolsky about this second story of the Intertwined universe, The Last Jewish Daughter of Kaifeng.

Follow along with the transcript.

Support the author, AJL, and independent book stores by buying their book here.

Check out these links from Fabrice Sapolsky:

• JewceThe Jewish Comic Experience at the Center for Jewish History
• Fair Square Comics
• Be'chol Lashon / Global Jews

Thanks to:

• The Association of Jewish Libraries
• Heidi Rabinowitz, podcast mentor
• Dee Yan Key for use of their Freylekh (downloaded from https://freemusicarchive.org/home)
• Donate to support the podcast

If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also like the AJL sister podcast, The Book of Life, a podcast about Jewish kidlit, mostly.

When people think of Operation Moses, they usually think of a plane full of Ethiopian Jews, the Beta Israel, arriving in Israel. But their journey started long before the plane ride and continued for years after arriving. Kim Salzman follows a single family as they journey in three groups from Ethiopia to Sudan, to Israel, and into the Israeli absorption centers. They each endure a physically dangerous and emotional wrenching journey.

Follow along with the transcript.

Support the author, AJL, and independent book stores by buying their book here.

Thanks to:

• The Association of Jewish Libraries
• Heidi Rabinowitz, podcast mentor
• Dee Yan Key for use of their Freylekh (downloaded from https://freemusicarchive.org/home)
• Donate to support the podcast

If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also like the AJL sister podcast, The Book of Life, a podcast about Jewish kidlit, mostly.

Lesbian, poet, activist, and Yiddishist Irena Klepfisz speaks about her lastest book, Her Birth and Later Years : New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021 with Yermiyahu Ahron Taub. Yermiyahu is a poet and Yiddishist in his own right. He and Irena have been friends for years. They speak about her process of writing and her use of Yiddish in her work as well as the legacy of her parents and extended family.

Follow along with the transcript.

Support the author, AJL, and independent book stores by buying their book here.

Thanks to:

• The Association of Jewish Libraries
• Heidi Rabinowitz, podcast mentor
• Dee Yan Key for use of their Freylekh (downloaded from https://freemusicarchive.org/home)
• Donate to support the podcast

If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also like the AJL sister podcast, The Book of Life, a podcast about Jewish kidlit, mostly.

During World War 11, Japanese citizens were rounded up and sent to internment camps. When they were finally released, the vast majority had lost their homes and businesses. In the upcoming episode of Nice Jewish Books, I speak with Josh Tuininga about one of the rare exceptions to this appalling situation. Josh focuses on the Sephardic Jewish community in Seattle, Washington where the friendship between Marco Calvo and members of the Japanese community rippled through the generations.

Follow along with the transcript.

Support the author, AJL, and independent book stores by buying their book here.

Thanks to:

• The Association of Jewish Libraries
• Heidi Rabinowitz, podcast mentor
• Dee Yan Key for use of their Freylekh (downloaded from https://freemusicarchive.org/home)
• Donate to support the podcast

If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also like the AJL sister podcast, The Book of Life, a podcast about Jewish kidlit, mostly.

If I told you that this episode was going to be about a house which ran around on chicken legs, you might assume that this should belong to an odd looking children's book. But NO! This is a full-fledged intruiguing adult adventure. When the Yaga siblings inherit their grandmother's house, they set off on a journey to hide from the mysterious man who is stalking the house, discover themselves, and oh yes, create puppet shows along the way. Listen in to Hannah Srour-Zackon's interview of GennaRose Northcott about her AJL honor winning book, Thistlefoot.

Follow along with the transcript.

Follow GennaRose on Instagram #gennarosenethercott

Support the author, AJL, and independent book stores by buying their book here.

Thanks to:

• The Association of Jewish Libraries
• Heidi Rabinowitz, podcast mentor
• Dee Yan Key for use of their Freylekh (downloaded from https://freemusicarchive.org/home)
• Donate to support the podcast

If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also like the AJL sister podcast, The Book of Life, a podcast about Jewish kidlit, mostly.

When Jamie's family moves from a liberal Jewish area of San Francisco to a conservative area of Florida, he decides to go back into the closet. But when he meets Alex, the football star, sparks fly between them which un-nerves both of the teens. Can they work out their feelings for each other while navigating homophobia? Join me for a conversation with Jacob Gelman.

Follow along with the transcript.

Support the author, AJL, and independent book stores by buying their book here.

Thanks to:

• The Association of Jewish Libraries
• Heidi Rabinowitz, podcast mentor
• Dee Yan Key for use of their Freylekh (downloaded from https://freemusicarchive.org/home)

If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also like the AJL sister podcast, The Book of Life, a podcast about Jewish kidlit, mostly.