On Being Jewish Now: Essays and Reflections from Authors and Advocates

• Author: Zibby Owens, editor
• Genre: Nonfiction Religion
• Publication Date: October 1, 2024
• Publisher: Zibby Books

On October 7th, 2023, Jews in Israel were attacked in the largest pogrom since the Holocaust. But Jews everywhere felt it and came together to process and to speak out in ways they never had before, like the contributors to this collection. More than sixty notable Jewish authors speak to their lifetimes of Jewish joy, celebration, laughter, food, trauma, loss, love, family, neuroses, and fun, and the common threads that course through the Jewish resilience and humor. Contributors include Mark Feuerstein, Jill Zarin, Rabbi Steve Leder, Amy Ephron, Lisa Barr, Rebecca Minkoff, Annabelle Gurwitch, Jenny Mollen, Nicola Kraus, Caroline Leavitt, and many more. On Being Jewish Now is edited by bestselling author, podcaster, bookstore owner, and media company CEO Zibby Owens.

All profits from the sale of the e-book, audiobook, and paperback will be donated to Artists Against Antisemitism, a group founded by Jewish authors in the aftermath of October 7th, dedicated to fighting the spread of antisemitism.

• Introduction
• You Have to Laugh
• I Thought We Were Friends
• An (Unlikely?) Activist
• Jewish Mom-Life
• Bling
• Am I a Good Enough Jew?
• Love Stories
• Jewish Pride and Joy
• In Loving Memory
• Happy(?) Holidays
• Represent!
• Quiet! The Rabbi is Talking
• Conclusion

October 7th, 2023 was a day that changed my life and the lives of Jews around the world. Much like 9/11, I’ll always remember where I was when I heard about the 10/7 massacre—on a cruise ship floating down the Danube River towards Budapest, Hungary. I turned on the news while getting ready, and immediately dropped everything. When I heard that the Nova festival was attacked, I realized that a cousin of mine was at the rave, and checked up on all my Israeli family and friends. Fortunately, my cousin escaped, but three of her friends were taken hostage and released in two different ceasefire efforts. 

At the time, I had no idea how deeply this massacre would affect me and my fellow Jews. The life of every Jew has been turned upside down, and life has been broken into ‘before October 7th’ and ‘after.’ We’re such a small community that we are known for playing Jewish Geography, where you try to establish connections through mutual friends or family, kind of like a Jewish Six Degrees of Separation. It’s said that we are one people, and October 7th felt like a personal attack. I might not have known the hostages personally, but each one of them felt like family. Every person who was murdered felt like I lost family members. Kfir and Ariel Bibas, the two little redheaded boys taken hostage and subsequently murdered, reminded me of my three nephews, who were also adorable redheaded babies, except my nephews are grown, while the lives of the Bibas children were cruelly cut short.

Since October 7th, 2023, I can’t even count the number of times I have said how grateful I am that my Holocaust survivor father wasn’t alive to see this genocidal massacre and the corresponding surge and acceptability of mainstream antisemitism. While mainstream media news don’t report on the daily attacks on visibly practicing Jews in major cities, the stories they do report on are frequently biased. Let me be clear: THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND ANTISEMITISM COMES FROM ANTISEMITES. Online, I’ve seen and received hateful, threatening messages and comments, whether the post was about Israel or just Jews practicing in the diaspora.

The word antisemitism was coined in 1879 Germany by Wilhelm Marr to replace the term Jew-hatred with a more scientific sounding word. Antizionism is today’s modern effort to replace antisemitism with a word that has less loaded connotations. However, make no mistake—anti-Zionism IS antisemitism, and the events of the last two years show that over and over again. In a world where Jews are facing hate and violence both online and in real life, I’ve leaned into Jewish community, both local and worldwide. Have I lost friends and followers? Of course. Have I gained supportive and accepting friends? Thankfully, yes. Are there still people out there who distort the meaning of Zionism, and there are so many out there that being Jewish and advocating often feels like shouting into the void. Being a Zionist simply means that I believe that Jewish people have the right of self-determination in our ancestral homeland. It doesn’t mean I agree with everything the Israeli government does, or that I think Palestinians should not have a country of their own or any rights. 

For obvious reasons, I held off on reading this when it was published. Everything still felt so raw, and these essays reflect that feeling. So many of the essays included in this book talked about what I like to call the ‘Jewish superpower’ — our tendency to come together in difficult and dangerous times. Throughout history and all of the groups trying to oppress, subjugate, convert, and eliminate us, we have prevailed every time. Almost every single essay mentioned losing friends and becoming closer to the Jewish community, echoing my own experiences and those of my friends.

Although this book is more than a year old, and nearly all of the remaining hostages have been returned home, with the exception of two deceased hostages, I felt this connection to the author of each essay in different ways—the authors of the essays come from all different backgrounds, but there was a common thread running through them. They practice Judaism differently, have unique connections to their background, and have been impacted by the rise in antisemitism, especially within the world of books. A while back, I wrote a blog post about double standards in the book industry, which you can check out here. 

Overall, this is a difficult but also powerful and moving read. I found so much identification and positive representation in the pages of this book, and the audiobook I read had several different narrators, but I honestly feel like this is the kind of book that I want to have on my shelf so I can page through it. In this collection, authors talk about appearing on lists of Zionists, and getting review bombed and plenty of hateful messages. Since authors aren’t always feeling supported by their agents and publishers, this gave them the opportunity to air out those grievances in a safe space. I came across Zibby Books when I got access to an ARC they published, but respect Zibby Owens even more for her dedication to supporting Jewish authors and advocates, and making this book possible. While some of the information has changed since the writing of this book, hearing several essayists mention the hostages and especially the name of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, felt like a punch to the gut, knowing that Hersh and so many others were murdered for nothing, yet the world celebrated. Who else would understand how we feel than our fellow Jews? Very few, and that’s why this is such an important collection. Additionally, I know I’ll be following up and checking out books by all the authors who contributed.

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