By Arysa Flores (Library Assistant), Chris Lederhos (Computer Lab Monitor), and Julianna Web (Customer Experience Representative)
We’re celebrating Jewish Heritage Month! Jewish Americans have made boundless contributions to the fabric of society, culture, art, science, and more. To this day, Jewish Americans face faith-based discrimination and ethnic discrimination; the strength of their communities is a testament to the Jewish people’s resilience and power in the face of adversity.
It’s estimated the first individuals of Jewish descent arrived in Colorado around the Gold Rush in the late 1850s. Few became miners, but many did establish businesses in mining towns. By the late 1800s, there were small but well-established Jewish communities across Colorado that continue to be integral to Colorado’s society and culture.
Library staff members have developed a book list for Jewish American Heritage Month that offers fiction and non-fiction choices as well as novels for young adults. Enjoying perusing this hand-picked selection of books available in our collection.
Biography
Lot Six: A Memoir
By David Adjmi
In a world where everyone is inventing a self, curating a feed and performing a fantasy of life, what does it mean to be a person? In his grandly entertaining debut memoir, playwright David Adjmi explores how human beings create themselves, and how artists make their lives into art. Brooklyn, 1970s. Born into the ruins of a Syrian Jewish family that once had it all, David is painfully displaced. Trapped in an insular religious community that excludes him and a family coming apart at the seams, he is plunged into suicidal depression. Through adolescence, David tries to suppress his homosexual feelings and fit in, but when pushed to the breaking point, he makes the bold decision to cut off his family, erase his past, and leave everything he knows behind.
There’s only one problem: who should he be? Bouncing between identities he steals from the pages of fashion magazines, tomes of philosophy, sitcoms and foreign films, and practically everyone he meets – from Rastafarians to French preppies – David begins to piece together an entirely new adult self. Lot Six offers a quintessentially American tale of an outsider striving to reshape himself in the funhouse mirror of American culture.
I Want You to Know We’re Still Here: A Post-Holocaust Memoir
By Esther Safran Foer
Esther Safran Foer grew up in a family where history was too terrible to speak of. The child of parents who were each the sole survivors of their respective families, for Esther the Holocaust was always felt but never discussed. So, when Esther’s mother casually mentions an astonishing revelation – that her father had a previous wife and daughter, both killed in the Holocaust – Esther resolves to find the truth. Armed with only a black-and-white photo and hand-drawn map, she travels to Ukraine, determined to find the shtetl where her father hid during the war. What she finds not only reshapes her identity but gives her the long-denied opportunity to mourn the all-but-forgotten dead.
Non-Fiction
Let There Be Laughter: A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What it all Means
By Michael Krasny
Michael Krasny has been telling Jewish jokes since his bar mitzvah, and it’s been said that he knows more of them than anyone on the planet. He certainly states his case in this wise, enlightening, and hilarious book that not only collects the best of Jewish humor passed down from generation to generation, but explains the cultural expressions and anxieties behind the laughs. With his background as a scholar and public-radio host, Krasny delves deeply into the themes, topics, and form of Jewish humor: chauvinism undercut by irony and self-mockery, the fear of losing cultural identity through assimilation, the importance of vocal inflection in joke-telling, and calls to communal memory, including the use of Yiddish. Borrowing from traditional humor and such Jewish comedy legends as Jackie Mason, Mel Brooks, Joan Rivers, Larry David, Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld, and Amy Schumer, Let There Be Laughter is an absolute pleasure for the chosen and goyim alike.
The Jewish Americans: A Series by David Grubin – Part 1
Available on Kanopy
In the 1700s, a small number of Jews came to America, struggling to hold fast to their faith and heritage while becoming part of the emerging nation. Though they fought in the American Revolution, they were at best tolerated, at worst shunned – becoming ready scapegoats in times of crisis. From the American Revolution to today, this expansive series covers the Jewish American diaspora and how Jewish Americans developed their own unique cultural institutions.
People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
By Dara Horn
A startling exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living. Reflecting on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the blockbuster traveling exhibition called “Auschwitz,” the Jewish history of the Chinese city of Harbin, and the little-known “righteous-gentile” Varian Fry, Dara Horn challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, as emblematic of the worst of evils the world has to offer, and so little respect for Jewish lives, as they continue to unfold in the present. Horn draws upon her own family life – trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious 10-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school in New Jersey, the profound and essential perspective offered by traditional religious practice, prayer, and study – to assert the vitality, complexity and depth of this life against an anti-Semitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of “Never forget,” is on the rise.
The Rational Passover Haggadah
By Dennis Prager, edited by Joseph Telushkin
The Rational Passover Haggadah includes the Hebrew text for the Seder side by side with the English translation, making this a complete and fulfilling guide to the Passover ritual. This book combines thought-provoking articles with the traditional Haggadah text. The book relies on reason to explain the text and “offers the opportunity to consider the importance of ritual, the historical accuracy of Exodus, and timeless questions about the relationship between God and the Jewish people in our modern world.” This book guides readers in discussions for any time of the year but is especially appropriate when sitting together to celebrate Passover.
Being Jewish Today: Confronting the Real Issues
by Tony Bayfield
This book understands and faces the impact of modernity on the Jewish community today. Tony Bayfield begins the book with an overview of Jewish people from ancient times to the present day and discusses Jewish identity, antisemitism, concerns of the Torah, and widely evaded questions of universal suffering and divine interaction. Bayfield explores the relationship between Jewish tradition and belief and the meaning of Jewish identity.
Fiction
The Boston Girl
By Anita Diamant
Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie’s intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can’t imagine – a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love. Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her “How did you get to be the woman you are today?” She begins in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naive girl she was and a wicked sense of humor.
All Other Nights
By Dara Horn
How is tonight different from all other nights? For Jacob Rappaport, a Jewish soldier in the Union army, it is a question his commanders have answered for him: on Passover in 1862, he is ordered to murder his own uncle, who is plotting to assassinate President Lincoln. After that night, will Jacob ever speak for himself? The answer comes when his commanders send him on another mission-this time not to murder a spy, but to marry one. Full of insight and surprise, layered with meaning, it is a brilliant parable of the moral divide that still haunts us: between those who value family first and those who are dedicated, at any cost, to social and racial justice for all.
The Intimacy Experiment
By Rosie Danan
Main characters Naomi and Ethan test the boundaries of love in this provocative romance from the author of the groundbreaking debut, The Roommate. Naomi Grant has built a life around going against the grain. When the sex-positive start-up she cofounded becomes an international sensation, her responsibilities shift from the bedroom to the boardroom. Ready to conquer new worlds, Naomi wants to extend her educational platform to live lecturing, but despite her long list of qualifications, higher ed won’t hire her. Ethan Cohen has recently received two honors: LA Mag named him one of the city’s hottest bachelors and he became rabbi of his own synagogue. Taking a gamble in an effort to attract more millennials to the faith, the executive board hired Ethan because of his nontraditional background. Naomi and Ethan join forces to host a buzzy seminar series on Modern Intimacy, the perfect solution to their problems-until they discover a new one-their growing attraction to each other. They’ve built the syllabus for love’s latest experiment, but neither of them expected they’d be the ones putting it to the test.
Once More with Feeling
By Elissa Sussmann
Katee Rose is living the dream as America’s number-one pop star, caught in a whirlwind of sold-out concerts, screaming fans, and constant tabloid coverage. Everyone wants to know everything about her and her boyfriend, Ryan LaNeve, the hottest member of adored boy band CrushZone. Katee loves to perform but hates the impossible demands of stardom. Maybe that’s why she finds herself in the arms of another CrushZone member, Cal Kirby. One unforgettable night is all it takes to blow up Katee’s relationship with Ryan, her career, and her whole life.
The Book of Lost Names
By Kristin Harmel
This historical fiction book is based on a true story of a young woman with a talent for forgery who helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis during World War II. The book follows Eva Adams, a now semi-retired librarian who fled Paris in 1942. She foraged documents for Nazi children to help them escape but keeps a record of the erased identities in what was called the Book of Lost Names. The book has since resurfaced, and only Eva understands the code. Will she revisit her past to help reunite those lost in the war? This book has been called “a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.” Kristin Harmel is a Jewish author who has written several books based off of World War II.
Teen & Young Adults
It’s a Whole Spiel: Love, Latkes, and Other Jewish Stories
By Katherine Locke and Laura Silverman
Experience life through Jewish teens’ eyes in this collection of short stories. The characters go through heartbreak, fall in love, and discover their identities. The collection has everything you could ever want to explore Jewish identity, from confronting relationships to rom-coms. This collection “features one story after another that says yes, we are Jewish, but we are also queer, and disabled, and creative, and political, and adventurous, and anything we want to be.”
The Last Words We Said
By Leah Scheier
This novel has mystery, romance, and Judaism. Danny disappeared nine months ago, and his closest friends are coping in different ways. Rae is rage-baking, while Deenie is deepening her commitment to Orthodox Judaism. Meanwhile, Ellie, Danny’s girlfriend, refuses to believe he is dead. The book moves between the past showing how Danny and Ellie fell in love and the present where Ellie is looking for answers, as she is certain this tragedy in their Jewish community runs deeper than they all believe. This novel is about grief, faith, and how that faith leads to the decisions people make.
