Women's Fiction

If Judaism were a swimming pool, Ruth would be at the centre of it, Miriam would be sitting at the edge, dangling her feet in the water, and Uncle Gerald wouldn’t even be in the building.

How do you live a Jewish life in a non-Jewish world? Sisters Ruth and Miriam Green take different stances. Living in north London, Ruth has a Jewish husband, sends her children to Jewish schools and is very involved in the local Jewish community. Miriam lives in the Midlands, has a non-Jewish husband and her children attend a school where they are the only Jewish pupils.

Ruth is a Jewish Brit. Miriam is a British Jew. Their different approaches lead to tension and division in the family: will those rifts be healed or will the family be torn apart forever?

There are other interesting characters: Morris who cloaks his sexuality in Jewish jokes; psychiatrist Israel who is more interested in his giant vegetables than his wife, and Shlossy, who dresses like a man, smokes a pipe and insults everyone in Yiddish.

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.