Your Reading List for Jewish American Heritage Month
By Daniel Turtel
It’s been an eventful century and a half for the Jews. From the Pale of Settlement, through Eastern and Western Europe, to the Americas and Israel, the breadth of the Jewish experience over the past 150 years represents some of humanity's highest highs and lowest lows. Through it all, that term “the Jewish experience” has taken on a life of its own; though it has grown and evolved and done some acrobatics, it’s managed to build and maintain a cohesive—if extremely multifaceted—meaning, and that’s in large part due to the stories and storytellers who have chronicled our history, analyzed our present, and offered thoughts about our future. Here are a few of the best:
The Brothers Ashkenazi by I.J. Singer
Sibling rivalry is something I.J. Singer would know all about; his younger brother, Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, is by far the more popular of the two. Yet The Brothers Ashkenazi, a tale of sibling rivalry itself, is perhaps the best novel ever written in Yiddish. Epic in its scope, the novel covers the lives of two fraternal twins born to a Hasidic family in turn-of-the-century Poland. Each leaves the faith in order to either build or marry into fortunes now made possible by the industrial revolution. But other revolutions are dawning, too; between pogroms, the outbreak of World War I, and the Russian Revolution, The Brothers Ashkenazi brings its characters, Eastern Europe, and the Jews that populate the Pale of Settlement out of shtetl life and throws them into world history.
Only Yesterday by S.Y. Agnon
If The Brothers Ashkenazi is the best novel ever written in Yiddish, it’s possibly due to S.Y. Agnon’s switching to Hebrew for the writing of Only Yesterday. The protagonist, Isaac Kumer, comes straight out of Singer’s Poland to the Land of Israel, which he imagines to be filled with opportunity—socioeconomic, sexual, and spiritual—and overflowing with ripe Jaffa oranges. The oranges are there, but little else of the ancient homeland is as the Zionist pamphlets made it out to be. It’s a long one, but a masterpiece.
The Messiah of Stockholm by Cynthia Ozick
Part homage to Bruno Schulz, part analysis of what tragedy means, especially when inherited, The Messiah of Stockholm is not your average post-Holocaust novel. Lars Andemening, a Swedish book reviewer who was raised an orphan, has come to believe that his true father was Nazi victim Bruno Schulz. Through Ademening’s conviction, and his burning need to find his “father’s” lost manuscript, Ozick investigates the ways in which we build our identities through myths.
A Meal in Winter by Hubert Mingarelli (translated by Sam Taylor)
Published as a French novella in 2012, A Meal in Winter tells the story of three German soldiers who are tasked with finding and capturing a Jew who is hiding out in the Polish backcountry in winter. They find him, and have just found an abandoned hut in which to spend the night, when a Polish peasant joins them. His virulent anti-semitism disgusts the Germans, and they find themselves wondering whether they should offer the Jew food, whether it matters, and whether they should set him free. It’s a quick, gorgeous read.
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
Only two of the five planned novels that make up Suite Francaise were ever written. The other three, like their author, were killed at Auschwitz. Storm in June and Dolce chronicle the Nazi invasion of France and life under their occupation. Published only in 2004, based on preserved notebooks, this collection shows the Ukrainian-Jewish author at the height of her powers.
Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig, an Austrian Jew who fled to England, New York, and finally Brazil, was obsessed by the true motives behind seemingly altruistic behavior. In Beware of Pity, a cavalry officer of the Austro-Hungarian empire slips up at a dinner party by politely asking the host’s daughter to dance, unaware that she is crippled. The scene she makes, and the pity which encourages the officer to try to make amends, sets his life on a downward spiral. Zweig makes a villain out of pity, and the result is astounding.
The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories by Etgar Keret
This book of shorts by one of Israel’s most important contemporary authors takes the reader on a wild ride. The stories are short enough to be read in one sitting each, but they stick around. Through surreal twists and turns bordering on absurdist, Keret gets at some deep truths about life and finding meaning.
The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
Joshua Cohen’s 2021 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Netanyahus reimagines a 1950s encounter between Harold Bloom and Benzion Netanyahu. The upstate New York winter campus is a perfect setting in which to extract the most out of the eccentric Israeli family, and the collegiate atmosphere offers Cohen a conduit through which to stuff the dialogue full of academic pretensions. The result is a 250-page whirlwind that is teeming with clever prose and entertaining ideas.
The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth
Of all the characters that Philip Roth has created, the best one might be himself. Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s literary alter ego, is a writer nearly as polarizing and controversial as his creator. The Zuckerman Bound trilogy offers readers a glimpse into how the writer thinks others see him, and possibly how he sees himself. The Ghost Writer starts us off with a young Nathan Zuckerman who is new to the literary elite. He is invited to spend a weekend with his literary idol, E.I. Lonoff, and a mysterious young woman with an unplaceable accent and a vague past who may or may not be Anne Frank.
Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander
If one novel of speculative Anne Frank-centric fiction is just not enough, here is Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander. The Kugels are seeking a new start and a quiet life in the rural town of Stockton, New York. But they have hardly finished moving themselves into their new farmhouse when Solomon comes across a surprise hiding in the attic. Through this clever and unorthodox setup, we’re given some genuine insights on the nature of reinvention and what it means to be stuck in the past.
The Family Morfawitz by Daniel Turtel
And to cap it off with some shameless self-promotion: my latest novel, The Family Morfawitz, is a retelling of Greco-Roman myth as a Jewish family saga. In four generations, the Morfawitz family goes from the poverty and pogroms of Pale of Settlement Russia to wealth and fame atop of the New York City skyline, where they’ve built their very own Mount Olympus.
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Daniel Turtel grew up on the Jersey Shore. He graduated from Duke University in 2013 with a degree in mathematics and received an MFA from The New School. His debut novel, Greetings from Asbury Park, was awarded the Faulkner Society’s Best Novel Award. His newest novel, The Family Morfawitz, released in February. He now lives in New York City.