For over 40 years, the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater & Simon Family JCC’s Lee and Bernard Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival has celebrated Jewish authors, illustrators, and books, providing opportunities to engage with bestselling and up-and-coming writers.

Lee and Bernard Jaffe Family Jewish Book Festival 2023-2024

October 23 - November 29, 2023

Unless otherwise noted, all events take place at the Simon Family Jewish Community Center on the Reba & Sam Sandler Family Campus of the Tidewater Jewish Community. Pre-registration or tickets are required for all events.

Support the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater and the Virginia Beach Public Library by either borrowing this year’s books from your nearest local library or by purchasing books online. United Jewish Federation of Tidewater receives 10% of each purchase made through our storefront at BookShop.org/Shop/JewishVA. Of course, you can also purchase books in person at the Simon Family JCC, and book signings will take place following each author event!

2023 SCHEDULE

Diana Fersko - We Need to Talk About Antisemitism

Monday, October 23, 2023, 7:30 PM EDT

FREE & Open to the Community

Simon Family JCC

In conversation with Esther Diskin

A mil­len­ni­al rab­bi explores why people are reluc­tant to dis­cuss anti­semitism — and empow­ers everyone to fight against it.

Anti­semitism is on the rise in Amer­i­ca, in cities and rur­al areas, in red states and blue states, and in forms both sub­tle and ter­ri­fy­ing­ly overt. Rab­bi Diana Fer­sko is used to hav­ing dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions with mem­bers of her con­gre­ga­tion about the issues they face — from the threat of vio­lence to microag­gres­sions and iden­ti­ty denial. In We Need to Talk About Anti­semitism, she gives readers the ulti­mate guide to mod­ern anti­semitism in its many forms.

Explor­ing top­ics like vile myths about Jew­ish peo­ple and the inter­sec­tion of anti­semitism with oth­er forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion, We Need to Talk About Anti­semitism gives read­ers the tools they need to under­stand the state of anti­semitism today. Fer­sko shows Jews and non-Jews alike how to speak up and come togeth­er, spread­ing a mes­sage of sol­i­dar­i­ty and hope. This is a time­ly read for any­one pas­sion­ate about fight­ing against hate.

Rab­bi Diana Fer­sko is the Senior Rab­bi at the Vil­lage Tem­ple in Man­hat­tan. She is the nation­al vice pres­i­dent of the Wom­en’s Rab­binic Network and a mem­ber of the New York Board of Rab­bis. Fer­sko has been pro­filed in The New York­er and has been pub­lished in Huff­Post. She lives in New York City.

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To Life - Jewish Book Festival

Monday, October 30, 2023, 7:30 PM EDT

FREE & Open to the Community

Simon Family JCC

A rich anthology collected by the Holocaust Commission of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater, To Life: The Past is Present, tells the stories of Holocaust survivors who made their homes in Hampton Roads. It is anchored by historical notes and archival information to create a well-rounded history of the Holocaust.  

This panel discussion will provide insight into the process, importance, and educational value of the book, because without true stories of survival, we cannot properly honor the millions who perished. There is no doubt that the memories of those who were murdered are kept alive by those who tell their stories – and by those who document them.

Did Benny Fefer ever see his twin brother again?  What happened to Hanns Loewenbach after his treacherous swim in freezing Baltic waters? How did Devorah Gutterman and her small daughter survive living in plain sight in World War II Poland? To Life: The Past Is Present will answer these questions and more through stories that open a personal window into what it was like to survive the Holocaust.  

To Life: The Past Is Present contains recollections of ghetto and concentration camp survivors, hidden children, Jews on the run, refugees, and daring, selfless rescuers. Completing this historical arc are the accounts of military liberators who first witnessed the aftermath of the atrocities. All of these resilient people called Hampton Roads their home at one time in their lives. 

The mission of the Holocaust Commission of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater is to foster an understanding of the uniqueness and magnitude of the Holocaust, while inspiring students, teachers, and our community to champion human dignity in our constantly changing world.

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Benyamin Cohen - The Einstein Effect

Thursday, November 2, 2023, 12:00 PM EDT

$8 for JCC members and adults 55+ | $12 for non-members

Lunch included with ticket

Simon Family JCC

Almost 70 years after his death, Albert Ein­stein’s genius con­tin­ues to define the daily lives of people around the world, and his endur­ing lega­cy has shaped him into a mod­ern-day pop cul­ture icon.

Albert Ein­stein’s face is still one of the most rec­og­niz­able in the world, and he’s wide­ly con­sid­ered to be the first mod­ern-day celebri­ty. While many of his dis­cov­er­ies con­tin­ue to define the dai­ly lives of people around the world, it’s not just his genius that he is known for. Today, more peo­ple know Ein­stein as an icon rather than a the­o­rist — decades after his death, he’s a celebri­ty with a mas­sive online following.

The Ein­stein Effect shows all the ways his influ­ence is still prevalent in culture today. Inter­spersed between chap­ters on his long-last­ing sci­en­tif­ic lega­cy, author Benyamin Cohen (the mind behind Ein­stein’s Twit­ter account!) also tells the sto­ry of how Ein­stein became an unlike­ly social media fig­ure and pop cul­ture icon in the mod­ern age.

Benyamin Cohen manages the official social media accounts of Albert Einstein. He is the News Director of the Forward and was the founding editor of both Jewsweek and American Jewish Life magazine. He is the co-host of the "That Jewish News Show" podcast. Cohen is also the author of My Jesus Year: A Rabbi’s Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith, named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly and for which he received the Georgia Author of the Year award. He is based in Morgantown, West Virginia, where he lives with his wife, three dogs and a flock of chickens known as the Co-Hens

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Dean Cycon - Finding Home

Thursday, November 9, 2023, 12:00 PM EST

$8 for JCC members and adults 55+ | $12 for non-members

Lunch included with ticket

Simon Family JCC

Finding Home is an emo­tion­al­ly grip­ping tale illu­mi­nat­es a lit­tle-known piece of the Jew­ish post-war experience: A search for home, community, and family where they no longer exist.

The war is over, but hatred has not sur­ren­dered. Eigh­teen-year-old Eva Fleiss clung to san­i­ty dur­ing nine months in Auschwitz by play­ing piano on imag­i­nary key­boards. After lib­er­a­tion, Eva and the five remain­ing Jews of Las­z­lo, Hun­gary, jour­ney to their home­town, seek­ing to restart their lives.

Yet the town that deport­ed them is not ready to embrace their return. Their homes and busi­ness­es are legal­ly in the hands of for­mer neigh­bors and friends, who resist relin­quish­ing their new­found wealth and sta­tus. Eva longs to pur­sue her dream of being a con­cert pianist; all that remains of her past life. Forced to clean her own home in exchange for prac­tice time on her piano, her pro­found expe­ri­ences in Auschwitz allow Eva to access music at a depth she did not know exist­ed. Her per­for­mances begin to affect those around her, with unex­pect­ed consequences.

Dean Cycon is an author, lawyer, human rights advo­cate, and inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned social entre­pre­neur. Cycon is a pas­sion­ate explor­er of cul­ture and his­to­ry, seek­ing out unex­am­ined cor­ners that illu­mi­nate the human con­di­tion. His nar­ra­tive non-fic­tion, Java­trekker: Dis­patch­es from the World of Fair Trade Cof­fee (Chelsea Green, 2008), won an IPPY Gold Medal. Find­ing Home (Hun­gary, 1945) is his first novel.

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Jacqueline Friedland - The Stockwell Letters

Monday, November 13, 2023, 7:30 PM EST

FREE & Open to the Community

Simon Family JCC

Part of the Konikoff Center for Learning's Unsung SHEroes of History series, moderated by Dr. Amy Milligan

Based on the true sto­ry of abo­li­tion­ist Ann Phillips, Jacqueline Friedland’s novel takes a deep dive into the obsta­cles faced by abo­li­tion­ists who fought tire­less­ly to erad­i­cate slav­ery.

A pas­sion­ate advo­cate of abo­li­tion from her ear­li­est years, Ann Phillip’s activism was derailed just before her twen­ty-fourth birth­day when she fell sick with a mys­te­ri­ous ill­ness. In order to pro­tect her frag­ile health, her hus­band, the famous abo­li­tion­ist Wen­dell Phillips, for­bade her from join­ing any fur­ther anti-slav­ery out­ings. Even so, when fugi­tive slave Antho­ny Burns is appre­hend­ed in Boston, Ann is deter­mined to help him, no mat­ter what it costs her.

With a par­tic­u­lar focus on the predica­ment of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry women who want­ed to effect change despite the restric­tions soci­ety imposed on them, The Stock­well Let­ters takes a deep dive into the har­row­ing con­di­tions of the ante­bel­lum South and the obsta­cles faced by abo­li­tion­ists who fought tire­less­ly to erad­i­cate slav­ery. A fast-paced, arrest­ing recount­ing of Amer­i­ca’s not-so-dis­tant his­to­ry, the sto­ry will stay with read­ers long after the final page.

Jacque­line Fried­land is the author of the award-win­ning nov­els Trou­ble the Water and That’s Not a Thing. A grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and NYU Law School, she prac­ticed as an attor­ney before decid­ing to pur­sue writ­ing full time. Jacque­line lives in Westch­ester, New York, with her hus­band, four chil­dren, and two very bossy canines.

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About the Moderator

Dr. Amy K. Milligan is the Batten Endowed Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and Women's Studies and the director of the Institute of Jewish Studies and Interfaith Understanding. She is an ethnographer who is particularly interested in the folkloric manifestations of selfhood and identity on the body and uses these questions of bodylore to explore lived experiences of gender, sexuality, and religion. She also specializes the study of small or marginalized Jewish communities. Her present research centers on the experiences of small Jewish communities in Alabama, with a special focus on Temple Mishkan Israel in Selma, AL.

Marjorie Ingall - Sorry, Sorry, Sorry

Thursday, November 16, 2023, 7:30 PM EST

FREE & Open to the Community

Simon Family JCC

Everyone has been on the receiving end of bad apologies. Why is it so hard to apologize well? How can society do better at apologizing and accepting those apologies?

Drawing on a deep well of research in psychology, sociology, law, and medicine, Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy, creators of the apology watchdog site SorryWatch, explain why a good apology is hard to find and why it doesn’t have to be. Alongside their six (and a half!)-step formula for apologizing beautifully, Ingall and McCarthy delve into how to respond to a bad apology; why celebrities, corporations, and governments seldom apologize well; how to teach children to apologize; how gender and race affect both apologies and forgiveness; and most of all, why good apologies are essential, powerful, and restorative. 

A good apology can do so many things—mend fences, heal wounds, and bring more harmony to individuals and society at large. With wit, deep introspection, and laugh-out-loud humor, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry will help make the world a better place, one apology at a time.

Mar­jorie Ingall is the author of Mamaleh Knows Best: What Jew­ish Moth­ers Do to Raise Cre­ative, Empa­thet­ic, Inde­pen­dent Chil­dren, and The Field Guide to North Amer­i­can Males. A for­mer colum­nist for Tablet and the For­ward, she is a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to The New York Times Book Review and has writ­ten for many oth­er outlets.

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Rebecca Clarren - The Cost of Free Land

Sunday, November 19, 2023, 2:00 PM EST

FREE & Open to the Community

Chrysler Museum of Art

Award-winning journalist Rebecca Clarren investigates the entangled history of her Jewish ancestors’ land in South Dakota, and the Lakota, who were forced off that land by the United States government.

Rebec­ca Clar­ren only knew the major plot points of her immi­grant family’s ori­gins. Her great-great-grand­par­ents and their six chil­dren fled anti­semitism in Rus­sia and arrived in the Unit­ed States at the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry, ulti­mate­ly set­tling on a 160-acre home­stead in South Dako­ta. Over the next few decades, despite tough years on a mer­ci­less prairie and mul­ti­ple set­backs, the Sinykin family became an Amer­i­can immi­grant suc­cess sto­ry. What none of Clarren’s ances­tors ever men­tioned was that their land, the foun­da­tion for much of their wealth, had been cru­el­ly tak­en from the Lako­ta by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment. Amer­i­ca had bro­ken hun­dreds of treaties with hun­dreds of Indige­nous nations across the con­ti­nent, and the land that had once been reserved for the sev­en bands of the Lako­ta had been dimin­ished, splin­tered, and hand­ed for free, or prac­ti­cal­ly free, to white set­tlers. 

In The Cost of Free Land, Clar­ren melds inves­tiga­tive report­ing with per­son­al fam­i­ly his­to­ry to reveal the inter­twined sto­ries of her fam­i­ly and the Lako­ta, and the dev­as­tat­ing cycle of loss of Indige­nous land, cul­ture, and resources that con­tin­ues today.

Award-win­ning jour­nal­ist Rebec­ca Clar­ren has been writ­ing about the Amer­i­can West for more than twen­ty years. Her mag­a­zine pieces, for which she has won the Hill­man Prize, appear in High Coun­try News, The Nation, and Indi­an Coun­try Today. Her debut nov­el Kick­down was short­list­ed for the PEN/?Bellwether Prize for Social­ly Engaged Fic­tion. “An Amer­i­can Inher­i­tance,” her work of cre­ative non-fic­tion, was award­ed a Whit­ing Non­fic­tion Award. Her work is reg­u­lar­ly sup­port­ed by the Fund for Inves­tiga­tive Jour­nal­ism. She lives in Port­land, Ore­gon with her hus­band and two kids.

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Corie Adjmi - The Marriage Box

Monday, November 20, 2023, 12:00 PM EST

$8 for JCC members and adults 55+ | $12 for non-members

Lunch included with ticket

Simon Family JCC

In her debut novel, Corie Adj­mi opens readers up to the world of a teenage Jew­ish Syr­i­an girl growing up in the 1970s, looking for love and a place to belong.

Casey Cohen, a Middle Eastern Jew, is a sixteen-year-old in New Orleans in the 1970s when she starts hanging out with the wrong crowd. Then she gets in trouble, and her parents turn her whole world upside down by deciding to return to their roots, the Orthodox Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn.

In this new and foreign world, families gather weekly for Shabbat dinner; parties are extravagant events at the Museum of Natural History; and the Marriage Box is a real place, a pool deck designated for teenage girls to put themselves on display for potential husbands. Casey is initially shocked by this unfamiliar culture, but after she meets Michael, she's enticed by it. Looking for love and a place to belong, she marries him at eighteen, believing she can adjust to Syrian ways. But she begins to question her decision when she discovers that Michael doesn't want her to go to college; he wants her to have a baby instead.

Can Casey integrate these two opposing worlds, or will she have to leave one behind in order to find her way?

Corie Adj­mi is the author of the short sto­ry col­lec­tion Life and Oth­er Short­com­ings, which won an Inter­na­tion­al Book Award, an IBPA Ben­jamin Franklin award, and an Amer­i­can Fic­tion Award. Her essays and short sto­ries have appeared in dozens of jour­nals and mag­a­zines, includ­ing Huff­Post, North Amer­i­can Review, Indi­ana Review, Medi­um, Moth­er­well, Kveller, and oth­ers. The Mar­riage Box is Corie’s first nov­el. She is a moth­er and grand­moth­er and lives and works in New York City.

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101 Treasures from the National Library of Israel

Wednesday, November 29, 2023, 7:30 PM EST

FREE & Open to the Community

Simon Family JCC 

Moderated by Art Sandler and presented as part of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the

United Jewish Federation of Tidewater, Simon Family JCC, & Community Partners' 13th annual Israel Today Series

The National Library of Israel works to preserve the written word of the worldwide Jewish community throughout the ages. Join Adina Kanefield, NLI USA CEO, and David Makovsky, NLI USA Co-President, for a discussion of this important work and an exploration of some of its most valued treasures, shared in the newly published book 101 Treasures from the National Library of Israel.

Selected by the National Library of Israel’s curators and collections experts, this fine-art volume presents 101 of the most precious items in the Library’s collections, from 5th-century Babylonia to modern-day Tel Aviv, and shares illuminating stories and anecdotes about these significant works and the intriguing people behind them. 

Highlights include Maimonides’ autograph copy of his Commentary on the Mishna; the “Damascus Crowns,” including a vitally important 10th century Hebrew Bible codex; theological ruminations of Isaac Newton; love poetry by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent; manuscripts from leading Jewish and Israeli writers, such as Martin Buber, Stefan Zweig, Franz Kafka, Naomi Shemer, and Shai Agnon; and rare materials documenting Israeli history. High-quality photographs illustrate the stories, and the introduction sets these collections within their cultural and historical context.

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Adina Kanefield is responsible for building support for the Library through partnerships, programs, and community outreach. In addition to running a nonprofit consulting practice focusing on strategic growth and resource development, Adina has served in a variety of leadership positions at both board and professional levels, including as the Deputy Director of the Edlavitch DCJCC, the Director of Institutional Advancement at the Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School of the Nation’s Capital, and the Deputy Director of the Center for Israel Studies at American University. Adina graduated from The George Washington University School of Law, where she served on the Law Review. 

David Makovsky is the Ziegler distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute and director of the Project on Arab-Israel Relations. He is also an adjunct professor in Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). In 2013-2014, he worked in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of State, serving as a senior advisor to the Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations. David is the host of the podcast Decision Points: The U.S.-Israel Relationship, which features interviews with authors, scholars, and practitioners on key moments in the history and present of the U.S.-Israel relationship. 

About the Moderator

Art Sandler has a degree in Comparative Cultures and a Masters in Middle East History. He co-leads his family-held business, L.M. Sandler & Sons, Inc., and oversees its broad real estate and financial service holdings. In addition to serving on the NLI USA Board of Directors, Art has served on Brandeis University’s board of trustees, as well as on the boards of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the United Jewish Appeal (UJA executive committee), and the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater (UJFT) — where he helped launch the UJFT Holocaust  Commission. Art is a founder and board member of PRO ISRAEL AMERICA as well as Project Healthy Minds and served as the vice chair of the Virginia Governor’s Commission to Combat Antisemitism. He also serves on the board of the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts Foundation.

Date: October 23 - November 29, 2023

Location:  Simon Family Jewish Community Center

5000 Corporate Woods Dr, Suite 200

Virginia Beach, VA 23462 

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