The Five Books: Jewish Authors on the Books That Shaped Them

Rob Kutner is an Emmy, Peabody, Grammy, and TCA-winning writer for late-night TV including The Daily Show and TBS’ Conan. He is the author of the humor books including Apocalypse How (Running Press, 2008) and the kids’ comedy-horror graphic novel Snot Goblins and Other Tasteless Tales (First Second, 2023). He has written material for the Oscars, Emmys, and two White  House Correspondents Dinners, and was named a “SuperJew” by Time Out New York. He is also the host of the new Mama’s Boys: a podcast on what it means to be a Jewish man today.

Rob Kutner’s irreverent book on Jewish history, The Jews: 5000 Years and Counting covers every major moment in Jewish history from Adam and Eve to Tuesday’s rerun of Seinfeld. This book will make you laugh, it might inadvertently make you learn, and it might just be a balm for our times that you didn’t know you needed.

In our conversation, Rob will tell us about how going to a Christian school reinforced his own Judaism, how he made sure that the diversity of stories were included in his Jewish history, and his story about ordering a lulav and etrog to the Daily Show office.

Rob Kutner’s Five Books:

1. The Big Book of Jewish Humor by Moshe Waldoks and William Novak

2. As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg

3. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

4. Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

5. The Jews by Rob Kutner

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For feedback or author recommendations please email us at [email protected]

Find us online at www.fivebookspod.org 

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

Editorial and website support from Amelia Merrill

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions

Art by Elad Lifshitz of  Dov Abramson Studio

Allegra Goodman tells us how This Is Not About Us grew like a family tree from her New Yorker short story “Apple Cake,” as she continued writing about the Rubinstein family for over a decade. We discuss how her perspective - and the world - has changed since she wrote The Family Markowitz in her 20s, and how Keats’ concept of negative capability has shaped her writing. We also hear about a book that she found very dull until a bad cold taught her patience.

Allegra Goodman is a writer of extraordinary range and precision. Across novels and stories, she’s written about faith, ambition, family, science, history, and the quiet negotiations of everyday life, always with clarity, wit, and deep compassion for her characters. Allegra’s many books include among them Sam, a Jenna’s Book Club pick, Paradise Park, Kaaterskill Falls (a National Book Award finalist), and Isola (a Reese’s Book Club Pick.) 

Her latest novel of interconnected short stories, This Is Not About Us, brings all of that together. It follows the Rubinstein family over many years, through moments that feel small until they suddenly don’t. 

Allegra Goodman’s Five Books:

1. A book that is in conversation with your latest work:

The Family Markowitz

2. A Book You Changed Your Mind About:

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

3. A passage from a book that has stayed with you or has changed how you think about things:

A famous passage from one of John Keats' letters about Negative Capability

4. ⁠The Book You’re Reading Now:

Dickens the Enchanter: Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Great Storyteller by Peter Conrad

5. The Author’s Latest Work:

This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman

Allegra’s First Appearance on The Five Books can be found here: Allegra Goodman on Making the Exotic Familiar, and Finding the Modern in Ancient Worlds

This episode was recorded live in front of an audience in a joint event for subscribers to Nu Reads, a project from Jewish Book Council that brings remarkable Jewish literature straight to your door. This is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman is the Nu Reads pick for February. Learn more at https://www.nureads.org/ 

The Five Books is a partner organization of Jewish Book Council, a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. 

The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)

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Find us on Instagram ⁠@fivebookspod ⁠or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.

For feedback or author recommendations please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠

For transcripts and more find us online at ⁠www.fivebookspod.org ⁠

Support our work lifting up Jewish books and Jewish authors!Donate Here

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

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Live Event Production support by the incredible team at Nu Reads/ Jewish Book Council: Jamie Betesh Carter, Evie Saphire-Bernstein, Miri Pomerantz Dauber and Naomi Firestone-Teeter 

Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill

Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions.

In this conversation, Jason Diamond unpacks what it means to be an American, Jewish, or Jewish-American author. We also discuss family secrets, Jewish gangsters, the humor and alienation of Franz Kafka, and how Art Spiegelman’s Maus taught Jason to accept his family’s silences.

Jason’s debut novel, Kaplan’s Plot, follows Elijah Mendes, who returns to Chicago after his tech business collapses and discovers that his family owns a Jewish cemetery, where a man he’s never heard of — his great-uncle Solomon Kaplan — is buried. As Elijah begins to untangle his family’s past, the novel moves between his present-day relationship with his mother, Eve, who is dying of cancer, and the earlier story of his grandfather, Yitz Kaplan. That past narrative traces Yitz and his brother Sol from a pogrom in Odessa to their arrival in America alone, and follows the brothers’ complicated bond as Yitz rises to become a Jewish gangster in 1920s Chicago.

Jason Diamond has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, The Wall Street Journal, McSweeny's, NPR, and many other outlets. He is the author of The Sprawl, and  the memoir, Searching For John Hughes. He is the co-author (with Nicolas Heller) of New York Nico's Guide to NYC. 

Jason Diamond’s Five Books:

1. Maus by Art Spiegelman

2. Amerika by Franz Kafka 

3. Be Here Now by Ram Dass

4. The Gods of New York by Jonathan Mahler and Effingers by Gabriele Tergit

5. Kaplan’s Plot by Jason Diamond

Stay tuned at the end of the episode for a bonus book selection by literary insider, Erika Dreifus. ErikaDreifus.com

Other Others who Chose Art Spiegelman’s Maus:


Benjamin Resnick on the Enduring Precariousness of Jewish Life


Georgia Hunter on Discovering her Family’s Jewish History

The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)

⁠⁠Sign up for our newsletter⁠⁠ to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.

Find us on Instagram @fivebookspod or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.

For feedback or author recommendations please email us at [email protected]

For transcripts and more find us online at www.fivebookspod.org 

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

Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill

Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions.

In this episode, Sasha reflects on her childhood in Russia and Ukraine, including the moment she discovered her family was Jewish at a Purim celebration. Cut off from much of the Soviet Jewish experience under communism, Sasha also shares what she is reading to bridge the gap and learn more about the hidden narratives of Soviet Jews. We discuss what Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing taught her about slavery’s impact on American history and life today, what it means to contribute a “missing puzzle piece” to WWII literature, and how witnessing the present Russia-Ukraine conflict emboldened her to tell her grandfather’s story.

Ukraine, 2007. Yefim Shulman, husband, grandfather and war veteran, was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he had defended.

In 1941, Yefim is a young artillerist on the border between the Soviet Union and Germany, eager to defend his country and his large Jewish family against Hitler's forces. But surviving the war requires sacrifices Yefim never imagined-and even when the war ends, his fight isn't over. He must conceal his choices from the KGB and from his family.

Sasha Vasilyuk is a journalist and author of the debut novel Your Presence Is Mandatory (Bloomsbury, 2024), winner of the California Book Award and the Sami Rohr Prize. Her nonfiction has been published in The New York Times, CNN, Harper’s Bazaar, Time, The Telegraph, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Sasha grew up between Ukraine and Russia before immigrating to the United States at the age of 13.

Sasha Vasilyuk’s Five Books:1. "An Airplane Went Flying" by Friedrich Gorenshteyn (in Russian)

2. Life and Fate by Vasiliy Grossman

3. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

4. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union translated by Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav

5. Your Presence is Mandatory by Sasha Vasilyuk

Other Episodes featuring Unique WWII Perspectives:

- Sharon Kurtzman on the Danger that Lingered Post Holocaust

- Mary Morris on Hidden Histories and Jewish Identities 

- Georgia Hunter on Discovering her Family’s Jewish History and Kindness as Resistance 

- Bonny Reichert on Food, Fear, and Finding Beauty

The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)

⁠⁠Sign up for our newsletter⁠⁠ to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.

Find us on Instagram @fivebookspod or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.

For feedback or author recommendations please email us at [email protected]

For transcripts and more find us online at www.fivebookspod.org 

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

Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill

Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions.

In this episode, we’ll hear Samantha reflect on her journey to preserve her Iraqi-Jewish heritage even as the language is disappearing from use. She shares how the hand work of cooking traditional recipes became a tangible way to pass culture to her son, how Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother helped her process family histories, and how stories of imprisonment and fear in Iraq shaped her childhood imagination. 

The daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, Samantha grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. A language that’s now on the verge of extinction. The realization that she won’t be able to tell her son he’s "living in the days of the aubergines" or "chopping onions on my heart" or reminding him to "always carry salt" opens the floodgates. The questions keep coming. How can she pass on this heritage without passing on the trauma of displacement? Will her son ever love mango pickle?

Samantha Ellis is the author of How to be a Heroine and Take Courage. Her plays include How to Date a Feminist, Cling to me Like Ivy and Operation Magic Carpet. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, theTLS, the Spectator, Literary Review and more. She worked on the first two Paddington films. She lives in London, where Always Carry Salt was published under the title Chopping Onions on My Heart.

Samantha Ellis’s Five Books:

1. Megillat Esther, The Book of Esther

2. The Book Of Jewish Food By Claudia Roden

3. Lose Your Mother By Saidiya Hartman

4. Scaffolding By Lauren Elkin

5. Always Carry Salt by Samantha Ellis

Other Books Mentioned:

- Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk

Other Episodes about Sephardic Heritage:

- Esther Levy Chehebar on Marriage, Sisterhood, and the Weight of Tradition

- Elizabeth Graver on Lost Worlds and New Doorways

The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous (Senior Rabbi at IKAR, and author of The Amen Effect), Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)

⁠⁠Sign up for our newsletter⁠⁠ to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.

Find us on Instagram @fivebookspod or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.

For feedback or author recommendations please email us at [email protected]

For transcripts and more find us online at www.fivebookspod.org 

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

Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill

Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions.