#jewish books
Looking for children’s and young adult books by Jewish authors? Katherine Locke’s list is an excellent place to start:
Picture Books:
- Gitty and Kvetch by Caroline Kusin Pritchard, illustrated by Ariel Landy
- The Polio Pioneer: Dr. Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine by Linda Elovitz Marshall, illustrated by Lisa Anchin
- Tía Fortuna’s New Home by Ruth Behar, illustrated by Devon Holzwarth
Middle Grade:
- The Magical Imperfect by Chris Baron
The Many Mysteries of the Finkel Family by Sarah Kapit
Recipe for Disaster by Aimee Lucido
Young Adult:
- Strange Creatures by Phoebe North
Cool for the Summer by Dahlia Adler
The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros
Read more about the books (including why Locke recommends them) here!
[Image Description: Graphic featuring the WNDB logo and a tiled square of cover art for 9 children’s and young adult books written by Jewish authors, set against a colorful background of abstract shapes.]
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Prayers, Amulets and Spells to Ward off Plague
“The first occurrence of plague in the recorded history of the Middle East was known as the “Plague of Justinian”, named after the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian I. It made its way to the Land of Israel from Egypt around 541-542 AD. The results were documented in detail by the emperor’s court historian.
A thousand years later, the residents of the land were still dealing with fairly frequent outbreaks. Throughout the 16th century, plague spread across different parts of the Middle East. The common wisdom in Jerusalem of the period spoke of a new wave of pestilence hitting the city every six or seven years. In the writings of the sages of the holy city of Safed (Zfat), in the northern Land of Israel, we find evidence that these rabbis sought to fight off the plague with the help of special amulets, among other things.
We found the amulet below in a copy of the book Shaar HaYichudim (“The Gate of Unifications”) by the famous Safed Kabbalist Hayyim ben Joseph Vital. The Hebrew title appearing at the top reads “This amulet is for plague from the holy ARI…” (The holy ARI was Rabbi Isaac Luria, Vital’s teacher). The charm in fact consists of two different amulets joined together, one on top and one below. The image here is taken from a later printing of the book which includes various commentaries on the writings of Vital and Luria, but the amulet, or similar versions of it, appear in earlier printings as well. This edition was published in 1855 in the city of Lemberg, today’s Lviv, in western Ukraine. Isaac Luria perished during an outbreak of plague in the year 1572, when he was only 38 years old.”
Purim is coming - and it’s International (Working) Women’s Day too! ✊ So I thought I would share some images of Esther as a working woman - a scribe! - in tribute to the many women who continue to mentor and inspire me. These images are from illustrated megillot from Italy, Germany, and Holland, ca. 1650-1750: the earliest images, to my knowledge, of female scribes in Hebrew manuscripts (although I’d be happy to be corrected!).
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kuttithevangu mentioned you in a post
@darkhei-noam thank you for turning this BBC-based WTF moment into some neat exploration of sforim history I’m so delighted
My pleasure! I only need the slightest suggestion to derail my whole day into another side research project on Jewish book history and I’m off to the races. Interestingly, this ended up connected to something I had actually previously researched — this Mishnah translation was done by Willem Surenhuis, who relied on two other earlier translations (one in Latin, and another in Spanish), done by two Sephardi brothers, Jacob and Isaac Abendana. I had written a research paper on Isaac Abendana and his role as a Hebrew scholar vis-a-vis Christian Hebraists, so I had already run into this! Another link is that Abendana was connected with the Orientalist Edward Pococke, who in 1655 edited the first book in Hebrew characters printed in Oxford — Maimonides’ Judeo-Arabic commentary on the Mishnah, Porta Mosis.
Here’s the title page and the first page of Middot from the Amsterdam 1702 edition of the Mishnah with Maimonides’ commentary, Mischna sive totius Hebræorum juris, rituum, antiquitatum, ac legum oralium systema, cum Maimonidis & Bartenoræ commentariis integris:
Siddur Masorti - Egalitarian + Sefaradi
Announcing Siddur Masorti , a new Səfaradi egalitarian prayer book. Inside you’ll find the weekday prayer service with…
- A *full* transliteration
- A groundbreaking new gender-neutral translation
- A Hebrew text inclusive of all genders
- Breathtaking calligraphic artwork
- Options designed to include as many different Səfaradi traditions as possible.
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*Pre-orders open 2 Oct and orders placed will ship after our launch on 3 November* *Free shipping in the UK*
isn’t it a bit of a stretch to say that they’re mostly written in europe when that only applies to the medieval texts? and even then to have an *overwhelming* majority of texts written in europe would have to kind of be an active conscious decision right?
@theatrejew it’s a good question!
You’re right that it was only the medieval and post-medieval Jewish texts which were written in Europe! The preview is a little condensed — here’s the full quote, which is me imagining Rabbi Solomon Freehof describing his bookshelf, ca. 1969: “I have the classical codes of rabbinic literature, the Mishnah and Talmud; I have the medieval compilations of Jewish law, Maimonides, etc.; I have a few early modern 18th/19th century compilations of Jewish law, all written by men, mostly written in Europe; and that’s it.”
So yes, hopefully that’s clearer: the early modern compilations of Jewish law on Rabbi Freehof’s bookshelf are the ones which were “mostly written in Europe,” and that would certainly be true for almost all American rabbis in the mid-20th century. It’s thankfully not true of this anthology, which contains material from all over the Jewish world.
Hope you enjoy the podcast!
