I Read This Over Shabbos is a weekly newsletter from Rivka Bennun Kay about Jewish book culture, book recommendations, and modern ideas. Receive this free newsletter every week in your inbox by subscribing here. Questions, comments, or feedback? Email Rivka at Shabbosreads@18forty.org.
This month, to mark America’s 250th birthday, 18Forty explored American Jewish history. At the end of each month, we like to recommend books as a way of continuing the conversation. The list below brings together memoirs, novels, histories, essays, and poetry—each offering a different window into the American Jewish experience. It is not an exhaustive list, but it’s a list that should spark your curiosity and offer new perspectives.
American Judaism by Jonathan Sarna
We had to start with this one. It’s the definitive history of how American freedom reshaped Jewish religious life.
Read this if you’re looking to understand Judaism in America today.
The Promised Land by Mary Antin
A classic immigrant memoir that captures the optimism, opportunity, and transformation of becoming an American Jew in the early twentieth century.
Read this if you’re looking for an immigrant’s American dream.
The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
A landmark American novel about a young Jewish Chicagoan whose restless search for identity reflects the boundless possibilities—and uncertainties—of America.
(Bellow is the author of another book that I love, called Seize the Day).
Read this if you’re looking for a great American Jewish novel.
World of Our Fathers by Irving Howe
An expansive portrait of the Eastern European immigrants who built the institutions, neighborhoods, and culture of American Jewish life.
Read this if you’re curious about the immigrant generation.
Maus by Art Spiegelman
This Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel tells the story of the Holocaust while exploring how its memory shaped the next generation of American Jews.
Read this if you’re looking for memory across generations.
Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth
Through wit and sharp observation, Roth explores class, assimilation, and what success meant for the first generation of American-born Jews.
Read this if you want to think about assimilation in America.
People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn
A provocative collection of essays examining how Jewish history is remembered, misunderstood, and celebrated in contemporary culture.
(Dara Horn is also a former 18Forty Podcast guest!)
Read this if you’re looking for today’s Jewish questions.
Metaphor & Memory by Cynthia Ozick
A collection of essays on literature, memory, and Jewish identity from one of America’s greatest Jewish writers and critics.
Read this if you’re looking for Jewish ideas and literature.
We’ll close with Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus”, whose words have shaped America’s vision of itself for more than a century:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
