By Dr. Steve Rubin
Dear Readers,
I hope you had the time to check out last month’s recommendations (Long Island Compromise, The Confidante, and The Plot Against America.) If not, there is still time to snuggle into your favorite winter spot and catch up on your reading. And here are three more recommendations to keep you engaged during those chilly winter evenings.
Mathew Daub’s Leaving Eastern Parkway (2022) is an under the radar yet exciting coming-of-age novel that mixes fictional and real-life personalities from the history of competitive (and moneyed) handball. It shares with recent popular stories and films (Netflix’s “Unorthodox” comes to mind) about young Jews casting off the constrictions of ultra-orthodox religion. Handball, for Daub’s young protagonist, is a near-religious experience, a gift from God—and more fulfilling than the claustrophobic (and not so righteous it turns out) world of Brooklyn’s Lubavitch community.
Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer-prize winner, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay (2002), was recently named by the NY Times as the 16th best novel of the 21st Century and lauded as “a towering achievement.” Whether you agree or not, I think you’ll enjoy the story of two young cousins (one recently arrived in America) and their exploits as they navigate and eventually succeed in the emerging world of comic books. It’s a novel take on the theme of “making it” in America and one that will capture your imagination.
On Being Jewish Now (2024), edited by Zibby Owens, the popular author and podcaster (“Mom’s Don’t Have Time to Read Books”; recently retitled “Totally Booked”), contains more than seventy very short essays by writers and “influencers” on subjects as varied as Jewish pride, faith, anti-Semitism, and most significantly, the effects of the October 7th Hamas attack. It’s an ambition collection that explores a wide range of contemporary Jewish issues. You can dip in and read those essays that most interest you—or read the entire thought-provoking collection. You will not be disappointed.
As always, I would be happy to get your responses or to learn what you have been reading. I can be reached by email: sjr@adelphi.edu
Steve Rubin, Ph.D. has written and lectured extensively both here and abroad on issues relating to Jewish culture and literature. He is the editor of, among other volumes, Telling and Remembering: A Century of American Jewish Poetry and Celebrating the Jewish Holidays: Poems, Stories, Essays. He is professor emeritus and former dean at Adelphi University, Garden City, NY.