100 Best Jewish Books of All Time

We've ranked the best jewish books using expert recommendations, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

Man's Search for Meaning book cover1

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl

5.0
Man's Search for Meaning has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 psychiatrist Viktor Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the stories of his many patients, Frankl argues that we can
Night book cover2

Night

Elie Wiesel

4.8
Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importan
The Book Thief book cover3

The Book Thief

Markus Zusak

4.6
It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, wit
4

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Michael Chabon

4.5
The novel follows the lives of the title characters, a Czech artist named Joe Kavalier and a Brooklyn-born writer named Sam Clay—both Jewish—before, during, and after World War II. Kavalier and Clay become major figures in the nascent comics industry during its "Golden Age."
5

The Chosen (Reuven Malther #1)

Chaim Potok

4.5
It is the now-classic story of two fathers and two sons and the pressures on all of them to pursue the religion they share in the way that is best suited to each. And as the boys grow into young men, they discover in the other a lost spiritual brother, and a link to an unexplored world that neither had ever considered before. In effect, they exchange places, and find the peace that neither will ev
Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Maus, #1) book cover6

Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Maus, #1)

Art Spiegelman

4.5
A story of a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father's story and history itself.
The Complete Maus book cover7

The Complete Maus

Art SPIEGELMAN

4.4
Combined for the first time here are Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the children of survivors ar
Number the Stars book cover8

Number the Stars

Lois Lowry

4.4
Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen often think of life before the war. It's now 1943 and their life in Copenhagen is filled with school, food shortages, and the Nazi soldiers marching through town. When the Jews of Denmark are "relocated," Ellen moves in with the Johansens and pretends to be one of the family. Soon Annemarie is asked to go on a dangerous mission to sav
9

My Name Is Asher Lev

Chaim Potok

4.4
Asher Lev is a Ladover Hasid who keeps kosher, prays three times a day and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Asher Lev is an artist who is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels even when it leads him to blasphemy. In this stirring and often visionary novel, Chaim Potok traces Asher’s passage between these two identities, the one consecrated to God,
10

The Red Tent

Anita Diamant

4.4
Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers--Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah--the f
11

People of the Book

Geraldine Brooks

4.4
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of March, the journey of a rare illuminated manuscript through centuries of exile and war

In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. Priceless and beautiful, the book is one of the earliest Jew
The Yiddish Policemen's Union book cover12

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Michael Chabon

4.4
For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritt
Exodus book cover13

Exodus

Leon Uris

4.3
Exodus is an international publishing phenomenon--the towering novel of the twentieth century's most dramatic geopolitical event. Leon Uris magnificently portrays the birth of a new nation in the midst of enemies--the beginning of an earthshaking struggle for power. Here is the tale that swept the world with its fury: the story of an American nurse, an Israeli freedom fighter caught up in a glorio
Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began (Maus, #2) book cover14

Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began (Maus, #2)

Art Spiegelman

4.3
Acclaimed as a quiet triumph and a brutally moving work of art, the first volume of Art Spieglman's Maus introduced readers to Vladek Spiegleman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and History itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out o
The Tattooist of Auschwitz book cover15

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Heather Morris

4.3
In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.

Imprisoned for over two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also
The Plot Against America book cover16

The Plot Against America

Philip Roth

4.3
In an astonishing feat of narrative invention, our most ambitious novelist imagines an alternate version of American history. In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected President. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.

For one boy growing up in Newark,
17

Sarah's Key

Tatiana de Rosnay

4.3
Paris, July 1942: Ten-year-old Sarah is brutally arrested with her family in the Vel' d'Hiv' roundup, the most notorious act of French collaboration with the Nazis. but before the police come to take them, Sarah locks her younger brother, Michel, in their favorite hiding place, a cupboard in the family's apartment. She keeps the key, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.

Paris, May 200
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil book cover18

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Hannah Arendt

4.3
Originally appearing as a series of articles in The New Yorker, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann sparked a flurry of debate upon its publication. This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account. A major journalistic tr
19

Everything Is Illuminated

Jonathan Safran Foer

4.3
The simplest thing would be to describe Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer's accomplished debut, as a novel about the Holocaust. It is, but that really fails to do justice to the sheer ambition of this book. The main story is a grimly familiar one. A young Jewish-American--who just happens to be called Jonathan Safran Foer--travels to the Ukraine in the hope of finding the woman who s
20

The Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni, #1)

Helene Wecker

4.3
Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic, created to be the wife of a man who dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899.

Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask, and released in New York Cit
21

Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

Deborah Feldman

4.3
The instant New York Times bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman’s escape from a religious sect, in the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, featuring a new epilogue by the author.

As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wea
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas book cover22

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

John Boyne

4.3
If you start to read this book, you will go on a journey with a nine-year-old boy named Bruno. (Though this isn't a book for nine-year-olds.) And sooner or later you will arrive with Bruno at a fence.

Fences like this exist all over the world. We hop you never have to encounter one.
The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom book cover23

The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

Corrie Ten Boom

4.3
At one time Corrie ten Boom would have laughed at the idea that there would ever be a story to tell. For the first fifty years of her life nothing at all out of the ordinary had ever happened to her. She was an old-maid watchmaker living contentedly with her spinster sister and their elderly father in the tiny Dutch house over their shop. Their uneventful days, as regulated as their own watches, r
The Diary of a Young Girl book cover24

The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank

4.3
In Everyman’s Library for the first time—one of the most moving and eloquent accounts of the Holocaust, read by tens of millions of people around the world since its publication in 1947.

The Diary of a Young Girl
is the record of two years in the life of a remarkable Jewish girl whose triumphant humanity in the face of unfathomable deprivation and fear has made the book one of the most enduring doc
25

The Promise

Chaim Potok

4.3
“A superb mirror of a place, a time, and a group of people who capture our immediate interest and hold it tightly.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

Young Reuven Malter is unsure of himself and his place in life. An unconventional scholar, he struggles for recognition from his teachers. With his old friend Danny Saunders—who himself had abandoned the legacy as the chosen heir to his father's rabbinical d
The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man book cover26

The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man

Abraham Heschel

4.2
Elegant, passionate, and filled with the love of God's creation, Abraham Joshua Heschel's The Sabbath has been hailed as a classic of Jewish spirituality ever since its original publication-and has been read by thousands of people seeking meaning in modern life.
In this brief yet profound meditation on the meaning of the Seventh Day, Heschel introduced the idea of an "architecture of holiness" tha
27

The History of Love

Nicole Krauss

4.2
An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

Fourteen-year-old Alma Singer is trying to find a cure for her mother's loneliness. Believing she might discover it in an old book her mother is lovingly translating, she sets out in search of its author. Across New York an old man called Leo Gursky is trying to survive a little bit longer. He spends his days dreaming of the lost love who
28

The Weight of Ink

Rachel Kadish

4.2
An intellectual and emotional jigsaw puzzle of a novel for readers of A. S. Byatt’s Possession and Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book.

Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits
29

All-of-a-Kind Family (All-of-a-Kind-Family, #1)

Sydney Taylor

4.2
It's the turn of the century in New York's Lower East Side and a sense of adventure and excitement abounds for five young sisters - Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte and Gertie. Follow along as they search for hidden buttons while dusting Mama's front parlor, or explore the basement warehouse of Papa's peddler's shop on rainy days. The five girls enjoy doing everything together, especially when it inv
30

Portnoy's Complaint

Philip Roth

4.2
The famous confession of Alexander Portnoy, who is thrust through life by his unappeasable sexuality, yet held back at the same time by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood. Hilariously funny, boldly intimate, startlingly candid, Portnoy’s Complaint was an immediate bestseller upon its publication in 1969, and is perhaps Roth’s best-known book.

Portnoy's Complaint n. [after Alexander Portno
31

The Dovekeepers

Alice Hoffman

4.2
Over five years in the writing, The Dovekeepers is Alice Hoffman's most ambitious and mesmerizing novel, a tour de force of imagination and research, set in ancient Israel.

In 70 C.E., nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert. According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived. Based on this tragic and i
The Devil's Arithmetic book cover32

The Devil's Arithmetic

Jane Yolen

4.2
Hannah thinks tonight Passover Seder will be the same as always. But this year she will be mysteriously transported into the past. Only she knows the horrors that await.
33

Choosing a Jewish Life: A Handbook for People Converting to Judaism and for Their Family and Friends

Anita Diamant

4.2
Married to a convert herself, Anita Diamant provides advice and information that can transform the act of conversion into an extraordinary journey of self-discovery and spiritual growth.

Here you will learn how to choose a rabbi, a synagogue, a denomination, a Hebrew name; how to handle the difficulty of putting aside Christmas; what happens at the mikvah (ritual bath) or at a hatafat dam brit (cir
34

A Tale of Love and Darkness

Amos Oz

4.2
Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, A Tale of Love and Darkness is at once a family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history.

It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. The sto
Survival in Auschwitz book cover35

Survival in Auschwitz

Primo Levi

4.2
The true and harrowing account of Primo Levi’s experience at the German concentration camp of Auschwitz and his miraculous survival; hailed by The Times Literary Supplement as a “true work of art, this edition includes an exclusive conversation between the author and Philip Roth.

In 1943, Primo Levi, a twenty-five-year-old chemist and “Italian citizen of Jewish race,” was arrested by Italian fascis
Schindler's List book cover36

Schindler's List

Thomas Keneally

4.2
In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser, a heavy drinker and a bon viveur, but to them he became a saviour. This is the extraordinary story of Oskar Schindler, who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and who was transformed by the war into a man with a mission, a compassionate angel of mer
37

The Invisible Bridge

Julie Orringer, Arthur Morey

4.2
A grand love story and an epic tale of three brothers whose lives are torn apart by war.

Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to C. Morgenstern on the rue de Sévigné. As he becomes involved with the letter’s recipient, his elder brother takes up medical studi
38

Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know about the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History

Joseph Telushkin

4.2
All the answers are here. "Jewish Literacy, " written by an esteemed rabbi, is a compendium of 346 short chapters on the essential trends, concepts, and personalities of Jewish history, religion, and culture.
The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother book cover39

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

James McBride

4.2
With a new Introduction to this touching homage to his mother, the author paints a portrait of growing up in a black neighborhood as the child of an interracial marriage. Although raised an Orthodox Jew in the South, McBride's mother abandoned her heritage, moved to Harlem, and married a black man.
The Choice: Embrace the Possible book cover40

The Choice: Embrace the Possible

Edith Eger

4.1
A New York Times Bestseller

“I’ll be forever changed by Dr. Eger’s story…The Choice is a reminder of what courage looks like in the worst of times and that we all have the ability to pay attention to what we’ve lost, or to pay attention to what we still have.”—Oprah

“Dr. Eger’s life reveals our capacity to transcend even the greatest of horrors and to use that suffering for the benefit of others. Sh
41

The Boston Girl

Anita Diamant

4.1
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Red Tent and Day After Night, comes an unforgettable coming-of-age novel about family ties and values, friendship and feminism told through the eyes of a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century.

Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its ef
42

If This Is a Man • The Truce

Primo Levi, Stuart Woolf, Paul Bailey

4.1
'With the moral stamina and intellectual poise of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, dutiful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose. He was profoundly in touch with the minutest workings of the most endearing human events and with the most conte
Living a Jewish Life, Updated and Revised Edition: Jewish Traditions, Customs, and Values for Today's Families book cover43

Living a Jewish Life, Updated and Revised Edition: Jewish Traditions, Customs, and Values for Today's Families

Anita Diamant and Howard Cooper

4.1
Living a Jewish Life describes Judaism as not just a contemplative or abstract system of thought but as a blueprint for living fully and honorably. This new edition builds on the classic guide, which has been a favorite among Jewish educators and students for years. Enriched with additional resources, including online resources, this updated guide also references recent changes in the modern Jewis
God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism book cover44

God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

Abraham Joshua Heschel

4.1
Abraham Joshua Heschel was one of the most revered religious leaders of the 20th century, and God in Search of Man and its companion volume, Man Is Not Alone, two of his most important books, are classics of modern Jewish theology. God in Search of Man combines scholarship with lucidity, reverence, and compassion as Dr. Heschel discusses not man's search for God but God's for man--the notion of a
45

The Jewish Book of Why

Alfred J. Kolatch

4.1
Why do Jews eat gefilte fish?


Why is a glass broken at the end of a Jewish wedding ceremony?


Why must the chapter of curses in the Torah be read quickly in a low voice?


Why are shrimp and lobster not kosher?


Why do Jews fast on Yom Kippur?


Why are some Matzot square while others are round?





If you've ever asked or been asked any of these questions, The Jewish Book of Why has all the answers. In this comp
46

The Source

James A. Michener, Steve Berry

4.1
In the grand storytelling style that is his signature, James Michener sweeps us back through time to the very beginnings of the Jewish faith, thousands of years ago. Through the predecessors of four modern men and women, we experience the entire colorful history of the Jews, including the life of the early Hebrews and their persecutions, the impact of Christianity, the Crusades, and the Spanish In
47

Spinning Silver

Naomi Novik

4.1
Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father's inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty--until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold.

When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the S
48

How Mirka Got Her Sword

Barry Deutsch

4.1
Spunky, strong-willed eleven-year-old Mirka Herschberg isn’t interested in knitting lessons from her stepmother, or how-to-find-a-husband advice from her sister, or you-better-not warnings from her brother. There’s only one thing she does want: to fight dragons!

Granted, no dragons have been breathing fire around Hereville, the Orthodox Jewish community where Mirka lives, but that doesn’t stop the
49

As a Driven Leaf

Steinberg, Milton

4.1
The age of the Talmud is brought to life in a breathtaking saga. This masterpiece of modern fiction tells the gripping tale of renegade talmudic sage Elisha ben Abuyah's struggle to reconcile his faith with the allure of Hellenistic culture.
Set in Roman Palestine, As a Driven Leaf draws readers into the dramatic era of Rabbinic Judaism. Watch the great Talmudic sages at work in the Sanhedrin, eav
50

The Gift of Asher Lev

Chaim Potok

4.1
"Rivals anything Chaim Potok has ever produced. It is a book written with passion about passion. You're not likely to read anything better this year."
THE DETROIT NEWS
Twenty years have passed for Asher Lev. He is a world-renowned artist living in France, still uncertain of his artistic direction. When his beloved uncle dies suddenly, Asher and his family rush back to Brooklyn--and into a world that
51

All Who Go Do Not Return

Shulem Deen

4.1
2015 National Jewish Book Award Winner

A moving and revealing exploration of Hasidic life, and one man's struggles with faith, family, and community

Shulem Deen was raised to believe that questions are dangerous. As a member of the Skverers, one of the most insular Hasidic sects in the US, he knows little about the outside world—only that it is to be shunned. His marriage at eighteen is arranged and
My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel book cover52

My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

Ari Shavit

4.1
A groundbreaking, ambitious, and authoritative examination of Israel by one of the most influential columnists writing about the Middle East today

My Promised Land tells the story of Israel as it has never been told before. Facing unprecedented internal and external pressures, Israel today is at a moment of existential crisis. Through revealing stories of significant events and of ordinary individu
The Dark Forest book cover53

The Dark Forest

Cixin Liu, Joel Martinsen

4.1
With the scope of Dune and the rousing action of Independence Day this near-future trilogy is the first chance for English-speaking readers to experience this multple-award-winning phenemonenon from Cixin Liu Chinas most beloved science fiction author In DarkForest Earth is reeling from the revelation of a coming alien invasionin just four centuries time The aliens human collaborators may have bee
54

The World to Come

Dara Horn

4.1
A million-dollar Chagall is stolen from a museum during a singles' cocktail hour. The unlikely thief, former child prodigy Benjamin Ziskind, is convinced that the painting once hung in his parents' living room. This work of art opens a door through which we discover his family's startling history--from an orphanage in Soviet Russia where Chagall taught to suburban New Jersey and the jungles of Vie
The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939–45 book cover55

The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939–45

Władysław Szpilman

4.1
The last live broadcast on Polish Radio, on September 23, 1939, was Chopin's Nocturne in C# Minor, played by a young pianist named Wladyslaw Szpilman, until his playing was interrupted by German shelling. It was the same piece and the same pianist, when broadcasting was resumed six years later. The Pianist is Szpilman's account of the years inbetween, of the death and cruelty inflicted on the Jews
We Were the Lucky Ones book cover56

We Were the Lucky Ones

Georgia Hunter

4.1
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Inspired by the incredible true story of one Jewish family separated at the start of World War II, determined to survive—and to reunite—We Were the Lucky Ones is a tribute to the triumph of hope and love against all odds

“Love in the face of global adversity? It couldn't be more timely.” —Glamour


It is the spring of 1939 and three generations of the Kurc family are doing
57

This is Where I Leave You

Jonathan Tropper

4.1
A riotously funny, emotionally raw novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind—whether we like it or not.

The death of Judd Foxman’s father marks the first time that the entire Foxman family—including Judd’s mother, brothers, and sister—have been together in years. Conspicuously absent: Judd’s wife, Jen, whose fourteen-month affair with Judd’s radio-shock-jock boss has recen
58

Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins

Eric A. Kimmel, Trina Schart Hyman

4.1
A traveler rids a village synagogue of goblins. A Caldecott Honor Book.
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin book cover59

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Timothy Snyder

4.1
Americans call the Second World War “The Good War.” But before it even began, America’s wartime ally Josef Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was finally defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, both the German and the Soviet killing sites fell behind the iron curtain, leav
60

Davita's Harp

Chaim Potok

4.1
For Davita Chandal, growing up in the New York of the 1930s and '40s is an experience of joy and sadness. Her loving parents, both fervent radicals, fill her with the fiercely bright hope of a new and better world. But as the deprivations of war and depression take a ruthless toll, Davita unexpectedly turns to the Jewish faith that her mother had long ago abandoned, finding there both a solace for
61

My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Family's Past

Ariel Sabar

4.1
Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper book cover62

Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper

Brant Pitre

4.1
In recent years, Christians everywhere are rediscovering the Jewish roots of their faith. Every year at Easter time, many believers now celebrate Passover meals (known as Seders) seeking to understand exactly what happened at Jesus’ final Passover, the night before he was crucified.

Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist shines fresh light on the Last Supper by looking at it through Jewish eye
63

The Rabbi's Cat

Joann Sfar

4.1
The preeminent work by one of France’s most celebrated young comic artists, The Rabbi’s Cat tells the wholly unique story of a rabbi, his daughter, and their talking cat — a philosopher brimming with scathing humor and surprising tenderness.

In Algeria in the 1930s, a cat belonging to a widowed rabbi and his beautiful daughter, Zlabya, eats the family parrot and gains the ability to speak. To his m
64

American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1)

Philip Roth

4.1
As the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and m
The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust book cover65

The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

Edith Hahn Beer

4.0
Edith Hahn was an outspoken young woman in Vienna when the Gestapo forced her into a ghetto and then into a slave labor camp. When she returned home months later, she knew she would become a hunted woman and went underground. With the help of a Christian friend, she emerged in Munich as Grete Denner. There she met Werner Vetter, a Nazi Party member who fell in love with her. Despite Edith's protes
The Will to Power book cover66

The Will to Power

Edmund de Waa

4.0
Nietzsche's notebooks, kept by him during his most productive years, offer a fascinating glimpse into the workshop and mind of a great thinker, and compare favorably with the notebooks of Gide and Kafka, Camus and Wittgenstein. The Will to Power, compiled from the notebooks, is one of the most famous books of the past hundred years, but few have studied it. Here, at last, is the first critical edi
67

Joheved (Rashi’s Daughters #1)

Maggie Anton

4.0
Rashi, one of the greatest Jewish scholars who ever lived, had no sons, only three daughters. Much has been written about Rashi and his grandsons, the Tosafot, but almost nothing of his daughters. Legend has it that they were learned in a time when women were forbidden to study the sacred texts. Rashi's Daughters tells the story of these forgotten women.
This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation book cover68

This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation

Alan Lew

4.0
There are times in life when we are caught utterly unprepared: a death in the family, the end of a relationship, a health crisis. These are the times when the solid ground we thought we stood on disappears beneath our feet, leaving us reeling and heartbroken, as we stumble back to our faith.

The Days of Awe encompass the weeks preceding Rosh Hashanah up to Yom Kippur, a period in which Jews take p
69

The Marriage of Opposites

Alice Hoffman

4.0
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Dovekeepers and The Museum of Extraordinary Things: a forbidden love story set on the tropical island of St. Thomas about the extraordinary woman who gave birth to painter Camille Pissarro; the Father of Impressionism.

Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel's mother, a pillar of their smal
The Periodic Table book cover70

The Periodic Table

Primo Levi

4.0
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi is an impassioned response to the Holocaust: Consisting of 21 short stories, each possessing the name of a chemical element, the collection tells of the author's experiences as a Jewish-Italian chemist before, during, and after Auschwitz in luminous, clear, and unfailingly beautiful prose. It has been named the best science book ever by the Royal Institution of Gre
71

Those Who Save Us

Jenna Blum

4.0
For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald.

Driven by the
72

Mila 18

Leon Uris

4.0
It was a time of crisis, a time of tragedy�and a time of transcendent courage and determination. Leon Uris's novel is set in the midst of the ghetto uprising that defied Nazi tyranny, as the Jews of Warsaw boldly met Wehrmacht tanks with homemade weapons and bare fists. Here, painted on a canvas as broad as its subject matter, is the compelling story of one of the most heroic struggles of modern t
73

Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories

Sholem Aleichem, Hillel Halkin

4.0
Of all the characters in modern Jewish fiction, the most beloved is Tevye, the compassionate, irrepressible, Bible-quoting dairyman from Anatevka, who has been immortalized in the writings of Sholem Aleichem and in acclaimed and award-winning theatrical and film adaptations.

And no Yiddish writer was more beloved than Tevye’s creator, Sholem Rabinovich (1859–1916), the “Jewish Mark Twain,” who wrot
Cuando a la gente buena le pasan cosas malas book cover74

Cuando a la gente buena le pasan cosas malas

Harold Kushner

4.0
Cuando su hijo fue diagnosticado a los tres años de edad con una enfermedad degenerativa que acortaría su vida en la adolescencia, Harold Kushner se enfrentó a una de las preguntas más angustiantes en la vida: ¿Por qué, Dios? Años más tarde, el rabino Kushner escribió esta contemplación sencilla y elegante de las dudas y temores que surgen cuando una tragedia nos golpea la puerta. Kushner comparte
75

Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories

Philip Roth

4.0
Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin - he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills - meet one summer and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella, the first book published by Phillip Roth, explores issues of both class and Jewish assimilation into American culture. It won the National Book Award in 1960.

©1993 Phillip Roth
Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures book cover76

Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures

The Jewish Publication Society

4.0
Read our customer guide

Regarded throughout the English-speaking world as the standard English translation of the Holy Scriptures, the JPS TANAKH has been acclaimed by scholars, rabbis, lay leaders, Jews, and Christians alike. The JPS TANAKH is an entirely original translation of the Holy Scriptures into contemporary English, based on the Masoretic (the traditional Hebrew) text. It is the culminati
77

Disobedience

Naomi Alderman

4.0
A small, close-knit Orthodox Jewish community in London is the setting for a revealing look at religion and sexuality in Alderman's frank yet heartfelt debut novel, Disobedience. The story begins with the death of the community's esteemed rabbi, which sets in motion plans for a memorial service and the search for a replacement. The rabbi's nephew and likely successor, Dovid, calls his cousin Ronit
78

Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books

Aaron Lansky

4.0
“Incredible . . . Inspiring . . . Important.” —Library Journal, starred review

“A marvelous yarn, loaded with near-calamitous adventures and characters as memorable as Singer creations.” —The New York Post

“What began as a quixotic journey was also a picaresque romp, a detective story, a profound history lesson, and a poignant evocation of a bygone world.” —The Boston Globe

“Every now and again a
79

The Fixer

Bernard Malamud, Jonathan Safran Foer

4.0
A classic that won Malamud both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

The Fixer (1966) is Bernard Malamud's best-known and most acclaimed novel—one that makes manifest his roots in Russian fiction, especially that of Isaac Babel.

Set in Kiev in 1911 during a period of heightened anti-Semitism, the novel tells the story of Yakov Bok, a Jewish handyman blamed for the brutal murder of a young
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland book cover80

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

Christopher R. Browning

4.0
Christopher R. Browning’s shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews—now with a new afterword and additional photographs.

Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi dea
81

The Big Book of Jewish Humor

William Novak, Moshe Waldoks

4.0
Two rival businessmen meet in the Warsaw train station. "Where are you going?" says the first man.

"To Minsk," says the second.

"To Minsk, eh? What a nerve you have! I know you're telling me you're going to Minsk because you want me to think that you're really going to Pinsk. But it so happens that I know you really are going to Minsk. So why are you lying to me?"

Four men are walking in the desert.

T
Essential Judaism: A Complete Guide to Beliefs, Customs and Rituals book cover82

Essential Judaism: A Complete Guide to Beliefs, Customs and Rituals

George Robinson

4.0
What happens at a synagogue service? What are the rules for keeping kosher? How do I light the Hanukah candles? What is in the Hebrew Bible? What do the Jewish holidays signify? What should I be teaching my children about being Jewish?
A landmark reference, here is an indispensable one-volume guide to the religious traditions, everyday practices, philosophical beliefs, and historical foundations
83

To Be A Jew: A Guide To Jewish Observance In Contemporary Life

Hayim Halevy Donin

4.0
The classic guide to the ageless heritage of Judaism

Embraced over many decades by hundreds of thousands of readers, To Be a Jew offers a clear and comprehensive introduction to traditional Jewish laws and customs as they apply to daily life in the contemporary world. In simple and powerful language, Rabbi Hayim Halevy Donin presents the fundamentals of Judaism, including the laws and observances f
84

The Jewish Study Bible

Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler, Michael Fishbane

4.0
The Jewish Study Bible is a one-volume resource tailored especially for the needs of students of the Hebrew Bible. Nearly forty scholars worldwide contributed to the translation and interpretation of the Jewish Study Bible, representing the best of Jewish biblical scholarship available today. A committee of highly-respected biblical scholars and rabbis from the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform J
85

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

A. J. Jacobs

4.0
From the bestselling author of "The Know-It-All" comes a fascinating and timely exploration of religion and the Bible.Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multip
86

Bee Season

Myla Goldberg

4.0
Eliza Naumann, a seemingly unremarkable nine-year-old, expects never to fit into her gifted family: her autodidact father, Saul, absorbed in his study of Jewish mysticism; her brother, Aaron, the vessel of his father's spiritual ambitions; and her brilliant but distant lawyer-mom, Miriam. But when Eliza sweeps her school and district spelling bees in quick succession, Saul takes it as a sign that
87

To Life: A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking

Harold S. Kushner

4.0
Filled with wisdom and gentle humor, here is the essential book on Judaism's traditions and practices from the bestselling author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Both practical and spiritual, Kushner makes Jewish tradition relevant to a new generation as he explores its many facets.
88

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

Nathan Englander

4.0
These eight new stories from the celebrated novelist and short-story writer Nathan Englander display a gifted young author grappling with the great questions of modern life, with a command of language and the imagination that place Englander at the very forefront of contemporary American fiction.

The title story, inspired by Raymond Carver’s masterpiece, is a provocative portrait of two marriages
89

Herzog

Saul Bellow, Philip Roth

4.0
This is the story of Moses Herzog, a great sufferer, joker, mourner, and charmer. Although his life steadily disintegrates around him - he has failed as a writer and teacher, as a father, and has lost the affection of his wife to his best friend - Herzog sees himself as a survivor, both of his private disasters and those of the age. He writes unsent letters to friends and enemies, colleagues and f
All But My Life: A Memoir book cover90

All But My Life: A Memoir

Gerda Weissmann Klein

4.0
All But My Life is the unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann Klein's six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty. From her comfortable home in Bielitz (present-day Bielsko) in Poland to her miraculous survival and her liberation by American troops—including the man who was to become her husband—in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, Gerda takes the reader on a terrifying journey.

Gerda's serene and
King Leopold's Ghost book cover91

King Leopold's Ghost

Adam Hochschil

4.0
In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian.
92

Undeniable: Full Color Evidence of Black Israelites In The Bible

Dante Fortson

4.0
93

Dawn

Elie Wiesel

4.0

Elisha is a young Jewish man, a Holocaust survivor, and an Israeli freedom fighter in British-controlled Palestine; John Dawson is the captured English officer he will murder at dawn in retribution for the British execution of a fellow freedom fighter. The night-long wait for morning and death provides Dawn, Elie Wiesel's ever more timely novel, with its harrowingly taut, hour-by-hour narrative. C
A Train Near Magdeburg: A Teacher's Journey into the Holocaust, and the Reuniting of the Survivors and Liberators, 70 years on book cover94

A Train Near Magdeburg: A Teacher's Journey into the Holocaust, and the Reuniting of the Survivors and Liberators, 70 years on

Matthew Rozell

4.0
The incredible TRUE STORY behind an iconic photograph, taken at the liberation of a death train deep in the heart of Nazi Germany, brought to life by the history teacher who reunited hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their children with the actual American soldiers who saved them.
-From the author of 'The Things Our Fathers Saw' World War II narrative history trilogy-
~THE HOLOCAUST was a waters
95

Bread Givers

Anzia Yezierska, Alice Kessler-Harris

4.0
This masterwork of American immigrant literature is set in the 1920s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and tells the story of Sara Smolinsky, the youngest daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, who rebels against her father's rigid conception of Jewish womanhood. Sarah's struggle towards independence and self-fulfillment resonates with a passion all can share. Beautifully redesigned page for page with t
The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor book cover96

The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor

Eddie Jaku

4.0
Story of the Jews book cover97

Story of the Jews

Simon Schama

4.0
It is a story like no other: an epic of endurance against destruction, of creativity in oppression, joy amidst grief, the affirmation of life against the steepest of odds. It spans the millennia and the continents - from India to Andalusia and from the bazaars of Cairo to the streets of Oxford. It takes you to unimagined places: to a Jewish kingdom in the mountains of southern Arabia; a Syrian syn
Suite Française book cover98

Suite Française

Irène Némirovsky, Sandra Smith

4.0
The first two stories of a masterwork once thought lost, written by a pre-WWII bestselling author who was deported to Auschwitz and died before her work could be completed.

By the early l940s, when Ukrainian-born Irène Némirovsky began working on what would become Suite Française—the first two parts of a planned five-part novel—she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was
99

I and Thou

Martin Buber, Walter Kaufmann

4.0
An alternate cover for this isbn can be found here.

Martin Buber's I and Thou has long been acclaimed as a classic. Many prominent writers have acknowledged its influence on their work; students of intellectual history consider it a landmark; and the generation born after World War II considers Buber one of its prophets. Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways: (1) tha
A History of the Jews book cover100

A History of the Jews

Paul Johnson

4.0
This historical magnum opus covers 4,000 years of the extraordinary history of the Jews as a people, a culture, and a nation, showing the impact of Jewish character and imagination upon the world.