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Read: September 2025

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10/7: 100 Human Stories

by Lee Yaron

The speaker at the Selichot Service with VAAD at Congregation Beth Israel on September 13, 2025, will be Lee Yaron, the author of 10/7: 100 Human Stories. Yaron is the recipient of the National Jewish Book Awards’ 2024 Jewish Book of the Year and The Natan Fund’s Winter 2025 Notable Book Award. This book provides a definitive account of the 10/7 attacks, sharing the stories of the victims and the communities they called home.

On October 7, 2023—the Sabbath and the final day of the holiday of Sukkot—the Gaza-based terror group Hamas launched an unprecedented assault on the people of Israel. Crashing through the border, attacking from the sea and air, militants indiscriminately massacred civilians in what became one of the worst terror attacks in modern history, and the most lethal day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

A radically passionate work of investigative journalism and political critique by acclaimed Haaretz reporter Lee Yaron, 10/7 chronicles the massacre that ignited a war through the stories of more than 100 civilians. These stories are the result of extensive interviews with survivors, bereaved individuals, and first responders in Israel and around the world. The victims run the gamut from left-wing kibbutzniks and Burning Man-esque partiers to radical right-wingers, from Bedouins and Israeli Arabs to Thai and Nepalese guest workers, peace activists, elderly Holocaust survivors, refugees from Ukraine and Russia, pregnant women, and babies.

At a time when people are seeking a deeper understanding of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how internal political turmoil in Israel has affected it, they predominantly encounter perspectives from the powerful—from politicians and military officers. 10/7 takes a fresh approach, offering answers through the stories of everyday people, those who lived tenuously on the border with Gaza.

Yaron profiles victims from a wide range of communities—depicting the fullness of their lives, not just their final moments—to honor their memories and reveal the way the attack ripped open Israeli society and put the entire Middle East on the precipice of disaster. Each chapter begins with a portrait of a community, interweaving history with broader political analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to provide context for the narratives that follow. Ultimately, 10/7 shows that the tragedy is much greater than the violence of the attacks, and in fact extends back through the entire Netanyahu era, which propagated a false image of Israel as a technologically advanced, militarily formidable powerhouse so essential to the region that it could continue to ignore and undermine Palestinian statehood indefinitely.

Lee Yaron has been a journalist with Haaretz, Israel’s oldest and most award-winning newspaper, for nearly a decade. Her investigative reporting has led to the establishment of state-level commissions and the revision of substantial bodies of Israeli policy and law. She is an elected member and representative of the Executive Committee of the Union of Israeli Journalists. She has also written and directed acclaimed theater productions notable for their use of found materials, including official governmental texts, to bring attention to marginalized communities both in Israel and throughout the Middle East. Born in Tel Aviv, Yaron splits her time between her native city and New York.

Joshua Cohen is the author of ten books, including the novels Book of Numbers, Moving Kings, and Witz. Called “a major American writer” by the New York Times and “an extraordinary prose stylist, surely one of the most prodigious at work in American fiction today” by the New Yorker, Cohen was awarded Israel’s 2013 Matanel Prize, and in 2017 was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. His book, The Netanyahus, won the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books that I’ve personally vetted to ensure quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

Read: March 2024

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Help Wanted: A Novel

by Adelle Waldman

Today, I started reading Help Wanted: A Novel by Adelle Waldman. The best-selling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel writes a funny and eye-opening tale of work in contemporary America. The story revolves around the members of Team Movement, who work at the big-box store Town Square in a small upstate New York town.

They come in for their shift at 3:55 a.m. every day, and under the supervision of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s merchandise truck, stock the shelves, and leave before the store opens for customers.

Although their lives follow a familiar and grueling routine, their real problem is that Town Square needs to schedule them for more hours. As a result, most are barely getting by, even while working second or third jobs. When the store manager, Big Will, announces he is leaving, the members of the Movement spot an opportunity. They set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion, hoping one of them might land a management job, providing stability and possibilities for advancement.

The members of Team Movement, including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman trying to keep her “cool kid” status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path, band together to achieve their goal. Adelle Waldman’s debut novel was a breakout sensation, and her long-awaited follow-up brings her unparalleled wit and astute social observation to modern, low-wage work. Help Wanted is a humane and darkly comic workplace caper that highlights the hardships low-wage workers face in today’s economy. It is a funny and moving tale of ordinary people trying to make a living.

Read: March 2023

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Western Lane: A Novel

by Chetna Maroo

Western Lane: A Novel by Chetna Maroo is a taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athlete’s struggle to transcend herself. Western Lane is about three sisters who have lost their mother. Their father is encouraged to provide structure in raising his daughters. Gopi, the narrator, is a squash player, and her father imposes a brutal training regimen. I highly recommend this novel!

The following passage explains the importance of squash to Gopi and how she views the world.

In the court, your mind is not only on the shot you’re about to play and the shot with which your opponent might reply, but on the shots that will follow two, three, four moves ahead. You’re watching your opponent’s position and the game he or she is playing, making calculations. This is how you choose which way to go. Though your mind is following several paths at once, it’s not a splitting but expansion forwards and backward in time, and it happens so quickly that it feels like instinct. Sometimes, you don’t even know you are thinking.

In the first few pages, I wondered what I would have done if I had been a single parent when my sons were young. I do not believe I would have imposed on my sons what Gopi’s father did to her. However, I have found reading and art to be powerful tools to help me cope with grief. I have focused on rituals, structure, and purpose.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot, and its echo.

But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.

An indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo’s first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty. Western Lane is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we know ourselves and each other.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Read: October 2021

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Summer: A Novel

by Ali Smith

Summer: A Novel by Ali Smith is a fascinating book about the times in which we live.

In the present, Sacha knows the world’s in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble. Meanwhile the world’s in meltdown – and the real meltdown hasn’t even started yet.

In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they’re living on borrowed time.

This is a story about people on the brink of change.

They’re family, but they think they’re strangers.

So: where does family begin? And what do people who think they’ve got nothing in common have in common?

Summer.

Because of the two different periods and the multiple characters, I had some difficulty following the plot until about halfway to the end. Suddenly it all fit together and made sense.

The book revealed information about the internments during World War II in England that I had not fully comprehended.

Sacha’s focus on the environmental degradation augmented by the COVID pandemic provided an emotional undertow in the book.

I now must begin to read the other three novels in this Seasonal Quartet.

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North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther

Read: October 2025

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North Sun: A Novel

by Ethan Rutherford

“North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther” by Ethan Rutherford is a finalist for the fiction category of the 2025 National Book Award. With one foot firmly planted in the traditional sea-voyage narrative, and another in a blazing mythos of its own, this debut novel looks unsparingly at the cost of environmental exploitation and predation, and in doing so feverishly sings not only of the past, but to the present and future as well.

Setting out from New Bedford in 1878, the crew of the Esther is confident the sea will be theirs: in addition to cruising the Pacific for whales, they intend to hunt the teeming northern grounds before the ice closes. But as they sail to their final destination in the Chukchi Sea, where their captain Arnold Lovejoy has an urgent directive of his own to attend to, their encounters with the natural world become more brutal, harrowing, ghostly, and strange.

Ethan Rutherford‘s fiction has appeared in BOMB, Tin House, Electric Literature, Ploughshares, One Story, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, and The Best American Short Stories. He is the author of two story collections–Farthest South (Deep Vellum, 2020) and The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories (Ecco, 2013)–and for these works has been named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, a finalist for the John Leonard Prize and CLMP’s Firecracker Award, received honorable mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and was the winner of a Minnesota Book Award.

Born in Seattle, Washington, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota and now teaches Creative Writing at Trinity College. He lives in Hartford, Connecticut, with his wife and two children.

Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books that I’ve personally vetted to ensure quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

Read: August 2021

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The Hidden Life of Trees

by Peter Wohlleben

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate ― Discoveries from A Secret World is a book I have wanted but had not had the time to read. In July of this year, when I was still in the early stages of my recovery journey, I talked to a friend of my wife’s (whom I now count as my friend) about our plans to plant a tree in Hanson Park.

As I talked about our plans, my friend suggested I read this book as it would help me understand the importance of trees. I will forever be grateful for her recommendation, as it made me read this book sooner than later.

To read that trees have a social network with more prominent, healthier trees concerned about the smaller, weaker ones. How is it that humans, a supposedly advanced species, have a social network that divides and weakens our community?

Are trees social beings? In The Hidden Life of Trees forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers. Wohlleben also shares his deep love of woods and forests, explaining the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in his woodland.

Having read this book, I am more sensitive to trees and have enjoyed my walks more than ever. In addition, when we plant Jan’s tree in Hanson Park, I will now have even more reasons to talk about the importance of trees to Jan, myself, and the community.

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