A Jewish American Heritage Month Reading List

While Book Talk by the Sea recently highlighted Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, AAPI is not this month's only month-long heritage observance. May is also celebrated as Jewish American Heritage Month, a way of acknowledging the history and culture of Jewish Americans and their contributions to this country. It was born of a 2006 grassroots effort begun in Florida to achieve such recognition. As with AAPI month, the Library of Congress, NARA, National Endowment for the Arts, and other institutions and organizations maintain a virtual exhibit of multimedia and documents to explore Jewish history and culture. You can access it at https://www.jewishheritagemonth.gov/.

Novels and histories of the Holocaust are published in abundance and often quite popular, and certainly a great deal of them are worth our attention, but there is far more of the Jewish experience that can be and has been conveyed through literature. Please explore the reading list below to discover novels, histories, memoirs, cookbooks, poetry, and more related to Jewish heritage. Click on the links to learn more about each book and/or to request them in our catalog.

Fiction

Rashi's Daughters, Maggie Anton

Florence Adler Swims Forever, Rachel Beanland

Milk Fed, Melissa Broder

People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks

Margot, Jillian Cantor

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon

Kaddish.com, Nathan Englander

Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

The Lost Shtetl, Max Gross

The World That We Knew, Alice Hoffman

Eternal Life, Dara Horn