Heidi Slowinski

The choice to convert to Judaism is a deeply personal one. Whether you’re exploring this path because of a personal calling or a desire to share a faith with someone you love, it is ultimately a path you will walk alone. When I made the decision, myself, three years ago, I was looking for something that I felt was lacking in my previous faith. A deeper, more personal understanding of G-d. I did a lot of reading on my own before I found the courage to contact my local synagogue to begin the formal process of converting. By the time I attended my first service, I knew I found what I was looking for.

If you’re considering pursuing conversion, I’ve assembled a list of some of the books I started my path with. I hope you’ll find them helpful as

Living a Jewish Life describes Judaism as not just a contemplative or abstract system of thought but as a blueprint for living fully and honorably. This new edition builds on the classic guide, which has been a favorite among Jewish educators and students for years. Enriched with additional resources, including online resources, this updated guide also references recent changes in the modern Jewish community, and has served as a resource and guide for non–Jews as well as Jews.

Addressing the choices posed by the modern world, Living a Jewish Life explains the traditions and beliefs of Judaism in the context of real life. It explores the spectrum of liberal Jewish thought, from Conservative to Reconstructionist to Reform, as well as unaffiliated, new age, and secular. Celebrating the diversity of Jewish beliefs, this guide provides information in ways that readers can choose how to incorporate Judaism into their lives.

Readers will learn how to choose the right synagogue, and discover the meaning and significance of lighting Sabbath candles. “Shabbat,” “Torah,” “kosher,” “mitzvah” and other key words are all defined in all of their complex and potent meanings.

On the most basic level, this book explains the essential Jewish vocabulary, but more importantly, LIVING A JEWISH LIFE is a sensitive and comprehensive introduction that reveals the timeless nature of Jewish tradition, rich with history and relevant in the modern world.

This book is a practical and inspirational companion to the conversion process for Jews-by-Choice and their families. Written primarily for the person considering the choice of Judaism, it provides highly personal insights from over 50 people who have made this life-changing decision.

But it also will speak to their families―the non-Jewish family that provided his or her spiritual beginnings and the Jewish “family” which receives the convert―and help them understand why the decision was made.

This definitive guide for Reform Jewish practice leads the reader to an understanding of the whole of Jewish life — from blessing to b’nei mitzvah, Havdalah to haftarah, and tikkun olam to Tikkun Leil Shavuot. The revised edition features an index, cross-references to Mishkan T’filah, and new sections exploring the impact of changes in the movement and the world at large over the last decade, including same-sex marriage, conversion, bioethics, and justification of war. Jewish Living is an ideal gift for b’nei mitzvah, confirmation, and graduation, and deserves pride of place on the bookshelf of every Reform Jewish library, classroom, office, and home. Definitive source for Reform Jewish practice Easy- to-use format Excellent resource for study or reference

In an effort to counter the confusion and isolation often experienced by a novice synagogue-goer, as well as by many who regularly attend synagogue, The Synagogue Survival Kit: A Guide to Understanding Jewish Religious Services offers introductions and instructions for all aspects of the synagogue experience. No matter what kind of synagogue you attend, the roadmap is the same. Some synagogues may read certain prayers in English translation rather than the original Hebrew or replace some traditional prayers with newer versions, but the service will still touch on the same topics in the same order for the same reasons. If you know the structure of the traditional service, you can readily find your place in any other one. The Synagogue Survival Kit maps the complete traditional service structure and points out the changes commonly encountered in different congregations in an effort to counter the confusion and isolation often experienced by novice synagogue-goers and regular attendees, alike. Always mindful of the sophisticated, adult reader with little or no Jewish background, Jordan Lee Wagner clearly and comprehensively explains the practices, vocabulary, objects, and attitudes that one can expect to find in any synagogue.

It is the now-classic story of two fathers and two sons and the pressures on all of them to pursue the religion they share in the way that is best suited to each. And as the boys grow into young men, they discover in the other a lost spiritual brother, and a link to an unexplored world that neither had ever considered before. In effect, they exchange places, and find the peace that neither will ever retreat from again. . . .

Like Isaac Bashevis Singer’s fiction, this poignant memoir of his childhood in the household and rabbinical court of his father is full of spirits and demons, washerwomen and rabbis, beggars and rich men. This rememberance of Singer’s pious father, his rational yet adoring mother, and the never-ending parade of humanity that marched through their home is a portrait of a magnificent writer’s childhood self and of the world, now gone, that formed him.

Night is Elie Wiesel’s masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie’s wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author’s original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man’s capacity for inhumanity to man.

Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

Anita Diamant’s “vivid, affectionate portrait of American womanhood” (Los Angeles Times), follows the life of one woman, Addie Baum, through a period of dramatic change. Addie is The Boston Girl, the spirited daughter of an immigrant Jewish family, born in 1900 to parents who were unprepared for America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End of Boston, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie’s intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can’t imagine—a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, to finding the love of her life, eighty-five-year-old Addie recounts her adventures with humor and compassion for the naïve girl she once was.

Another week, another reading list! I’m still enjoying the company of audio books during the day, while working at my 9 to 5. They’re a refreshing change from playlists on Spotify or leaving a familiar series to stream, just for the noise. I prefer the sense of accomplishment when I complete another book.

On my audio book list for this week, I’ll be enjoying another Kristin Hannah, Night Road. This one is a story primarily focused on three eighteen-year-olds, reaching the end of their senior year of high school and preparing for college when tragedy strikes, changing their lives in ways none of them imagined. I’m also looking forward to Lisa Jewell’s The House We Grew Up In. This one has been on my reading list

Amy is in her mid-forties and still doesn’t know what to do with her life. She comes across an ad for group therapy led by the charismatic Yigal at his home in the Galilee, and she is smitten. Over the summer, she listens to the stories of the five other participants – tough grandmother Orna whose husband left her for another woman; young, sensual Reishit, raised on a religious settlement and newly single; the architect Michal, with a teenage daughter who despises her; the divorced and lustful Shimon; and Guy, a doctoral student at Hebrew University, still obsessed with the Moslem Arab woman he loved years ago.
Their stories awaken a spark within Amy, and she begins to reconnect with the world around her.
Throughout it all, the boundaries of therapy are questioned. Is Yigal a brilliant therapist, or a fake guru? Does his therapy help or harm?
The novel provides a first hand, authentic Israeli voice, exploring contemporary issues such as gender, aging, language and religion.

Meet the picture-perfect Bird family: pragmatic Meg, dreamy Beth, and towheaded twins Rory and Rhys, one an adventurous troublemaker, the other his slighter, more sensitive counterpart. Their father is a sweet, gangly man, but it’s their beautiful, free-spirited mother Lorelei who spins at the center. In those early years, Lorelei tries to freeze time by filling their simple brick house with precious mementos. Easter egg foils are her favorite. Craft supplies, too. She hangs all of the children’s art, to her husband’s chagrin.

Then one Easter weekend, a tragedy so devastating occurs that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass and the children have become adults, while Lorelei has become the county’s worst hoarder. She has alienated her husband and children and has been living as a recluse. But then something happens that beckons the Bird family back to the house they grew up in—to finally understand the events of that long-ago Easter weekend and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home.

The Orphan’s Daughter is a novel about a girl who grows up in the shadow of her charismatic but troubled father, a man shaped by his boyhood in a Depression-era Jewish orphanage. The two life stories are woven together to form the fabric of this funny and suspenseful work of literary fiction.

Clyde Aronson survives the cruelties of the seemingly bucolic orphanage but is left scarred. Brilliant and self-destructive, a popular high-school teacher and a callous womanizer, he yearns for a son to replace the relationship lost when his father abandoned him. Instead, he fathers two daughters. He resents most the one who most resembles him: the younger, Joanna.

Joanna Aronson is thirty, alienated and living in Southern California when she learns of her father’s puzzling illness. She returns home to Baltimore to help care for him. In the process, the two reconcile; Joanna struggles to come to terms with her own difficult history. Clyde promises to leave Joanna his collected papers, including a secret manuscript written long ago about life in the orphanage.

After Clyde’s death, Joanna’s stepmother inherits the house and all of his possessions. She refuses Joanna any access. Determined, Joanna breaks into the house and steals the manuscript. The stepmother presses charges.

Though fictional, The Orphan’s Daughter is based upon the time, from 1924 to 1934, the author’s father spent in the Hebrew National Orphan Home in Yonkers, New York.

This evocative novel incorporates contemporary feminist themes, Jewish cultural history, and a nostalgic sense of place. By turns wrenching and delightfully humorous, The Orphan’s Daughter is a deft melding of history and psychological drama, a literary page-turner you won’t want to put down.

For eighteen years, Jude Farraday has put her children’s needs above her own, and it shows—her twins, Mia and Zach, are bright and happy teenagers. When Lexi Baill moves into their small, close-knit community, no one is more welcoming than Jude. Lexi, a former foster child with a dark past, quickly becomes Mia’s best friend. Then Zach falls in love with Lexi and the three become inseparable.

Jude does everything to keep her kids out of harm’s way. But senior year of high school tests them all. It’s a dangerous, explosive season of drinking, driving, parties, and kids who want to let loose. And then on a hot summer’s night, one bad decision is made. In the blink of an eye, the Farraday family will be torn apart and Lexi will lose everything. In the years that follow, each must face the consequences of that single night and find a way to forget…or the courage to forgive.

Vivid, universal, and emotionally complex, Night Road raises profound questions about motherhood, identity, love, and forgiveness. It is a luminous, heartbreaking novel that captures both the exquisite pain of loss and the stunning power of hope. This is Kristin Hannah at her very best, telling an unforgettable story about the longing for family, the resilience of the human heart, and the courage it takes to forgive the people we love.

Submit Your Book

Are you an author, publicist, or publisher with a book in need of review? I’d like to work with you. To submit your book for review, please visit Contact Me and complete the form. I’ll review your request and respond within 48 hours. I’m also happy to work with authors on interviews. To set up an interview, please use the same form.

I’m working through another great reading list this week, albeit a shorter one than last week.

My first read is Chicken Dreaming Corn by Roy Hoffman explores the Jewish experience living on the Gulf Coast. This is a history I’m interested to learn more about since I recently relocated to the Gulf Coast area.

My second read is one I return to annually, The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. The book centers on Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob’s to be mentioned in the book of Genesis. While she is only briefly mentioned in the biblical text, Diamant brings her story, along with the

In 1916, on the immigrant blocks of the Southern port city of Mobile, Alabama, a Romanian Jewish shopkeeper, Morris Kleinman, is sweeping his walk in preparation for the Confederate veterans parade about to pass by. “Daddy?” his son asks, “are we Rebels?” “Today?” muses Morris. “Yes, we are Rebels.” Thus opens a novel set, like many, in a languid Southern town. But, in a rarity for Southern novels, this one centers on a character who mixes Yiddish with his Southern and has for his neighbors small merchants from Poland, Lebanon, and Greece.

As Morris resides with his family over his Dauphin Street store, enjoys cigars with his Cuban friend Pablo Pastor, and makes “a living not a killing,” his tale begins with glimpses of the old Confederacy, continues through a tumultuous Armistice Day, and leads up to the hard-won victories of World War II. Along the way Morris sells shoes and sofas and endures Klan violence, religious zealotry, and financial triumphs and heartbreaks. With his devoted Miriam, who nurses memories of Brooklyn and Romania, he raises four adventurous children whose own journeys take them to New Orleans and Atlanta and involve romance, ambition and tragic loss.

At turns lyrical, comic, and melancholy, this tale takes inspiration from its title. This Romanian expression with an Alabama twist is symbolic of the strivings of ordinary folks for sustenance, for the realization of their hopes and dreams. Set largely on a few humble blocks yet engaging many parts of the world, this Southern Jewish novel is, ultimately, richly American.

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons.

Told in Dinah’s voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood-the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers-Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah-the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that are to sustain her through a damaged youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah’s story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate, immediate connection.

Deeply affecting, The Red Tent combines rich storytelling with a valuable achievement in modern fiction: a new view of Biblical women’s society.

Submit Your Book

Are you an author, publicist, or publisher with a book in need of review? I’d like to work with you. To submit your book for review, please visit Contact Me and complete the form. I’ll review your request and respond within 48 hours. I’m also happy to work with authors on interviews. To set up an interview, please use the same form.

I am really looking forward to this week’s reading list. There are some great books on it. First up, is a new release by Pamela Braun Cohen, Hidden Heroes, explores the Soviet Jews’ exodus from the Soviet Union. I am really looking forward to exploring more about this important period in Jewish history.

Next up, I am continuing my mission to make progress on my Want to Read list on Goodreads. So I’m picking up a book I started long ago but never quite finished, Rashi’s Daughters – Book I: Joheved, by Maggie Anton. This is the first book in a three book series I’ve been meaning to read for ages. Looking forward to finally finishing it and progressing in the series.

In 1068, the scholar Salomon ben Isaac returns home to Troyes, France, to take over the family winemaking business and embark on a path that will indelibly influence the Jewish world, writing the first Talmud commentary, and secretly teaching Talmud to his daughters.

Joheved, the eldest of his three girls, finds her mind and spirit awakened by religious study, but, knowing the risk, she must keep her passion for learning and prayer hidden. When she becomes betrothed to Meir ben Samuel, she is forced to choose between marital happiness and being true to her love of the Talmud.

Rich in period detail and drama, Joheved is a must read for fans of Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring.

Spanning nearly three decades, Hidden Heroes gives an insider’s view of the modern-day exodus of Soviet Jews from the Soviet Union, a period of Jewish history that has rarely been told and is in danger of being forgotten. This deeply personal narrative explores the grassroots Soviet Jewish emigration movement through the eyes of one of its indefatigable leaders, focusing on the actions of heroic refuseniks in the Soviet Union as well as courageous individuals in the West – described by Natan Sharansky as the “army of students and housewives” who waged the battle to free Soviet Jews.

From Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania to the distant republics of Central Asia, refuseniks come to life, discovering their identity, protesting on the streets, defending themselves in courtrooms, defying jailers in their prison cells, and struggling to survive in Siberian labor camps. This engrossing memoir tells the story of the resistance and moral courage of men and women inside the Soviet Union and of those in the West who relentlessly crusaded on their behalf.

In the rugged Pacific Northwest lies the Olympic National Forest – nearly a million acres of impenetrable darkness and impossible beauty. From deep within this old growth forest, a six-year-old girl appears. Speechless and alone, she offers no clue as to her identity, no hint of her past.

Having retreated to her western Washington hometown after a scandal left her career in ruins, child psychiatrist Dr. Julia Cates is determined to free the extraordinary little girl she calls Alice from a prison of unimaginable fear and isolation. To reach her, Julia must discover the truth about Alice’s past – although doing so requires help from Julia’s estranged sister, a local police officer. The shocking facts of Alice’s life test the limits of Julia’s faith and strength, even as she struggles to make a home for Alice – and for herself.

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family business; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, these two estranged sisters will find themselves together again, standing alongside their disapproving mother, Anya, who even now offers no comfort to her daughters. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise: Anya will tell her daughters a story; it is one she began years ago and never finished. This time she will tell it all the way to the end.

The tale their mother tells them is unlike anything they’ve heard before—a captivating, mysterious love story that spans more than sixty years and moves from frozen, war-torn Leningrad to modern-day Alaska. Nina’s obsession to uncover the truth will send them all on an unexpected journey into their mother’s past, where they will discover a secret so shocking, it shakes the foundation of their family and changes who they believe they are.

Mesmerizing from beginning to end, Winter Garden is that rarest of novels — at once an epic love story and an intimate portrait of women poised at the crossroads of their lives. Evocative, lyrically written, and ultimately uplifting, it will haunt the listener long after the last word is spoken.

The number one New York Times best-selling author returns to the characters in Firefly Lane in her next blockbuster novel, Fly Away. Once, a long time ago, I walked down a night-darkened road called Firefly Lane, all alone, on the worst night of my life, and I found a kindred spirit. That was our beginning. More than 30 years ago. TullyandKate. You and me against the world. Best friends forever. 

But stories end, don’t they? You lose the people you love and you have to find a way to go on…Tully Hart has always been larger than life, a woman fueled by big dreams and driven by memories of a painful past. She thinks she can overcome anything until her best friend, Kate Ryan, dies. Tully tries to fulfill her deathbed promise to Kate – to be there for Kate’s children – but Tully knows nothing about family or motherhood or taking care of people. Sixteen-year-old Marah Ryan is devastated by her mother’s death. Her father, Johnny, strives to hold the family together, but even with his best efforts, Marah becomes unreachable in her grief. Nothing and no one seems to matter to her…until she falls in love with a young man who makes her smile again and leads her into his dangerous, shadowy world. 

Dorothy Hart – the woman who once called herself Cloud – is at the center of Tully’s tragic past. She repeatedly abandoned her daughter, Tully, as a child, but now she comes back, drawn to her daughter’s side at a time when Tully is most alone. At long last, Dorothy must face her darkest fear: Only by revealing the ugly secrets of her past can she hope to become the mother her daughter needs. 

A single, tragic choice and a middle-of-the-night phone call will bring these women together and set them on a poignant, powerful journey of redemption. Each has lost her way, and they will need each one another – and maybe a miracle – to transform their lives. 

An emotionally complex, heart-wrenching novel about love, motherhood, loss, and new beginnings, Fly Away reminds us that where there is life, there is hope, and where there is love, there is forgiveness. 

Told with her trademark powerful storytelling and illuminating prose, Kristin Hannah reveals why she is one of the most beloved writers of our day. Includes a Reading Group Guide Read by Kristin Hannah 

Submit Your Book

Are you an author, publicist, or publisher with a book in need of review? I’d like to work with you. To submit your book for review, please visit Contact Me and complete the form. I’ll review your request and respond within 48 hours. I’m also happy to work with authors on interviews. To set up an interview, please use the same form.

Read Along With Me

This week, I’m moving on to book three in The Night Trilogy by Elie Wiesel, Day. The first two books were brilliantly written. I thoroughly enjoy Wiesel’s writing style and look forward to getting started on book three in the series.

The second book on my list this week is a new release by S.J. Schwaidelson, The Pomegranate. Set in the 12th century, this is the story of Batsheva Hagiz as she makes her way across the desert to her wedding. Based on the synopsis, Batsheva Hagiz is a strong, independent young woman determined to make her own decisions about her life. I’ve previously read Dream Dancer by S.J. Schwaidelson and enjoyed her very detailed storytelling.

How many books are on your Want to Read list? I hope you’ll add your suggestions in the comments.

Night is one of the masterpieces of Holocaust literature. First published in 1958, it is the autobiographical account of an adolescent boy and his father in Auschwitz. Elie Wiesel writes of their battle for survival and of his battle with God for a way to understand the wanton cruelty he witnesses each day.

In the short novel Dawn (1960), a young man who has survived World War II and settled in Palestine joins a Jewish underground movement and is commanded to execute a British officer who has been taken hostage.

In Day (previously titled The Accident, 1961), Wiesel questions the limits of conscience: Can Holocaust survivors forge a new life despite their memories? Wiesel’s trilogy offers insights on mankind’s attraction to violence and on the temptation of self-destruction.

The girl was defiant, her dress dusty, her scarf askew; tendrils of burnished copper hair escaping onto her face. She would not stand by as her brother defended her honor. She would defend herself.

So begins the story of Batsheva Hagiz, the spirited daughter of a Jewish merchant dynasty in 12th Century Málaga. Her life is set by tradition, with schooling in languages, merchandise, and trade. But it’s her love of swordplay and the ability to throw a dagger with deadly aim that will serve her best.

On the caravan journey across the desert to her wedding, Batsheva is abducted by men who are certain their sheik will prize her body. In the early days of captivity, chained to his tent, she makes the decision to do more than merely survive. She will live.

Her resolve will push the boundaries of convention, taking Batsheva from the sands of the Maghreb to the Holy Land where a crusade rages, on to the court of Plantagenet England. Batsheva is Everywoman; she refuses to give in to her fate. Instead, she confronts the world on her terms.

In her third novel, S. J. Schwaidelson weaves another cinematic story, immersing readers into exotic lands and cultures with surprisingly contemporary conflicts and human passions.