PODCAST · fiction
Nice Jewish Books
by Sheryl Stahl
Nice Jewish Books is a podcast focusing on adult Jewish fiction sponsored by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL.) Not only is AJL the leading authority on Judaica Librarianship, its members are a community of readers and bibliophiles. On this podcast, we chat with authors about Jewish literature, genre fiction, works in translation, and more. As long as a book has a Jewish theme or character, it's a candidate for our show!
Episodes
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The Maiden and her Monster by Maddie Martinez
🐉 What happens when the monster you're hunting turns out to be someone you could fall for? In The Maiden and Her Monster, Maddie Martinez reimagines the Jewish myth of the Golem in a sapphic fantasy filled with danger, intrigue, and forbidden feelings. When Malka ventures into a cursed forest to...
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The Wolf Shall Dwell With the Lamb by Emmet Hirsch
How many lives can one person live—and still know who he truly is? Joseph has already lived several lives when he crosses the border from Lebanon into British Mandate Palestine. Once a beloved son in a Jewish home in Lebanon, he was later left to live at a convent, where he became a medical...
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Love Me Like a Rock Song by Shelly Jay Shore
What happens when a road trip becomes a journey of self-discovery—and maybe love? In Shelly Jay Shore's latest novel, Love Me Like a Rock Star, Delilah sets out on the honeymoon trip she planned before her rock-star fiancé broke her heart. Along for the ride is Emmet, a closeted golem honoring…
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The Last Time We Saw Her with Jaclyn Goldis
Ten years after teen-aged Sydney vanished on a camping trip in the Azores, counselors, fellow campers, and her family come together to reconnect, remember her, and dedicate a newly renovated synagogue in her honor. But while old resentments resurface, what no one expects is the sudden arrival of…
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Wild Grapes by Miriam Flock
It is 1918 and Bluma has waited four long years for her husband, Sender, to bring her and their three daughters from Romania to America. When the tickets fail to arrive, she takes their future into her own hands. Packing up her children, Bluma journeys across the ocean to rural Ohio—only to...
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Blood of Birds by Jay Bailey
The newly crowned King David was making all kinds of radical reform in his kingdom. High on the list was establishing six cities of refuge where men accused on manslaughter would be safe from people seeking blood vengence. But with a new system in play; how long will it take for someone to figure...
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Accidental friends with Susan Josephs
What happens when two strangers are brought together by the same heartbreaking loss? Can friendship help heal the soul? After Rose's husband, Maury, and Nina's fiancé, Jeff, are killed in a tragic car accident, the two women form an unexpected bond. What begins in shared grief grows into…
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AJL Fiction Award Winners 2026
Every year, the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award committee scours the literary world for books with significant Jewish content. They look for extra-ordinary writing, accurate depictions of Jewish life in all its diversity, and contributions to the field of Jewish literature. This…
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Alive and Beating / a conversation with Rebecca Wolf
Six lives. One city. A phone call that will change everything. In Alive and Beating, Rebecca Wolf brings us to Jerusalem just days before Passover, where six diverse characters balance family, work, and life-threatening illnesses. After a devastating bus bombing, an organ donation sets off a...
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Immortal Gifts : tales of a Jewish vampire with Katherine Villyard
In this episode of Nice Jewish Books… Sheryl Stahl sits down with author Katherine Villyard to discuss Immortal Gifts, a historical fantasy starring Abraham, a Jewish vampire trying to balance immortal life, Jewish identity, and his love for his mortal wife, Destiny. But peace is hard to come...
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Will Hope Arrive in the Shape of Dog? a conversation with Yishay Ishi Ron
Geller has hit rock bottom — homeless, addicted, and haunted by the horrors of war. His only goal is to forget. But when he rescues a dog from another addict, something shifts. After a brutal accident, a stranger named Doris steps in — and suddenly, there's a spark of hope. Can a dog... and a…
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Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation: a conversation with Sarah Yahm
Louise isn't juggling balls or flames — she's juggling life: the emotional weight of being a daughter, a mother, a wife… and someone facing a terminal diagnosis. In her latest novel, Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation, author Sarah Yahm introduces us to a woman navigating the tangled mess of grief,...
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Fagin, the Jew; Fagin the Thief; Fagin the Man: a conversation with Allison Epstein
When Allison Epstein first saw the musical Oliver!, one character stood out—Fagin. He was the only Jewish character she'd ever seen on stage. But when she later read Dickens' Oliver Twist, her excitement turned to dismay. The Fagin in the novel was a far cry from what she'd hoped: he was a cruel...
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Who Killed the Rabbi's Wife: a conversation with Saul Golubcow
Step into the world of mystery, memory, and meaning with author Saul Golubcow. In this compelling interview, Golubcow discusses his gripping works, The Cost of Living and Who Killed the Rabbi's Wife?—this collection of three novellas and a novel feature Frank Wolf, a Holocaust survivor turned...
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2nd grader Mike learns his way around the American Playground: a conversation with Mike Shokrian
Michel may not be the big man on campus, but he definitely rules his 2nd grade classroom in Tehran and all is well in his world. That is, until his family decides to uproot him and brother Saeed and move the family to Los Angeles. Newly minted as "Mike" he struggles to navigate a new language…
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Small Moments Made Large in Displaced Persons : a conversation with Joan Leegan
In March, Rena Citrin, chair of the Association of Jewish Libraries fiction award, told me (not quite in these words) to get my tush in gear and read Joan Leegant's excellent short story collection, Displaced Persons. It took two months for it to percolate to the top of my "to be read" pile but…
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Midwives' Escape: a conversation with Maggie Anton
It's Passover! Time to slurp the soup, crunch the matzah, and make jokes about Moses never stopping to ask directions in the desert. It's also a great time to speak with Maggie Anton about her latest book, the Midwives' Escape. Through the eyes of the Egyptian midwives, we see what life was like...
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AJL Fiction Award Winners
Every year, the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award committee scours the book world for books with significant Jewish content. They look for extra-ordinary writing, accurate depictions of Jewish life in all its diversity, and contributions to the field of Jewish literature. This month I...
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The Second Journey : an adventurous blend of Jewish & Chinese folklore and wisdom / a conversation with Joel Bigman
When the Buddhist monk Xuanzang returned to China from India, bringing back precious Buddhist texts, he thought his traveling days were over. But then he finds an intriguing scrap with writing that he does not recognize. Finally connecting it with the Jewish community in Kaifeng he is implored by...
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Dangerous Golem? or Man of Her Dreams? A conversation about a Magical Meet Cute with Jean Meltzer
After her town is carpeted with antisemitic leaflets, ceramic artist Faye finds refuge in her studio and before she knows it, her hands have created the figure of a man. She enscribes all her wishes into the clay and buries it under her rose bushes. The next day she runs into a handsome stranger,...
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When all else fails ... call the Magic Maker / a conversation with Mickey Dubrow
For 100 years the Rosenfelds have been trapped in a time bubble in their tenement apartment on the lower East Side of New York. They can only catch glimpes of the outside world which has no idea that they are there. Until one day, Esther Luna, who works in the building which has now been turned...
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Will living "With a Good Eye" bring Luna luck? a conversation with Gila Green
Luna Levi may have graduated high school, but she is far from any kind of path to success. She works part time at a motel in Ottowa to help support her family since neither parent seem capable of it. Luna's mother has dreams of being a theater star and takes off for weeks at a time to perform in...
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How Many Secrets are Behind the Boy with the Star Tattoo / a conversation with Talia Carner
Sharon is surrounded by secrets. It is 1968 and she has been recruited to clandestinely bring Israel sailors, soldiers, and engineers to the French port of Cherbourg. She needs to help support them until the last 5 ships which were promised to Israel were fully constructed. Since France has...
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The Main Character: a conversation with Jaclyn Goldis about secrets, lies, and murder!
Genevra Ex is a best-selling mystery author with a major quirk. Instead of inventing new characters, she hires a real-life person to be the main character of her book. The latest hire is a young woman named Rory. After an intensive three months of interviewing, Genevra gifts Rory with a ticket on...
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Jewish Emotional Support Books: a conversation with Heidi Rabinowitz and AJL conference attendees
Heidi Rabinowitz and I both saw a cartoon from the New Yorker in which one spouse was trying to move a pile of tottering books off the other spouses night-stand. The other spouse yelled in alarm (something like) "don't move those - they are my emotional support books!" We were inspired to ask our...
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Jackpot Summer! a conversation with Elyssa Friedlander
Whether you play the lottery or not, I think that all of us dream about what we would do if we won a major jackpot. This is what happened to three out of the four Jacobson siblings. Matthew, Laura, Sophie, and Noah were gathered to pack up the family summer house on Long Beach Island, when Noah...
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What Will be Found in the Cave of Secrets: a Conversation with Lynne Golodner
Eve is only looking for some shelter from the rain, but what she finds will change her work, her heart, and her life. In a small cave in the Scottish highlands, Eve finds a journal written in as a series of letters from a woman named Shira to her lover Benjamin. Eve realized that the letters...
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The Hebrew Teacher: three novellas by Mara Arad
Often we just want to connect with all the people around us and fix any problems we see. In the Hebrew Teacher, a collection of three novellas, people attempt to do this in very different situations. But sometimes, other people see the problem from a different perspective, or the problem is not...
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Two Girls: One Lives in Manhattan, the Other in a Parable. A discussion about To and Fro with Leah Hager Cohen
. Annamae lives in New York with her brother and linguist mother. She yearns for connection and feels that someone will show up to take her away to where she is supposed to be. In the meantime, she pours her thoughts and dreams into her diary. Ani lives on a homestead which is a safe place for...
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RAS Award Winner: Early Jewish Cookbooks: Essays on Hungarian Jewish Gastronomical History
Every year the Research, Archive, and Special libraries division of the Association of Jewish Libraries (otherwise known as RAS) gives awards for excellence in Reference and in Bibliography. Since these are obviously not fiction, they wouldn't ordinarily be a candidate for this podcast. But I got...
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Could we adjust Once We Were Home? a conversation with Jennifer Rosner
During the Holocaust, desperate Jewish parents placed their children with Christian families and in convents in the hope that the children would survive the war. After the war, Jewish organizations went to reclaim these children to be raised in the Jewish community. But how did the children deal...
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Discovering the mysteries in Our Little Histories : a conversation with Janice Weizman
We start in a familiar place, in contemporary Chicago, where Jennifer, a museum curator, is asked to go to Belarus to create a living installation of Jewish life there before the Holocaust. She invites a distant cousin to participate, and she brings with her an old Yiddish literary magazine to…
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Can a kid survive the turmoil of the 70s as well as his Bar Mitsvah? Adam Unrehearsed with Don Futterman
Adam is a twelve year old boy preparing for his bar mitzvah in Flushing New York in the early 1970. In many ways, he is a typical kid, trying to fit in at school, but also trying to find himself and find ways to stand out. But his year is off to a difficult start when his parents decide to move…
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New Translations of Yiddish Literature
While the body of Yiddish literature is vast, many people still think of Tevye the milkman, trudging along with his lame horse and arguing with God. But the many new translations of Yiddish fiction show the breadth and depth of the settings, characters, and topics covered as well as the many...
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The Last Jewish Daughter of Kaifeng : a conversation with graphic novelist Fabrice Sapolsky
Leah is not your typical Chinese-Jewish owner of a kosher Chinese restaurant. She is also a woman on the run from Yuk-Wong, a drug lord determined to marry her against her will. And if that wasn't enough drama in her life, she is also the host/recipient of the Spirit of Water with all the powers...
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Straddling Black & White: the travails of the Ethiopian Jews with author Kim Salzman
When people think of Operation Moses, they usually think of a plane full of Ethiopian Jews, the Beta Israel, arriving in Israel. But their journey started long before the plane ride and continued for years after arriving. Kim Salzman follows a single family as they journey in three groups from...
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Irena Klepfisz discusses Her Birth and Later Years with guest host Yermiyahu Ahron Taub
Lesbian, poet, activist, and Yiddishist Irena Klepfisz speaks about her lastest book, Her Birth and Later Years : New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021 with Yermiyahu Ahron Taub. Yermiyahu is a poet and Yiddishist in his own right. He and Irena have been friends for years. They speak about her…
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We are not Strangers: Friendship between the Jews & Japanese in WWII era Seattle, a conversation with Josh Tuininga
During World War 11, Japanese citizens were rounded up and sent to internment camps. When they were finally released, the vast majority had lost their homes and businesses. In the upcoming episode of Nice Jewish Books, I speak with Josh Tuininga about one of the rare exceptions to this appalling...
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On the Run in a House with Chicken-feet: a discussion Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott
If I told you that this episode was going to be about a house which ran around on chicken legs, you might assume that this should belong to an odd looking children's book. But NO! This is a full-fledged intruiguing adult adventure. When the Yaga siblings inherit their grandmother's house, they…
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Coming out in Florida ... Can love triumph? A discussion with Jacob Gelman about Butterflies in the Endzone
When Jamie's family moves from a liberal Jewish area of San Francisco to a conservative area of Florida, he decides to go back into the closet. But when he meets Alex, the football star, sparks fly between them which un-nerves both of the teens. Can they work out their feelings for each other…
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What are the Shadows We Carry? A conversation with Meryl Ain
Twins JoJo and Bronka are coming of age in the United States in the 1960s. Daughters of Orthodox Jewish parents, they both have dreams and ambitions; JoJo of becoming an actress and Bronka of becoming an journalist. But shadows follow them: their parents' holocaust experience, US politics,...
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Can this young Jewish Syrian woman find her way out of the Marriage Box? A conversation with Corie Adjmi
Casey is a teenager living in New Orleans, when her parents decide that she is getting into too much trouble. They move the family back to Brooklyn to be closer to their Orthodox Jewish Syrian community. But will she end up trapped in the Marriage Box? Join me for a conversation with author Corie...
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The Joys of Jewish sleepaway camp! Eric Glickman regales us with adventures a Camp Pock-a-Wockne
We may not be able to live in the past, but it is nice to visit it sometimes. Join me for a nostalgic journey back to Jewish sleep-away-camp with Eric Glickman as we talk about his graphic novel Camp Pock-a-wocknee : dynomite summer '77. Follow along with the transcript. Support the author, AJL,...
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Other Covenants, the ultimate "what ifs" of Jewish history and Jewish fan fiction
What if David and Goliath were actually lovers and con artists? What if the Scotts turned about to be God's chosen people? What if Ilan Ramon had been on the Columbia ground crew instead of in the shuttle? Andrea Lobel and Mark Shainblum collect an intriguing collection of "what ifs" in Jewish...
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Speaking with AJL Fiction Award winner Omer Friedlander about the Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land
Scheherazade telling stories to spellbound soldiers, Sephardic kids "borrow' and old confused man off the street to pose as their Holocaust surviving grandfather, and the son of a shoemaker who delights in climbing construction cranes ... these are just a few of the characters who appear in Omer...
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It's Always a Party with a Sephardi! from the Book of Life
This episode of The Book of Life features Sarah Aroeste,a singer/songwriter of Ladino music and an author of board books featuring Sephardic culture and Ladino vocabulary andBridget Hodder, a Sephardic author of middle grade and picture books. Follow along with the transcript. Support the author,...
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A Deathbed Confession reveals My Mother's Secret. A conversation with Alina Adams
After her beloved father's death, Lena is stunned to learn that he was not her biological father. She had never felt as close to Regina, her Russian-born mother. But as Regina's story unfolds from her early life in Moscow to her early adulthood in Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Region, their...
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The Surprisingly Modern Voice of Yiddish Author Fradl Shtok : a conversation with translators Jordan Finkin and Allison Schachter
In a Nice Jewish Books first – I won't be speaking with the author of the book From the Jewish Provinces, Fradl Shtok, but rather her translators, Jordan Finkin and Allison Schachter. Fradl Shtok was born in the Austro-Hungarian empire and started her writing career there. She later moved to New...
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Almost Parallel Lives: The Thread Collectors by Shaunna Edwards and Alyson Goldman
In this historical novel based on both their families' histories, I speak with author's Shaunna Edwards and Alyson Richman. In the novel, we follow two couples. Jacob and Lilly are a Jewish couple living in New York while Stella and William are both slaves in New Orleans. Both men are fighting…
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Justice or Revenge? Can Shanna Tell Them Apart and Prevent Another Murder?
Journo (journalist) Shanna Regan was researching historical plaques for the town news magazine when she encounters fake plaques. Instead of praising a former residents, the plaques told of a person's malicious actions and a statement this if they don't repent, that they will never rest in peace....
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Nice Jewish Books is a podcast focusing on adult Jewish fiction sponsored by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL.) Not only is AJL the leading authority on Judaica Librarianship, its members are a community of readers and bibliophiles. On this podcast, we chat with authors about Jewish literature, genre fiction, works in translation, and more. As long as a book has a Jewish theme or character, it's a candidate for our show!
HOSTED BY
Sheryl Stahl
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Nice Jewish Books have?
Nice Jewish Books currently has 62 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Nice Jewish Books about?
Nice Jewish Books is a podcast focusing on adult Jewish fiction sponsored by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL.) Not only is AJL the leading authority on Judaica Librarianship, its members are a community of readers and bibliophiles. On this podcast, we chat with authors about Jewish...
How often does Nice Jewish Books release new episodes?
Nice Jewish Books has 62 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Nice Jewish Books?
You can listen to Nice Jewish Books on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Nice Jewish Books?
Nice Jewish Books is created and hosted by Sheryl Stahl.
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