As a bibliophile, one of the biggest problems I always face is deciding what book to read next.  There are thousands of possibilities – just walking into a bookstore, a library, or browsing Amazon.com can be overwhelming.  Sometimes, the only good way to select a new book is by getting a recommendation – that way, you don’t experience information overload, and you know that someone you trust has declared the book tried and true.

What if you were able to get book recommendations from authors whose books you’ve read and loved?  That’s a huge step up from just any old book recommendation – it’s an invitation to a guided tour of the author’s area of expertise!  That’s certainly a real treat.

If the thought of getting book recommendations from great authors excites you, well, today’s your lucky day.  I’ve invited a number of JPS authors to recommend a list of ten books, related to the subject matter they’ve written about themselves.

Today I’m going to start by featuring JPS author Maggie Anton.  When Anton began studying Talmud in 1992, she was introduced to the famous medieval Torah and Talmud commentator, Rashi.  She became fascinated with the idea that Rashi had no sons, but instead had three daughters who, contrary to the conventions of the time, studied Jewish texts.  So Anton embarked on a seven year intellectual journey, researching Rashi, his family, and the time in which they lived.  Out of this research emerged Anton’s first three novels – Joheved, Miriam, and Rachel – which explore the lives of Rashi’s three daughters.  Later, Anton penned a prequel about Rashi’s eldest daughter Jocheved.  Aimed at teen and preteen girls, this novel was published by the Jewish Publication Society as Rashi’s Daughter, Secret Scholar.  Anton’s many years of research on the lives of medieval Jewish women and deep interest in Jewish women’s issues make her the perfect person to kick off the JPS Blog Book Recommendation Series!

Maggie Anton’s Top 10 Books About Jewish Women

Fiction
1. The Rashi’s Daughters trilogy, by Maggie Anton [Joheved, Miriam, Rachel]
2. The Ghost of Hannah Mendes, by Naomi Ragen
3. He, She and It, by Marge Piercy [Anton’s “absolute favorite book”!]
4. The Triumph of Deborah, by Eva Etzioni-Halevy [Anton’s “choice for Biblical fiction”]

Nonfiction
5. The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, ed. by Tamara Eshkenazi
6. Rereading The Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice (Radical Traditions), by Judith Hauptman
7. Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe (Brandeis on Jewish Women), by Avraham Grossman
8. Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World), by Elisheva Baumgarten

Children’s
9. All-of-a-kind Family, by Sydney Taylor
10. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume

-Naomi