I recently presented my most recent novel, BABYLON: A Novel of Jewish Captivity to a particularly responsive group, made up of a combined synagogue Sisterhood and Hadassah book club. The question-and-answer portion of the talk was extremely lively.
Then things got serious: I was asked about being a Jewish author today.
The literary community and antisemitism
I’m sure people – even many fellow writers – aren’t aware of how much of the literary community have turned their backs on Jewish writers.
Many have stated in their submission guidelines that they will not accept work from Zionists or anyone sympathetic to Israel. Publications, including those I was once proud to be included in, have leapt onto the virtue-signaling bandwagon, making philosophical statements that defame Israel as apartheid, genocidal, and colonizers. None of these accusations are true; all of them stem from misinformation fueled by social media. Is the reason why many Jewish writers are fielding more than the usual number of rejections? Who can know in the current climate?
Don’t believe me? Here is the extensive “Writers, Beware” list my friend Erika Dreifus has been compiling of publications that have embraced the left-progressive, anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist stance. The sheer magnitude of this growing list is terrifying.
Jewish books have been review bombed, besieged by 1-star rankings by anti-Israel individuals, most of whom don’t bother to read the books they are condemning. This includes my friend Talia Carner’s The Boy with the Star Tattoo.
Book events of Jewish authors have been cancelled, ostensibly due to concerns about pro-Palestine protests. (A major event of mine was postponed and then cancelled because of this.)
Protests disrupted book selling at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), and presenters were urged to begin their sessions with an unofficial statement about Israel/Gaza that upset and even frightened Jewish attendees. Read more here.
Then there is the now well-publicized story of Joanna Chen’s beautifully nuanced essay about her life in Israel in Guernica, which the publication saw fit to retract after publishing it, stating they regretted ever including it. This after several editors resigned, declaiming the piece as “a pillar of eugenicist white colonialism masquerading as goodness” and “a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism and the ongoing genocide in Palestine.” This New Republic interview will allow you to make up your own mind about this sensitive piece.
In fact, things have gotten so bad that the Jewish Book Council has undertaken a campaign to catalogue all instances of antisemitism in the literary world.
What can I do – as a reader – to help?
Having described just some of this at the aforementioned book talk, there came a particularly wise question from the audience: What can we readers do to support Jewish authors?
I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting the question and I’m sorry my response – “buy their books” – was as glib as it was. Realizing that readers who want to help deserve a more comprehensive answer, I turned to a couple of Jewish-based Facebook communities and asked the same question. Here were some of the responses:
- Invite Jewish authors to speak – not only at synagogues and Jewish groups, but everywhere. If an author isn’t local, have them join you via Zoom. (This includes Israeli authors, many of whom write in English.)
- Write honest reviews and ratings of Jewish books to balance out the malice and intensity of review bombers.
- Spread the word about Jewish books, especially those just launching, widely on social media.
- Ask local libraries and bookstores to order these books.
- Check for inclusion of Jewish books on round-ups that are not explicitly Jewish in nature, including seasonal roundups, beach reads, romance, sci-fi/fantasy, and more.
- Look at your child’s reading lists – is the only “Jewish” book included about the Holocaust? This is an important topic, of course, but shouldn’t be the only aspect of Jewish culture and history, as well as contemporary Jewish issues, that all kids, Jewish or not, learn about.
- Make your voices heard against publications that are explicitly anti-Zionist. If you are subscribed to them, drop the subscription and let the publication know why.
- Oh, yes. And buy their books.
More great examples of what readers can do particularly to support Jewish children’s books can be found on this blog post.
And a special note to my non-Jewish friends
Not Jewish? Don’t believe these actions don’t pertain to you? Frankly, we need your help. It’s painful to feel this isolated. Silence from you increasingly feels like betrayal. As one of the writers responding to my request for ideas said: “We cannot do this all ourselves. Our allies have got to start being loud with us.”
Please. Be loud with us. Help us through these troubled times.
With thanks to all who contributed to my Facebook request for ideas!
I think we need a list of authors to be able to really do this in the right way.
Going to the Jewish Book Council website is a good first step.
Always considered myself a friend of “the tribe” and I read 2 or 3 books every week. So important to declare oneself as an ally.
Thank you, Janet!
Book burning at its worst. Anyone who does not equate this with Hitler’s Germany is either naive or antisemitic. Buying the books although it helps. It is not enough. We have to show up en masse for any boycotted Jewish writers whenever and wherever they are signing books.
I love this idea!
Thank you for this piece. This has been beyond painful… and if children’s literature is a harbinger of what is to come, it is absolutely terrifying. The writing has been on this wall for quite some time.
It has, indeed. I had proposed a panel at a nearby literary festival right before the pandemic about writing Jewishly in a time of rising antisemitism. They had accepted it then, but of course the pandemic meant we couldn’t hold it. When I re-suggested it this year, they passed. What does that tell you?
I am just finishing “The Boy With the Star Tattoo”. I always wonder whether I would have the wherewithal to be brave enough and wise enough to think of a way to protect my loved ones. How clever was the solution in this book!! No I am not giving away anything else. Read the book!!! It is wonderful.
Lydia Katz
Thanks for the recommendation of Talia’s book!
Thanks for this.
Maybe we need to find a way to start a Jewish friendly publishing house, kind of like Moint Sinai hospitals bit for books.
In the meantime I order books by Jewish and Israeli writers and will make a point to write fair reviews.
Thanks for your support of Jewish and Israeli writers. It’s so important right now!
I have to say I am appalled at our own community who has turned their back on our Jewish community. I hear fellow Jews siding with the Palestinians and saying the children! No one said the children when the children in Ukrain were forced to leave their homes and lost their parents , family and friends were killed and evicted. No one said a word! Why because they were Jews! We must stand up and not let history repeat itself!
Thank you for commenting.
Bravo, Michelle.
Thank you, Mitchell!
So well-put. We live in scary times. I have been speaking to adult groups about my novels, which deal with a child of survivors. I am now interested in contacting high schools to speak to teenagers. We have to try to reach them with facts before it’s too late.
Best of luck with this. It’s so important to reach this younger generation.
I co- run a Jewish book group for Phoenix chapter of Brandeis. We ask some of the Jewish authors to join us on our zoom meetings when we read their books. We were pleased that Maggie Anton not only zoomed with us but also signed her books when she was in town before the zoom. Next term we will be reading The Boy with the Blue Star and would love to have you zoom with us if you are available. We meet 10 am on the first Thursday of November through April. We support Jewish authors.
Ellen, thank you for the invitation. I’d be delighted and sent you email to discuss.
I am religiously unaffiliated, a secular humanist. As such, it is, as it should be, the obligation of freethinkers and secular humanists to fight book banning at every turn. This, of course, applies to the works of Jewish writers, who have down through history contributed so very much to world culture. It is just sheer bigotry, Third Reich continued, to target those who are who they are by accident of birth, but bless the world of literary voices, a gift for which we should all be grateful.
George, thank you so much for your support of Jewish writers!
Thank you, Michelle, for a great, thoughtful article. The list of the ways readers can support Jewish writers is excellent, and the appeal to non-Jewish friends is important. We are a small minority, disproportionally hated through lies and blood libels that began centuries ago and have found a defined entity in the State of Israel as it defends itself against murderous, cynical and barbaric enemy.
I plan to include a link to this excellent article in my next newsletter.
You are the best! (Besides being a great writer.)
Thank you!
Thank you so much for including a link in your next newsletter! And I’m so sorry that your wonderful book was a target of hate.
Michelle, thank you for writing this vital, essential blog — though I am horrified that anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly head in yet another community. As a Jewish woman, mother, grandmother, and Second-Generation Holocaust survivor, a teacher, a writer, and a human being — I hope and pray that we can get beyond this current nightmare. Please let’s all do what we can to make this the world we want for the present and the future!
Esther, like you, I certainly never thought we’d get to this point – again – in our history. I join you in hoping that this nightmare will be short-lived!
This was very brave, Michelle. I’m so glad you provided a deeper look into the issues and an actionable list to help.
Thank you, Judith!
I am happy that there is solidarity among the writers and their readers. One of my daughters is an actress and a writer. At age 17 she was urged to change her last name to one that was less ethnic. She was born a Schwartz.
Amazing that even today actors are getting this advice. All the best to your daughter.