Very Exciting News

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

I have incredibly exciting news.

It’s official: the Never Alone Book Club in partnership with the Jewish Book Council will be bringing you an hour with Dara Horn on May 15th!!

The event will take place on Zoom at 5 pm Pacific time (and 8 pm Eastern).

We will be in conversation about her brand-new book, ONE LITTLE GOAT, which will be available at a very deep discount (likely 50%) through the Jewish Book Council. Please stay tuned for the link to purchase — coming very soon.

Meanwhile, just to recap information I have shared before, and highlight why this event is such a big deal:

When I started this club, it was for the purpose of mounting a fierce fight against the way Jews were being pushed to the margins of the book world. If you’re not aware of this awful, antisemitic trend, you can read about it here and here and here and here and here.

I love Jewish books. I love Jewish writers. I love talking about Jewish work. But the overarching purpose of this club was this:

It only takes 5,000 sales in a single week to land a book on the NYT bestseller list.

We are People Of The Book. We are millions strong in the U.S.

THERE IS NO EARTHLY REASON WE CAN'T ORGANIZE FOR THIS PURPOSE, BUY THE SAME BOOK ON THE SAME DAY EACH MONTH, AND PUT A JEWISH AUTHOR ON THE BESTSELLER LIST EVERY SINGLE MONTH.

Publishing is very unfortunately a business first and last.

It's as money-driven as any other.

If Jewish authors are continually on the bestseller list, this will send a very powerful message to the industry: that we are not poison, but gold.

It was always my ultimate hope that the wonderful, excellent Jewish Book Council would partner with us in order to execute this plan and now, kayn ahora, this is happening.

So please do one of two things as soon as possible (now is wonderful):

If you’re on Facebook, join the NEVER ALONE BOOK CLUB if you haven’t already, find the event under the “Featured” tab on the page, and RSVP.

If and only if you are NOT on Facebook, but you are planning to come, register your intention here (this is just for a participant count, so we only need votes of “yes” or “maybe” and I sincerely hope every single one of you will choose the former if humanly possible.

Also, please invite all your Jewish friends. Let's make this happen together.

This club is not monetized in any way, shape or form. I make absolutely no money doing this -- it's an act of support and service to the Jewish writers’ community, which I love beyond words. And I have no doubt that we can reverse the trend against us if we’re resolute, intentional and organized. The world needs our voices. We must not let antisemites succeed in silencing us.

Speaking of the refusal to be silenced:

On Saturday, there were massive protests against the Trump regime across our country and the rest of the world. The sight of people in the streets in countless cities and towns from coast to coast was a beautiful and heart-warming sight.

I myself spoke to 7,000 people at a local rally, drawing on my own Jewish history. It was wonderfully empowering to address a very progressive audience while wearing my tee that says I’m That Jew, my hostage dog tags, my Am Yisrael Chai necklace and the #BringThemHome bracelet I was just gifted by a cherished friend who received it directly from a Bibas family member — all while delivering a very Jewish speech.

If you’d like to watch the video, it’s here. When I watched it afterward, there were some things that made me cringe: the microphone was having feedback issues for the first minute or two, and honestly, it’s very hard for me to listen to the sound of my own voice. But afterward, I was swarmed by people who wanted to thank me, to hug me, to write down their contact info so I could send the video, and in some cases, to tell me they were Jewish too and I’d made them proud.

Then, the very next day — yesterday — an astonishing essay appeared in the New York Times.

In it, the writer — Taffy Brodesser-Akner — grapples with what it means for Jews of my generation to have grown up in the shadow of the Holocaust, steeped in the first-hand testimonies of survivors.

And what is it about me that needs to ameliorate or mitigate the sharp, upward, not-gray spike in antisemitism, to think of it as something paranoid people make too big of a deal out of, as if to defend ourselves is embarrassing and tacky? What is it in me that needs me to diminish what is in front of me? Is never again really now? Is it now? Is now when I’m supposed to leave? But OK, if yes, OK but where to?

And though I do want antisemitism to be punished and banished, how am I supposed to feel comforted by an administration that seems to be invoking it to fight a culture war that has nothing to do with Jews, while at the same time warmly embracing not one but two guys who recently did the ol’ “Sieg heil" in front of large crowds? Is the actual longest Jewish tradition that we get scapegoated even by the people who are pretending to save us?

And is there any way the world can experience economic or political turmoil without deciding to lay it at the feet of the Jews? And why am I sitting here at a catered event when I maybe should be running through the streets, screaming that the danger is here, that it’s happening, that it’s over for us? That we lived through this golden age and nobody ever warns you when a golden age is over, nobody will agree upon the metrics that declare it so?

And how about me? How am I supposed to live? That’s my real question, maybe my only one. Am I supposed to enjoy the freedom that your survival and my grandparents’ survival has afforded me? Was I supposed to have more than these two children in response to the Holocaust, to replace myself and my husband and then replenish the supply of Jewish souls on this earth because the six million stories that were burned in ovens are real and more recent than I realized? Am I supposed to have done more than live and fall in love and have a career and raise my kids and go to the movies and travel and do karaoke and read novels and sometimes watch an entire season of a TV show in one day and sometimes go to a museum and sometimes ride the Central Park loop on a Citi Bike with my children? Was I supposed to do more than walk around unafraid and think to stop sometimes and tilt my head up toward the sun?

I related so deeply to so much of the essay, even though my response to the first-hand Holocaust testimonies was the opposite of hers: I picked up that torch and ran with it for all I was worth, determined to provide some shred of redemption to Judith, my survivor, as well as others like her. My childhood with Judith informs every single thing I do in the realm of Jewish advocacy today.

In any event, the essay was in part about her desire to run far, far away from the Holocaust, to step out of its long, dark shadow. She reasoned that living well, refusing to be haunted, was its own kind of triumph, revenge, vindication.

And yet. In the end, the Holocaust is not escapable for us. We can run but we can’t hide.

In any event, the essay was the perfect thing for me to read after speaking about the Holocaust from the protest stage. It drove home the worth of these efforts, this insistence on remembering and forcing the world to remember with us.

Okay, fam. I hope your week has gotten off to a good start. I’ll be back with you on Wednesday, and in the meantime, again, please don’t wait to either RSVP at the Never Alone Book Club event page on Facebook or answer the poll above.

Much love to you all. Chazak v’ematz.

Am Yisrael Chai.