Want to Fight Antisemitism? Read a Jewish Book - Kol Nidre 5787

On July 9th of this year Dinaw Mengestu, a prominent Ethiopian-American novelist, and the President of PEN America resigned over an article that was published by his organization. That offending article was called “A Silent Moratorium” and it chronicled the struggle of Jewish and Israeli writers in the current climate.  

As the article explains, where once these writers had access to American publishing houses, today they are met with rejections or silence. When confronted about not engaging with these writers, many editors respond, “I wouldn’t know how to publish this author right now.” This author. Not this work, not these ideas.  Israeli and American Jewish authors, some of whom aren’t even writing about Israel, are being rejected because of who they are, not what they stand for.  

In fact, as the article goes on to explain, liberal authors in Israel like the writer Edgar Keret, are facing a double boycott. Too radical for Israel but too Israeli for the rest of the world, they have no home.  

In detail, the article chronicled the many abuses these Jewish and Israeli authors face: documented harassment, torn-up contracts, the canceling of readings, being dropped by their agents.  

PEN America, who published the article, is widely considered our nation’s most important non-profit advocating free speech and dedicated to defending writers and celebrating literature. The travails of these Jewish writers fit comfortably in their wheelhouse. Yet, the article so offended Mengestu, its president, that he stepped down in a fire blaze. He wrote a scathing response that addressed none of the concerns of these authors, instead defending the boycott of them as a pillar of free speech.  

For the past three years I have spoken about antisemitism on the High Holy Days. And the most common question I get after these speeches is “what can I do?”  

Tonight, rather than give another “state of antisemitism” speech, I want to drill down on one, tangible, easy thing you can do to fight antisemitism. Commit to consume Jewish culture: buy Jewish books, attend Jewish theater, watch Jewish movies, go to Jewish concerts.  

As a book lover, I’m going to make the case for Jewish literature, but it’s important to note that the same issues I’m going to discuss in the publishing industry exist in other industries across the board. Michael Solomonov, who owns a number of Israeli-themed restaurants saw them picketed when he announced that his falafel restaurant Goldie would be donating $100,000 to ambulances in Israel. The protesters marched screaming, “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” The reduced traffic from protestors compounded other economic factors and led Solomonov to close six locations.  

If you come Friday night, you know the song “One Day” which is Matisyahu’s call for peace with offensive lines like “stop with the violence, down with the hate.” After October 7th he had to cancel some of his tour because many of the workers at his venues refused to work those concerts.  

Our congregant Justin Bias approached me earlier this year because Yemen Blues, a band headed by the Israeli musician Ravid Kahalani that Justin works with, has found its invitations dry up or revoked. To give one example, in November 2024, the group had a show in The Hague canceled after antisemitic threats targeting the band. Yemen Blues has sold out major venues like the Brooklyn Bowl. We shouldn’t be able to afford them. But in this climate we can. 

It’s not just books that are affected by this climate but tonight I want to focus on them because they are a neat articulation of the wider cultural boycott. When we understand what is to be done to save Jewish and Israeli literature, we can learn how to do the same in every area of Jewish culture. 

Jewish books matter. And they make an impact. A quick glance at the 20th century can show us why. 

You may not realize this but in the 20th century, books taught Jews to be American and taught Americans to embrace Jews and over time, Jewish stories didn't just find an American audience; they became the American story. 

Early writers at the turn of the 20th century like Abraham Cahan showed Jews that they could succeed in America. Through books like The Rise of David Levinsky, they could watch a Russian immigrant rise from rags to riches and know they might too.  

Fast forward half a century and in the post-WW II era, two kinds of books exploded on the scene. Some, like the widely successful Gentleman’s Agreement fell into the genre of anti-antisemitism books. This book chronicles a journalist who pretends to be Jewish only to see firsthand just how hard it is for Jews among New York antisemites. The book, combined with the movie, starring Gregory Peck, is credited by some as exposing the hypocrisy of Jew hatred.  

At the same time, Jewish non-fiction was exploding. The middle of the 20th century was a high point for introduction to Judaism books. Since they were so readily available, Jews read them to learn how to engage deeper in their religion. At the same time, non-Jews bought them by the millions and began to appreciate Jewish thought and culture in new ways.  

Soon Jewish literature and American literature were synonymous. Think of the great writers of the American 20th century. Saul Bellow and Philip Roth come to mind. Later, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Safran Foer. These writers proved that one could write some of our best “great American novels” through the lens of Jewish living.  

Today, we have fewer and fewer avenues for books like these to be published. Many of you know that I’m a fiction judge for the National Jewish Book Award. I haven’t crunched the numbers, but it feels to me that in the past few years we are getting fewer submissions from major publishing houses and more self-published or print-on-demand manuscripts. Since even good authors need good editors, the totality of the submissions has slipped in quality.  

And this gut feel is backed by research. Publishers Marketplace is the leading industry database where many book deals are announced. In the year after October 7th, the number of books mentioning Jews, Judaism, or Israel in their blurbs fell by 76% from the previous year. In the first half of 2026, that number was even worse, hovering around 82% down from pre-2023 levels. 

In 2022, the Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen won the Pulitzer Prize for its fictional depiction of a visit by Benzion Netanyahu, Bibi’s dad, to a fictional college town in Upstate New York. Only four years later, I don’t believe that book would have ever had the reach it did then, and maybe would not have seen the light of day.  

The loss of media like this comes at a cost. According to a Pew survey from 2021, only 12% of Jews attend religious services regularly. But over 70% regularly engage in Jewish cultural life: reading, cooking, watching Jewish-themed film/TV etc. That means more Jews learn about the Exodus by watching Prince of Egypt than from reading the Hagaddah, discover ultra-orthodoxy by watching Shtisel on Netflix than by visiting their local Chabad, gain more insights about the Jewish story by touring the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia than by taking a class at their shul.  

Today, we have never needed Jewish culture more as a teacher. That's what makes the attack on it so problematic.  

So how have we gotten here? 

To find out, I spoke with a few congregants who are in publishing. They explained to me that when editors pass on Jewish books, it’s for two reasons. And neither of them is editorial antisemitism.  

The first reason is that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Editors know that if they publish a book by an Israeli or someone who is on the record as a Zionist, they might face pushback from younger associates or from the public at large. Since they can only publish a certain number of titles a year, the headache is a strike against a book and causes them to seek another route. 

The other reason is that they worry that the market will not deliver for them. Publishing is a business. I know this firsthand. I just submitted a proposal for my third book (to JPS, a Jewish publishing house) and if I get the deal, it will be as much because I surpassed my profit and loss projections on my last book as the quality of my current one. If these editors worry that the current climate will mean fewer bookstores will carry an author, fewer newspapers will review a book, or fewer people will be interested in the subject, they will pass. 

For a moment, I want to take these arguments at face value. Maybe they are wrong, and we have a pack of rabid antisemites at the helm of the publishing world. But likely they are correct; when people reject Jewish authors, it’s not an ideological decision, but an economic one. A book has to sell to be worth publishing, and it has to sell enough that if it has any pushback, the revenue supersedes the headache.  

The good news, for any author, is you don’t have to sell that many books for it to be worthwhile for a publisher to notice you. You may not realize it, but 90% of all books do not sell more than 2,000 copies. There are seven million Jews in America today. If even a fraction of those Jews agrees to buy more Jewish books, publishers will have to publish more like them. It will be economic stupidity not to.  

So, what can you do to fight the anti-Jewish bias in publishing: buy more Jewish books.  

Read them. Gift them. Let them decorate your shelves. If you traditionally give a certain percentage of your income to charity, earmark some of that money for spending on literature and other cultural Jewish expressions.  

And for an added incentive, I promise that if anyone here reads a Jewish book and gets one other friend to do the same, I will read it alongside you and will meet you for coffee to discuss it. 

Need a recommendation? Subscribe to the emails from the Jewish Book Council. They review most Jewish books that appear on the market. And they even have a subscription service called "Nu Reads" that will send you Jewish books to read alongside thousands who are doing the same. Yes, they choose their books based on the quality, but they also are strategic, using their platform to prove to certain publishers that there still is a market for Jewish fiction if only they take a chance on it.  

And if books aren't your thing, do the same with every other kind of Jewish cultural medium. Go to that Israeli restaurant. Buy tickets for that Jewish play. Stream that Jewish film.  

One of the misconceptions of Jewish life is that Torah is found only in the scrolls behind me. Torah is everywhere. Our Rabbis understood this well. The Talmud tells stories of Rabbis who hide in the bathroom or under their mentors' beds to see their private habits because, "this too is Torah and I need to learn it."  

Knowing this, it makes the final of the 613 commandments much more accessible for us. Every Jew is commanded at the end of the book of Deuteronomy to either write one themselves or help another fund the writing of a Torah. But if Torah is found everywhere, one could argue that one can find it in its various forms on Netflix, at your bookstore, or on Broadway, and that means supporting those endeavors helps make Torah manifest in this world.  

Antisemites today can try to take a lot from us, but we cannot let them rob us of our Jewish wisdom. But unlike other manifestations of antisemitism, the attack on Jewish culture is a fight we can win. It will be difficult but doable.  

We have the power. We just have to prioritize it and prove that Jewish books, movies, music, plays, and food are as important to the rest of society as we know they are to us.