QUARANTINE READING RECS
@ZIONESSMOVEMENT SPOTLIGHT
BOOK CLUB
FEATURED PICKS
1) WHERE PRIDE DWELLS BY RABBI DENISE EGER BOOK CLUB This groundbreaking collection of LGBTQ prayers, poems, liturgy, and rituals is both a spiritual resource and a celebratory affirmation of Jewish diversity. Giving voice to the private and public sectors of queer Jewish experience, Mishkan Ga’avah is also a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of both the Stonewall Riots and the first pride march, reflecting the longtime advocacy of the Reform Movement for full LGBTQ inclusion. Tune into the Zioness Book Club interview with Rabbi Eger on April 22 by registering at www.zioness.org/events
2) MY OWN WORDS BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG This incredible collection of speeches and writings cover life as a Jewish woman, gender equality, and the U.S. Constitution from one of the greatest living Zionesses of our time: the notorious RBG.
3) ANTISEMITISM: HERE AND NOW BY DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT The winner of the 2019 National Jewish Book Award, this book (written as a series of letters to a college student and a professor) gives us a penetrating and provocative analysis of the hate that will not die, focusing on its current, virulent incarnations on both the political right and left: from neo-Nazis, to mainstream enablers like Donald Trump, to the Chicago Dyke March.
4) AN IMPROBABLE FRIENDSHIP BY ANTHONY DAVID Fashion designer and social activist Ruth Dayan, IDF General Moshe Dayan’s wife, and Palestinian journalist Raymonda Tawil, Yasser Arafat’s mother-in-law, first became friends after the Six-Day War in 1967. Using interviews and journal entries, this tells the history of the Middle East’s most influential leaders from two prominent women on either side of the ongoing conflict.
5) YES SHE CAN COMPILED BY MOLLY DILLON This anthology includes 10 inspiring stories from young female staffers of the Obama White House (three of them are Jewish). It tells their successes and challenges while taking charge and creating change in the U.S. government.
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FEATURED PICKS, CONT’D
6) THE LIBERATION OF THE JEW BY ALBERT MEMMI Primarily available as an e-book, this work from one of the greatest world’s foremost writers on colonization and post-modernism makes the case why Zionism and Israel liberate Jews from oppression worldwide and from a crisis of identity.
7) EXODUS BY LEON URIS This tremendous historical novel depicts the incredible courage of Jews defying the British government to settle in mandatory Palestine and the freedom fighters who sacrificed to build the State of Israel and secure the future for generations of Jews. (Catch the epic film, starring Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint, but not until after you read the book!)
8) DEAR MADAM PRESIDENT BY JENNIFER PALMIERI Framed as an empowering letter from former Hillary Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri to the first woman president, and by extension, to all women working to succeed in any field, this book is filled with forward-thinking, practical advice for all women who are determined to seize control of their lives—from boardroom to living room.
9) HOW TO FIGHT ANTISEMITISM BY BARI WEISS The prescient New York Times writer delivers an urgent wake-up call to all Americans exposing the alarming rise of anti-Semitism in this country—and explains, in practical terms and a powerful unifying voice, what we can do to defeat it. Check out the great Zioness shout-out in the section entitled “How to Fight”!
10) HERE ALL ALONG BY SARAH HURWITZ David Axelrod, director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, describes this book by his former colleague this way: “Searching for meaning in the ancient scripture and traditions of Judaism, Sarah Hurwitz takes us along on an enriching journey of discovery. In Here All Along, she explores her birthright as a Jew and finds timeless and valuable life lessons.”
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BOOK BOOK CLUB CLUB
FEATURED PICKS, CONT’D
BOOK 11) LETTERS TO MY PALESTINIAN NEIGHBOR BY YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI CLUB Attempting to break the agonizing impasse between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israeli commentator and award-winning author of Like Dreamers directly addresses his Palestinian neighbors in this taut and provocative book, empathizing with Palestinian suffering and longing for reconciliation as he explores how the conflict looks through Israeli eyes.
12) LIONESS BY FRANCIE KLAGSBRUN Winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award/Everett Family Foundation Book of the Year, this is the definitive biography of the iron-willed leader, chain-smoking political operative, and tea-and-cake serving grandmother who became the fourth prime minister of Israel. The iconic Golda was the second female head of state in modern history and part of the inspiration for Zioness’s name.
BOOK 13) BLACK POWER, JEWISH POLITICS BY PROFESSOR MARC DOLLINGER CLUB Marc Dollinger charts the transformation of American Jewish political culture from the Cold War liberal consensus of the early postwar years to the rise and influence of Black Power–inspired ethnic nationalism. He shows how black nationalists enabled Jewish activists to devise a new Judeo-centered political agenda including the emancipation of Soviet Jews, the rise of Jewish day schools, the revitalization of worship services with gender-inclusive liturgy, and the birth of a new form of American Zionism.
14) THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA BY PHILIP ROTH Philip Roth’s bestselling alternate history novel tells the chilling story of what happens to one family when America elects a charismatic, isolationist, antisemitic president in Charles Lindbergh over Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940. Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler. (And don’t miss the new HBO series based on the book!)
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ZIONISM FOCUSED
The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky by Susie Linfield
Winning the War of Words: Essays on Zionism and Israel by Einat Wilf
The Colonizer and the Colonized by Albert Memmi
Telling Our Story: Recent Essays on Zionism, the Middle East, and the Path to Peace by Einat Wilf
The Liberation of the Jew by Albert Memmi
Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS, edited by Andrew Pessin and Doron S. Ben-Atar
Contemporary Left Antisemitism by David Hirsch
FEMINISM/PROGRESSIVE FOCUS
Emma Lazarus by Esther Schor
Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community by Noach Dzmura
Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (Essays) by Rebecca Solnit
BOOK CLUB My Vanishing Country by Bakari Sellers Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World by Jennifer Palmieri Women & Power: A Manifesto by Mary Beard
The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate by Rabbi Rebecca Einstein Schorr and Rabbi Alysa Mendelson Graf
Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage by Barney Frank The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk by Randy Shilts
Then Comes Marriage: United States V. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA by Lisa Dickey and Roberta A. Kaplan
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remarkable Life of New Deal Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate Bessie Margolin by Marlene Trestman
Yes She Can: 10 Stories of Hope & Change from Young Female Staffers of the Obama White House (three of the authors are Jewish)
Call Me Phaedra: The Life and Times of Movement Lawyer Fay Stender by Lise A. Pearlman
Balancing on the Mechitza by Noach Dzmura
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ISRAELI HISTORY FOCUS
The Woman Who Fought an Empire: Sarah Aaronsohn and Her Nili Spy Ring by Gregory J. Wallance
A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
Never a Native by Alice Shalvi
Spies of No Country by Matti Friedman
The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership by Yehuda Avner
Israel: A History by Anita Shapira
Catch-67 by Micah Goodman
Israel: The Concise History of Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis
Be Strong and of Good Courage by Dennis Ross & David Makovsky
JEWISH HISTORY FOCUS
The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town by Edward Berenson
Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century by James Loeffler
The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man by Abraham Joshua Heschel
In Ishmael’s House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands by Martin Gilbert
Uprooted: How 3000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight by Lyn Julius
Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s by Marc Dollinger
Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi
When General Grant Expelled the Jews by Jonathan D. Sarna
Modern Girls by Jennifer S. Brown
Spirits of the Ordinary by Kathleen Alcala
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The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant
All Other Nights: A Novel by Dara Horn
The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg
Forest Dark: A Novel by Nicole Krauss
There Are Jews in My House by Lara Vapnyar
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman
The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Stations West by Allison Amend
One Foot in America by Yuri Suhl
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
Exodus by Leon Uris
Dropped from Heaven by Sophie Judah
ZIONESS BOOK CLUB
Books marked with the Zioness Book Club icon either have already been, or will soon be, part of our Book Club series! You can watch interviews with featured authors in the “videos” section of the Zioness Facebook page.
Join our upcoming Book Club discussion with Rabbi Denise Eger, author of Where Pride Dwells, on April 22 at 5pm ET / 8pm PT; make sure you register at www.zioness.org/events! And email us at [email protected] to let us know which books you like most and which authors you’d like us to feature in the future.
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