Taking full advantage of the growing prestige of interdisciplinary research, Jewish scholars have been particularly active, publishing studies of European Jewish spas, Jewish education, Jewish self-hatred, Jewish music, and a thousand other enticing subjects. Jewish novelists, young and old, have written novels worth keeping around the house and loaning out to friends. All in all, it was a great year to be a Jewish reader.
Of course there were terrible Jewish books, too. To anticipate the inevitable criticisms, Judith Butler’s anti-Zionist Parting Ways, Nathan Englander and Jonathan Safran Foer’s hipster Haggadah, and Deborah Feldman’s self-congratulatory memoir of breaking with Orthodox Judaism (predictably entitled Unorthodox) have been intentionally left off the following list of the 40 best Jewish books, 20 in nonfiction and 20 in literature, from the past year:
