In the Belly of the Whale: Portraits from a Fractured Israel
By Ruth Margalit (Steerforth Press)

One of Israel’s finest journalists, Ruth Margalit presents a thoughtful portrait of Israeli society through profiles of 10 newsworthy figures and one very personal piece. These are essays that ran in The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker between 2014 and 2025, and which have been updated. Her subjects include Israeli Palestinian writer Sayed Kashua; politician Itamar Ben Gvir; Ori Elon and Yehonatan Indursky, creators of the television series Shtisel; and survivors of the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, 2023. Margalit’s interest is in people—in all their complexity—more than in politics.

Purchase the book here.

 The Diamond Setter
By Moshe Sakal. Translated by Jessica Cohen (Other Press)

A multifaceted novel inspired by the author’s family stories, the book opens in 2011, when a young Syrian man secretly crosses the border into Israel carrying a blue diamond. He makes his way to Jaffa, a place he had heard about from his grandparents. Moshe Sakal’s novel moves back in time, to an era when Arabs and Jews lived in peace and friendship in the city. The gemstone is at the center of the plot, as are two love triangles. In a preface to this new and revised English translation from the original Hebrew, award-winning novelist and publisher Moshe Sakal writes that stories, like gemstones, change “the fate of whoever holds them, they bear witness to a vanished world—and open the imagination to envision a future one.”

Purchase the book here. 

Pretend You Believe: How to Enter Religion
By Noa Kushner (Schocken)

Noa Kushner, the founding rabbi of the innovative synagogue community The Kitchen in San Francisco, presents a spiritual and theological—and very friendly—approach to religion, grounded in Jewish sources and her own rabbinate and experience. In compelling prose, she makes the case that “religion is as fundamental and transformational as eating.” Kushner, who has been named by Newsweek “a rabbi to watch,” doesn’t present answers, but does write of God and holiness with thoughtfulness and wisdom, comfortable in the mysteries.

Purchase the book here.

The Two Saddest Kitchens: A Comics Conversation
By Roz Chast and Jason Adam Katzenstein (Bloomsbury)

Celebrated New Yorker cartoonists Roz Chast and Jason Adam Katzenstein share stories about their much-less-than-perfect kitchens; both prefer reading and drawing over household tasks and cooking. Through illustrated comic panels, they lament the deadly poisons lurking under their sinks and the appliances they’ll never use, while pondering why so many Tupperware containers don’t have lids and what the “all-purpose seasoning” that has sat on their shelves for decades might be used for. Readers who loved Chast’s best-selling and award-winning Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant, and even those who take pride in their spotless kitchens, will enjoy this Jewish comic duo kvetching about demonic dishwashers, dysfunctional drawers and the perils of opening a bottle of seltzer.

Purchase the book here.

Brilliant By Design: The Handbags of Judith Leiber
By Bridget Kerr (Yale University Press)

Hungarian-born Judith Leiber, one of America’s greatest handbag designers, studied design and handbag construction during World War II in Budapest. When confined to the city’s ghetto, she dreamed of the beautiful bags she would make some day in the future. She moved to the United States in 1946 and started her own company in 1963, making the elegant, playful, sparkling, finely crafted small bags that became her trademark—and were carried by First Ladies, Hollywood stars and stylish women everywhere. This is a gorgeous tribute to an exceptionally strong, creative, resilient and successful Jewish woman, published in conjunction with an exhibit at The Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C., through July 2027.

Purchase the book here.

Sandee Brawarsky is 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.