The Five Books: Jewish Authors on the Books That Shaped Them
Episodes
Zeeva Bukai on the On the Fragments that Make Us Whole
17 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Zeeva Bukai discusses her two novels, Anatomy of Exile and The World Between, both published in the past year and woven with threads ...
A Purim Episode with Rob Kutner On Where Comedy and Judaism Overlap [REBROADCAST]
03 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 hu...
Allegra Goodman on “This is Not About Us” (Or So We Tell Ourselves)
17 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 a...
Jason Diamond on being a (Jewish-)American Author
03 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this conversation, Jason Diamond unpacks what it means to be an American, Jewish, or Jewish-American author. We also discuss family secrets, Jewish...
Sasha Vasilyuk on the Silences of the Soviet-Jewish Past
20 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Sasha reflects on her childhood in Russia and Ukraine, including the moment she discovered her family was Jewish at a Purim celebrati...
Samantha Ellis on Becoming a Keeper of Her Ancestral Language
06 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Judith Viorst on Happiness, Agency, and the Art of Aging
23 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, celebrated children’s book author, poet and memoirist Judith Viorst brings her irrepressible wit, humor, and insight to every age ...
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg on Re-envisioning the Jewish Future
09 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“No Jewish thinker has had a greater impact on the American Jewish Community in the last two decades than Irving (Yitz) Greenberg.” - Professor St...
BONUS: Introducing Jewish Insights with Justin Pines
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today we’re sharing a special episode from the show Jewish Insights with Rabbi Justin Pines on JBS, the Jewish Broadcasting Service. Rabbi Justin an...
Jake Cohen on the Magic of Gathering Around the Table
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ahead of Thanksgiving, we’re doing something a little different: we’re talking with Jake Cohen about the foods that impacted his identity. Jake Co...
Sam Sussman on Bob Dylan and Being his Mother’s Son
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sam Sussman’s autobiographical novel Boy From North Country begins with the quest to determine whether Bob Dylan is in fact his father, but gives wa...
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl on Finding Yourself in the Story
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Angela Buchdahl was born in Seoul, the daughter of a Korean Buddhist mother and Jewish American father. One of America’s most prominent rabbis, Rabb...
Kitty Zeldis On Passing and the Relief of Being “Kitty”
14 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At Vassar College, Kitty Zeldis confronted what she calls a “WASP tsunami,” sparking lifelong questions about what it means to be Jewish in a wide...
Ilana Kurshan on Books as Blueprints for Life
30 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As we approach Simchat Torah, when we roll the scroll back to the beginning and start reading again, Ilana Kurshan’s Children of the Book: A Memoir ...
Sarah Hurwitz on Reclaiming Our Jewish Story
16 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As Rosh Hashanah approaches - a time of reflection, renewal, and returning to our deepest selves - I can’t think of a better moment to listen to (an...
Toby Lloyd on Biblical Horror and being a Jewish Atheist
02 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Toby Lloyd discusses Fervor, his haunting debut novel inspired by a rereading of the Bible. Struck by the richness, ambiguity, and moments of horror i...
Sharon Kurtzman on the Danger that Lingered Post Holocaust
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sharon Kurtzman shares how an interview with her mother became a defining moment of connection. She was haunted by her mother’s description of just ...
Rachel Cockerell on The Zionist Dream That Sailed to Galveston
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On June 7, 1907, a ship packed with Russian Jews sets sail not to Jerusalem or New York, as many on board have dreamed, but to Texas. The man who pers...
BONUS: Introducing The Book of Life Podcast
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this bonus episode of The Book of Life Podcast: Jewish Kidlit (Mostly), host Heidi Rabinowitz talks to host of The Five Books, Tali Rosenblatt Cohe...
Esther Levy Chehebar on Marriage, Sisterhood, and the Weight of Tradition
22 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Cohen sisters are at a crossroads. And not just because the obedient middle sister, Fortune, has secretly started to question her engagement and i...
Elizabeth Graver On Lost Worlds and New Doorways
08 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family’s displacement across four countries, Kantika―“song” in Ladino―follows the joys and losses of Rebecca...
Jessica Berger Gross on on Cultural Judaism and Creative Resistance
24 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Hazel Blum’s father gets a tenured job at a prestigious college, she and her family relocate from Brooklyn to a middle-of-nowhere college town ...
Mary Morris on Hidden Histories and Jewish Identities
10 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thirty years ago, Laura’s mother, Viola, went missing. She left behind her purse, her keys and her mysterious paintings of a red house. Viola was ne...
Announcement: Now an Always-On, Every Other Week Show, and a Newsletter!
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Hi everyone! If you’re new here, welcome! At The Five Books, we’re all about connecting through stories. What role do books play in shaping who we...
Rabbi Sharon Brous on Finding Her Place in the Jewish Community and Working to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In a time of loneliness and isolation, social rupture and alienation, what will it take to mend our broken hearts and rebuild our society? Sharon Bro...
Jeremy Dauber on Jewish Literature, Pop Culture, and What The Horror Genre Reveals About America
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Show me what scares you, and I’ll show you your soul.” In American Scary, noted cultural historian Jeremy Dauber draws a captivating through...
Jill Santopolo on Being a “Pizza Bagel”, and Fiction as a Way to Make History More Human
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The long-awaited follow-up to the Reese’s Book Club pick and New York Times bestselling global phenomenon The Light We Lost: a thrilling love story ...
Allison Epstein on Taking on One of Literature’s Most Notoriously Antisemitic Characters
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Long before Oliver Twist stumbled onto the scene, Jacob Fagin was scratching out a life for himself in the dark alleys of nineteenth-century London. B...
Nicole Graev Lipson On the Attention, Intention, and Complexity of Mothers
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it take to escape the plotlines mapped onto us? Searching for clues in the work of her literary foremothers, Lipson untangles what it means ...
Gayle Forman on Judy Blume, Taylor Swift, and the Innate Goodness of Young People
22 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
To say Alex has had it rough is an understatement. His father's gone, his mother is struggling with mental health issues, and he's now living with an ...
Jennifer Weiner on Pushing Back Against De-Jewified Last Names, “Women’s Fiction,” and Activism in the Face of Despair
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cassie and Zoe Grossberg were thrust into the spotlight as The Griffin Sisters, a pop duo that defined the aughts. Together, they skyrocketed to the t...
Dara Horn on Being the Lorax at Her Seder Table
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dara Horn is the award-winning author of six books, including the novels The World to Come, All Other Nights, and the essay collection People Love Dea...
BONUS: Dara Horn on Tevye the Dairyman
08 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Award-winning author Dara Horn is also a professor of Jewish literature. In discussing the Tevye story, she went into a deep dive, explaining each of ...
Georgia Hunter on Discovering her Family’s Jewish History and Kindness as Resistance
01 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Georgia Hunter was fifteen years old, she discovered that she came from a family of Holocaust survivors. Years later, she embarked on a journey o...
Rob Kutner on Writing for The Daily Show, Conan, and How Comedy and Judaism Overlap
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rob Kutner’s new irreverent book on Jewish history, The Jews: 5000 Years and Counting covers every major moment in Jewish history from Adam and Eve ...
Allegra Goodman on Making the Exotic Familiar, and Finding the Modern in Ancient Words
18 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Isola is inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, and is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival. Heir to a fortune,...
Introducing Chutzpod!
25 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we’re excited to introduce you to Chutzpod, a podcast that offers frank and wide-ranging conversations on how to build a good life. Each wee...
We'd love to hear your feedback!
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We just finished our very first season of The Five Books! While we're preparing Season 2, we'd love to hear what you thought of our show. You can emai...
Tova Mirvis on Community, Belonging, and Forgiveness
11 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We Would Never is a riveting literary page-turner that maps the extremes to which a family will go in order to protect their own. No one appears more...
Bonny Reichert on Food, Fear, and Finding Beauty
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father’s near-starvation and ultim...
Jessica Elisheva Emerson on Belief, Identity, and Women’s Desire
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Olive Days is a novel about Rina Kirsch, a young mother and Modern Orthodox Jew in Los Angeles. But a contradiction burns at her center: Rina is an at...
Elyssa Friedland on Being a First Generation American and Why Representation in Books Matters
21 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After the Jacobson siblings win a life-changing fortune in the lottery, they assume their messy lives will transform into sleek, storybook perfection–...
Gila Pfeffer on Finding Meaning and Humor in the Darkest Times
14 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
By the time she was thirty, Gila Pfeffer was the oldest living member of her family, having lost her mother to breast cancer and her father to colon c...
Samantha Greene Woodruff on Blacklists and being a 'Christmas Tree Jew'
07 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Trade Off is the story of a brilliant and ambitious young woman striving to find her place amid the promise and tumult of 1920s Wall Street. ...
Yehuda Kurtzer on Grappling with History and Memory
31 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The New Jewish Canon is both text and textbook, a rich collection of major Jewish ideas from the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. With o...
Zibby Owens on the Healing Power of the Written Word
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On Being Jewish Now is an intimate and hopeful collection of 75 meaningful, smart, funny, sad, emotional, and inspiring essays from today’s authors ...
Francine Klagsbrun on Embracing and Reshaping Tradition
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream reveals the complex life and work of Henrietta Szold, renowned as the founder of Hadassah, the Women’...
Jean Meltzer on ‘Jewitches’ and Jewish Joy
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Magical Meet Cute, Faye Kaplan is definitely happy alone. That is, until she finds her town papered with anti-Semitic flyers. Desperate for comfort...
Yael van der Wouden on Rage, Desire, and Magic
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it shoul...
Benjamin Resnick on the Enduring Precariousness of Jewish Life
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Benjamin Resnick’s debut novel, Next Stop, is a work of speculative fiction that explores the precariousness of Jewish American life through the l...
Coming Soon: The Five Books
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Join us December 3rd! Each episode will feature a candid conversation with a Jewish author about five books that are near and dear to them. We’ll...