The College Commons Podcast

Author Ashley Goldberg imagines the human and communal cost of sexual abuse in the Jewish community. Abomination, Winner of the 2022 National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction Ashley Goldberg is a writer from Melbourne, Australia. His stories have appeared in New Australian Fiction 2021, Meanjin, Chiron Review and Award Winning Australian Writing among others. His work has been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and has been the recipient of the KYD/Varuna Copyright Agency Fellowship and the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre Fellowship. His debut novel, Abomination, was published by Penguin Random House Australia in May 2022 and won the Debut Fiction Prize at the National Jewish Book Awards.

Sarah Imhoff introduces us to Jessie Sampter who broke the Zionist mold. The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Dis­abled, Zionist - National Jewish Book Award Finalist in Women's Studies Imhoff is Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. She writes about religion and the body with a particular interest in gender, sexuality, disability, and American religion, as well as religion and law. She is author of Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017) and The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Disabled, Zionist (Duke University Press, 2022). She is the founding co-editor of the journal American Religion.

Author Laura Hobson Faure on how French Jews accepted, negotiated and even rejected American Jewish aid after the Holocaust. A “Jewish Marshall Plan”: the American Jewish Presence in Post-Holocaust France, winner of the National Jewish Book Award in Writing Based on Archival Material. Laura Hobson Faure is a professor at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University-Paris 1, where she holds the chair of Modern Jewish history and is a member of the Center for Social History (UMR 8058). Her research focuses on the intersections between French and American Jewish life, during and after the Holocaust. She is the author of A “Jewish Marshall Plan”: the American Jewish Presence in Post-Holocaust France (Indiana University Press, 2022) which won a National Jewish Book award, and Rescue: The Story of Kindertransport to France and America (forthcoming, Yale University Press). She also co-edited L’Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants et les populations juives au XXème siècle. Prévenir et Guérir dans un siècle de violences (Armand Colin, 2014) and Enfants en guerre. « Sans famille » dans les conflits du XXème siècle ( éditions CNRS).

Author Dani Shapiro teases out the kaleidoscopic layers of Jewishness, loss, secrets and discoveries in her award-winning novel, Signal Fires. Signal Fires, winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. Dani Shapiro is the author of eleven books, and the host and creator of the hit podcast Family Secrets. Her most recent novel, Signal Fires, was named a best book of 2022 by Time Magazine, Washington Post, Amazon, and others, and is a national bestseller. Her most recent memoir, Inheritance, was an instant New York Times Bestseller, and named a best book of 2019 by Elle, Vanity Fair, Wired, and Real Simple. Both Signal Fires and Inheritance were winners of the National Jewish Book Award. Dani’s work has been published in fourteen languages and she’s currently developing Signal Fires for its television adaptation. Dani’s book on the process and craft of writing, Still Writing, has just been reissued on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. She occasionally teaches workshops and retreats, and is the co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy.

Author Lisa Brahin shares her family’s riveting story of escape from the pogroms. Lisa Brahin is an accomplished Jewish genealogist, researcher and writer. Inspired as a young girl by Alex Haley’s ROOTS, she spent many summers audio taping the stories of her grandmother’s traumatic childhood during the 1917-1921 anti-Jewish pogroms in Ukraine. Those tapes were the primary source for her historical family saga, TEARS OVER RUSSIA: A Search for Family and the Legacy of Ukraine’s Pogroms (Pegasus Books, 2022).   With a lack of previously published sources to turn to, Lisa used her genealogical skills to locate and interview former residents of her grandmother’s shtetl, Stavishche, Russia (which soon became Ukraine). Curators in four countries assisted her in finding unpublished documents, written in five languages, that would help to validate her grandmother’s tales. In 2003, she assisted in finding the lost location of the original manuscript Megilat HaTevah, which she considers to be one of the most important primary sources on the Ukrainian pogroms. On Jewishgen.org, the premier website for Jewish genealogy, she is a two-town project coordinator for the Yizkor Book Project (Holocaust Memorial Book Project). She has a special interest in using her skills in genetic genealogy to assist hidden child Holocaust survivors who are in search of their true identities and families.   Lisa hopes that TEARS OVER RUSSIA will inspire continued interest in family history research. She also hopes her book will shine a light on a forgotten and underrepresented period of Jewish history – between the years described in FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and SCHINDLER’S LIST – that prefigured the horror that was to come.   Ms. Brahin is a 2022-2023 Jewish Book Council author. Photo Credit: Diana P. Lang Photography

Journalist Oren Kessler dives into the enduring legacy of the Arab Revolt of 1936. Oren Kessler is a journalist and political analyst based in Tel Aviv. He has served as deputy director for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society in London, Arab affairs correspondent for The Jerusalem Post, and an editor and translator at Haaretz English edition. ​ Raised in Rochester, New York, and Tel Aviv, he holds a BA in history from the University of Toronto and an MA in diplomacy and conflict studies from Reichman University (IDC Herzliya). ​ Kessler’s work has appeared in media outlets including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Politico. Palestine 1936 is his first book.

Roslyn Bernstein’s novel follows a young woman’s voyage of discovery in 1961 Israel. Roslyn Bernstein is the author of several books, including Boardwalk Stories, a collection of 14 fictional tales set from 1950 to 1970, and Engaging Art: Essays and Interviews from Around the Globe, a collection of 60 of her online avant-garde art pieces. She is also the co-author of Illegal Living: 80 Wooster Street and the Evolution of SoHo, written jointly with the architect Shael Shapiro. Her most recent novel is The Girl Who Counted Numbers. Since the 1980s, she has been reporting from around the globe for such print and online publications as the New York Times, Newsday, the Village Voice, New York Magazine, Medium, Huffington Post, and Guernica, focusing primarily on cultural reporting, contemporary art, and in-depth interviews with artists and curators. Currently, Professor Emerita in the Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions at Baruch College of the City University of New York (CUNY), she taught journalism and creative writing classes from 1974-2016. A devoted teacher, she served as an advisor to Ticker, the college newspaper and established Dollars and $ense, the Baruch College business magazine. During her time at Baruch, she served as the director of the Journalism Program and was the Founding Director of the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program, a residency that has brought over 30 distinguished poets, playwrights, critics, and journalists to campus to teach intensive classes for gifted students. Prof. Bernstein is a recipient of the College’s Distinguished Awards for Teaching and Service. Before coming to Baruch, she worked at Esquire and attended graduate school. She holds a Masters and Ph.D in English Literature from New York University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Author Hen Mazzig dives into the varieties and challenges of Jewishness diversity, while also capturing our shared experience, identity and story. Hen Mazzig is an award winning Israeli author, a writer, and a speaker who has inspired thousands around the world with his story for over a decade. He was named as one of the Algemeiner’s top 100 people positively influencing Jewish life in 2018 and 2021, Top 50 online pro-Israel Influencers, and Top 50 LGBTQ+ Influencers. In 2022 the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis chose Hen to be its' Portrait in Courage award laureate. Hen's first bestselling book, "The Wrong Kind of Jew" was released in 2022.

Author Oren Schneider was raised by his grandfather, Alex, who survived Buchenwald and built a life in Israel, against all the odds. Oren Schneider was born in Israel, a third generation to holocaust survivors and seventh generation to farmers from the Galilee. He is an entrepreneur and business owner who enjoys music, cooking, travel, people and especially the combination of all four. He lives with his family in Brooklyn.

Congressional observer Ira Shapiro revisits his past critiques of Congress. Ira Shapiro’s forty-five-year Washington career has focused on American politics and international trade. Shapiro served twelve years in senior staff positions in the U.S. Senate, working for a series of distinguished senators: Jacob Javits, Gaylord Nelson, Abraham Ribicoff, Thomas Eagleton, Robert Byrd, and Jay Rockefeller. He served in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative during the Clinton administration, first as general counsel and then chief negotiator with Japan and Canada, with the rank of ambassador. In his most recent book on the U.S. Senate, The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America (Rowman & Littlefield; May 17, 2022), Shapiro turns his gaze to how the Senate responded to the challenges posed by the Trump administration and its prospects under President Biden.