Jew­ish Amer­i­can Her­itage Month 2023

May is Jew­ish Amer­i­can Her­itage Month! Jewish Book Council provides a read­ing list that high­lights and speaks to the Amer­i­can Jew­ish expe­ri­ence through­out history.

Updated March 31, 2023
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Lot six : a memoir
Adjmi, David
Paper Book
"One of the great American memoirs, a heartbreaking, hilarious story of what it means to make things up, including yourself. A wild tale of lack and lies, galling humiliations and majestic reinventions, this touching, coruscating joy of a book is an answer to that perennial question: how should a...
A beginner's guide to America : for the immigrant and the curious
H ?akka kiya n, Ru ?ya
Paper Book
A stirring, witty, and poignant glimpse into the bewildering American immigrant experience from someone who has lived it. Hakakian's "love letter to the nation that took her in is also a timely reminder of what millions of human beings endure when they uproot their lives to become Americans by...
Mahjong : a Chinese game and the making of modern American culture
Heinz, Annelise
Audiobook
Click-click-click. The sound of mahjong tiles connects American expatriates in Shanghai, Jazz Age white Americans, urban Chinese Americans in the 1930s, incarcerated Japanese Americans in wartime, Jewish American suburban mothers, and Air Force officers' wives in the postwar era. ...
Loss of memory is only temporary : stories
Kaplan, Johanna
Paper Book
A funny, fresh, and brilliantly insightful collection of stories from a beloved writer, with a new introduction by Francine Prose Johanna Kaplan's beautifully written stories first burst on the literary scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today they have retained all of their depth,...
Once we were slaves : the extraordinary journey of a multiracial Jewish family
Leibman, Laura Arnold
Paper Book
An obsessive genealogist and descendent of one of the most prominent Jewish families since the American Revolution, Blanche Moses firmly believed her maternal ancestors were Sephardic grandees. Yet she found herself at a dead end when it came to her grandmother's maternal line. Using family...
Hannah G. Solomon dared to make a difference
Lindauer, Bonnie Gratch
Paper Book
When Hannah G. Solomon looked around Chicago, the city where she was born, she saw unfairness all around her. Many people were poor and living in terrible conditions. Immigrants from other countries struggled to survive in their new home. Hannah decided to help change that. When she grew up, she...
America's Jewish women : a history from colonial times to today
Nadell, Pamela Susan
Paper Book
Pamela S. Nadell weaves together the complex story of Jewish women in America--from colonial-era matriarch Grace Nathan and her great-granddaughter, poet Emma Lazarus, to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Recounting how Jewish women have been at the forefront of social, economic, and...
Lincoln and the Jews : a history
Sarna, Jonathan D.
Paper Book
One hundred and fifty years after Abraham Lincoln's death, the full story of his extraordinary relationship with Jews is told here for the first time. Lincoln and the Jews: A History provides readers both with a captivating narrative of his interactions with Jews, and with the opportunity...
The great kosher meat war of 1902 : immigrant housewives and the riots that shook New York City
Seligman, Scott D.
Paper Book
2020-21 Reader Views Literary Award, Gold Medal Winner 2021 Independent Publisher Book Award, Gold Medal Winner 2020 National Jewish Book Award, Finalist 2020 American Book Fest Best Book Awards Finalist in the U.S. History category 2020 Foreword...
Inheritance : a memoir of genealogy, paternity, and love
Shapiro, Dani
Paper Book
A New York Times BestsellerIn the spring of 2016, a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA for analysis gave Dani Shapiro the stunning news that her father was not her biological father. Her entire history, the life she had lived, crumbled beneath her. Inheritance is a book...
How Yiddish changed America and how America changed Yiddish
Stavans, Ilan
Paper Book
Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are based on Holocaust survivors? And how has Yiddish, a language without a country, influenced Hollywood? These and other...

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