Museum Of Jewish Heritage Unveils Full Schedule Of Events For The 2nd Annual New York Jewish Book Festival

The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust has revealed the full schedule of programs – both in-person and virtually – for the 2023 New York Jewish Book Festival, which will be held from Sunday, November 12 to Sunday, November 19 and feature events for adults, kids, and families. The full schedule can be found at mjhnyc.org/bookfestival.  

The festival will feature talks, panels, and author signings and touch on themes of Jewish heritage, culture, and history, modern life and literature, the Holocaust and the 80th anniversary of the Danish Rescue, food and cookbooks, books for kids and families, and more spread out over eight days of the festival. All books will be for sale in the Museum shop, along with Judaica and other special materials ahead of the winter holidays. 

Sunday, November 12 events are designed for adults, while Sunday, November 19 will be geared toward families and children and include programs connected with the Museum's newest exhibition – now open – about the Danish Rescue, Courage to Act: Rescue in Denmark. The Museum's first exhibition for visitors ages 9 and up, the exhibition tells the remarkable story of the rescue of the Danish Jews during the Holocaust, immersing visitors in age-appropriate themes of community, citizenship, bravery, and resilience.  

Among the highlights of the New York Jewish Book Festival are two keynote events:

• Award-winning author, screenwriter, philanthropist, journalist, and broadcaster Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie) will launch the book tour for his new book, The Little Liar, at the Museum on Sunday, November 12. Mitch Albom is an inspiration around the world. Albom is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, which have collectively sold more than forty million copies in forty-eight languages worldwide. He has written eight number-one New York Times bestsellers, including Tuesdays with Morrie, the bestselling memoir of all time, which topped the list for four straight years and celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2022. He also has written award-winning TV films, stage plays, screenplays, a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and a musical. He appeared for more than 20 years on ESPN and was a fixture on The Sports Reporters. His much-anticipated new novel, set during the Holocaust, is coming this fall.

• Author Lois Lowry, who will speak about her book, Number the Stars, and songwriter Sean Hartley, from Kaufman Music Center, will present songs from his original musical based on Number the Stars. Lois Lowry is the author of more than forty books for children and young adults, including The New York Times bestselling Giver Quartet and the popular Anastasia Krupnik series. She has received countless honors, among them the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award, the California Young Reader Medal, and the Mark Twain Award. She received Newbery Medals for two of her novels, Number the Stars and The Giver.

Other highlights of the New York Jewish Book Festival

Sunday, November 12 

• Portico with Leah Koenig - A leading authority on Jewish food, Leah Koenig celebrates la cucina Ebraica Romana within the pages of her new cookbook, Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome's Jewish Kitchen, which features over 100 deeply flavorful recipes and beautiful photographs of Rome's Jewish community, the oldest in Europe. Koenig will showcase the recipes in Portico and discuss the book, its making, and what she learned with and from Rome's Jewish community. A signing will follow, with books available for purchase.

• The Necessity of Exile with Shaul Magid - Jewish identity today has been shaped by prior generations' answers to the questions: What is exile? What is diaspora? What is Zionism? In each generation, we see that the future of Jewish life depends on how we respond in our own time. In The Necessity of Exile: Essays from a Distance, celebrated rabbi and scholar Shaul Magid offers an essential contribution to this intergenerational process, inviting us to rethink our current moment using religious and political resources from the Jewish tradition. Shaul Magid is Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College, Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) at Harvard University, and Rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue.

• Fierce Love and Awakenings - Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Senior Minister and Public Theologian at Middle Church, Rabbi Joshua Stanton, Rabbi of East End Temple and Senior Fellow at CLAL, and Rabbi Benjamin Spratt, Senior Rabbi at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, will explore questions about faith, spirituality, and the strength and resilience of religious organizations in today's world. Rabbis Spratt and Stanton are co-authors of Awakenings: American Jewish Transformations in Identity, Leadership, and Belonging. Rev. Dr. Jacqui is the author of Fierce Love: A Bold Path to Ferocious Courage and Rule-Breaking Kindness That Can Heal the World.

• Kibbitz & Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow's Cafeteria – Photographer Marcia Bricker Halperin and novelist Kevin Baker will discuss how Halperin's black-and-white photographs of Dubrow's Cafeteria, a restaurant-social club for a generation of New Yorkers on Kings Highway in Brooklyn, are a revealing return to New York City's legendary cafeteria culture.  Marcia Bricker Halperin, a lifelong Brooklynite, has been photographing the character and landscape of New York City since the 1970s. Kibbitz & Nosh: When We All Met at Dubrow's Cafeteria, her first book, was published this year. Kevin Baker is a novelist, historian, journalist, screenwriter, and playwright who most recently, wrote the story for the Ken Burns documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust. The author or co-author of twelve books, his new work, The New York Game: Baseball and the Making of a New City, will be published by Knopf next March.

• The Routledge History of Antisemitism – recent events show that antisemitism is not just a matter of historical interest or of concern only to Jews; it has become a major issue confronting and challenging our world. As the concern over antisemitism has grown, so too have debates over how to understand and combat it. The Routledge History of Antisemitism explores its history and manifestations, ranging from its origins to the internet, through the lenses of time, geography, and culture. Volume editors Mark Weitzman and Dr. Robert Williams, along with Dr. Mehnaz Afridi, one of the authors featured in The Routledge History of Antisemitism, will be in conversation with Laura Adkins, Opinion Editor at The Forward about the new book.

Monday, November 13

• Isaac Bashevis Singer Writings on Yiddish and Yiddiskayt: The War Years 1939-1945 – David Stromberg, editor of the Isaac Bashevis Singer Literary Trust, will talk with Lisa Newman, Yiddish Book Center's Director of Publishing and Public Programs, about Isaac Bashevis Singer Writings on Yiddish and Yiddiskayt: The War Years 1939-1945 by the late Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer on what would have been his 120th birthday. The collection, the first in a three-volume series, features twenty-five curated essays (selected from over 150) written from just before the start of World War II through to its immediate aftermath. 

Tuesday, November 14

• The Postcard – Winner of the American Choix Goncourt Prize, the Prix Renaudot des lycéens, and the ELLE Readers Prize, Anne Berest's The Postcard is among the most acclaimed and beloved French novels of recent years. Luminous and gripping to the very last page, it is an enthralling investigation into family secrets, a poignant tale of mothers and daughters, and a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life.  Anne Berest talks with Leslie Camhi, an essayist, cultural journalist, and translator, who covered The Postcard for The New Yorker magazine. The Postcard will be available for purchase at shop.mjhnyc.org. 

Wednesday, November 15

• Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin, and the Miraculous Survival of My Family – An epic and uplifting World War II family history of resistance that spans Europe, in Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin, and the Miraculous Survival of My Family, beloved British journalist Daniel Finkelstein tells the extraordinary story of the years before his mother and father met —years of war and trials they barely survived. Daniel Finkelstein talks with Jonathan Goldberg, a leading trial advocate and defender in the United Kingdom.

Thursday, November 16

• Middle Eastern Maze with Itamar Rabinovich and Thomas Friedman -- Middle East Maze: Israel, the Arabs, and the Region