Shows
The Five BooksEsther Levy Chehebar on Marriage, Sisterhood, and the Weight of TraditionThe Cohen sisters are at a crossroads. And not just because the obedient middle sister, Fortune, has secretly started to question her engagement and impending wedding. Nina, the rebellious eldest sister, is single at 26 (and growing cobwebs by her community's standards) when she runs into an old friend who offers her a chance to choose a different path. Meanwhile, Lucy, the youngest, a senior in high school, has started sneaking around with a charming older bachelor.
As Fortune inches ever closer to the chuppah, the sisters find themselves in a tug of war between tradition and modernity...2025-07-2252 min
The Five BooksElizabeth Graver On Lost Worlds and New DoorwaysA kaleidoscopic portrait of one family’s displacement across four countries, Kantika―“song” in Ladino―follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way―a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure and motherhood. Moving from Spain to Cuba to New York for an arranged second marriage, she faces her greatest challenge―her disabled stepdaughter, Luna, whose feistiness equals her own...2025-07-0857 minThe Five BooksJessica Berger Gross on on Cultural Judaism and Creative ResistanceWhen Hazel Blum’s father gets a tenured job at a prestigious college, she and her family relocate from Brooklyn to a middle-of-nowhere college town in Maine. With her mother, Claire, a clothing designer, and her father, Gus, an American Studies professor, Hazel and her eleven-year-old brother, Wolf, spend the summer at the town pool, where they acclimate to their new lives and connect with the town’s sprawling community. That is, until a dramatic fallout on the very first day of her senior year tips the fickle balance of idyllic Riverburg and impacts everyone in her family.
Je...2025-06-2445 minThe Five BooksMary Morris on Hidden Histories and Jewish IdentitiesThirty years ago, Laura’s mother, Viola, went missing. She left behind her purse, her keys and her mysterious paintings of a red house. Viola was never found, and her family never recovered. Laura, an artist herself, held on to the paintings. On the back of each work, her mother scrawled in Italian, “I will not be here forever.” The family never understood what Viola meant.
Blending elements of true crime with settings that evoke Elena Ferrante, Laura follows her mother’s trajectory as she ventures north to Naples, Turin and finally home. Along the way, she confronts...2025-06-1049 minThe Five BooksAnnouncement: Now an Always-On, Every Other Week Show, and a Newsletter!Hi everyone! If you’re new here, welcome! At The Five Books, we’re all about connecting through stories. What role do books play in shaping who we are? Which beloved books do you share with your favorite author? What’s the next great read that might shift your worldview? Stick around and we’ll have your summer reading pile stocked in no time.
In case you missed it, we’re moving to an every-other-week publishing schedule! That means no more long breaks between seasons – you’ll now be able to discover great Jewish authors and the books they lov...2025-06-0301 minThe Five BooksRabbi Sharon Brous on Finding Her Place in the Jewish Community and Working to Mend Our Broken Hearts and WorldIn a time of loneliness and isolation, social rupture and alienation, what will it take to mend our broken hearts and rebuild our society?
Sharon Brous—a leading American rabbi—makes the case that the spiritual work of our time, as instinctual as it is counter-cultural, is to find our way to one other in celebration, in sorrow, and in solidarity. To show up for each other in moments of joy and pain, vulnerability and possibility, to invest in relationships of shared purpose and build communities of care.
Sharon Brous is the founding and senio...2025-05-271h 03The Five BooksJeremy Dauber on Jewish Literature, Pop Culture, and What The Horror Genre Reveals About America“Show me what scares you, and I’ll show you your soul.”
In American Scary, noted cultural historian Jeremy Dauber draws a captivating through line that ties historical influences ranging from the Salem witch trials and enslaved-person narratives directly to the body of work we associate with horror today: from the taut, terrifying stories of Edgar Allan Poe to the grisly, lingering films of Jordan Peele.
Jeremy Dauber is a professor of Jewish literature and American Studies at Columbia University, where he has also served as director of its Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. Jeremy...2025-05-2054 minThe Five BooksJill Santopolo on Being a “Pizza Bagel”, and Fiction as a Way to Make History More HumanThe long-awaited follow-up to the Reese’s Book Club pick and New York Times bestselling global phenomenon The Light We Lost: a thrilling love story about the roles fate and choice play in shaping a life.
It’s been nearly ten years since Gabe’s been gone when Lucy finds a tiny piece of paper in a box of his old photos. An address in Rome. Why did Gabe keep it, and what was he doing in Italy? Lucy buys a last-minute ticket. Impulsive, but Gabe always brought that out in her. Lucy’s journey to uncover Gabe’s s...2025-05-1348 min
On Being Jewish NowIntroducing “The Five Books”Today, I’m sharing a special episode from our friends at The Five Books. Join host Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen as she speaks with me about what has drawn me to books and writing, and what motivates my advocacy for Jewish authors.Listen and follow The Five Books here! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.2025-05-0712 minThe Five BooksAllison Epstein on Taking on One of Literature’s Most Notoriously Antisemitic CharactersLong before Oliver Twist stumbled onto the scene, Jacob Fagin was scratching out a life for himself in the dark alleys of nineteenth-century London. Born in the Jewish enclave of Stepney shortly after his father was executed as a thief, Jacob’s whole world is his open-minded mother, Leah. But Jacob’s prospects are forever altered when a light-fingered pickpocket takes Jacob under his wing and teaches him a trade that pays far better than the neighborhood boys could possibly dream.
Fagin the Thief is a thrilling reimagining of the world of Charles Dickens, as seen through the...2025-05-0647 minThe Five BooksNicole Graev Lipson On the Attention, Intention, and Complexity of MothersWhat does it take to escape the plotlines mapped onto us? Searching for clues in the work of her literary foremothers, Lipson untangles what it means to be a girl, a woman, a lover, a partner, a daughter, and a mother in a world all too ready to reduce us to stock characters. Whether she’s testing the fragile borders of fidelity, embracing the taboo power of female friendship, escaping her family for the solitude of the mountains, grappling with what to do with her frozen embryos, or letting go of the children she imagined for the ones she’s ra...2025-04-2951 minThe Five BooksGayle Forman on Judy Blume, Taylor Swift, and the Innate Goodness of Young PeopleTo say Alex has had it rough is an understatement. His father's gone, his mother is struggling with mental health issues, and he's now living with an aunt and uncle who are less than excited to have him. Almost everyone treats him as though he doesn't matter at all, like he's nothing. So when a kid at school actually tells him he's nothing, Alex snaps, and gets violent. Fortunately, his social worker pulls some strings and gets him a job at a nursing home for the summer rather than being sent to juvie. There, he meets Josey, the 107-year-old...2025-04-221h 00The Five BooksJennifer Weiner on Pushing Back Against De-Jewified Last Names, “Women’s Fiction,” and Activism in the Face of DespairCassie and Zoe Grossberg were thrust into the spotlight as The Griffin Sisters, a pop duo that defined the aughts. Together, they skyrocketed to the top, gracing MTV, SNL, and the cover of Rolling Stone. Cassie, a musical genius who never felt at ease in her own skin, preferred to stay in the shadows. Zoe, full of confidence and craving fame, lived for the stage. But fame has a price, and after one turbulent year, the band abruptly broke up. Now, two decades later, the sisters couldn’t be further apart. Zoe is a sub...2025-04-1554 minThe Five BooksDara Horn on Being the Lorax at Her Seder TableDara Horn is the award-winning author of six books, including the novels The World to Come, All Other Nights, and the essay collection People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present. Her latest book is the graphic novel One Little Goat. At the Passover seder, an out-of-control family cannot find their afikoman and as a result, they are trapped at a seder that cannot end. Six months in, a wisecracking talking goat shows up at their door with bad news: Thousands of years of previous seders have accumulated underneath their seder, and their afi...2025-04-0857 minThe Five BooksBONUS: Dara Horn on Tevye the DairymanAward-winning author Dara Horn is also a professor of Jewish literature. In discussing the Tevye story, she went into a deep dive, explaining each of the daughters’ marriages as a confrontation with a different political challenge to Russian Jews. I was riveted and wanted to share with you as well!2025-04-0807 min
The History of Literature692 An Investigation in Chinatown (with Radha Vatsal) | The Five Books (with Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen)It's a two-for-one special! First, Jacke talks to novelist Radha Vatsal about her new book, No. 10 Doyers Street, which tells the gripping story of an Indian woman journalist investigating a bloody shooting in New York's Chinatown circa 1907. Then podcaster Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen stops by to discuss her experience hosting The Five Books, which asks Jewish writers to list the five books that have influenced them. Enjoy!Additional listening:
40 Radha Vatsal, Author of "A Front Page Affair"
90 History and Mystery (with Radha Vatsal)
512 Hannah Arendt (with Samantha Rose Hill)
The music in this episode is by Gabriel...2025-04-031h 02The Five BooksGeorgia Hunter on Discovering her Family’s Jewish History and Kindness as ResistanceWhen Georgia Hunter was fifteen years old, she discovered that she came from a family of Holocaust survivors. Years later, she embarked on a journey of intensive research, determined to unearth and record her family’s remarkable story. The result is the New York Times best seller, We Were the Lucky Ones, which has been published in over 20 languages and adapted for television by Hulu as a highly acclaimed limited series. One Good Thing is Georgia’s second novel. In our conversation, Georgia will talk about the hold that multi-generational Holocaust stories have on her...2025-04-0154 minThe Five BooksRob Kutner on Writing for The Daily Show, Conan, and How Comedy and Judaism OverlapRob Kutner’s new 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 (Simon & Schuster).Rob Kutner is an Emmy, Peabody, Grammy, and TCA-winning writer for late-night TV including The Daily Show and TBS’ Conan. He is also the author of the humor books including Apocalypse How (Running...2025-03-2543 minThe Five BooksAllegra Goodman on Making the Exotic Familiar, and Finding the Modern in Ancient WordsIsola is inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, and is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival. Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. That journey takes an unexpected turn when Marguerite, accused of betrayal, is brutally punished and abandoned on a small island.Allegra Goodman’s books include Sam, The Family Markowitz, The Cookbook Collector, Paradise Park, and...2025-03-1848 minThe Five BooksIntroducing Chutzpod!Today, we’re excited to introduce you to Chutzpod, a podcast that offers frank and wide-ranging conversations on how to build a good life.Each week on Chutzpod, Rabbi Shira Stutman and co-host Hanna Rosin tackle life’s toughest questions through a Jewish lens. If you’ve ever wondered whether to forgive a friend who won’t apologize, felt annoyed by service dogs on your flight, or pondered how to heal our broken world, this podcast is for you.In this episode, Shira and Hanna delve into listener-submitted questions, blending...2025-02-2540 minThe Five BooksWe'd love to hear your feedback!We just finished our very first season of The Five Books! While we're preparing Season 2, we'd love to hear what you thought of our show. You can email us at team@fivebookspod.org. We will be back on March 18 with some incredible authors for Season Two like Allegra Goodman, Georgia Hunter, Gayle Forman and more. Thank you for listening, sharing with your friends and loved ones, and for being a part of this incredible community of Jewish Book readers.2025-02-2001 minThe Five BooksTova Mirvis on Community, Belonging, and ForgivenessWe Would Never is a riveting literary page-turner that maps the extremes to which a family will go in order to protect their own.No one appears more surprised than Hailey Gelman when she comes under suspicion for the murder of her soon-to-be ex-husband Jonah. Hailey—nicknamed Sunshine by her mother for her bright outlook and ever-present smile—has always tried to do what is expected of her and is regarded as the family peacemaker. But is anyone, including Hailey, who she has always seemed to be?Inspired by a tr...2025-02-1150 minThe Five BooksBonny Reichert on Food, Fear, and Finding BeautyBonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father’s near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head-on.Then a chance encounter with a perfect bowl of borscht in Warsaw set Bonny on a journey to unearth her culinary lineage, and she began to dig for the roots of her food obsession, dish by dish. Stepping into the kitchen to connect her past with her future, the author recounts the defining moments of...2025-02-0443 minThe Five BooksJessica Elisheva Emerson on Belief, Identity, and Women’s DesireOlive Days is a novel about Rina Kirsch, a young mother and Modern Orthodox Jew in Los Angeles. But a contradiction burns at her center: Rina is an atheist. She is also stymied in her life and marriage.Hoping to reinvigorate their relationship, Rina’s husband convinces her to partake in a night of wife swapping with other Orthodox couples. Rather than preserve her marriage, however, the swap plunges Rina down a heady path that begins with a rekindled passion for painting and culminates in an intoxicating affair with Will, her married art teacher. Ri...2025-01-2843 minThe Five BooksElyssa Friedland on Being a First Generation American and Why Representation in Books MattersAfter the Jacobson siblings win a life-changing fortune in the lottery, they assume their messy lives will transform into sleek, storybook perfection–but they couldn’t be more wrong. The Jacobson children reunite when their newly widowed father puts their Jersey Shore beach house on the market. Packing up childhood memories isn’t easy, especially when each sibling is facing drama in their own life. When Noah sees an ad for a Powerball drawing, he and his sisters, Laura and Sophie, go in on tickets while their brother Matthew passes. All hell break...2025-01-2137 minThe Five BooksGila Pfeffer on Finding Meaning and Humor in the Darkest TimesBy the time she was thirty, Gila Pfeffer was the oldest living member of her family, having lost her mother to breast cancer and her father to colon cancer. A simple blood test confirmed she carried the BRCA1 gene—which put her at high risk of developing cancer herself. Determined to break the cycle of early death in her family, Gila decides to undergo an elective double mastectomy.This memoir follows her journey as she becomes a reluctant expert on how to sit shiva, grows up, falls in love, and enters motherhood, before her life is derailed ye...2025-01-1445 minThe Five BooksSamantha Greene Woodruff on Blacklists and being a 'Christmas Tree Jew'The Trade Off is the story of a brilliant and ambitious young woman striving to find her place amid the promise and tumult of 1920s Wall Street. Bea Abramovitz has a gift for math and numbers, and for finding patterns within the stock market. But in the 1920s, in a Lower East Side tenement, opportunities for (Jewish) women on Wall Street don't just come knocking. It's easier for her golden-boy twin brother, Jake, who longs to reclaim all their parents lost after fleeing the pogroms in Russia to come to America. Well...2025-01-0743 min
Chutzpod!Introducing The Five BooksToday, we’re sharing a special episode from our friends at The Five Books. Join host Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen as she speaks with Rabbi Benjamin Resnick about his debut novel, Next Stop, a work of speculative fiction that explores the precariousness of Jewish American life through the lens of one family. He also discusses how the literature that’s meant the most to him throughout his life has also influenced his own work.Listen and follow The Five Books here.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-c...2025-01-0146 min
Identity/CrisisYehuda Kurtzer on Grappling with History and MemoryHow do the books we read shape our memories? To close out the year, we’re bringing you a special episode from The Five Books Podcast, a new podcast that celebrates the role of books in our lives, featuring Yehuda Kurtzer. Each week on The Five Books, host Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen speaks with a Jewish author about the books that have shaped them, shifted their perspective, or guided their journey. They delve deep into conversations about growing up, books as cultural touchstones, and what it means to live, write, and read as a Jewish American today.2024-12-3150 minThe Five BooksYehuda Kurtzer on Grappling with History and MemoryThe New Jewish Canon is both text and textbook, a rich collection of major Jewish ideas from the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. With over eighty excerpts from key primary source texts and insightful corresponding essays by leading scholars, on topics of history and memory, Jewish politics and the public square, religion and religiosity, and identities and communities, The New Jewish Canon promises to start conversations from the seminar room to the dinner table. (Academic Studies Pres)Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute. Yehuda is a leading thinker on...2024-12-3155 minThe Five BooksZibby Owens on the Healing Power of the Written WordOn Being Jewish Now is an intimate and hopeful collection of 75 meaningful, smart, funny, sad, emotional, and inspiring essays from today’s authors and advocates about what it means to be Jewish, how life has changed since the attacks on October 7th, 2023, and the unique culture that brings this group together. Contributors include Mark Feuerstein, Jill Zarin, Steve Leder, Joanna Rakoff, Amy Ephron, Lisa Barr, Annabelle Gurwitch, Daphne Merkin, Bradley Tusk, Sharon Brous, Jenny Mollen, Nicola Kraus, Caroline Leavitt, and many others. (Zibby Books)Zibby Owens is the bestselling author of B...2024-12-2443 minThe Five BooksFrancine Klagsbrun on Embracing and Reshaping TraditionHenrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream reveals the complex life and work of Henrietta Szold, renowned as the founder of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. She later moved to Mandate Palestine to help shape education, health, and social services there. The pinnacle of her career came in her seventies, when she took on the task of directing the Youth Aliyah program, which rescued thousands of young people from the Nazis and resettled them in Palestine.Using Szold’s copious letters, diaries, and essays, along with other archival documents, Francine Klagsbrun reve...2024-12-171h 01The Five BooksJean Meltzer on ‘Jewitches’ and Jewish JoyIn Magical Meet Cute, Faye Kaplan is definitely happy alone. That is, until she finds her town papered with anti-Semitic flyers. Desperate for comfort, Faye drunkenly turns to her pottery. A golem protector is just what her town needs…and adding details to make him her ideal man can’t hurt, right? When a mysterious stranger turns up the next day, Greg seems too good to be true, causing Faye to wonder if his appearance might be anything but a coincidence. (Mira)Jean started her career in television where she w...2024-12-1053 minThe Five BooksYael van der Wouden on Rage, Desire, and MagicIt is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, The Safekeep is “a brave and thrilling debut about facing up to the truth of history, and to one’s own desires” (The Guardian). (Simon and Schuster) Yae...2024-12-0355 minThe Five BooksBenjamin Resnick on the Enduring Precariousness of Jewish LifeBenjamin Resnick’s debut novel, Next Stop, is a work of speculative fiction that explores the precariousness of Jewish American life through the lens of one family. After a black hole consumes the State of Israel, similar strange events occur in cities around the world, ushering in a time of chaos as well as miracles. (Simon and Schuster) Benjamin Resnick is the rabbi of the Pelham Jewish Center in New York. Our wide ranging and thought-provoking conversation touches on the recurring appearance of false messiahs, Hebrew as the enduring language of Jews, and Jewish joy...2024-12-0351 minThe Five BooksComing Soon: The Five BooksJoin us December 3rd! Each episode will feature a candid conversation with a Jewish author about five books that are near and dear to them.We’ll hear about the books that helped form their identities, the books that changed their worldview, and we’ll get the inside scoop on a new book they’ve just published. 2024-11-1202 min