The Genizah

Set in a suburban New Jersey interfaith community during the fall of 2023 and told through the eyes of the passionate, inclusivity-minded Rabbi Adinah, the novel unfolds as the shadow of Hamas’ gruesome attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent devastation of Gaza looms over an already fractured community. The narrative opens with Rabbi Adinah returning from a summer in Haifa, only to find her synagogue literally falling apart: a hurricane has torn through the roof, and her office is flooded. Within her congregation, a new conservative member causes strife in her weekly Torah class, and differing opinions about Israel threaten to upend her authority. In the wider community, a young Syrian refugee she mentors lies in a coma, the victim of a brutal hate crime, and the treasured alliances she’s cultivated with leaders of other faiths become increasingly challenged. Rabbi Adinah struggles to keep her community together while her foundational beliefs and closest relationships are tested. Through a kaleidoscope of characters, Nathaniel Popkin reflects the contemporary American experience, unraveling the existential consequences that political divisions pose to a community that has long offered strength, purpose, and belonging to all its members. PARTLY STRONG, PARTLY BROKEN tackles questions that have fractured countless families, friendships, and communities even before October 7th. What does it mean to be a Jew in America today? How can the suffering in Gaza and Israel’s promise of refuge be reconciled? When core religious, personal and political values conflict, how do people respond? The novel doesn’t offer easy answers—but it grapples with these questions with urgency, intimacy, and honesty. By exploring them through fiction, Popkin captures the emotional and moral complexities, the nuances and contradictions, that are too often drowned out in rancorous debate.

Miriam is the youngest, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know things. She’s not as gullible as her parents or older siblings think, and she is too old for ridiculous stories that make no sense. So, using her superior detective skills, she sets out to find the truth about all of the fantastical things that people tell gullible kids. It’s finally summer vacation, and that means one thing: Miriam and her family are headed to Mermaid Lake! Legend has it the lake was named after the mermaid who swims beneath its waters, but as an experienced magical mystery detective, Miriam is determined to find out the truth. She has the perfect trap in mind . . . if she can get up the courage to climb the big waterslide. This could be her most challenging case yet, but Miriam’s determined to find the mermaid—if she even exists.

A debut novel by the critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Light of Days, following two very different Jewish women in Warsaw in the late 1930s as they unexpectedly come together in their search for love, meaning, and a sense of home, and as they grapple with the storm clouds gathering around them 1938: Fanny Zelshinsky is a sophisticated, modern daughter of the city’s Jewish elite who wants nothing more than to be recognized as a legitimate artist by her family, her radical professor whom she idolizes, and the world at large. And all while she wonders if she is really going to go through with her wedding. Meanwhile, Zosia Dror has left behind her small northeastern shtetl and religious family in the wake of violence. Part of a budding youth movement that believes in social equality and creating a Jewish homeland, all she wants is to not get distracted by the glitz and hubbub of the city—or by the keen eyes of a certain tall, handsome comrade. When legendary artist Wanda Petrovsky—both a member of Zosia’s movement leadership and Fanny’s beloved photography professor—goes missing, the two young women are thrown together in the pursuit of the elusive firebrand. Is Wanda simply hiding, or is her disappearance connected to the rise in antisemitic laws and university practices? Fanny and Zosia may be the most unlikely of allies, but they must bridge their differences to help someone they both care for—and dodge the danger mounting around them in the process.

Lizzie’s never experienced shiva before. When she and her mom arrive at Joshua’s house, Lizzie is determined to cheer up her friend who is mourning the loss of his grandfather. But Joshua isn’t in the mood for their usual puzzles or magic tricks. He misses his favorite baking partner. As Lizzie participates in the Jewish customs of shiva, she begins to learn a new meaning of friendship. Maybe all Joshua needs right now is someone to listen. Something Sweet balances themes of processing grief, experiencing another culture, and learning how to be a good friend—and does so with tender care.

By Guggenheim Fellow and Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center Wayne Koestenbaum, a novel chronicling the increasingly obsessive psychosexual relationship between a rabbi and the man devoted to him, an entanglement with unpredictable consequences for the two men and those around them

Esther Kreitman’s fiction explores the realities of Jewish life in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Uncompromising in her critique of injustice and hypocrisy, she exposes the emptiness of those who maintain nothing of Judaism but rituals devoid of meaning. She insists on the dignity of those denied opportunity: the poor, women, and all excluded from modern education. Her characters love and work, despair and rebel as they move through the streets and homes of the shtetl, Warsaw, Antwerp, and London.

This Passover, Jordanita's family is leaving their Miami apartment and flying to Argentina to spend the holiday with cousins. Their cousins' house is the best, since it not only has a giant yard-they also two dogs, a cat, two turtles, and two parrots called Tic and Toc! But when Jordanita hears the Passover story this year, she can't help but notice that Tic and Toc are in a cage. If the point of Passover is to celebrate freedom, shouldn't that apply to all creatures? Celebrated Jewish Argentine author Ana María Shua explores the nature of freedom and the love of family in this warm-hearted tale, perfectly paired with the gentle humor of Spanish illustrator Angeles Ruiz's lively illustrations

From lighting a candle and reciting Kiddush, to singing dayenu, this beautiful portrait of Jewish heritage is filled with joy. With bright illustrations and simple, yet informative, text there's no better way to introduce little ones to this special holiday.