The Five Books

By 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 yet again. Her double mastectomy reveals cancer already growing in one breast.

Drenched in Gila’s dark humor, Nearly Departed is a story about thriving against the odds, committing to what’s important, and leaving a better legacy than the one you inherited. (The Experiment).

Gila Pfeffer is a Jewish American writer and humorist. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Today.com, and elsewhere. Gila’s monthly “Feel It on the First” campaign reminds women to prioritize their breast health. She splits her time between New York City and London.

In this intimate conversation, Gila reflects on why she’s grateful for her “big mouth,” and her impulse to find meaning - and humor - in even the most painful experiences. 

Gila Pfeffer’s Five Books:

1. God Knows by Joseph Heller
2. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
3. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 
4. The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
5. Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer, and Other Inconveniences by Gila Pfeffer

Other Resources: 

• The Life of Viktor Frankl 
• The Choice by Dr. Edith Eva Eger 

Find us on Instagram @fivebookspod 

The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate

The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity. 

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Artwork by Dena Friedman

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions

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 intentioned but undisciplined, Jake has a charm that can carry him only so far on Wall Street. So Bea devises a plan to be the brains behind her brother, acting as broker. As Jake's reputation, his heedless ego, and the family fortune soar, Bea foresees catastrophe: an impending crash that could destroy everything if she doesn't finally take control. (Lake Union)

Samantha Greene Woodruff has an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and spent fifteen years at Viacom’s Nickelodeon before leaving to parent her two young children. Her first novel, The Lobotomist’s Wife was a #1 Amazon bestseller and Amazon First Reads Pick. The Trade Off is her second novel. 

Samantha expounds upon her love of Christmas, what it meant to step into her Jewish identity post 10/7, and her conflicted feelings toward wealth. 

Samantha Greene Woodruff’s Five Books:

1. The Diary of Anne Frank
2. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
3. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
4. The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl and The Whispers by Ashley Audrain
5. The Trade Off by Samantha Greene Woodruff

The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of The Jewish Book Council.

The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity. 

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Artwork by Dena Friedman

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions

The 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 the essential questions facing contemporary Jewish life. He is the author of Shuva: The Future of the Jewish Past, the co-editor of The New Jewish Canon, the host of the Identity/Crisis podcast.  He writes, teaches, and lectures widely about contemporary Jewish life. 

Yehuda is trained as a scholar of ancient Judaism and rabbinics with a doctorate in Jewish Studies from Harvard University and previously served as a member of the faculty at Brandeis University, where he held the inaugural Chair in Jewish Communal Innovation.

In this wide ranging conversation Yehuda will reflect on his unusual upbringing as the child of a diplomat with a front row seat to Middle East politics, on falling in love with second century rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity, and his optimistic take on a new path forward for Israel and the Middle East. 

Yehuda Kurtzer’s Five Books:

1. As a Driven Leaf, by Milton Steinberg
2. Zakhor, by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi
3. In The Land of Israel, by Amos Oz
4. The Safekeep, by Yael van der Wouden
5. The New Jewish Canon, edited by Yehuda Kurtzer and Claire E. Sufrin

The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of The Jewish Book Council. 

The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity. 

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Artwork by Dena Friedman

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions

On 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 Blank: A Novel, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature, Princess Charming, and the forthcoming novel Overheard. She is the editor of three anthologies: On Being Jewish Now, Moms Don’t Have Time To: A Quarantine Anthology and Moms Don’t Have Time To Have Kids: A Timeless Anthology. Zibby is the founder and CEO of Zibby Media, which includes the Zibby Books boutique publishing house, Zibby’s Bookshop, an independent bookstore in Santa Monica, CA, the award-winning daily podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, which she hosts, Zibby’s Book Club, and Zibby Retreats for book lovers. 

Zibby shares what draws her to books and writing, and what compels her to speak up for Jewish authors.

Zibby Owens' Five Books:

1. Night by Elie Wiesel
2. 10/7 by Lee Yaron
3. Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp
4. Here One Moment, by Liane Moriarty
5. On Being Jewish Now, edited by Zibby Owens

Other Books & Resources:

• Slow Motion by Dani Shapiro 
• On Being Jewish Now Substack 

The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of The Jewish Book Council. November 24 to December 24 is Jewish Book Month! Celebrate with Jewish Book Council. https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate   

The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity. 

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Artwork by Dena Friedman

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions

Henrietta 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 reveals Szold as a multi-faceted human being whose impact on women’s lives as well as on education and health systems still resonates. (Jewish Lives Series, Yale University Press).

Francine Klagsbrun has also had a tremendous impact on the story of American Jewish women. Born in 1931, she has been a passionate advocate for women in Jewish religious life. Francine is the author of more than a dozen books, including Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel, which won the National Jewish Book Award in 2017. 

She has been a columnist for New York Jewish Week and Moment, is a contributing editor to Lilith, and is on the editorial board of Hadassah Magazine. Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, Ms. magazine, and other national publications. 

Charming and wry, Francine reflects on her unlikely Jewish education as a girl in the 1930s and 40s, on the seeds of her feminist activism, and on why she is grateful to have reinvigorated Szold’s legacy.  

Francine Klagsbrun’s Five Books:

1. The Bible
2. Marjorie Morningstar, by Herman Wouk
3. The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth 
4. The Propagandist, by Cécile Desprairies
5. Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream, by Francine Klagsbrun

The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of The Jewish Book Council. November 24 to December 24 is Jewish Book Month! Celebrate with Jewish Book Council. https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate   

The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity. 

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Artwork by Dena Friedman

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions

In 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 won numerous awards including a Daytime Emmy. She spent five years in rabbinical school before her chronic illness forced her to withdraw. 

In this conversation, Jean reflects on “second wave” Jewish books and finding herself represented on the page, on Jewish magic (or being a “Jewitch”), and Jewish joy.  

Jean Meltzer’s Five Books:

1. The Bible
2. Once More with Chutzpah by Haley Neil
3. Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
4. Love you a Latke by Amanda Elliot
5. Magical Meet Cute by Jean Meltzer

Books and Resources on Jewish Magic:

• Jewish Magic and Superstition Joshua Trachtenberg
• The Golem Redux by Elizabeth R. Baer
• The Golem and the Won­drous Deeds of the Mahar­al of Prague by Yudl Rosenberg
• The Golem by Gustav Meyrink
• Throwing Sheyd (Podcast)
• The Vigil (Movie)
• https://www.sefaria.org/

The Jewish Joy Community:

• https://www.facebook.com/p/The-Jewish-Joy-Book-Club-61555704527625/ 
• https://www.instagram.com/thejewishjoybookclub/ 
• https://thejewishjoybox.com/ 

Other Books Jean Mentioned:

• Marry Me by Midnight by Felicia Grossman

The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of The Jewish Book Council. November 24 to December 24 is Jewish Book Month! Celebrate with Jewish Book Council. https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate 

The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt-Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Artwork by Dena Friedman

Music by Dov Rosenblatt

It 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) 

Yael memorably reflects on the mouse that helped her to make friends, her gravitation toward magic, the book that convinced her not to get a nose job, and the nature of complicity, trauma and reconciliation.

Yael van der Wouden’s Five Books:

1. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
2. The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander and Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
3. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
4. The Artist by Lucy Steeds (to be released early 2025)
5. The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of The Jewish Book Council. November 24 to December 24 is Jewish Book Month! Celebrate with Jewish Book Council. https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate

The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Artwork by Dena Friedman

Music by Dov Rosenblatt

Benjamin 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 even in times of trauma.

Benjamin’s Resnick’s Five Books:

1. Maus by Art Speigelman
2. The Tevye Stories by Sholem Aleichem
3. A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
4. Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
5. Next Stop by Benjamin Resnick

Relevant Links:

• Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer
• Cooking Pot on display at the Museum of the Jewish Heritage

The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of The Jewish Book Council. November 24 to December 24 is Jewish Book Month! Celebrate with Jewish Book Council. https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate

The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity.

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Artwork by Dena Friedman

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions

Join 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.