Jewish Book Festival Program 2024

Welcome to the 3rd annual Jewish Book Festival

Greetings, friends and welcome to the 2024 Jewish Book Festival!

The Center for Jewish Education (CJE) is thrilled to embark on another year of events celebrating literature, ideas, and the rich tapestry of Jewish experiences.

This year’s festival features an array of talented authors whose works offer unique perspectives and narratives reflective of Jewish life and culture.

We open the festival with Joshua Cohen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Netanyahus,” a rich exploration of Jewish life in America that promises to entertain and enlighten. Next, we look forward to a fun and inspiring Ladies’ Night Out with Danielle Friedman, including hors d’oeuvres, wine and a stimulating discussion of women’s empowerment through physical fitness, inspired by her book “Let’s Get Physical.” Finally, we will explore themes of resilience, courage and compassion in conversation with Weina Dai Randel and Armando Correa, authors of “Night Angels” and “The Night Travelers,” respectively.

The Jewish Book Festival is more than just a literary event; it’s an opportunity to build bridges, foster dialogue, and create lasting memories.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all of our sponsors and participants whose support makes this festival possible. Your enthusiasm and dedication inspire us to continue nurturing a vibrant literary culture within our community.

So mark your calendars, spread the word, and join us for an unforgettable celebration of Jewish books, ideas, and experiences at the CJE’s Jewish Book Festival. We can’t wait to welcome you!

Warm regards,

Tair Guidice Chief Impact Officer Jewish Federation of Greater Charlotte

For those who want the complete Book Festival experience Includes:

• Tickets to all the events

• A signed copy of all the books

• Recognition as a Festival Patron

Get all the Books

Books available for purchase online and at all events. Authors will be available for book signing at their event.

Online Book Purchases

A portion of all online book purchases goes to support independent book stores and the Jewish Federation

KNOWLEDGE. INVESTING IN

We’re proud to support those who work toward a brighter tomorrow.

The Netanyahus

Tickets: $10

An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family

MARCH 3 SUNDAY | 7 PM

Opening Night with Pulitzer Prizewinning Author Joshua Cohen

• Winner Of The 2022 Pulitzer Prize For Fiction

• 2021 National Jewish Book Award Winner

• A New York Times Notable Book Of 2021

• A Wall Street Journal Best Book Of 2021

• A Kirkus Best Fiction Book Of 2021

“Absorbing,delightful,breathtaking, hilarious and the best and most relevant novel I’ve read in what feels like forever.” THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959–1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.

JOSHUA COHEN

Joshua Cohen is the author of the novels The Netanyahus, Moving Kings, Book of Numbers, Witz, A Heaven of Others, and Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto; the short fiction collection Four New Messages, and the non-fiction collection Attention: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction. Called “a major American writer” by the New York Times, and “an extraordinary prose stylist, surely one of the most prodigious at work in American fiction today” by the New Yorker, Cohen was awarded Israel’s 2013 Matanel Prize, and in 2017 was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. The Netanyahus won the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

LADIES’ NIGHT OUT

Let’s Get Physical

How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World

MARCH 7 THURSDAY | 7 PM

Empowered and Fit: Celebrating the History of Womens’ Fitness

Tickets: $15

• hors d’oeuvres

• “get physical” with Lyn Addy

A captivating blend of reportage and personal narrative that explores the untold history of women’s exercise culture–from jogging and Jazzercise to Jane Fonda–and how women have parlayed physical strength into other forms of power. For much of the twentieth century, sweating was considered “unladylike” and girls grew up believing physical exertion would cause their uterus to “fall out.” It was only in the Sixties that, thanks to a few forward-thinking fitness pioneers, women began to move en masse. In Let’s Get Physical, journalist Danielle Friedman reveals the fascinating untold history of contemporary fitness culture, chronicling in vivid, cinematic prose how exercise evolved from a beauty tool pitched almost exclusively as a way to “reduce” into one millions have harnessed as a path to mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

“Friedman’sengagingstoriesofthe women who created and transformed thefitnessindustryillustrateanevolution builtuponstrongfemaleshoulders.”

THE WASHINGTON POST

DANIELLE FRIEDMAN

Danielle Friedman is an award-winning journalist who specializes in telling stories at the intersection of health, gender, and culture. Her first book, Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World, was published by Putnam Books (Penguin Random House) in the US and Icon Books in the UK in January 2022. It was selected as a New Yorker, Financial Times, and Amazon Best Book of the Year. Danielle’s feature writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Cut, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, Health, and other publications. She has worked as a senior editor at NBC News Digital and The Daily Beast, and she began her career as a nonfiction book editor at the Penguin imprints Hudson Street Press and Plume. Danielle holds a B.A. in English from Duke University and a M.S. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Originally from Atlanta, she now lives in New York City with her husband, NBC News reporter Daniel Arkin, and their two sons.

The Night Travelers Night Angels

& 3 RD ANNUAL JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL | JEWISHCHARLOTTE.ORG

MARCH 17 SUNDAY | 7 PM

Unbroken Spirit: Tales of Resilience, Courage, and Compassion, A Conversation With Two Authors

ARMANDO LUCAS CORREA The Night Travelers

“A stunning multigenerational story…the taut pacing keeps the pages flying. Readers will be deeply moved.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Four generations of women experience love, loss, war, and hope from the rise of Nazism to the Cuban Revolution and finally, the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Armando Lucas Correa is an award-winning journalist, editor, author, and the recipient of several awards from the National Association of Hispanic Publications and the Society of Professional Journalism. He is the author of the international bestseller The German Girl, which is now being published in thirteen languages, The Sister’s Tale, and The Night Traveler.

Armando began his career as an editor and reviewer at Tablas, a national theater and dance magazine in Havana, before joining the reporting staff of El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish edition of The Miami Herald, in 1991.

Armando is a graduate of the University of Arts in Cuba (Instituto Superior de Arte) and has a graduate degree in journalism from the University of Havana. He lives in New York City with his partner and their three children.

WEINA DAI RANDEL Night Angels

From the author of The Last Rose of Shanghai comes a profoundly moving novel about a diplomatic couple who risked their lives to help Viennese Jews escape the Nazis, based on the true story of Dr. Ho Fengshan, Righteous Among the Nations.

Weina Dai Randel is the Wall Street Journal bestselling, award-winning author of four historical novels, Night Angels, The Last Rose of Shanghai, The Moon in the Palace and The Empress of Bright Moon, a historical duology about Wu Zetian, China’s only female emperor.

Weina is the winner of the RWA RITA Award, a National Jewish Book Award finalist, and a Goodreads Choice Award “Best Historical Fiction” nominee. Her novels have been translated into 12 languages, including Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Hebrew.

Born in China, Weina came to the United States at twenty-four. She holds an MA in English from Texas Woman’s University, has worked as the subject-matter expert for Southern New Hampshire University’s MFA program and as an adjunct professor. Weina now resides in Boston with her loving husband, two children, and a family of chipmunks in the backyard.