okay I wrote a really long thing and my phone deleted it so here is take 2 of my MASTERPOST OF NON-HOLOCAUST-CENTRIC JEWISH MC’s:
“All Other Nights” by Dara Horn - Jewish spy for the union in the civil war
“Shylock’s Daughter” by Marjam Pressler - retelling of the Merchant of Venice with a sympathetic Shylock and a historically accurate look at the Ashkenazi AND Sephardic Jewish community in 16th century Italy
“The Chosen” by Chaim Potok - Hassidic + Modern Orthodox Jewish boys ‘friendship’ (lbr we all ship it) in 1945-1948 NYC
“My Name is Asher Lev” by Chaim Potok - ultra-orthodox Jewish boy takes up art, paints a crucifixion scene, and sh*t hits the fan
“The Museum of Extraordinary Things” - Jewish photographer + (non-Jewish) daughter of a sideshow owner meet and fall in love in turn of the century Brooklyn, and also a subplot about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
“Escape from Egypt” by Sonia Levitin - retelling of the Passover story
“Daniel Deronda” by George Eliot - it’s like Jane Austen. With Jews! (And while everything is not all hunky-dory, it’s also not the antisemitic travesty I’ve come to expect from 19th century gentile writers).
“Hacking Harvard” by Robin Wasserman - 3 nerds take on a bet to get a slacker/stoner into Harvard (also a really nice critique of the college admissions process tbh)
“The Pact” by Jodi Picoult - (suicide tw) A tragedy hits 2 families. The novel centers on a trial and flashbacks to the event in question.
“Someone to Run With” by David Grossman - set on the streets of Jerusalem, a boy tries to return a lost dog to its owner, a girl who has run away from home in search of her brother (this is the English translation, obviously, but if you can read novels in Hebrew I highly recommend reading the original, משהו לרוץ איתו)
Urban Fantasy/Fantasy/SciFi
“The Mediator” series by Meg Cabot - teenaged girl starts seeing ghosts / YA romance (although the fact that the MC is Jewish is not even remotely relevant to the plot, it is mentioned outright several times which is more than most books)
“The Cure” by Sonia Levitin - futuristic dystopian society tries to cure one young man’s appreciation of music by sending him to a Jewish shtetl in 13th century Poland (fair warning for dystopian fans, though, the middle 2/3rds reads like historical fiction, so.)
Children’s (Middle Grade) Books
“All of a Kind Family” by Sydney Taylor - the classic “1920s NYC Jewish family”
“Dave at Night” by Gail Carson Levine - boy sneaks out of an orphanage in early 20th century NYC
“Witness” by Karen Taylor Hesse - told in free verse, the KKK visits a small town (I’m including it because it’s not a Holocaust book, and it’s really good, but it still might will set off your antisemitism sensors so fair warning)
“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” by Judy Blume - Classic. (Also, takes on an interfaith family in a really interesting and nuanced way!)
“Samir and Yonatan” by Daniella Carmi - two boys (one Israeli, one Palestinian) end up in the same hospital and learn that they have more in common than they thought
“Angels in America” by Harold Kushner - I can’t even begin to describe this one just google it. (or: Jewish and Mormon gay people in NYC during the AIDS epidemic, and also angels)
“Thirteen: The Musical” by Dan Elish and Robert Horn, music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown - Jewish boy’s parents get divorced and he moves from NYC to Appleton, Indiana right before his Bar Mitzvah
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