May is Jewish Heritage Month! Celebrate, honour and learn about diverse Jewish communities and their histories with this book list.
Shabbat Shalom! by Douglas Florian
A family enjoys their weekly Sabbath dinner in a board book full of warm illustrations and a simple narration sure to appeal to young children. Ages 0-3.
Here is the World: A Year of Jewish Holidays by Lesléa Newman
Here Is the World is a joyous celebration of the Jewish holidays throughout the year for young children. Beginning with the weekly observance of Shabbat, readers join a family through the holidays and the corresponding seasons. Ages 4-7.
Jew-ish: Reinvented Recipes From a Modern Mensch: A Cookbook by Jake Cohen
A brilliantly modern take on Jewish culinary traditions for a new generation of readers, from a bright star in the culinary world.
Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader by Derek Jonathan Pensla
Drawing on a vast body of Herzl's personal, literary, and political writings, historian Derek Penslar shows that Herzl's path to Zionism had as much to do with personal crises as it did with antisemitism. Once Herzl devoted himself to Zionism, Penslar shows, he distinguished himself as a consummate leader - possessed of indefatigable energy, organizational ability, and electrifying charisma.
The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor by Eddie Jaku
In this uplifting memoir in the vein of The Last Lecture and Man's Search for Meaning, a Holocaust survivor pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story, sharing his wisdom, and living his best possible life.Born in Leipzig, Germany, into a Jewish family, Eddie Jaku was a teenager when his world was turned upside-down. On November 9, 1938, during the terrifying violence of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, Eddie was beaten by SS thugs, arrested, and sent to a concentration camp with thousands of other Jews across Germany.
Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Revealing the Jewish Roots of Christianity by John Sietze Bergsma
From popular Old Testament scholar John S. Bergsma comes an illuminating text that reveals a Jewish community predating Christianity, whose existence, beliefs, and practices have long been ignored by scholars and the public for social and political reasons. One of only a handful of American scholars who has had access to the original Dead Sea manuscripts, Bergsma reveals how this radical pre-Christian Jewish religious community directly influenced the beliefs and early practices of early Christianity.
The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Levy
The Genius of Judaism presents a new vision and understanding of what it means to be a Jew, a vision quite different from the one we're used to. It is rooted in the Talmudic traditions of argument and conflict, rather than biblical commandments, borne out in struggle and study, not in blind observance. At the very heart of the matter is an obligation to the other, to the dispossessed, and to the forgotten.
