July 2025: Many many book recs, an in-person event, and whiplash
Writing, reading, resources and recipes + an update from day 634
Dear friends,
It’s been a month! I don’t know about you, but I’m still feeling a bit of whiplash. More on that later. May the month of July see our hostages home, an end to the fighting, and peace and security for everyone in the region. Scroll down for your monthly dose of book reviews (extra long this time!), an upcoming literary event, a story, a recipe, and an update from my corner of Israel.
Brief writing update - Due to the events of June 13 - 24, I didn’t get much writing done, some days, none at all, but when I did, it was to work on new scenes for my novel-in-progress. During a two-day period in which our mall was open as normal, I ran out to get essential supplies - a new notebook and more pens.
Some nice news - ICYMI - I had two new short stories published in June (cue the cartwheel emojis):
Both of these include characters who may be familiar to readers of The Book of Jeremiah. No worries if you haven’t read the book, as both are stand-alone new stories which will appear in my next book. (And you can always buy a signed copy here).
More nice news - Manna Songs, a collection of 32 essays celebrating Jewish joy (including one by yours truly) is now available for pre-order from ELJ Editions. Let’s face it — we can all use some joy right now! I’m looking forward to reading the other essays. My fellow contributors — all from the States (I’m the only Israeli) — would be happy to do Zoom or in-person readings/book events, so if you are a book club / book event coordinator for your local synagogue / sisterhood / Hadassah chapter / library / bookstore, please reach out to me and I’ll put you in contact with the right people.
Lastly, as part of Zibby Owens’ On Jewish Now Substack, I had a guest essay published in response to a call for submissions on Israel vs Iran. I dashed this off quickly, without a title, and “Nowhere Else I’d Rather Be” came out a few days later.
Recommended Reading
June is a short month but I managed to read nine books this month, so I’m up to 45 books for the year, waaay ahead of schedule for my self-imposed Goodreads challenge. Here are this month’s recommendations:
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid: Sign me up for any new book by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I “wolfed” down the audiobook version — nearly 10 hours — in about three days. The novel follows Joan Goodwin, a reserved, multi-talented professor of physics who is accepted to the NASA astronaut class of 1980. Joan’s class of ASCANS (astronaut candidates) is only the second to include women, and naturally they must work three times as hard as the men to prove themselves. Despite the grueling training, Joan finds her true calling and a new family with her fellow astronauts, and - much to her surprise - a love she never imagined. But then, during a mission, everything changes in an instant. (This is not a spoiler, we know this from the book description and early in the novel). Those of us old enough to remember NASA’s space shuttle program and specifically the Challenger disaster (99% of my readership??) will likely feel a mixture of nostalgia / awe for the heroic astronauts, gratitude that certain attitudes and views have evolved since the 1980s, alongside a bit of nail-biting fear over everything that can go wrong when putting humans - fictional or real - into space. If I’d been asked to blurb this (ha ha), mine would be “A soaring achievement.”
Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld: I don’t often buy hardcovers but I’ve been on a Curtis Sittenfeld kick since April of last year when I read Romantic Comedy (and shortly thereafter Rodham and American Wife). (Also: Shoutout to my friend Allison for turning me on to this author). Each of the 12 stories in this collection is a delight, many of the protagonists women of a certain (read: familiar) age. Successful artists, executives, photographers, academics grappling with a range of internal and societal tensions, from creative jealousies and ambition to sexism, racial biases, loneliness, and identity. From the book’s description: “In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,” a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,” a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other.” I’ve heard so many people say they’re not “into” short story collections…to those people I say: read these, and you’ll change your mind.
The Wolf Hunt by Ayelet Gundar-Goshan: This propulsive read follows Lilach, an Israeli ex-pat in California, whose reclusive teenage son Adam gains self-confidence and a new set of friends through a Krav Maga (self-defense) course that he takes in the aftermath of a violent antisemitic attack. But when one of Adam’s classmates, a black boy named Jamal dies at a house party and rumors circulate that the death was not accidental, Lilach must question everything she thought she knew about her son. As in her other books, Gundar-Goshan goes deep into the psyche of her characters, their fears and flaws and neuroses and the way they love laid bare. This book has it all - raising questions on parenting, bullying, antisemitism, race relations and more. I read it in a day. Maybe even in a few hours, if I recall. There is a lot to discuss here and would be a great book club read.
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy: The author of Migrations and Once There Were Wolves has done it again - a fast-paced, lyrical novel with an ecological bent and richly-drawn characters in a race against time. From the book description: “Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.” As they nurse her back to health, they all must decide whether they can trust each other. I listened to the audiobook version - great narration! - another one I “wolfed down.” Highly recommend.
Secret Agent Man by Margot Singer: This powerful collection of linked essays deals with the “in-between spaces” - a lifelong grappling with identity, belonging, Jewishness, womanhood, family, memory and home. The title essay centers on the mystery of whether the author’s father was a spy for the Mossad, as she herself snoops around spying on him. (Listen to Margot speak about how this essay came to be, a previous version she’d published in a small literary magazine and the back and forth with her father after he discovered it and hinted that she’d blown his cover). Other essays contend with thorny questions, including: How much do we know about our loved ones? What is consent? How do we hold our childhood homes, and what do we take with us? How should we handle it when aging parents stay in their home past when it may be safe for them to do so? All of these issues are written about with wisdom, wit, compassion, and love. This collection would make a worthy choice for any book club.
Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson: Lastly - something on the lighter side…If you recall, I’ve been looking for fun and quirky reads/listens, and Kevin Wilson always fits the bill. His latest novel brings four half-siblings together whose only link is the father by whom they’ve all been abandoned. Until the point of each abandonment, their father had always been a model, loving dad. Over the course of a raucous road trip to find each other and their father, the siblings — Tennessee farmer Mad(eline), college basketball star Pep, adolescent filmmaker Tom, and oldest brother Rube, a writer from Boston — try to make sense of their father’s different incarnations with each of them. As one blurb (Cristina Henriquez of WBEZ Chicago) puts it, “A rollicking, hilarious family drama. . . . It’s zany and madcap, and the characters are so indelibly drawn, so charming and full of heart, that it’s an absolute pleasure to go along for the ride.”
For more great recommendations - check out Bill Wolfe’s recent Read Her Like an Open Book posts, in which 38 different writers shared what’s on their to-be-read stacks this summer. My entry is in part 2 of 3 all the way at the bottom.
Events
After staying very close to home for a good part of last month, I’m especially excited that Literary Modiin’s July event will be in-person (and on Zoom, of course). Sunday, July 27, at the Peerspot offices in Modiin, doors will open at 19:30 and the program will start at 20:00 / 1 pm Eastern. We’ll be hearing from Oren Kessler (PALESTINE 1936), Tehila Hakimi and Joanna Chen (author and translator, respectively, of HUNTING IN AMERICA), and Yakir Ben Moshe (TAKE A BREATH, YOU’RE GETTING EXCITED). One novel, one poetry collection, and one work of narrative nonfiction — should be a great event! Register here.
Story of the Month: Blooms
Blooms by Nicole Hazan (Lilith): I enjoyed this story about motherhood and nature, possibly the first magical realism story I’ve read that takes place on a kibbutz!
Recipe of the Month: Amy’s Keto Seed Crackers
Welcome to the near end of the newsletter where you are rewarded with a yummy recipe. This super-easy, super-yummy recipe is brought to you by my friend Amy. I made a double batch on Friday and now (as of this writing, on Monday night), they are almost gone, including a bunch eaten by my pickiest eater (aka my oldest son). Bonus: they’re gluten-free, pareve, vegan, etc. etc. and probably a heck of a lot healthier than the Fitness (brand) crackers which we seem to stock in abundance.
Ingredients
1/3 cup almond flour
1/3 cup unsalted sunflower seeds
1/3 cup unsalted pumpkin seeds
1/3 cup flaxseed or chia seeds
1/3 cup sesame seeds
1 TBSP ground psyllium husk powder (okay, I’d never heard of this before, but it seems readily available in health food stores or the dietary supplements section of a regular supermarket or pharmacy)
1 tsp salt or to taste
1 tsp paprika or to taste
1 tsp garlic powder or to taste
1/4 cup of melted coconut oil OR olive oil (I used olive oil but I may try the coconut oil in the future)
1 cup boiling water
Preheat oven to 300 F / 150 C. Mix all dry ingredients in a boil, then add the boiling water and oil. Keep working the dough until it has a gel-like consistency. Place the dough on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Add another sheet of parchment paper on top and either flatten with your fingers or use a rolling pin. Bake on lower rack for 40-45 minutes, then leave the crackers to dry in the oven for quite a bit longer. Especially yummy with butter on top!
Israel Update
To live in this country is to experience the full gamut of human emotions each day. Fear, sadness/grief, shock, despair, and anger on the one hand, together with fierce pride, love, joy, courage, compassion, awe, solidarity and gratitude on the other.
12 Insane Days
For 12 insane days that began with an earsplitting alert on our phones at 3 am on June 13, staying safe and surviving the Iranian ballistic missile attacks took precedence over everything else. As I wrote in Nowhere Else I’d Rather Be, I am well aware how very very lucky I am to live in Modiin, with a safe room of our own that can be easily reached. Other than one long drive back from Kibbutz Ketura, where we were when the attack started, I did not stray farther than quick trips to the supermarket or to drive my daughter to a friend’s. I biked or ran only in my neighborhood or along city paths from which I could dart into a building and knock on a stranger’s door at a moment’s notice. I have no idea how many times in that 12 day period we were called into the safe room — sometimes it was multiple times in the middle of the night, other times we were awakened by the earsplitting pre-alerts but then Modiin was spared the actual siren. I don’t usually speak on behalf of all Israelis, but it’s safe to say that EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THIS COUNTRY would be happy to never hear that f***ing sound ever again.
I am still processing it all. In some ways, the time felt very reminiscent of Covid, but in other crucial ways, the utter destruction that the attacks wrought is nothing like it. And then, suddenly, it was over. At least for now.
As David Horovitz wrote in his The Times of Israel piece yesterday (Israel was facing destruction at the hands of Iran. This is how close it came, and how it saved itself)"
This was a knockout blow in a life-or-death fight. But it is not the end of the existential struggle.
In the space of a few hours - Tuesday morning, June 24, from 5 am to 7 am we had multiple alerts and attacks that had us in and out of the safe room - to that evening, ceasefire and all restrictions lifted. The skies opened. I quickly booked tickets for my husband and daughter to leave for the States the following evening, arriving at camp only a few days late. Whiplash was the best way to describe it. And I know many of you abroad were experiencing the same thing…for my nephew, who’d left for camp thinking his Israel trip had been cancelled but was then back on, for my sister, who had to get him his passport, and on and on.
Two last things I’ll share for now. Eli Katzoff is a filmmaker whose videos you may have seen on The Times of Israel website. I’m on his mailing list (and you can be, too), and yesterday he shared several videos he made while dodging missiles. Here’s one. He writes:
To really understand the impact that a single Iranian ballistic missile can cause when it strikes an area, I managed to capture a very unique perspective. I flew a drone through the destroyed husks of what was left of buildings hit in Tel Aviv. I want to emphasize that while most drone photography is about flying over and near landscapes, this was the concept of flying it through the insides of the apartments ripped apart by the blast. To do this I used the same search and rescue drone that the paramedics and first responders are using to find survivors when a rocket strikes. The final video is a haunting reminder of what kind of damage these shockwaves cause. And I want to emphasize that the above video is the aftermath of a single ballistic missile.
Over the course of those 12 days, 28 Israelis were killed, thousands wounded, and thousands more saw their homes destroyed. But when watching this video - of a single missile strike - I felt like it was a miracle that these numbers were not far, far greater.
Lastly - read this incredible piece by Miriam Herschlag about her son’s wedding, which took place on that first Friday of the war. They were going to get married no matter what (Fun fact - I was at Miriam’s wedding back in 1992…her husband, Jonathan Ferzinger, was - at the time - the Jerusalem bureau chief for UPI, where I was interning). Mazal tov!!!
And now, חזל”ש (pronounced chazlash) / back to routine
Again, as one of the lucky ones whose home was not destroyed and whose loved ones were not killed or injured, I can get back to routine (in Hebrew, that’s חוזרת לשגרה - and everything here gets shortened, so חזל”ש). Make no mistake, I was glad to get back to my office, to be able to bike without thinking of which building I’d run into, to swim, to sit at my coffee shop, to return to some agricultural volunteering (yay strawberries, see below), to go out with friends, etc.
I was even “glad” (that is not the right word…maybe “comforted”) to be able to return to our weekly hostage gathering in Modiin, where we come to show our support for the hostage families and those who were killed on October 7th and since. This week we heard from the mother of Gaya Halifa, 24, killed as she was escaping the Nova festival. Each story is unbelievably tragic and heartbreaking. We listened to this song, written in her memory by Yosef Gal (who did not know her). If you are interested in a translation, let me know and I’ll try to translate it…
But - what is routine, when we are on Day 634 of this nightmare, when 50 hostages are still in Gaza, when the safety of many people I care about is at risk, and when the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza is dire? Everyone I know wants this to be over, to begin the rebuilding and the healing that is so desperately needed. Halavai that it will happen this month.
I’ll leave you with a few pictures. Until next time, b’sorot tovot. Am Yisrael Chai.
A small way to support my work: Since June 2019, I’ve hosted the monthly Literary Modiin author series, and since April 2020, I’ve been putting out this monthly newsletter. Both represent a significant amount of effort for me, but I love talking about books and promoting other authors, and I’m committed to keeping both of these things FREE for all. I do incur some expenses to keep these up, however, so if you have enjoyed the Literary Modiin events and/or if you enjoy the newsletter or both, and you’d like to support my work in some small, tangible way, I’d be grateful if you’d click on the “Buy Me a Coffee” link below. (If you can’t, that’s fine too)! I appreciate your continued support for these events, book recommendations and my literary musings.
Request: If you’ve read (and liked) The Book of Jeremiah, please help me out by writing a brief review on Amazon or wherever you purchase books online. It can be as simple as one or two lines. Thank you!
Julie Zuckerman's debut novel-in-stories, The Book of Jeremiah, was published in May 2019 by Press 53. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in CRAFT, Tikkun, Jewish Women’s Archives, Crab Orchard Review, The Coil, The SFWP Quarterly, Ellipsis, MoonPark Review, Sixfold, and The MacGuffin, among others. She is the founder and host of Literary Modiin, a monthly author series celebrating fiction, memoir and poetry with Jewish content. A native of Connecticut, she lives in Israel with her husband and four children. www.juliezuckerman.com
Whoops, I meant the Literary Modi’in event will be on Sunday, July 27!
As an Israeli residing person, thanks for your good expression of our feelings about the uncompleted war with Iran. What I wish to ask is that all of your book recommendations are about novels and none about non-fiction works. As a writer and reader of scientific matters i would appreciate it were you to have a non-fiction part in what you are advising is of good reading here, too!