Poetry

Wild such contraries, deftly held in balance, lie at the heart of Natania Rosenfeld's debut collection in which poems are energized as much by the poet's life-affirming, lush, appetitive drives as they are reined in by her sober-eyed vision of caged birds of prey and flayed rabbits; I am thinking in particular of the remarkable sequence inspired by "The torso stretched / like pulled meat, / a skull, vacant bloody / mouth at the point / of the genitals."

Rosenfeld knows how to write to the tight, serrated measures of duress--war-ravaged Europe haunts her imagination--but in the end it is the robust, androgynous body and its runaway anima that gain the high "In her teeth/now a rose, now a dagger, / she slashes her world." --Gabriel Levin

This collection of books featuring Jewish main characters is decidedly non-comprehensive. As we come across books that are described as having Jewish main characters, we add them to this database. The creators of the Jewish Genre Reading Challenge have not read all (or even most) of the books in this database. We have gathered information from many sources and not all may be accurate. Inclusion of a book in our database does not imply endorsement or approval. There is always the possibility that antisemitism may be present in a book, either written into a character's experience or through malicious or ignorant caricature or stereotypical portrayal of Jewish characters and culture. Please take care of yourselves as you read.

 

PLEASE let us know if you encounter a book in this database that does not have a Jewish main character, if you have corrections or additions for a book's genre categories, or if you have any other concerns about the inclusion of a particular book in this database.