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
Paper Book
How has a game brought together Americans and defined separate ethnic communities? This book tells the first history of mahjong and its meaning in American culture.Click-click-click. The sound of mahjong tiles connects American expatriates in Shanghai, Jazz Age white Americans, urban Chinese...
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,...
One more year : stories
Krasikov, Sana
Paper Book
Every so often a new writer appears who is wiser than her years would suggest, whose flesh-and-blood characters embody more experience than a young writer could possible know. Sana Krasikov is one of those writers. Her first published story appeared in the New Yorker, her second in The Atlantic...
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
Ebook
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...
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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