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

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.

In this episode, celebrated children’s book author, poet and memoirist Judith Viorst brings her irrepressible wit, humor, and insight to every age and stage of life. We talk about growing up, raising children, and living well - including the story of how her family gave up Christmas. She reflects on her lifelong love of “messy” characters, from Max in Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are to her own Lulu.  Her wisdom and advice is especially meaningful as we take stock of the year and set our intentions for the year ahead.

In Making the Best of What’s Left: When We’re Too Old to Get the Chairs Reupholstered, Judith confesses, “I never ever send a text while driving, and not just because I don’t know how to text.” She discusses the afterlife (She doesn’t believe in it, but if it exists, she hopes her sister-in-law isn’t there). She complains to her dead husband (“I need you fixing our damn circuit breakers. I need you! Could you please stop being dead?”). And she explores the late-life meanings of wisdom and happiness and second chances and home. With a wit that defies age, Viorst navigates the terrain of loss. 

Judith Viorst is the author of the beloved Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, which has sold some four million copies; the Lulu books; the New York Times bestseller Necessary Losses; and four musicals. Judith has written books for each decade of life after twenty, including: It's Hard to Be Hip Over 30 & Other Tragedies of Married Life, Forever 50 & Other Negotiations, I'm Too Young to Be 70 & Other Delusions, and Nearing 90 And Other Comedies of Late Life. Now in her nineties, Judith writes about life’s “Final Fifth” in her latest book Making the Best of What’s Left. 

Judith Viorst’s Five Books:

1. The Assistant by Bernard Malamud

2. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

3. The Odyssey by Homer (Robert Fagles translation)

4. I'll Be Right Here by Amy Bloom

5. Making the Most of What’s Left: When We’re Too Old to Get the Chairs Reupholstered by Judith Viorst

Other Books Mentioned:

- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

- Brundibar by Maurice Sendak 

- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Other Episodes featuring Children’s Book and YA Authors:

- Gayle Forman on Judy Blume, Taylor Swift, and the Innate Goodness of Young People

- Dara Horn on Being the Lorax at Her Seder Table

- Rob Kutner on Writing for the Daily Show, Conan, and How Comedy and Judaism Overlap 

- Jeremy Dauber on Jewish Literature, Pop Culture, and What the Horror genre Reveals About America

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.

“No Jewish thinker has had a greater impact on the American Jewish Community in the last two decades than Irving (Yitz) Greenberg.” - Professor Steven T. Katz

Rabbi Greenberg has had a long and notable career in the service of the Jewish people.  He received his smicha, ordination, in 1953 and has a masters and PhD in American History from Harvard. He has served in numerous rabbinic and academic positions. Together with Elie Wiesel, he founded CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He also served as founding president of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation which created such programs  as Birthright Israel and the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education. When Elie Wiesel served as chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, Rabbi Greenberg served as its (Executive) Director. He is a leading Jewish thinker, the author of five books, and has written extensively on post-Holocaust Jewish religious thought, Jewish-Christian relations, pluralism, and the ethics of Jewish power. He is married to the Orthodox Jewish feminist pioneer and writer, Blu Greenberg.

His latest book, The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism, gives people direct access to the big ideas of Judaism in a way that's grounded in tradition, yet fully accessible. It offers a vision of Jewish law and theology that affirms life, dignity, and human partnership with God.

In our conversation, we discuss Rabbi Greenberg’s unusual path to the rabbinate, how he sees the messianic intent of tikkun olam, or repairing the world, and how you can translate his idea of maximizing life into everyday actions.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg’s Five Books:


Masechet Megillah: a tractate of Talmud


The works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Halakhic Man by Joseph B. Soloveitchik 


The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn


The Art of Diplomacy by Stuart E. Eizenstat


The Triumph of Life: a Narrative Theology of Judaism by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg

Other Episodes about Jewish Ethics & Spirituality:

- Rabbi Sharon Brous on Working to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World 

- Ilana Kurshan on Books as Blueprints for Life

- Sarah Hurwitz on Reclaiming Our Jewish Story

- Rabbi Angela Buchdahl on Finding Yourself in the Story