YOM KIPPUR AND BEYOND

Great Books About Jewish Holidays

Why the work of Philip Roth, Sholem Aleichem, and other authors transcends labels like ‘Jewish fiction’

Janice Harayda
Lit Life
Published in
5 min readOct 11, 2024

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Torah scroll at the Library of Congress
Torah scroll / Library of Congress

Jewish writers — from my perspective as an off-the-rack Presbyterian and book critic — have advantages and disadvantages in publishing.

They can tap into a well-organized network of Jewish literary events— about 1400 a year — that includes fairs, festivals, and book-club meetings.

Jews are also better educated than any other major religious group, Pew surveys have found, with a high literacy rate that helps books by Jewish authors find readers. And publishing has long honored their talents: Nearly 75 years ago, Philip Roth won a National Book Award for a short story collection with explicitly Jewish themes.

In the past half century, all but one of the American winners of the Nobel Prize for literature, Toni Morrison, have been Jewish: Saul Bellow, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph Brodsky, Bob Dylan, and Louise Glück, although Dylan embraced evangelical Christianity for a time.

But the effect of antisemitism on Jewish authors is incalculable. Add to that the publishing industry’s fixation on pigeonholing writers, and hidden biases may offset the advantages of…

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Janice Harayda
Lit Life

Critic, novelist, award-winning journalist. Former book editor of the Plain Dealer and book columnist for Glamour. Words in NYT, WSJ, and other major media.