Soloway JCC Jewish Book Festival

Douglas Century  

Crash of the Heavens: The Remarkable Story of Hannah Senesh and the Only Military Mission to Rescue Europe’s Jews During World War II 
In conversation with Laurence Wall 

Wednesday, October 14 ➜ 7:00 pm 

In 1939, at just eighteen, Hannah emigrated from Hungary to the British Mandate for Palestine, where she dreamed of being a poet and a schoolteacher. Instead, she became a poet and a paratrooper. Five years after fleeing Europe, Hannah parachuted back into occupied territory as a freedom fighter with a most crucial role: the wireless operator tasked with sending and deciphering top-secret British radio codes. Captured after crossing into her native Hungary, she refused to give up her radio codes, despite months of torture. Her final act of defiance—choosing to die rather than beg for clemency—cemented her legendary status as the “Jewish Joan of Arc.” 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DOUGLAS CENTURY is the author and coauthor of numerous bestselling books including Hunting El Chapo, and Under and Alone. Born and raised in Calgary, he is a veteran investigative journalist who has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Billboard, The Globe and Mail, and The Guardian. 

Yair Mintzker 

I, Wandering Jew: A Five Century History of Our Modern Condition 
In conversation with Rabbi Steven Garten 

Thursday, October 15 ➜ 7:00 pm 

In I, Wandering Jew, National Jewish Book Award–winning historian Yair Mintzker traces the tale of Ahasversus back to its source, follows its many metamorphoses through five centuries, and relates it to the fraught present moment. A work of history that reads like a detective story, I, Wandering Jew is also part memoir. As Mintzker discovers affinities between his own story and that of the Wandering Jew, the surprising history of an old antisemitic trope and its meanings become a profound meditation on home and exile, Judaism and Christianity, poetry and truth, the deep past and the present. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

YAIR MINTZKER is a professor of history at Princeton University. He is the author, most recently, of The Many Deaths of Jew Süss: The Notorious Trial and Execution of an Eighteenth-Century Court Jew (Princeton), which won the National Jewish Book Award and was named a book of the year by The Financial Times. 

Jane Ziegleman  

Once There Was a Town: The Memory Books of a Lost Jewish World
On Zoom

Friday, October 16 ➜ 11:00 am 

By the close of World War II, six million Jews had been erased from the face of the earth. Those who eluded death had lost their homes, families, and entire way of life. Their response was quintessentially Jewish. From a people with a long history of self-narration, survivors gathered in groups and wrote books, yizkor books, remembering all that had been destroyed. Once There Was a Town takes readers on a journey through this largely uncharted body of writing and the vanished world it depicts. Resounding with the voices of rich and poor, shopkeepers and trades people, scholars and peddlers, Zionists and Communists, men and women tell stories of the towns that were their homes. Stops are made in the bustling market squares where Jewish merchants catered to local farmers; study houses where men recited Torah; kitchens where homemakers baked 20lb loaves of bread; cemeteries where mourners conversed with departed loved ones; and wooded groves where young couples met for the occasional moonlit tryst. In conversation with classics by IB Singer and Roman Vishniac, Once There Was a Town is a landmark of rediscovery, and a love song to a vanished world. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JANE ZIEGELMAN is the author of the classic 97 Orchard, and co-author of the James Beard-Award winning A Square Meal. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn, New York.

Josh Cutler 

The Seventy Shuls: Synagogue Life and Yiddishkeit from the Pine Barrens to the Boardwalk 
On Zoom

Saturday, October 17 ➜ 7:30 pm 

Hidden among South Jersey’s farmlands and deep within the Pine Barrens, faint echoes of a once-thriving Jewish world still whisper in the wind. Old train tracks cut through fields and forests, leading past forgotten stations and beyond the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Along the way, traces of that lost world emerge, waiting to be rediscovered. The Seventy Shuls is a journey through time, memory, and faith. It explores how Jewish life flourished in the Garden State and what remains today. For nearly 150 years, these seventy synagogues stood as sanctuaries of resilience and belonging. They were built by pioneers and immigrants. They were sustained by farmers, shop keepers, and later revived by Holocaust survivors. These shuls anchored Jewish life in wood, brick, and mortar. Nearly all of them have vanished, replaced by churches, highways, casinos, and housing developments, yet their stories linger in the land scape. Blending investigative journalism, cultural history, and personal reflection, The Seventy Shuls uncovers the hidden legacy of synagogues that anchored these successive communities in Jewish life. Through meticulous research and intimate storytelling, these forgotten places come alive again. This work is much more than a local story. It traces the evolution of the synagogue’s sacred space within the timeline of American history and how these spaces evolved in tandem with American Judaism. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOSH CUTLER is a Ph.D. student in Holocaust Studies at Gratz College and holds an M.A. in Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Stockton University. He has served as Program Director at the Marjorie & Lewis Katz JCC, Camp Director of JCC Camp by the Sea, and Executive Director of the Board of Jewish Education of Atlantic & Cape May Counties. 

Jenna Katz 

Daniel Loves to Dance 
Kids Storytime 

Sunday, October 18 ➜ 9:30 am 

Come for the story, stay for the dance party!

Daniel just can’t stop dancing, whether he’s at home, at school, even at the dinner table! 
But when some kids tease him and say that “boys don’t dance,” Daniel starts to wonder if he should hide what he loves to do the most. With support from his family, Daniel discovers the courage to share how dancing makes him feel and soon inspires his classmates to celebrate their own passions too. Playful, uplifting, and full of rhythm, Daniel Loves to Dance is a heartwarming story about confidence, self-expression, and the joy of following what makes you truly happy! 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JENNA KATZ grew up in Ottawa and started dancing when she was just four. She trained in jazz, tap, ballet and hip hop. After graduating with a legal studies degree, Jenna moved to Toronto to dance and act professionally, performing in movies, tv shows and music videos. Today, Jenna continues to share her love of dance as a teacher, mentor, and storyteller. This is why she decided to write Daniel Loves to Dance, a children’s book that proves dancing is for everyone! 

 Free Admission

Leah Eskin

Like Wafers in Honey 
In conversation with Deborah Saginur  

Sunday, October 18 ➜ 11:30 am 

Inspired by the life and example of Edda Servi Machlin, Like Wafers in Honey tells two stories: that of Stella and Edda. Stella is a Jewish girl from the Tuscan town of Pitigliano, who spends the winter of 1943 fleeing Fascist and Nazi brutality. Dodging the ever-closer Fascists in pursuit, Edda dreams of romance, the comforts of home, and the food that was not just her mother’s love, but the delicious expression of an entire culture in danger. Edda is a Westchester housewife in the 1960s trying to make sense of a new culture while trying to preserve the indelible flavors of an Italian-Jewish way of life that is in danger of extinction, as her family once was. Each chapter includes a recipe. This beautiful novel is a survival story and a cultural archive. It honours a nearly vanished world through narrative and recipes, showing how memory, food, and storytelling can resist erasure. A truly delicious read. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LEAH ESKIN writes about food and other pressing matters. She lives in Chicago with her husband and their chocolate Lab. 

Dr. Samuel Markind 

Music Between Your Ears: How Musical Engagement Powers the Human Brain 

Sunday, October 18 ➜ 5:00 pm 

Why does music so deeply influence how we feel, and what is the science behind this phenomenon? In Music Between Your Ears, Dr. Samuel Markind explores the relationship between music and brain function. Using evolutionary theory, he illuminates the pivotal roles that music plays in human survival and procreation. Music’s impact on raising children, finding love, and building community has molded the human species and continues to shape our lives in remarkable ways. This book combines research, stories, and drawings to present compelling evidence for music’s life-enhancing potential. Dr. Markind highlights the brain’s instinctive capacities for music and the effects that music has on brain development throughout our lives. Music helps us learn at any age and in any condition, so it can improve our speech, movement, and memory, whether we’re healthy or suffering from illness or injury. The benefits of active participation in music are profound and accessible to everyone. Filled with straight forward and practical suggestions, this book will inspire anyone seeking to enrich their life through music. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DR. SAMUEL MARKIND has a love of neurology and music which fuels his passion for teaching communities about the connection between music and the brain. His goals are to illuminate ways that music benefits the brain and to encourage people to engage actively with music. Sam and his wife, Dina, have 3 grown children and became grandparents in 2022. They live in Connecticut and enjoy dancing together. www.musicbetweenyourears.com 

Samantha Ellis 

Always Carry Salt: A Memoir of Preserving Language and Culture  
In conversation with Gefen Bar-On Santor — On Zoom

Monday, October 19 ➜ 11:00 am 

A life-affirming memoir about resilience, language, and the healing power of our ancestor’s music, stories, and recipes. Samantha’s mother tongue is dying out. The daughter of Iraqi Jewish refugees, Samantha grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. A language that’s now on the verge of extinction. The realization that she won’t be able to tell her son he’s “living in the days of the aubergines” or “chopping onions on my heart” or reminding him to “always carry salt” opens the floodgates. The questions keep coming. How can she pass on this heritage without passing on the trauma of displacement? Will her son ever love mango pickle? In her search for answers Samantha encounters demon bowls, the perils of kohl, and the unexpected joys of fusion food. Her journey transports us from the clamour of Noah’s Ark to the calm of the British Museum, from the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages to the banks of the River Tigris. As Samantha considers what we lose and keep, she also asks what we might need to let go of to preserve our culture and ourselves. Always Carry Salt is an immersive and moving meditation on the words and traditions that shape us and what we carry forward into future generations. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SAMANTHA ELLIS is the daughter of Iraqi-Jewish refugees, and the author of How to be a Heroine and Take Courage. Her plays include How to Date a Feminist, Cling to me Like Ivy and Operation Magic Carpet. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, the TLS, the Spectator, Literary Review and more. She worked on the first two Paddington films. She lives in London. 

Michael Shapiro   

Ketubah Renaissance: The Artful Modern Revival of the Jewish Marriage Contract 
In conversation with Shawna Dolansky

Monday, October 19 ➜ 7:00 pm 

Illuminating the contemporary revival of the Jewish marriage contract, Ketubah Renaissance is the first to chronicle the remarkable contemporary rebirth of the art ketubah in America. It is a sumptuous book that invites “curling up with”, show casing sixty of the most innovative ketubot of the last half century. Originally created 2,500 years ago as a unilateral marriage contract, the ketubah evolved from the tenth century onward into a richly decorated expression of love and commitment. However, it virtually died out in the first half of the twentieth century. Then, starting in the late 1960s, influenced by Jewish life and North American society at large, hundreds of artists and calligraphers began to imprint their unique aesthetic onto each ketubah design—a movement Judaica scholar Shalom Sabar calls “a veritable renaissance of the illuminated ketubah”. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MICHAEL SHAPIRO is the founder and CEO of Ketubah.com, the world’s leading publisher of artistic Jewish wedding contracts, and a worldwide lecturer on historical and contemporary ketubot. For three decades he has helped shape the development of ketubah art, working with both influential and emerging artists. 

Judy Batalion  

The Last Woman of Warsaw 
In conversation with Hannah Srour-Zackon 

Tuesday, October 20 ➜ 7:00 pm 

The debut novel by the critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of The Light of Days, The Last Woman of Warsaw follows two very different Jewish women in late 1930s Warsaw. Fanny Zelshinsky is a sophisticated, modern daughter of the city’s Jewish elite who wants nothing more than to be recognized as a legitimate artist. Meanwhile, Zosia Dror has left behind her small northeastern shtetl and religious family and is part of a budding youth movement that believes in social equality and creating a Jewish homeland. When legendary artist Wanda Petrovsky—both a member of Zosia’s movement leadership and Fanny’s beloved photography professor goes missing, the two young women are thrown together in the pursuit of the elusive firebrand. Is Wanda simply hiding, or is her disappearance connected to the rise in antisemitic laws and university practices? Throughout, the two share in their search for love, meaning, and a sense of home as they grapple with the storm clouds gathering around them. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JUDY BATALION is the author of several books of award-winning nonfiction, most recently The Light of Days. Judy’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue, The Forward, Salon, The Jerusalem Post, and many other publications.