Afleveringen
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Portia Elan tells us about her journey to become a Jew by choice after attending Friday night services and feeling that she had “come home.” We also discuss her fascination with the AIDS quilt as a child, and the beauty in finding queer elders in her synagogue. Portia also reflects on how she understands tikkun olam: rooted in how we care for others and in our responsibility to the balance of entire ecosystems.
Portia Elan studied history at Stanford University and earned an MFA from the University of Victoria before returning to California, where she has worked as a waitress, bookseller, teacher, and public librarian. She is a former Lambda Literary Fellow and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife and an abundance of cats. Homebound, Portia’s debut novel, is a clear-eyed, hopeful work of speculative fiction about humanity’s future and capacity for love.
Homebound is a GMA Book Club pick and the latest selection for Nu Reads, the curated, bi-monthly book subscription service from Jewish Book Council.
Homebound Portia Elan’s Five Books:
Surprised by God by Danya Ruttenberg
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
The Encore by Juliet Izon
HOMEBOUND by Portia Elan
Other Episodes You Might Enjoy:
Alicia Jo Rabins on Composing a Life of Meaning
Yael van der Wouden on Rage, Desire, and Magic
Rabbi Sharon Brous on Finding Her Place in the Jewish Community
Other Books Mentioned:
The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel
When the Emperor Was Divine and The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous, Sam Sussman, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Allegra Goodman.
â â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram â @fivebookspod â or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at â [email protected]â
For transcripts and more find us online at â www.fivebookspod.org â
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! â https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrateâ
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions -
In this conversation, Dahlia Adler discusses the emotional and cultural terrain of love, identity, and storytelling within and beyond the Modern Orthodox world. We explore the particular pressures and expectations around romance in a community where shared values, observance, and belief are foundational. Dahlia also reflects on her unexpected journey to understanding her own bisexual identity as a result of writing a sapphic romance. And we explore her deep love of flawed characters - from Biblical women, to her own protagonists and her commitment to rendering them with empathy, context and moral complexity.
Dahlia Adler is an award-winning author of romance novels for both teens and adults, a prolific YA anthologist, and the founder of the website LGBTQReads. Her novels include the Kids' Indie Next picks Cool for the Summer, Home Field Advantage, and Going Bicoastal, a Sydney Taylor Honor book. She lives in the New York City suburbs with her family.
Dahlia’s latest novel, Soon By You, is a rom-com set in the Modern Orthodox community on the Upper West Side.
Dahlia Adler’s Five Books:
1. Alan and Naomi by Myron Levoy
2. Playing with Matches by Suri Rosen
3. Biblical Images: Men and Women of the Bible by Adin Steinsaltz
4. Sisters of Fortune by Esther Chehebar
5. Soon By You by Dahlia Adler
Other Media Mentioned:
- LGBTQReads
- Unorthodox Love by Heidi Shertok
Other Episodes You Might Enjoy:
Esther Chehebar on Marriage, Sisterhood, and the Weight of Tradition
Jean Meltzer on ‘Jewitches’ and Jewish Joy
Jessica Elisheva Emerson on Belief, Identity, and Women’s Desire
Jennifer Weiner on “Women’s Fiction”
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous, Sam Sussman, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Allegra Goodman.
â â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram â @fivebookspod â or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at â [email protected]â
For transcripts and more find us online at â www.fivebookspod.org â
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! â https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrateâ
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Is two Jews, three opinions a good thing? In this episode, Laurie Frankel discusses the very Jewish capacity of holding space for many different ideas and views, and how this capacity might be exactly what we need in this moment. We’ll also discuss the power and devastation of Cythnia Ozick’s short story “The Shawl,” its contribution to the conversation around trauma, and how a difficult-to-believe premise followed by realism (like that in Naomi Alderman’s The Power) is one of Laurie’s favorite structures for fiction.
Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of six novels. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Publisher’s Weekly, People Magazine, Lit Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald, and more. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. A proponent of transgender rights, she wrote about her child’s transition in an essay in the New York Times titled, “From He to She in First Grade.” Her novel This Is How It Always Is, also about a transgender child, was a Reese’s Book Club Pick and was listed as one of the best books of 2017 by People Magazine, Bustle, and more.
Laurie’s latest novel is Enormous Wings. At seventy-seven, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas—that would be her three grown children—but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting, and confusion start. She fears it’s cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: She’s pregnant. As word gets out, everyone wants a piece of her: the press and paparazzi, activists and medical researchers, belly-rubbers and rubber-neckers all descending on Vista View while Pepper struggles to determine her next move. Soon she has some hard decisions to make—and some she’s not allowed to make.
Laurie Frankel’s Five Books:
1. The Shawl and Rosa, interconnected short stories by Cynthia Ozick
2. Angels in America, a play by Tony Kushner
3. The Power by Naomi Alderman
4. The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehmann
5. Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel
Other Episodes You Might Enjoy:
Fran Fabriczki on “Homelooseness” and a Love Letter to Los Angeles
Judith Viorst on Happiness, Agency, and the Art of Aging
Kitty Zeldis on Passing and the Relief of Being “Kitty”
Gayle Forman on the Innate Goodness of Young People
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous, Sam Sussman, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Allegra Goodman.
â â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram â @fivebookspod â or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at â [email protected]â
For transcripts and more find us online at â www.fivebookspod.org â
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! â https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrateâ
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions -
In recognition of Jewish Heritage Month, this episode features a conversation with Nicholas Lemann, whose work and life story open up questions about American and Jewish identity. Nicholas discusses his assimilated Louisianan/ German-Jewish upbringing and his lifelong quest for connection with Judaism. What does it mean to be both Jewish and have ancestors who benefitted from slavery? We’ll also discuss what Tolstoy’s Russia has in common with the New Orleans of Nicholas’ childhood, and his appreciation for reading the Torah in all its moral complexity.
Nicholas was born and raised in New Orleans and has been a magazine writer since he was a teenager. He has worked at the Washington Monthly, Texas Monthly, the Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, and has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1999. He is a professor and dean emeritus at the Columbia Journalism school, and in 2023 was appointed to Columbia’s Task Force on Antisemitism.
Nicholas is also the author of many books of nonfiction including The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, and Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream. His latest book is Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries. delves deeply into his family’s German-Jewish-Lousianan story. From their arrival in Louisiana in the 1830s as peddlers from Germany, to their becoming plantation owners and department store owners after the Civil War, to their emergence in the aristocratic world of New Orleans, where they could never quite belong.
Nicholas Lemann’s Five Books:
1. My Son the Nut by Allan Sherman (album)
2. How Judaism Became a Religion by Leora Batnitzky
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth
5. Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries by Nicholas Lemann
Other Episodes You Might Enjoy:
Rachel Cockerell on the Zionist Dream that Sailed to Galveston
Matti Friedman on the Stories that Built a People
Elizabeth Graver on Lost Worlds and New Doorways
Francine Klagsbrun on Embracing and Reshaping Tradition
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous, Sam Sussman, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Allegra Goodman.
â â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram â @fivebookspod â or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at â [email protected]â
For transcripts and more find us online at â www.fivebookspod.org â
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! â https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrateâ
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions -
In this conversation, Fran Fabriczki discusses coming of age between Hungary and Los Angeles and her experiences with cultural richness and antisemitism between the two countries. We also discuss “homelooseness” in The Nearest Thing to Life by James Wood, and JD Salinger’s relationship with Jewishness through his short story “Down at the Dinghy.”
Fran Fabriczki was born in Budapest. She has lived in Los Angeles and currently lives in London. She studied English at the University of Cambridge and worked in publishing for several years before becoming a novelist. She graduated from the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing MA in 2022. Porcupines is her debut novel.
In Porcupines, Sonia is a Hungarian immigrant who is raising her daughter, Mila on her own in sunny Los Angeles. Her days are a blur of not-quite-illegal business activities, dodging PTA moms, and baking birthday cakes laced with rum—minor mistakes that nevertheless continually remind her of everything she doesn’t understand about America and parenthood. Mila, meanwhile, is juggling violin and swimming lessons and navigating the treacherous social politics of school with the help of a less-than-helpful guidebook on how to be cool in the sixth grade—all the while trying to get her secretive mother to share something, anything, about her past. Moving between Budapest before the fall of the Berlin Wall; Washington, DC, in the tense years of the Cold War; and the bright sunshine of early aughts Los Angeles, Porcupines is an irresistible novel about mothers and daughters, secrecy and loneliness, belonging and reinvention—and what happens when the truth can’t be held back any longer.
Fran Fabriczki's Five Books:
The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen
“Down at the Dinghy” from Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
The Nearest Thing to Life by James Wood
Going Home by Tom Lamont
Porcupines by Fran Fabriczki
Other Episodes You Might Enjoy:
Allegra Goodman on “This is Not About Us”
Sasha Vasilyuk on the Silences of the Soviet-Jewish Past
Jessica Berger Gross on Cultural Judaism and Creative Resistance
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous, Sam Sussman, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Allegra Goodman.
â â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram â @fivebookspod â or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at â [email protected]â
For transcripts and more find us online at â www.fivebookspod.org â
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! â https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrateâ
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions -
In this conversation, Adeena Sussman discusses how reading an (age-inappropriate) short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer one Shabbat afternoon changed the way she thought about writing and storytelling. We’ll also hear about her deep attachment to Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market, and how discovering Claudia Roden’s writing about Middle Eastern food expanded her sense of Jewish food.
Adeena Sussman is the author of the New York Times best selling cookbook Shabbat: Recipes and Rituals From My Table To Yours, and Sababa, which was named a Best Fall 2019 cookbook by The New York Times, Bon Appetit, and Food & Wine. Her latest cookbook, Zariz, focuses on quick and easy Tel Aviv-inspired recipes. Adeena is also the co-author of 15 other cookbooks, including the Cravings series with Chrissy Teigen, which were New York Times Best-sellers. Adeena lives, cooks and writes in Tel Aviv, where she lives in the shadow of that city’s Carmel Market with her husband, Jay Shofet.
Adeena Sussman's Five Books:
1. Short Friday and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer
2. Call It Sleep by Henry Roth
3. Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden
4. Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
5. Zariz: 100 Easy, Breezy, Tel Aviv-y Recipes by Adeena Sussman
Other Media Mentioned:
- The New York Times Cookbook by Craig Claiborne
- Spice and Spirit: The Complete Kosher Jewish Cookbook by Tzuvia Emmer and Tzipora Reitman
- “How To Live Life Like Erez Komarovsky: The Hell-Raising, Iconoclastic Israeli Bread Baker” by Taffy Brodesser Akner
Other Episodes Featuring Jewish Food:
Bonny Reichert on Food, Fear, and Finding Beauty
Jake Cohen on the Magic of Gathering Around the Table
Samantha Ellis on Becoming a Keeper of Her Ancestral Language
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous, Sam Sussman, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Allegra Goodman.
â â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram â @fivebookspod â or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at â [email protected]â
For transcripts and more find us online at â www.fivebookspod.org â
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! â https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrateâ
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions
A special thank you to Dr. Ruby Gelman -
In this episode, Alicia Jo Rabins traces the “red hot glow” of the moments that shaped her, both spiritual and artistic, and how they led her to a life rooted in music, text, and ritual. She’ll tell us how a chavruta (study partnership) with an Orthodox student while at Barnard College paved the way for her to transform her academic study into song in Girls in Trouble. As she details the pendulum swings in her religious and spiritual practices, we discuss the ways in which small moments – watching orthodox women wait for the electric doors to open on Shabbat, watching Titanic – have helped her to build a life and tradition wholly her own.
Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, musician, composer, performer, and Torah teacher. When We’re Born We Forget Everything follows her journey as a modern Jewish woman to owning ancient teachings and finding her own meanings in them, refracted through feminist interpretations of the lives of Biblical women.
Alicia has published two award winning poetry collections, a collection of short personal essays called Even God Has Bad Parenting Days, and a children’s picture book called Hallelujah: The Story of Leonard Cohen. Alicia is the creator and performer of Girls in Trouble, an indie-folk song cycle about the complicated lives of Biblical women. It has an accompanying curriculum and is now being made into an indie web series! She is also the creator of A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff, which began as a one-woman chamber-rock opera and was adapted into an award-winning independent feature film.
Alicia Jo Rabins’ Five Books:
1. Pirkei Avot
2. Reading the Women of the Bible by Tikva Frymer-Kensky
3. Japanese Death Poems
4. Mother's Milk: Essays on Child-Rearing, the Household, and the Making of Jewish Culture by Deena Aranoff
5. When We’re Born We Forget Everything by Alicia Jo Rabins
Alicia’s Music Played in this Episode:
- Alicia Jo Rabins, “Blackberry Spring”, Sugar Shack
- Girls in Trouble, “Open the Ground”, Open the Ground
- Girls in Trouble, “River So Wide”, Open the Ground
Other Books Mentioned:
- Slow Productivity by Cal Newport
Other Episodes on Jewish Feminism:
- Francine Klagsbrun on Embracing and Reshaping Tradition
- Ilana Kurshan on Books as Blueprints for Life
- Nicole Graev Lipson on the Attention, Intention, and Complexity of Mothers- Jennifer Wiener on “Women’s Fiction”
- Jessica Elisheva Emerson on Belief, Identity, and Women’s Desire
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous, Sam Sussman, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Allegra Goodman.
â â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram â @fivebookspod â or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at â [email protected]â
For transcripts and more find us online at â www.fivebookspod.org â
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! â https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrateâ
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions. -
In this conversation, Matti Friedman reflects on the power of foundation stories to shape how we understand ourselves and where we come from – from Noah’s Ark, to the origins of the Bible, to Hannah Senesh and the other parachutists who landed in Nazi Europe during World War II. We also talk about what happens when we look more closely at these myths and encounter the flawed, human figures behind them - and why that often deepens, rather than diminishes, our admiration for their courage. Along the way, we also discuss Matti’s particular perspective as a Western-born journalist living in Israel, Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, and the gift of reading poetry in uncertain times.
Matti’s latest book, Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe, has been awarded the Natan Notable Book award for Winter 2026 and was released last week.
In Out of the Sky, Matti Friedman unravels one of the strangest episodes of World War II: In 1944, a team of young women and men who had escaped the Holocaust made the inconceivable choice to parachute back into Nazi-occupied Europe under the cover of a British military operation.
Matti Friedman is the author of five works of nonfiction that have been translated into more than a dozen languages, each of which has appeared on numerous ‘best books of the year’ lists and have been awarded prizes and accolades including the Sami Rohr Prize, the ALA’s Sophie Brody Medal, and the Canadian Jewish Book Award, and more. Matti is a former Associated Press correspondent, his work has appeared in the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, the Atlantic, and elsewhere. He currently writes from Israel for The Free Press.
Matti Friedman's Five Books:
1. The Bible - Parshat Noach, the Story of Noah
2. Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Friedman
3. Submission by Michel Houellebecq
4. Hebrew poetry by Yehuda Amichai and Lea Goldberg
5. Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe by Matti Friedman
Other Media Mentioned:
HHhH by Laurent Binet
Eli Eli, recorded by Ofra Haza and the Hatikva Neighbourhood Workshop Theatre
Stay tuned at the end of the episode for a reflection on Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock with designer and friend of the podcast Dov Abramson.
Other Episode You Might Enjoy:
Sarah Hurwitz on Reclaiming Our Jewish Story
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg on Re-envisioning the Jewish Future
Dara Horn on Being the Lorax at Her Seder Table
Ilana Kurshan on Books as Blueprints for Life
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl (Senior Rabbi at Central Synagogue, and author of Heart of a Stranger) Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)
â â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram â @fivebookspod â or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at â [email protected]â
For transcripts and more find us online at â www.fivebookspod.org â
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! â https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrateâ
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions
Thank you to Rob Mank
Thank you to Felicia Herman and David Ben-Ur for their generous support. -
In this episode, Zeeva Bukai discusses her two novels, Anatomy of Exile and The World Between, both published in the past year and woven with threads of her family history. She traces a legacy of dislocation: her grandmother’s reunion with her husband after years in a Siberian work camp, her father’s escape from Syria at age 13 with his younger brothers, and her own life between Israel and the U.S. Zeeva also reflects on her deep connection to Nicole Kraus’ Great House and the “architecture” of memory, and shares a striking moment teaching Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis to a class of orthodox high school students.
The Anatomy of Exile was chosen as the winner of the 2025 National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction. Zeeva’s latest book, The World Between was released just a few weeks ago.
Zeeva Bukai’s stories have appeared in Carve Magazine, The Master’s Review, Mcsweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and elsewhere. Her honors include a fellowship at the New York Center for Fiction, residencies at Hedgebrook Writers Colony, and Byrdcliff AIR program in Woodstock NY. She is the recipient of the The Master’s Review fall fiction prize, the Curt Johnson Prose Award, and the Lilith Fiction Award.
Zeeva Bukai’s Five Books:
1. The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig
2. Great House by Nicole Kraus
3. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
4. Your Presence is Mandatory by Sasha Vasiliyuk
5. Anatomy of Exile and The World Between by Zeeva Bukai
Other Episodes with Authors who Teach:
- Elizabeth Graver on Lost Worlds and new Doorways
- Jeremy Dauber on What the Horror Genre Reveals About America
- Toby Lloyd on Biblical Horror and being a Jewish Atheist
- Mary Morris on Hidden Histories and Jewish Identities
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)
â â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram â @fivebookspod â or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at â [email protected]â
For transcripts and more find us online at â www.fivebookspod.org â
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! â https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrateâ
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions. -
Rob Kutner is an Emmy, Peabody, Grammy, and TCA-winning writer for late-night TV including The Daily Show and TBS’ Conan. He is the author of the humor books including Apocalypse How (Running Press, 2008) and the kids’ comedy-horror graphic novel Snot Goblins and Other Tasteless Tales (First Second, 2023). He has written material for the Oscars, Emmys, and two White House Correspondents Dinners, and was named a “SuperJew” by Time Out New York. He is also the host of the new Mama’s Boys: a podcast on what it means to be a Jewish man today.
Rob Kutner’s irreverent book on Jewish history, The Jews: 5000 Years and Counting covers every major moment in Jewish history from Adam and Eve to Tuesday’s rerun of Seinfeld. This book will make you laugh, it might inadvertently make you learn, and it might just be a balm for our times that you didn’t know you needed.
In our conversation, Rob will tell us about how going to a Christian school reinforced his own Judaism, how he made sure that the diversity of stories were included in his Jewish history, and his story about ordering a lulav and etrog to the Daily Show office.
Rob Kutner’s Five Books:
1. The Big Book of Jewish Humor by Moshe Waldoks and William Novak
2. As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg
3. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
4. Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
5. The Jews by Rob Kutner
Find us on Instagram @fivebookspod
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at [email protected]
Find us online at www.fivebookspod.org
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support from Amelia Merrill
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions
Art by Elad Lifshitz of Dov Abramson Studio -
Allegra Goodman tells us how This Is Not About Us grew like a family tree from her New Yorker short story “Apple Cake,” as she continued writing about the Rubinstein family for over a decade. We discuss how her perspective - and the world - has changed since she wrote The Family Markowitz in her 20s, and how Keats’ concept of negative capability has shaped her writing. We also hear about a book that she found very dull until a bad cold taught her patience.
Allegra Goodman is a writer of extraordinary range and precision. Across novels and stories, she’s written about faith, ambition, family, science, history, and the quiet negotiations of everyday life, always with clarity, wit, and deep compassion for her characters. Allegra’s many books include among them Sam, a Jenna’s Book Club pick, Paradise Park, Kaaterskill Falls (a National Book Award finalist), and Isola (a Reese’s Book Club Pick.)
Her latest novel of interconnected short stories, This Is Not About Us, brings all of that together. It follows the Rubinstein family over many years, through moments that feel small until they suddenly don’t.
Allegra Goodman’s Five Books:
1. A book that is in conversation with your latest work:
The Family Markowitz
2. A Book You Changed Your Mind About:
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
3. A passage from a book that has stayed with you or has changed how you think about things:
A famous passage from one of John Keats' letters about Negative Capability
4. â The Book You’re Reading Now:
Dickens the Enchanter: Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Great Storyteller by Peter Conrad
5. The Author’s Latest Work:
This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman
Allegra’s First Appearance on The Five Books can be found here: Allegra Goodman on Making the Exotic Familiar, and Finding the Modern in Ancient Worlds
This episode was recorded live in front of an audience in a joint event for subscribers to Nu Reads, a project from Jewish Book Council that brings remarkable Jewish literature straight to your door. This is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman is the Nu Reads pick for February. Learn more at https://www.nureads.org/
The Five Books is a partner organization of Jewish Book Council, a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers.
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)
â â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
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Support our work lifting up Jewish books and Jewish authors!Donate Here
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Live Event Production support by the incredible team at Nu Reads/ Jewish Book Council: Jamie Betesh Carter, Evie Saphire-Bernstein, Miri Pomerantz Dauber and Naomi Firestone-Teeter
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions. -
In this conversation, Jason Diamond unpacks what it means to be an American, Jewish, or Jewish-American author. We also discuss family secrets, Jewish gangsters, the humor and alienation of Franz Kafka, and how Art Spiegelman’s Maus taught Jason to accept his family’s silences.
Jason’s debut novel, Kaplan’s Plot, follows Elijah Mendes, who returns to Chicago after his tech business collapses and discovers that his family owns a Jewish cemetery, where a man he’s never heard of — his great-uncle Solomon Kaplan — is buried. As Elijah begins to untangle his family’s past, the novel moves between his present-day relationship with his mother, Eve, who is dying of cancer, and the earlier story of his grandfather, Yitz Kaplan. That past narrative traces Yitz and his brother Sol from a pogrom in Odessa to their arrival in America alone, and follows the brothers’ complicated bond as Yitz rises to become a Jewish gangster in 1920s Chicago.
Jason Diamond has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, The Wall Street Journal, McSweeny's, NPR, and many other outlets. He is the author of The Sprawl, and the memoir, Searching For John Hughes. He is the co-author (with Nicolas Heller) of New York Nico's Guide to NYC.
Jason Diamond’s Five Books:
1. Maus by Art Spiegelman
2. Amerika by Franz Kafka
3. Be Here Now by Ram Dass
4. The Gods of New York by Jonathan Mahler and Effingers by Gabriele Tergit
5. Kaplan’s Plot by Jason Diamond
Stay tuned at the end of the episode for a bonus book selection by literary insider, Erika Dreifus. ErikaDreifus.com
Other Others who Chose Art Spiegelman’s Maus:
Benjamin Resnick on the Enduring Precariousness of Jewish Life
Georgia Hunter on Discovering her Family’s Jewish History
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)
â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram @fivebookspod or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at [email protected]
For transcripts and more find us online at www.fivebookspod.org
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions. -
In this episode, Sasha reflects on her childhood in Russia and Ukraine, including the moment she discovered her family was Jewish at a Purim celebration. Cut off from much of the Soviet Jewish experience under communism, Sasha also shares what she is reading to bridge the gap and learn more about the hidden narratives of Soviet Jews. We discuss what Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing taught her about slavery’s impact on American history and life today, what it means to contribute a “missing puzzle piece” to WWII literature, and how witnessing the present Russia-Ukraine conflict emboldened her to tell her grandfather’s story.
Ukraine, 2007. Yefim Shulman, husband, grandfather and war veteran, was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he had defended.
In 1941, Yefim is a young artillerist on the border between the Soviet Union and Germany, eager to defend his country and his large Jewish family against Hitler's forces. But surviving the war requires sacrifices Yefim never imagined-and even when the war ends, his fight isn't over. He must conceal his choices from the KGB and from his family.
Sasha Vasilyuk is a journalist and author of the debut novel Your Presence Is Mandatory (Bloomsbury, 2024), winner of the California Book Award and the Sami Rohr Prize. Her nonfiction has been published in The New York Times, CNN, Harper’s Bazaar, Time, The Telegraph, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Sasha grew up between Ukraine and Russia before immigrating to the United States at the age of 13.
Sasha Vasilyuk’s Five Books:1. "An Airplane Went Flying" by Friedrich Gorenshteyn (in Russian)
2. Life and Fate by Vasiliy Grossman
3. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
4. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union translated by Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav
5. Your Presence is Mandatory by Sasha Vasilyuk
Other Episodes featuring Unique WWII Perspectives:
- Sharon Kurtzman on the Danger that Lingered Post Holocaust
- Mary Morris on Hidden Histories and Jewish Identities
- Georgia Hunter on Discovering her Family’s Jewish History and Kindness as Resistance
- Bonny Reichert on Food, Fear, and Finding Beauty
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)
â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram @fivebookspod or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at [email protected]
For transcripts and more find us online at www.fivebookspod.org
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions. -
In this episode, we’ll hear Samantha reflect on her journey to preserve her Iraqi-Jewish heritage even as the language is disappearing from use. She shares how the hand work of cooking traditional recipes became a tangible way to pass culture to her son, how Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother helped her process family histories, and how stories of imprisonment and fear in Iraq shaped her childhood imagination.
The daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, Samantha grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. A language that’s now on the verge of extinction. The realization that she won’t be able to tell her son he’s "living in the days of the aubergines" or "chopping onions on my heart" or reminding him to "always carry salt" opens the floodgates. The questions keep coming. How can she pass on this heritage without passing on the trauma of displacement? Will her son ever love mango pickle?
Samantha Ellis is the author of How to be a Heroine and Take Courage. Her plays include How to Date a Feminist, Cling to me Like Ivy and Operation Magic Carpet. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, theTLS, the Spectator, Literary Review and more. She worked on the first two Paddington films. She lives in London, where Always Carry Salt was published under the title Chopping Onions on My Heart.
Samantha Ellis’s Five Books:
1. Megillat Esther, The Book of Esther
2. The Book Of Jewish Food By Claudia Roden
3. Lose Your Mother By Saidiya Hartman
4. Scaffolding By Lauren Elkin
5. Always Carry Salt by Samantha Ellis
Other Books Mentioned:
- Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk
Other Episodes about Sephardic Heritage:
- Esther Levy Chehebar on Marriage, Sisterhood, and the Weight of Tradition
- Elizabeth Graver on Lost Worlds and New Doorways
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)
â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram @fivebookspod or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at [email protected]
For transcripts and more find us online at www.fivebookspod.org
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions. -
In this episode, celebrated childrenâs book author, poet and memoirist Judith Viorst brings her irrepressible wit, humor, and insight to every age and stage of life. We talk about growing up, raising children, and living well - including the story of how her family gave up Christmas. She reflects on her lifelong love of âmessyâ characters, from Max in Sendakâs Where the Wild Things Are to her own Lulu. Her wisdom and advice is especially meaningful as we take stock of the year and set our intentions for the year ahead.In Making the Best of Whatâs Left: When Weâre Too Old to Get the Chairs Reupholstered, Judith confesses, âI never ever send a text while driving, and not just because I donât know how to text.â She discusses the afterlife (She doesnât believe in it, but if it exists, she hopes her sister-in-law isnât there). She complains to her dead husband (âI need you fixing our damn circuit breakers. I need you! Could you please stop being dead?â). And she explores the late-life meanings of wisdom and happiness and second chances and home. With a wit that defies age, Viorst navigates the terrain of loss. Judith Viorst is the author of the beloved Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, which has sold some four million copies; the Lulu books; the New York Times bestseller Necessary Losses; and four musicals. Judith has written books for each decade of life after twenty, including: It's Hard to Be Hip Over 30 & Other Tragedies of Married Life, Forever 50 & Other Negotiations, I'm Too Young to Be 70 & Other Delusions, and Nearing 90 And Other Comedies of Late Life. Now in her nineties, Judith writes about lifeâs âFinal Fifthâ in her latest book Making the Best of Whatâs Left. Judith Viorstâs Five Books:1. The Assistant by Bernard Malamud2. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak3. The Odyssey by Homer (Robert Fagles translation)4. I'll Be Right Here by Amy Bloom5. Making the Most of Whatâs Left: When Weâre Too Old to Get the Chairs Reupholstered by Judith ViorstOther Books Mentioned:- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett- Brundibar by Maurice Sendak - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre DumasOther Episodes featuring Childrenâs Book and YA Authors:- Gayle Forman on Judy Blume, Taylor Swift, and the Innate Goodness of Young People- Dara Horn on Being the Lorax at Her Seder Table- Rob Kutner on Writing for the Daily Show, Conan, and How Comedy and Judaism Overlap - Jeremy Dauber on Jewish Literature, Pop Culture, and What the Horror genre Reveals About AmericaThe Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each authorâs favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â to get new episode reminders, authorsâ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.Find us on Instagram @fivebookspod or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.For feedback or author recommendations please email us at [email protected] transcripts and more find us online at www.fivebookspod.org The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrateThe Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity. Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt CohenProduced by Odelia RubinEditorial and website support by Amelia MerrillArtwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson studioMusic by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions.
-
“No Jewish thinker has had a greater impact on the American Jewish Community in the last two decades than Irving (Yitz) Greenberg.” - Professor Steven T. Katz
Rabbi Greenberg has had a long and notable career in the service of the Jewish people. He received his smicha, ordination, in 1953 and has a masters and PhD in American History from Harvard. He has served in numerous rabbinic and academic positions. Together with Elie Wiesel, he founded CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He also served as founding president of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation which created such programs as Birthright Israel and the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education. When Elie Wiesel served as chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, Rabbi Greenberg served as its (Executive) Director. He is a leading Jewish thinker, the author of five books, and has written extensively on post-Holocaust Jewish religious thought, Jewish-Christian relations, pluralism, and the ethics of Jewish power. He is married to the Orthodox Jewish feminist pioneer and writer, Blu Greenberg.
His latest book, The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism, gives people direct access to the big ideas of Judaism in a way that's grounded in tradition, yet fully accessible. It offers a vision of Jewish law and theology that affirms life, dignity, and human partnership with God.
In our conversation, we discuss Rabbi Greenberg’s unusual path to the rabbinate, how he sees the messianic intent of tikkun olam, or repairing the world, and how you can translate his idea of maximizing life into everyday actions.
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg’s Five Books:
Masechet Megillah: a tractate of Talmud
The works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Halakhic Man by Joseph B. Soloveitchik
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
The Art of Diplomacy by Stuart E. Eizenstat
The Triumph of Life: a Narrative Theology of Judaism by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg
Other Episodes about Jewish Ethics & Spirituality:
- Rabbi Sharon Brous on Working to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World
- Ilana Kurshan on Books as Blueprints for Life
- Sarah Hurwitz on Reclaiming Our Jewish Story
- Rabbi Angela Buchdahl on Finding Yourself in the Story -
Today we’re sharing a special episode from the show Jewish Insights with Rabbi Justin Pines on JBS, the Jewish Broadcasting Service. Rabbi Justin and I sat down in the JBS studio for a deep dive conversation about Jewish storytelling, and of course his five book selections.
If truth is one of the foundational pillars of any stable society, how do we navigate a world which often feels post-truth?
They begin by exploring Tali’s own mission for The Five Books Podcast: the profound power of Jewish literature to foster empathy and a sense of shared purpose, especially during moments of crisis. Tali also shares her insights on the expanding landscape of Jewish storytelling in 2025, from the enduring resonance of Holocaust literature to the rise of stories exploring Sephardi, Mizrachi, and romantic Jewish experiences.
Then, in a special twist, Tali turns the tables and interviews Justin about the five books that have shaped his Jewish journey.
This conversation is a powerful celebration of reading, identity, and the spiritual journey that connects them both.
Justin's Five Books
1. The Catcher in the Rye 2. The Jewish Way: Living the Jewish Holidays
3. The Story of Joseph and His Brothers
4. Living Emunah: Achieving a Life of Serenity Through Faith
5. Ohr Yisrael and Other Writings -
Ahead of Thanksgiving, we’re doing something a little different: we’re talking with Jake Cohen about the foods that impacted his identity. Jake Cohen is the New York Times bestselling author of the cookbooks Jew-ish and I Could Nosh, and star of A&E’s Jake Makes It Easy. Jake’s latest cookbook, Dinner Party Animal, is a “self help cookbook” all about throwing a great dinner party and finding community. In this episode, we’ll hear about how Jake reconnected with Judaism in his 20s and how learning to make kubbeh opened a door to the wide world of Jewish food. Of course he’ll have plenty of recommendations for making Thanksgiving dinner special (and pain-free!)
Jake and his recipes have been featured on Rachael Ray, The Drew Barrymore Show, Good Morning America, the Food Network and in The New York Times, among many others. When he’s not posting challah-braiding videos and recipes, he’s eating around New York City.
Jake Cohen’s Five Foods & Restaurants:
1. Passover at his Aunt Susi’s (featuring her take on Joan Nathan’s Apricot Chicken)
2. Kubbeh at Azura in Jerusalem
3. The Chocolate Coulant, created by Dominique Ansel at Daniel
4. Hani’s bakery in the Lower East Side
5. Dinner Party Animal by Jake Cohen
Other Episodes Featuring conversations about Jewish Food:
- Bonny Reichert on Food, Fear, and Finding Beauty
- Esther Levy Chehebar on Marriage, Sisterhood, and the Weight of Tradition
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)
â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram @fivebookspod or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at [email protected]
For transcripts and more find us online at www.fivebookspod.org
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions -
Sam Sussman’s autobiographical novel Boy From North Country begins with the quest to determine whether Bob Dylan is in fact his father, but gives way to the deeper story of his love for his mother in her final days. In many ways it’s a testament to her having accomplished in its truest form what I think mothers all hope for, which is that their love travels forward and in some way inoculates their children against future pain.
In this episode, Sam reflects on his unconventional Jewish upbringing in upstate New York, where Judaism lived in literature and in the spiritual teachings passed down by his mother. He shares how My Name Is Asher Lev gave him a vision of a future for himself where art was central and how A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz helped him sustain a relationship with his mother after her death, redefining for him the bond between the living and the dead.
Sam Sussman is originally from the Hudson Valley, and he has lived in Jerusalem, Berlin, and England. He graduated with a B.A from Swarthmore and M.Phil from Oxford, and has taught writing and literature seminars around the world. His writing has been recognized by BAFTA and published in Harper’s Magazine. Boy from the North Country is his first novel. It debuted as a USA Today bestseller and was picked by our partners at the Jewish Book Council as the next Nu Reads selection, their new bi-monthly subscription series spotlighting remarkable Jewish literature.
Sam Sussman’s Five Books:
1. My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
2. A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
3. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
4. Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
5. Boy From the North Country by Sam Sussman
Other Books Mentioned:
- Tales of the Hasidim by Martin Buber
- Existentialism is a Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre
Other Episodes featuring Autofiction & Memoir:
Nicole Graev Lipson on the Attention, Intention, and Complexity of Mothers
Bonny Reichert on Food, Fear, and Finding Beauty
Gila Pfeffer on Finding Meaning and Humor in the Darkest Times
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)
â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram @fivebookspod or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at [email protected]
For transcripts and more find us online at www.fivebookspod.org
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions. -
Angela Buchdahl was born in Seoul, the daughter of a Korean Buddhist mother and Jewish American father. One of America’s most prominent rabbis, Rabbi Angela discusses her memoir Heart of a Stranger and the importance of finding yourself in a story. She shares how she discovered belonging within the Jewish narrative itself - seeing in Abraham and Sarah’s journey of boundary crossing a reflection of her own. In Jewish folktales, she recognized her own longing to reach deeper truths, and in Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, she saw her experience of feeling outside the Jewish community reflected back to her. Stories, she explains, are the quickest way to build empathy. In sharing her own, she invites us all to see how our sense of otherness can become a profound source of Jewish belonging.
Profoundly spiritual from a young age, by sixteen she felt the first stirrings to become a rabbi. Despite the naysayers and periods of self-doubt—Would a mixed-race woman ever be seen as authentically Jewish or chosen to lead a congregation?—she stayed the course, which took her first to Yale, then to rabbinical school, and finally to the pulpit of one of the largest, most influential congregations in the world.
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl’s Five Books:
1. All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor
2. Elijah’s Violin and Other Jewish Fairy Tales selected and retold by Howard Schwartz
3. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson
4. As A Jew by Sarah Hurwitz
5. Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi’s Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging by Angela Buchdahl
Also Mentioned:
The Carp in the Bathtub by Barbara Cohen
Grimm’s Fairytales
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl’s Rosh Hashanah Sermon
Other Episodes featuring Rabbis and Communal Leaders:
- Rabbi Sharon Brous on Finding Her Place in the Jewish Community
- Rabbi Benjamin Resnick on the Enduring Precariousness of Jewish Life
- Yehuda Kurtzer on Grappling with History and Memory
The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)
â â Sign up for our newsletterâ â to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.
Find us on Instagram @fivebookspod or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.
For feedback or author recommendations please email us at [email protected]
For transcripts and more find us online at www.fivebookspod.org
The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate
The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.
Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Produced by Odelia Rubin
Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill
Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio
Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions. - Laat meer zien
