Hadassah members are not only passionate readers, they are also prolific writers. Some of their published works are biographical, some historical and some are comedic gems. Here are a few recent releases, confirming that Jews—and particularly members of Hadassah—are the people of the book

Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American
By Rachel Gordan (Oxford University Press)

If you are wondering how to combat antisemitism today, you might find guidance in Postwar Stories, a comprehensive account of how authors, rabbis and others caused a change in thinking about Jews and Judaism starting in the mid-1940s. Extensively researched and written by Rachel Gordan, assistant professor of religion and Jewish studies at the University of Florida in Gainesville, the book takes readers on a journey through faith, community and creed, unpacking how Judaism went from “the least understood of all major religions” to being accepted in America’s public sphere. 

Gordan explores how magazine articles and literature normalized images of Jews and shaped post-Holocaust American Jewish identity. She also notes key events that highlight that shift.

For example, after Charles Lindbergh’s infamous 1941 speech at an America First rally in which he pointed to Jews as one of the groups pushing the country to war, public discourse critical of the former aviation hero reflected changing attitudes toward Jews. Lindbergh gained a new reputation as an isolationist through his vocal support of America First, an influential group known for its antisemitic and pro-fascist views. 

Gordan credits Gentleman’s Agreement, both the book by Laura Z. Hobson and the movie of the same title staring Gregory Peck, with awakening the public to antisemitism in America in 1947.

 

The First Murder
By Carol Goodman Kaufman (Touchpoint Press)

The fictional Queensbridge, a quiet town set in the real-life Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, is the type of place where everyone knows each other’s business—or thinks they do.

That’s the starting point for Carol Goodman Kaufman’s debut novel. A former industrial psychologist and writer of many children’s books who lives in Worcester, Mass., the author’s love for the Berkshires is clear in her descriptions of its natural beauty. She is also an active member of Hadassah, serving as chair of Youth Aliyah as well as in other national Hadassah portfolios over the years.

In Goodman Kaufman’s Queensbridge, an unexpected death sends Caleb Crane, the tenacious local police chief, on a quest to uncover the truth about the town and its inhabitants. Running throughout the whodunit are themes from the holiday of Purim. Indeed, Goodman Kaufman creates a topsy-turvy world, filled with charades and playful disguises.

Caleb, a former New York City police officer, and his Jewish wife, Rachel, have moved to the sleepy Queensbridge in search of a change of pace. They settle in and begin trying to have a child. Rachel soon becomes fast friends with the pregnant Mary Jane Bennett.

But soon, Mary Jane is found dead, strangled by her own scarf in what the medical examiner deems an experiment with autoerotic asphyxiation, and Caleb has difficulty accepting that explanation. Instead, he wonders who might have wanted to kill Mary Jane.

Was it her husband, a lawyer and environmental activist; Mary Jane’s best friend, who appears on crutches a day after her death; her rambunctious father, who disapproves of his daughter? Or her brother, who has a criminal history? And what about Rachel, Caleb’s own wife, who was jealous of Mary Jane’s pregnancy?

Told in an easy style, the novel moves convincingly toward exposing the murderer, thanks to the persistent police chief.

 

The Goldie Standard
By Simi Monheit (Sibylline Press)

If you grew up in a Jewish household in Brooklyn after World War II, you are certain to recognize the characters and their kvetching in The Goldie Standard, a touching and sometimes very funny account of an earnest grandmother’s effort to be a shadchan, trying to pair her granddaughter with, at the very least, a Jewish doctor.

Spanning several decades and mixing Yiddish, Hebrew and English, and set in an assisted living facility, the smartly titled novel delves into such serious issues as life, death and aging in a respectful way.

Beyond matchmaking, Goldie has to put up with the antics of a fellow resident, a man her age who thinks Goldie herself is a good catch. “And before I know what he is doing,” she complains, “he stands with one hand on his walker and in the middle of everything he starts like he’s Nat King Cole, singing how I’m unforgettable.”

It’s hard not to admire the savvy 90-year-old widow on a salt-free diet and her bittersweet, if a bit clichéd, enjoyable story.

 

Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China
By Susan Blumberg-Kason (Post Hill Press)

Delving into Jewish as well as Chinese history, author Susan Blumberg-Kason has produced a thoroughly documented biography of Bernardine Szold Fritz, a long-forgotten American journalist, artist, actor—and cousin of Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold.

Szold Fritz, born in Peoria, Ill., in 1896, led an unusual life. In 1929, after three failed marriages, she traveled by train from Paris to Manchuria to marry Chester Fritz, a silver broker from North Dakota. The two had only met once before, in Shanghai.

The marriage turned out to be a mistake, but Szold Fritz had, Blumberg-Kason writes, “an exotic kind of personality that appealed to people.” So, like Gertrude Stein in Paris, Szold Fritz transformed her living room in Shanghai into a salon. Her guests included leading Chinese poets and publishers and actresses as well as international visitors such as hotelier Sir Victor Sassoon, actor Charlie Chaplin and writer Emily Hahn.

After returning to the United States, Szold Fritz was involved in anti-Nazi causes and donated to the American League for a Free Palestine, whose goal was a Jewish state. She died in Los Angeles in 1982.

The author ends with this glowing evaluation of her subject: “She broke into acting and journalism at a time when women couldn’t vote. She had the courage to divorce when her marriages fell apart, even if it meant living without financial security. She was a romantic and an art aficionado, an adventurer and loyal friend.”

 

Like A Mother
By Mina Hardy (Crooked Lane Books)

Like a Mother, a brilliant can’t-put-down-novel, begins at the shiva for Sarah Granatt’s young husband, Adam, who has passed away after a yearlong battle with cancer.

This twisted psychological thriller by Mina Hardy, the pen name of New York Times best-selling author Megan Hart, follows newly pregnant Sarah and her 3-year-old daughter through a nightmare of surprises. Among them, meeting Candace Grant, who calls Adam “Henry” and says he was her son—Adam had claimed that both his parents were deceased—and is eager to establish a relationship with his widow; and contending with Graham, his college friend and business partner, who connives to deprive Sarah of the financial support due to her from Adam’s share of the business.

This is a dark and ominous tale with lie upon lie and twist after twist. Not only did her late husband lie about his mother’s death, he also lied that his union with Sarah was his first marriage. Graham wants to adopt Sarah’s unborn child, to raise with his childless wife, Ava. “You are in no position to be having another child,” Ava scolds Sarah, confronting her at the shiva. “You’re going to have to get a job, and is that what you want for your baby? To be raised by strangers in a day care?”

In financial straits and wanting to escape Graham, Sarah must sell her California home and move into Candace’s rural Ohio house—a home without WiFi and with padlocks on every door.  There, far from friends, Sarah uncovers even more secrets as she contends with her sinister mother-in-law’s strange obsessions with her and her pregnancy.

There is darkness on almost every page. But the unexpected ending brings everything back into focus.

 

Shadows We Carry
By Meryl Ain (SparkPress)

In this sequel to her award-winning first book, The Takeaway Men, Meryl Ain, an educator, writer and podcaster, brings a fresh perspective to the social and political upheavals in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s and how that turmoil impacted Jews in America.

The carefully researched novel explores love, marriage and religion as well as the inherited trauma of second-generation Holocaust survivors and the significant changes for women in the postwar decades. Starting with the presidential election of 1968, when Lyndon Johnson declined to seek re-election during the Vietnam War, the story unfolds as young and zealous antiwar activists ring doorbells while campaigning for Senator Eugene McCarthy.

JoJo and Bronka, the central focus of a large cast of characters, are identical twins born in a DP camp in Poland to Holocaust survivors. Now college students in New York City, readers watch the sisters make career and life choices as they navigate a series of complex relationships that touch on sexuality, marital fidelity and religion.

JoJo, who yearns to be an actress, instead becomes pregnant out of wedlock and marries.

Bronka seeks a career in journalism but is rejected by Columbia’s School of Journalism. She is asked by the dean interviewing her if she is planning on getting married “…because our enrollment is so limited, we want the women we admit to stay in the field,” he tells her. “It’s been our experience that women don’t have the same staying power as men in the profession once they have a family.”

Instead, she takes a position as a food columnist with a Jewish newspaper but still yearns to write in-depth features articles.

Due to a shortage of reporters at the paper, Bronka is assigned, along with the newspaper’s photographer, to cover a story about a former German-only community on eastern Long Island. This community is updating its street names, which honored Nazi leaders. (In reality, there was a community in Yaphank, L.I., called German Gardens that required proof of German ancestry until its laws were changed in 2017.) At the renaming ceremony, Bronka and the photographer encounter a pro-Nazi group protesting the name change.

Readers are also introduced to Father Stan, the photographer’s friend, a priest born in Poland to a Jewish family and, during the Holocaust, hidden as an infant with a Catholic family who adopted and raised him. Father Stan and Bronka begin a friendship that makes the priest question whether he should continue as a priest or embrace his Jewish heritage.

Ain’s novel raises profound questions: What defines a family? Who bears responsibility for hatred and prejudice, and how do these sentiments arise? What sacrifices did women make to achieve full rights in the workplace?

The novel’s title, Shadows We Carry, encapsulates the essence of the story, compelling us to reflect on our own experiences and beliefs.

---

Stewart Kampel was a longtime editor at The New York Times.