Reconstructing the tragic story of a medieval noblewoman who leaves her home and family for the love of a Jewish boy.

The Convert, Finalist (Sephardic Culture),  The National Jewish Book Award (2020)

In this dazzling work of historical fiction, the Man Booker International–long-listed author of War and Turpentine reconstructs the tragic story of a medieval noblewoman who leaves her home and family for the love of a Jewish boy.
 
In eleventh-century France, Vigdis Adelaïs, a young woman from a prosperous Christian family, falls in love with David Todros, a rabbi’s son and yeshiva student. To be together, the couple must flee their city, and Vigdis must renounce her life of privilege and comfort. Pursued by her father’s knights and in constant danger of betrayal, the lovers embark on a dangerous journey to the south of France, only to find their brief happiness destroyed by the vicious wave of anti-Semitism sweeping through Europe with the onset of the First Crusade.
 
What begins as a story of forbidden love evolves into a globe-trotting trek spanning continents, as Vigdis undertakes an epic journey to Cairo and back, enduring the unimaginable in hopes of finding her lost children.
 
Based on two fragments from the Cairo Genizah—a repository of more than three hundred thousand manuscripts and documents stored in the upper chamber of a synagogue in Old Cairo—Stefan Hertmans has pieced together a remarkable work of imagination, re-creating the tragic story of two star-crossed lovers whose steps he retraces almost a millennium later. Blending fact and fiction, and with immense imagination and stylistic ingenuity, Hertmans painstakingly depicts Vigdis’s terrible trials, bringing the Middle Ages to life and illuminating a chaotic world of love and hate.

Ste­fan Hert­mans is an inter­na­tion­al­ly acclaimed Flem­ish author. For more than twen­ty years he was a pro­fes­sor at the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Fine Arts, Ghent, where he wrote nov­els, poems, essays, and plays. His pre­vi­ous book, War and Tur­pen­tine, was award­ed the pres­ti­gious AKO Lit­er­a­ture Prize in 2014.

Stefan Hertmans: The Convert

Psychedelics as a key to exploring Jewish mystical experiences.

Rabbi Zac Kamenetz is a community leader and aspiring psychedelic-assisted therapist based in Berkeley,CA. He holds an MA in Biblical literature and languages from UC Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union and received rabbinic ordination in 2012. A sought-after educator and qualified MBSR instructor, Zac’s work has been centered on seeking answers to life’s essential questions within the Jewish tradition and embodied spiritual practice. As the founder and CEO of Shefa: Jewish Psychedelic Support, Zac is pioneering a movement to integrate safe and intentional psychedelic use into the Jewish spiritual tradition, advocate for individuals and communities to heal individual and inherited trauma and inspire a Jewish religious and creative renaissance in the 21st century.

Rabbi Zac Kamenetz: Psychedelic Judaism

Feminism, intertextuality and 3000 years of making sense of God.

Rabbi Kari Tuling received rabbinic ordination in 2004 and earned her PhD in Jewish Thought in 2013, both from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati. She has served congregations in Connecticut, Indiana, New York, and Ohio, and has taught Jewish Studies courses at the University of Cincinnati and the State University of New York, Plattsburgh. She currently serves as the rabbi of Congregation Kol Haverim in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Recent publications include contributions to the CCAR Journal: Reform Jewish Quarterly, chapters in A Life of Meaning: Reform Judaism’s Sacred Path and Inscribed: Encounters with the Ten Commandments, both by the CCAR Press. Her first book, Thinking About God: Jewish Views, was published in 2020 by JPS/University of Nebraska Press.

Rabbi Kari Tuling: Thinking about God in Jewish Terms

Dig into the Jew­ish lit­er­ary land­scape with the Jewish Book Council’s intriguing and rich annual literary journal.

Becca Kantor is the editorial director of Jewish Book Council and its annual print literary journal, Paper Brigade. She received a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. Becca was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to spend a year in Estonia writing and studying the country's Jewish history. She lives in Brooklyn.

Paper Brigade with Editor Becca Kantor

Author Lisa Brahin shares her family’s riveting story of escape from the pogroms.

Lisa Brahin is an accomplished Jewish genealogist, researcher and writer. Inspired as a young girl by Alex Haley’s ROOTS, she spent many summers audio taping the stories of her grandmother’s traumatic childhood during the 1917-1921 anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine. Those tapes were the primary source for her historical family saga, TEARS OVER RUSSIA: A Search for Family and the Legacy of Ukraine’s Pogroms (Pegasus Books, 2022).  

With a lack of previously published sources to turn to, Lisa used her genealogical skills to locate and interview former residents of her grandmother’s shtetl, Stavishche, Russia (which soon became Ukraine). Curators in four countries assisted her in finding unpublished documents, written in five languages, that would help to validate her grandmother’s tales. In 2003, she assisted in finding the lost location of the original manuscript Megilat HaTevah, which she considers to be one of the most important primary sources on the Ukrainian pogroms.

On Jewishgen.org, the premier website for Jewish genealogy, she is a two-town project coordinator for the Yizkor Book Project (Holocaust Memorial Book Project). She has a special interest in using her skills in genetic genealogy to assist hidden child Holocaust survivors who are in search of their true identities and families.  

Lisa hopes that TEARS OVER RUSSIA will inspire continued interest in family history research. She also hopes her book will shine a light on a forgotten and underrepresented period of Jewish history – between the years described in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and SCHINDLER’S LIST – that prefigured the horror that was to come.  

Ms. Brahin is a 2022-2023 Jewish Book Council author.

Photo Credit: Diana P. Lang Photography

The Old Country: A Harrowing Tale of Escape from the Russian Empire

Tracing medieval women’s Biblical culture and how it differed from… the Bible.

Bib­li­cal Women and Jew­ish Dai­ly Life in the Mid­dle Ages, winner of the 2022 JBC Award for Women’s Studies.

Prof. Elisheva Baumgarten holds the Prof. Yitzhak Becker Chair for Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She teaches in the Department of Jewish History and the Department of History. She is a social historian who specializes in the history of the Jews in medieval Germany and Northern France. Baumgarten has published three monographs, a dozen edited volumes, and many articles. She has held fellowships from the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as EHESS in Paris. She is an awardee of the Michael Bruno Memorial Award (2016) for outstanding Israeli researchers and of a European Research Council’s Consolidator’s Grant (2016-2022).

Elisheva Baumgarten: Mind the Gap

Jay Michaelson brings to life the charlatan and heretical Jewish leader Jacob Frank.

The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jew­ish Mes­sian­ism to Eso­teric Myth - Winner, National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship.


Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson is an affiliated assistant professor at Chicago Theological Seminary and a visiting scholar at the Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion. He holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and nondenominational rabbinic ordination.  His most recent book, The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Antinomianism to Esoteric Myth, was published by Oxford University Press and won the 2022 National Jewish Book Award for scholarship.

Dr. Michaelson’s scholarly work on Jewish mysticism and messianism has been published in journals including Theology and Sexuality, Modern Judaism, and Shofar, and anthologized in volumes including Queer Religion, Imagining the Jewish God, and Jews and the Law. 

Outside the academy, Dr. Michaelson is the author of nine books, including Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism and God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality, a Lambda Literary Award finalist. He directs the Hazon Jewish Meditation Retreat, and is authorized to teach in a Sri Lankan Buddhist lineage.  He lives outside of New York City.

Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson: Jewish Mysticism Upside Down & Inside Out

Rabbi Zoë Klein roots her new creations in the millennial tradition of Jewish Storytelling.

Rabbi Zoë Klein serves Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles, California where she brings her unique blend of innovation and tradition. At Temple Isaiah since 2000, she has served as Associate Rabbi, Senior Rabbi and Director of Adult Education and Engagement. 

A Connecticut native, Rabbi Klein holds a degree in Psychology from Brandeis University, and a Masters in Hebrew Literature and Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and Jerusalem. She pursued the rabbinate out of a passion for ancient texts, mythology, liturgy, and poetry. 

Rabbi Klein is the author of the novel Drawing in the Dust (Gallery Books, 2009) of which Publishers Weekly wrote, “Insight into the world of biblical excavation in Israel raises Rabbi Klein’s debut novel from a Jewish Da Vinci Code to an emotionally rich story of personal and historical discovery.” Drawing in the Dust has been published in five countries. 

Rabbi Klein is also the author of the children’s story The Goblins of Knottingham: A History of Challah (Apples & Honey, 2017) and the collection of short stories, Candle, Feather, Wooden Spoon (CCAR Press, 2023). Rabbi Klein’s writing is included in The Women’s Torah Commentary, Teen Texts, Holy Ground: A Gathering of Voices on Caring for Creation, The Sacred Exchange: Creating a Jewish Money Ethic and more. Her poems and prayers are used in houses of prayer around the world.

Rabbi Zoë Klein: Brand New Stories from a Thousand Years Ago

Rabbi Barbara Symons challenges Reform Judaism to engage with often-neglected Prophetic books.

Rabbi Barbara Symons: Is Prophetic Judaism Listening to the Prophets?

Dr. David Mendelsson, Senior Lecturer in Israel Studies and Modern Jewish History at HUC-JIR’s Taube campus in Jerusalem, is an educator, historian, and author who sheds light on his experiences since October 7th as a father, mentor, and Israeli. Witnessing everything from shifts in both the literal and learning landscapes to moments inspired by Jewish peoplehood, Dr. Mendelsson offers perspective and wisdom on Israel today.

HUC Connect: Inside Israel with David Mendelsson

Author Joseph Skloot reveals the revolutionary power of early printed Hebrew books.

Joseph A. Skloot, Ph.D. is the Rabbi Aaron D. Panken Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish Intellectual History at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion/New York. He is a historian of Jewish culture and religious thought in the early modern and modern periods. He received his Ph.D. in Jewish History from Columbia University, his rabbinical ordination from HUC-JIR, and his A.B. from Princeton University. His writings have appeared in Modern Judaism, the CCAR Journal, and several anthologies.

Joseph Skloot: The Secret Lives of Books

Author Rabbi Michael Strassfeld encourages us to reorganize our thinking about—and reengage our lives with—Judaism.

Rabbi Michael Strassfeld has served the Jewish community for over five decades, in numerous capacities, including as an educator, writer, editor, rabbi, and community leader.

He is the author of Judaism Disrupted, which is being published on the 50th anniversary of his breakthrough best-seller that sold over 300,000 copies, The Jewish Catalog. 

Rabbi Strassfeld, the son of a Modern Orthodox rabbi,  was ordained as a rabbi over 30 years ago by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He served as rabbi for a decade at Congregation Ansche Chesed and for 14 years as Rabbi for The Society for the Advancement of Judaism.

For nearly 20 years he was the leader of High Holiday services at Congregation Ansche Chesed. He also was their director of programming and development for four years, and their executive director for three years.

He served as a member of the faculty of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality for 15 years, the executive director of the Jewish Counter culture Oral History Project for three years, and the founding chairperson of the National Havurah Committee for three years. He also was a founding vice-president of the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, a board member of Beyond Shelter, a coalition of Manhattan synagogues concerned with homelessness, and a founding chairperson of Learning, a young adult education brochure of seven Manhattan synagogues.

He has had articles published by Tikkun Magazine, Shma, Hadassah, CLAL, Response Magazine, and other publications. He also edited the Second and Third Jewish Catalogs (1975,1979), authored The Jewish Holidays (1985), co-authored A Night of Questions: A Passover Haggadah (1999), and authored A Book of Life: Embracing Judaism as a Spiritual Practice (2002). He recorded Songs to Open the Heart: Contemplative Niggunim (2003). He also edits a free weekly newsletter about Judaism, available on his website michaelstrassfeld.com.

Rabbi Michael Strassfeld: Disrupting Judaism

Host Joshua Holo speaks with HUC-JIR educator, Michael Marmur about his experiences on the ground in Jerusalem during the Israel-Hamas War.

Michael Marmur is Associate Professor of Jewish Theology at HUC-JIR/Jerusalem. Until July 2018 he served as the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Provost at HUC-JIR, having previously been Dean of the Jerusalem campus. After some 20 years in administrative capacities, he now concentrates his energies on teaching and writing. 

Born and raised in England, Rabbi Marmur completed a B.A. Degree in Modern History at the University of Oxford before moving to Israel in 1984. While studying for an M.A. in Ancient Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he completed his studies in the Israel Rabbinic Program of HUC-JIR in Jerusalem, and was ordained in 1992. For six years following his ordination, he worked as rabbi and teacher at the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa. He has been an employee of HUC-JIR since 1997. 

Michael Marmur served for three years as Chair of the Board of Rabbis for Human Rights, and is still a member of its Board. He has lectured and taught courses in several countries around the world.

HUC Connect: Inside Israel with Michael Marmur

Rabbi Debra J. Robbins offers insight and practice to bring the Psalms into our lives.

Rabbi Debra J. Robbins is a member of the clergy team at Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas, focusing on teaching, pastoral care, and spiritual practice. She was ordained in 1991 at the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, and is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality Clergy Leadership Program. She is the author of Opening Your Heart with Psalm 27: A Spiritual Practice for the Jewish New Year (2019) and New Each Day: A Spiritual Practice for Reading Psalms (2023), both with CCAR Press.

The Ancient Renewed: Psalms for Every Day

Reform Judaism’s pioneering decision to mandate study in Jerusalem.

“My Heart Is in the East, though I Be in the Very West”

Rabbi Yonatan Neril frames the ecological crisis in spiritual terms.

Rabbi Yonatan Neril: We’ve Got the Whole World in Our Hands

Julia Watts-Belser reveals disability as an engine for human creativity and spiritual depth - for everyone.

Julia Watts-Belser: Around Us and In Us

Deborah Dash Moore transports us to midcentury New York and the photographer who captured its people from street level.

Deborah Dash Moore: On a Human Scale

Author Mari Lowe explores adolescence through the lens of the Orthodox experience – both unique and common to all.

Mari Lowe: Growing up is tough business

Shai Held puts love at the center of Judaism, and explains why it may surprise you.

Shai Held: What the World Needs Now

Aryeh Ben David plumbs the diaries of the epochal thinker Rav Kook. He finds the imperative of love.

Aryeh Ben David: The Jewish Thinker of the Millennium

Who are we and where is home? Author Yariv Inbar investigates through the mental tightrope of espionage.

Yariv Inbar: I, Spy

Poet Menachem Rosensaft transforms the Psalms into a search for God who permitted the Holocaust.

Menachem Rosensaft: Burning Psalms

Rabbi Joshua Weinberg tackles both the complexity and the clarity of vision embedded in the idea of Liberal Zionism.

Rabbi Joshua Weinberg: What do We Even Mean by “Liberal Zionism”?

Rabbi Elliot asks us to approach difficult times with depth of mind and spirit.

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove: A New Era for Judaism and Israel

Rabbi Marc Katz uses the historical imagination to plumb the depths of Judaism’s greatest choice for survival.

Rabbi Marc Katz: A Civilization’s Inflection Point

Middle East Historian Louis Fishman reshapes our understanding of the birth of Zionism in its Ottoman context.

Louis Fishman, Ph.D.: At the Dawn of the State of Israel

Rabbi Green discusses Neo-Hasidism, Kabbalah, the Zohar and the search for a contemporary Judaism.

Dr. Arthur Green was the founding dean and is currently rector of the Rabbinical School and Irving Brudnick Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Religion at Hebrew College. He is Professor Emeritus at Brandeis University, where he occupied the distinguished Philip W. Lown Professorship of Jewish Thought. He is both a historian of Jewish religion and a theologian; his work seeks to form a bridge between these two distinct fields of endeavor.

Educated at Brandeis University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he received rabbinic ordination, Dr. Green studied with such important teachers as Alexander Altmann, Nahum N. Glatzer, and Abraham Joshua Heschel, of blessed memory. He has taught Jewish mysticism, Hasidism, and theology to several generations of students at the University of Pennsylvania, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (where he served as both Dean and President), Brandeis, and now at Hebrew College. He has taught and lectured widely throughout the Jewish community of North America as well as in Israel, where he visits frequently. He was the founder of Havurat Shalom in Somerville, Massachusetts in 1968 and remains a leading independent figure in the Jewish Renewal movement.

Rabbi Arthur Green: Serving God in Joy

With a growing divide between Israeli Jews and American Jews, can we utilize humor to find something compelling and deep about our shared experience?

Natalie Marcus is a highly-acclaimed, award-winning, screenwriter based in Tel Aviv. For the past 10 years, Marcus has been in charge of some of Israel's top-rated shows. She is the creator and head writer of the acclaimed historically-themed sketch show, The Jews are Coming, winner of the Israeli Academy Award for the best entertainment show. Marcus is also the creator and head writer of the TV show, Crowded, that won the "Best Kids' Comedy" award in the Israeli Kid's Choice Awards and a special award for contribution to the public discussion from the Minister of Communication. 

Marcus is currently writing and show running a new comedy called The Estate for Keshet 12, due to air in 2019, as well as writing a new fourth season of The Jews are Coming.

Marcus teaches comedy writing and lectures about writing and Jewish history all over the world.  She lives in Tel Aviv with her husband and two kids.


Asaf Beiser is a screenwriter based in Tel Aviv. For the past 15 years, Beiser has been a writer and showrunner in Israel’s highest-rated comedy, satire and drama shows. Beiser is the co-creator and head writer of Israeli Academy of Film and Television award winning show (best satire and entertainment show) The Jews are Coming,  and a  writer in the acclaimed Israeli Academy of Film and Television award winning show (best drama) Fauda, currently airing on Netflix. The children’s sitcom Beiser created, Elisha, has won The Israeli Academy of Film and Television award for best children's program for three years in a row.    

Beiser had a writing role in many other acclaimed shows, including The Good Cop, a comedy recently remade by Netflix, and the psychological thriller The Gordin Cell (titled "Allegiance" in the NBC remake). He also was a staff writer in ERETZ NEHEDERRET ("What a Wonderful Country", the Israeli version of SNL), and the co-creator and showrunner of the sitcom Crowded.

A recipient of a personal Israeli Academy award for best screenplay, Beiser was also awarded the generous British BI-Arts scholarship, with a winning script for a 40-minute comedy film.  

A Captain (ret.) in the Israeli Defense Forces, Beiser served as a military attorney in the IDF Military Advocate General’s Unit, and holds an LLB degree from Tel Aviv University.

Natalie Marcus and Asaf Beiser: Humor Across the Divide

A frank and lively conversation between unlikely partners in the work of religious thinking and living.

Gregory Mobley is Visiting Professor of Hebrew Bible and Congressional Studies at Yale Divinity School. Previously he taught at Union Theological Seminary (NY) and Andover Newton Theological School in the Boston area. His books in Hebrew Bible include The Return of the Chaos Monsters—and Other Backstories of the Bible (2012) and The Empty Men: The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel (2005). Active in Interfaith Learning, he is a co-editor (with Or Rose and Jennifer Peace) of My Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interreligious Encounter, Growth, and Transformation (2012).

Dr. Gregory Mobley: A Baptist and a Jew Walk into a Bar...

The compelling journey of a biracial Jew.

Marra B. Gad was born in New York and raised in Chicago. She is an independent film and television producer and now calls Los Angeles home. Ms. Gad is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and holds a master’s degree in modern Jewish history from Baltimore Hebrew Institute at Towson University. She is the author of The Color of Love: A Story of a Mixed-Race Jewish girl.

Marra Gad: Racism in Progressive Jewish Communities

The College Commons Podcast, passionate perspectives from Judaism's leading thinkers, is produced by Hebrew Union College, America's first Jewish institution of higher learning.

College Commons

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