Jewish literature has long been shaped by conversation across generations, borders, and texts. In this dynamic session, contemporary Jewish authors will share brief readings from their work and respond to one another’s stories, themes, and questions in real time. Moving between genres, the program will explore how today’s writers and creatives engage with enduring questions of identity, memory, belonging, tradition, and the Jewish experience. As each author builds on what came before, audiences will witness a living conversation that reflects both the diversity of Jewish storytelling and the connections that bind it together.
In When We’re Born We Forget Everything: A Memoir, writer, musician, and Torah teacher Alicia Jo Rabins braids her personal narrative with hidden stories of biblical women, as she shares her remarkable journey from a secular Jewish childhood to modern queer woman. In the process, she owns ancient teachings and finds her own meanings in them, refracted through her feminist interpretations. Portia Elan’s Homebound: A Novel links three women across centuries: a lonely teenager, a doctor working at the intersection of AI and robotics, and a scavenger who has spent decades at sea. In a story of love, creativity, and longing, Homebound imagines how future generations will find meaning in the things we leave behind. In Zeeva Bukai’s The World Between, a once-famous actress travels to Tel Aviv, Israel, after her divorce to revisit the home she once shared with her husband. Soon after, she finds herself at a sanatorium run by a group of nuns and begins to piece together the events that led her there – exploring marriage, friendship, loss, and the lingering effects of childhood trauma. They will be joined by writer and cartoonist Drew Lerman in a panel moderated by Naomi Firestone-Teeter, CEO of the Jewish Book Council.
