The Third Temple by Yishai Sarid

Translated by Yardenne Greenspan — Restless Books

An Israeli lawyer and award-winning writer, Yishai Sarid has written a novel that imagines Israel’s near future, an apocalyptic story about Jewish fundamentalism, prayer, sacrifice and family set in the time of the titular Third Temple. Told though the voice of the royal family’s third son, Jonathan—whose ruling father has made the Torah the law of the Land of Israel—the cautionary tale unfolds with descriptive power. The newly translated novel was awarded Israel’s distinguished Bernstein Prize when it was first published in Hebrew in 2015.

Pickleballers by Ilana Long

Berkley

This energetic debut novel might be the first Jewish romantic comedy set around a pickleball court. A woman going through an unexpected divorce finds friendship and healing through the sport that’s increasingly being played all over America. As she is perfecting her back swing, she finds new romance, albeit with complications, spin and bounce. Readers will understand why you never want to hit the ball into the kitchen and the nature of a mid-court crisis.

 

Rosenfeld by Maya Kessler

Avid Reader Press

The Talmudic aphorism “kishmo ken hu,” which means the name describes itself, aptly characterizes a marketing tagline for Israeli writer Maya Kessler’s debut novel: “A grown-up love story for grown-ups.” Told in the first person by Noa Simon, a young, driven filmmaker, the novel starts slowly, but soon the foreplay is over. Her affair with Teddy Rosenfeld, the gruff older CEO of her company, is steamy. Rosenfeld can be seen as a rejoinder to #MeToo certitudes since it is Noa who pursues her boss. While this book is not recommended for human resources personnel or underage readers, the rest of us can enjoy this well-told tale of a ravenous romance set in Israel.

 

Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers by Jean Strouse

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Behind artist John Singer Sargent’s many celebrated portraits are untold stories. Award-winning biographer Jean Strouse portrays the connection between the American expatriate artist and his aristocratic patron, Asher Wertheimer, a London-based German Jewish art dealer. Strouse has long been captivated by 12 portraits of Wertheimer, his wife, Flora, and their 10 children that Sargent painted around the turn of the 20th century. In her research, she came to understand the trajectory of the family members’ lives, particularly the tragedy some of the children later faced in fascist Italy in the 1930s.

 

The Lives of Jewish Things: Collecting and Curating Material Culture edited by Gabrielle Anna Berlinger and Ruth von Bernuth

Wayne State University Press

Examining Judaica, Holocaust ephemera, antiquities, folkloric items and large-scale objects, such as a Bedouin shelter transformed into a sukkah, the scholars, curators and artists whose essays are included in this volume take a wide view of what makes an object Jewish. While this book has an academic tone, general readers interested in material objects and their history as well as their layers of meaning, beauty and the ways they carry Jewish tradition and culture will find much that is engaging.

 

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Sandee Brawarsky is a longtime columnist in the Jewish book world as well as an award-winning journalist, editor and author of several books, most recently of 212 Views of Central Park: Experiencing New York City’s Jewel From Every Angle.