The Five Books: Jewish Authors on the Books That Shaped Them

In recognition of Jewish Heritage Month, this episode features a conversation with Nicholas Lemann, whose work and life story open up questions about American and Jewish identity. Nicholas discusses his assimilated Louisianan/ German-Jewish upbringing and his lifelong quest for connection with Judaism. What does it mean to be both Jewish and have ancestors who benefitted from slavery? We’ll also discuss what Tolstoy’s Russia has in common with the New Orleans of Nicholas’ childhood, and his appreciation for reading the Torah in all its moral complexity. 

Nicholas was born and raised in New Orleans and has been a magazine writer since he was a teenager. He has worked at the Washington Monthly, Texas Monthly, the Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, and has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1999. He is a professor and dean emeritus at the Columbia Journalism school, and in 2023 was appointed to Columbia’s Task Force on Antisemitism.

Nicholas is also the author of many books of nonfiction including The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, and Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream.  His latest book is Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries. delves deeply into his family’s German-Jewish-Lousianan story. From their arrival in Louisiana in the 1830s as peddlers from Germany, to their becoming plantation owners and department store owners after the Civil War, to their emergence in the aristocratic world of New Orleans, where they could never quite belong. 

Nicholas Lemann’s Five Books:

1. My Son the Nut by Allan Sherman (album)

2. How Judaism Became a Religion by Leora Batnitzky

3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

4. The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

5. Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries by Nicholas Lemann

Other Episodes You Might Enjoy:


Rachel Cockerell on the Zionist Dream that Sailed to Galveston


Matti Friedman on the Stories that Built a People


Elizabeth Graver on Lost Worlds and New Doorways


Francine Klagsbrun on Embracing and Reshaping Tradition

The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous, Sam Sussman, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Allegra Goodman.

⁠⁠⁠Sign up for our newsletter⁠⁠⁠ to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.

Find us on Instagram ⁠@fivebookspod ⁠or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.

For feedback or author recommendations please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠

For transcripts and more find us online at ⁠www.fivebookspod.org ⁠

The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! ⁠https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate⁠

The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity. 

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill

Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions

In this conversation, Fran Fabriczki discusses coming of age between Hungary and Los Angeles and her experiences with cultural richness and antisemitism between the two countries. We also discuss “homelooseness” in The Nearest Thing to Life by James Wood, and JD Salinger’s relationship with Jewishness through his short story “Down at the Dinghy.” 

Fran Fabriczki was born in Budapest. She has lived in Los Angeles and currently lives in London. She studied English at the University of Cambridge and worked in publishing for several years before becoming a novelist. She graduated from the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing MA in 2022. Porcupines is her debut novel.

In Porcupines, Sonia is a Hungarian immigrant who is raising her daughter, Mila on her own in sunny Los Angeles. Her days are a blur of not-quite-illegal business activities, dodging PTA moms, and baking birthday cakes laced with rum—minor mistakes that nevertheless continually remind her of everything she doesn’t understand about America and parenthood. Mila, meanwhile, is juggling violin and swimming lessons and navigating the treacherous social politics of school with the help of a less-than-helpful guidebook on how to be cool in the sixth grade—all the while trying to get her secretive mother to share something, anything, about her past. Moving between Budapest before the fall of the Berlin Wall; Washington, DC, in the tense years of the Cold War; and the bright sunshine of early aughts Los Angeles, Porcupines is an irresistible novel about mothers and daughters, secrecy and loneliness, belonging and reinvention—and what happens when the truth can’t be held back any longer.

Fran Fabriczki's Five Books:


The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen


“Down at the Dinghy” from Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger


The Nearest Thing to Life by James Wood


Going Home by Tom Lamont


Porcupines by Fran Fabriczki

Other Episodes You Might Enjoy:


Allegra Goodman on “This is Not About Us”


Sasha Vasilyuk on the Silences of the Soviet-Jewish Past


Jessica Berger Gross on Cultural Judaism and Creative Resistance 

The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous, Sam Sussman, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Allegra Goodman.

⁠⁠⁠Sign up for our newsletter⁠⁠⁠ to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.

Find us on Instagram ⁠@fivebookspod ⁠or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.

For feedback or author recommendations please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠

For transcripts and more find us online at ⁠www.fivebookspod.org ⁠

The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! ⁠https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate⁠

The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity. 

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill

Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions

In this conversation, Adeena Sussman discusses how reading an (age-inappropriate) short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer one Shabbat afternoon changed the way she thought about writing and storytelling. We’ll also hear about her deep attachment to Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market, and how discovering Claudia Roden’s writing about Middle Eastern food expanded her sense of Jewish food.

Adeena Sussman is the author of the New York Times best selling cookbook Shabbat: Recipes and Rituals From My Table To Yours, and Sababa, which was named a Best Fall 2019 cookbook by The New York Times, Bon Appetit, and Food & Wine. Her latest cookbook, Zariz, focuses on quick and easy Tel Aviv-inspired recipes. Adeena is also the co-author of 15 other cookbooks, including the Cravings series with Chrissy Teigen, which were New York Times Best-sellers. Adeena lives, cooks and writes in Tel Aviv, where she lives in the shadow of that city’s Carmel Market with her husband, Jay Shofet.

Adeena Sussman's Five Books:

1. Short Friday and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer

2. Call It Sleep by Henry Roth

3. Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden

4. Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

5. Zariz: 100 Easy, Breezy, Tel Aviv-y Recipes by Adeena Sussman

Other Media Mentioned:

- The New York Times Cookbook by Craig Claiborne

- Spice and Spirit: The Complete Kosher Jewish Cookbook by Tzuvia Emmer and Tzipora Reitman

- “How To Live Life Like Erez Komarovsky: The Hell-Raising, Iconoclastic Israeli Bread Baker” by  Taffy Brodesser Akner

Other Episodes Featuring Jewish Food:


Bonny Reichert on Food, Fear, and Finding Beauty


Jake Cohen on the Magic of Gathering Around the Table


Samantha Ellis on Becoming a Keeper of Her Ancestral Language

The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous, Sam Sussman, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Allegra Goodman.

⁠⁠⁠Sign up for our newsletter⁠⁠⁠ to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.

Find us on Instagram ⁠@fivebookspod ⁠or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.

For feedback or author recommendations please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠

For transcripts and more find us online at ⁠www.fivebookspod.org ⁠

The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! ⁠https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate⁠

The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity. 

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill

Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions

A special thank you to Dr. Ruby Gelman

In this episode, Alicia Jo Rabins traces the “red hot glow” of the moments that shaped her, both spiritual and artistic, and how they led her to a life rooted in music, text, and ritual. She’ll tell us how a chavruta (study partnership) with an Orthodox student while at Barnard College paved the way for her to transform her academic study into song in Girls in Trouble.  As she details the pendulum swings in her religious and spiritual practices, we discuss the ways in which small moments – watching orthodox women wait for the electric doors to open on Shabbat, watching Titanic – have helped her to build a life and tradition wholly her own. 

Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, musician, composer, performer, and Torah teacher. When We’re Born We Forget Everything follows her journey as a modern Jewish woman to owning ancient teachings and finding her own meanings in them, refracted through feminist interpretations of the lives of Biblical women.

Alicia has published two award winning poetry collections, a collection of short personal essays called Even God Has Bad Parenting Days, and a children’s picture book called Hallelujah: The Story of Leonard Cohen. Alicia is the creator and performer of Girls in Trouble, an indie-folk song cycle about the complicated lives of Biblical women. It has an accompanying curriculum and is now being made into an indie web series! She is also the creator of A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff, which began as a one-woman chamber-rock opera and was adapted into an award-winning independent feature film.

Alicia Jo Rabins’ Five Books:

1. Pirkei Avot

2. Reading the Women of the Bible by Tikva Frymer-Kensky

3. Japanese Death Poems

4. Mother's Milk: Essays on Child-Rearing, the Household, and the Making of Jewish Culture by Deena Aranoff

5. When We’re Born We Forget Everything by Alicia Jo Rabins

Alicia’s Music Played in this Episode:

- Alicia Jo Rabins, “Blackberry Spring”, Sugar Shack

- Girls in Trouble, “Open the Ground”, Open the Ground

- Girls in Trouble, “River So Wide”, Open the Ground

Other Books Mentioned:

- Slow Productivity by Cal Newport

Other Episodes on Jewish Feminism:

- Francine Klagsbrun on Embracing and Reshaping Tradition

- Ilana Kurshan on Books as Blueprints for Life

- Nicole Graev Lipson on the Attention, Intention, and Complexity of Mothers- Jennifer Wiener on “Women’s Fiction”

- Jessica Elisheva Emerson on Belief, Identity, and Women’s Desire

The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Sharon Brous, Sam Sussman, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl and Allegra Goodman.

⁠⁠⁠Sign up for our newsletter⁠⁠⁠ to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.

Find us on Instagram ⁠@fivebookspod ⁠or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.

For feedback or author recommendations please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠

For transcripts and more find us online at ⁠www.fivebookspod.org ⁠

The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! ⁠https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate⁠

The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity. 

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill

Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions.

In this conversation, Matti Friedman reflects on the power of foundation stories to shape how we understand ourselves and where we come from – from Noah’s Ark, to the origins of the Bible, to Hannah Senesh and the other parachutists who landed in Nazi Europe during World War II. We also talk about what happens when we look more closely at these myths and encounter the flawed, human figures behind them - and why that often deepens, rather than diminishes, our admiration for their courage.  Along the way, we also discuss Matti’s particular perspective as a Western-born journalist living in Israel, Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, and the gift of reading poetry in uncertain times. 

Matti’s latest book, Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe, has been awarded the Natan Notable Book award for Winter 2026 and was released last week.

In Out of the Sky, Matti Friedman unravels one of the strangest episodes of World War II: In 1944, a team of young women and men who had escaped the Holocaust made the inconceivable choice to parachute back into Nazi-occupied Europe under the cover of a British military operation.

Matti Friedman is the author of five works of nonfiction that have been translated into more than a dozen languages, each of which has appeared on numerous ‘best books of the year’ lists and have been awarded prizes and accolades including the Sami Rohr Prize, the ALA’s Sophie Brody Medal, and the Canadian Jewish Book Award, and more. Matti is a former Associated Press correspondent, his work has appeared in the New York Times,  Smithsonian Magazine, the Atlantic, and elsewhere. He currently writes from Israel for The Free Press. 

Matti Friedman's Five Books:

1. The Bible - Parshat Noach, the Story of Noah

2. Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Friedman

3. Submission by Michel Houellebecq

4. Hebrew poetry by Yehuda Amichai and Lea Goldberg 

5. Out of the Sky: Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe by Matti Friedman

Other Media Mentioned:

HHhH by Laurent Binet

Eli Eli, recorded by Ofra Haza and the Hatikva Neighbourhood Workshop Theatre 

Stay tuned at the end of the episode for a reflection on Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock with designer and friend of the podcast Dov Abramson.

Other Episode You Might Enjoy:


Sarah Hurwitz on Reclaiming Our Jewish Story


Rabbi Yitz Greenberg on Re-envisioning the Jewish Future


Dara Horn on Being the Lorax at Her Seder Table


Ilana Kurshan on Books as Blueprints for Life

The Five Books is a podcast that celebrates the role of books in Jewish culture. Through author interviews, we delve into Jewish identity and discover each author’s favorite novels. Join us every week for new Jewish book recommendations! Some of our episodes have included conversations with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl (Senior Rabbi at Central Synagogue, and author of Heart of a Stranger) Yael Van Der Wouden (author of The Safekeep), and Dara Horn (author of People Love Dead Jews.)

⁠⁠⁠Sign up for our newsletter⁠⁠⁠ to get new episode reminders, authors’ five book picks, and more delivered straight to your inbox.

Find us on Instagram ⁠@fivebookspod ⁠or on Facebook at The Five Books Podcast.

For feedback or author recommendations please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠

For transcripts and more find us online at ⁠www.fivebookspod.org ⁠

The Five Books has the advisory and promotional support of the Jewish Book Council. Jewish Book Council is a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying and celebrating Jewish literature and supporting authors and readers. Stay up to date on the latest in Jewish literature! ⁠https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/events/celebrate⁠

The Five Books is fiscally sponsored by FJC, a 501c3 public charity. 

Hosted by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen

Produced by Odelia Rubin

Editorial and website support by Amelia Merrill

Artwork by Elad Lifshitz of the Dov Abramson Studio

Music by Dov Rosenblatt and Blue Dot Sessions

Thank you to Rob Mank 

Thank you to Felicia Herman and David Ben-Ur for their generous support.