Books coverage is supported by a generous grant from The Milton and Sophie Meyer Fund.
Northern California is rich in writing talent. Here are a handful of books with Jewish themes or characters, written by local Jewish authors, in case you are looking for a read or resource.
“I Wish I’d Said That: A Guide for Writers, Speakers, and Healers”
By Rabbi Stephen Pearce (independently published; 709 pages)
Pearce has spoken countless heartfelt words over his long career. He worked for 20 years at San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El before his retirement in 2013. Now the well-known rabbi has published the book he always wanted to have on his own bookshelf.
“This is the book I wish I had when I was starting out and I struggled to find the right quote, metaphor, story, etc., for a sermon, lecture, Torah study and more,” he said in a statement.
The book is an inventory of “allegories, allusions, ambiguities, anecdotes, aphorisms, fables, folktales, metaphors, myth, paradoxes, puns, quotations, and witticisms,” Pearce added. It’s organized into themes to help a speaker to find wise words on topics including aging, greed, thankfulness and utopia.
During his tenure at Emanu-El, Pearce landed on Newsweek’s list of 50 Most Influential Rabbis three times. He also has a doctorate in counseling psychology. Royalties from the book will be donated to the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank.
“The Bipolar Therapist: A Journey from Madness to Love and Meaning”
By Marcia Naomi Berger (Bitachon Press; 312 pages)
In this memoir and nonjudgmental guide to mental illness, the author, who is a psychotherapist, explains how she navigated her own bipolar disorder, which forced her to leave her job as head of Jewish Family & Community Services of the East Bay in the 1980s. The book is a candid story of Berger’s mental illness — as seen from the point of view of a mental health professional — and is an attempt to dispel some of the stigma around bipolar disorder.
She also delves into her family’s past and the story of her maternal grandmother, Yetta, a Yiddish-speaking immigrant who was abandoned by her husband while pregnant and spent the rest of her life in a psychiatric facility.
Berger is also the author of “Marriage Minded: An A to Z Dating Guide for Lasting Love.” She offers marriage counseling in Marin County.
“The Talking Stick”
By Donna Levin (Arcade Publishing; 408 pages)
Four women narrate this new novel by Donna Levin, set in her native Bay Area. One of them is Alicia Lieberman, a doctor and the single mother to a troubled teenage daughter, Summer. Alicia has become disengaged from her Jewish roots. But when she reconnects with her daughter’s father, it brings about a journey of return. A story of love and reexamination of the past, “The Talking Stick” is also about women and their connections.
According to her publicist, “Levin is Jewish and felt strongly about creating a character who represented her heritage.” She is an Oakland native and San Francisco resident. Levin is also the author of “There’s More Than One Way Home,” a retelling of Anna Karenina set in contemporary San Francisco, and other books.
“The Gonif”
By Andy Weinberger (Prospect Park Books; 238 pages)
A new installment of the Amos Parisman mysteries is out. In this book, L.A.’s “oldest and most unconventional Jewish gumshoe” Parisman has to track down the fate of a historic Torah scroll that’s been stolen from a Sephardic synagogue in Hollywood.
“Gonif” means “thief” or “crook” in Yiddish, and there are plenty of them in this story as the trail leads Parisman down a twisty path of international thievery and deception.
J. books columnist Howard Freedman wrote about the series in 2022. “What I found most compelling in the novel was not the intrigues of the case, but Amos himself,” Freedman wrote. “A secular Jew with a strong ethical code, he is motivated not by the desire to solve riddles, but by his humanity.”
Weinberger is founder of Readers’ Books in Sonoma, which has been in operation since 1991.
“Fine, I’m a Terrible Person”
By Lisa Rosenberg (Sibylline Press; 274 pages)
People who love Marin County will want to pick up this comedic novel, which is described as a “mother-daughter caper.” In it, a broke 73-year-old former beauty and her ultra-competitive daughter take a road trip from Marin to Los Angeles in quest of both money and love.
This is Rosenberg’s debut novel and is published by a small press with a mission to support the work of women over 50. Rosenberg, who comes from a Ladino-speaking Sephardic family that emigrated from the island of Rhodes, wrote the novel as her thesis for her MFA in creative writing from Dominican University in San Rafael.