Moment’s Fall Reading Guide 2026

An advertising guide for curious readers.

Writing Against Infamy
Harold Kirson

Through the remarkable wartime correspondence of Harold Kirson, a Jewish American ambulance driver in Patton’s Third Army, Writing Against Infamy offers an intimate perspective on the Second World War. Writing to his wife Sylvia, Kirson chronicles his experiences from the United States to Britain and across Europe. His letters document both ordinary moments and extraordinary circumstances, from military life and personal relationships to encounters with wounded soldiers, prisoners of war, displaced persons, and Holocaust survivors. With wit and compassion, Kirson reflects on Jewish identity, uncertainty, resilience, and the moral complexity of war and its aftermath. Editorial notes provide historical and cultural context.
Available on fordhampress.com and Amazon

Rickover: Underway, My Way
Joann DiGennaro

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover was an influential figure in American military history, yet remains largely unknown today.

He came to the U.S. with his Polish Jewish family to flee antisemitism. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and later developed the first nuclear-powered submarine.

Rickover served under presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Ronald Reagan and mentored Jimmy Carter before he became commander-in-chief. Rickover’s safety procedures still continue decades after his death.

Joann DiGennaro, co-founder of the Center for Excellence in Education with Rickover, offers fresh insight into Rickover’s Jewish identity and enduring impact on military service and STEM education.
Available on Amazon

Street Corner Dreams
Florence Reiss Kraut

This suspenseful family saga, love story and gangster tale, set between the World Wars, brings to life a family forged in tragedy andhope, dreaming of success while living amidst the Jewish and Italian gangs who ruled Brooklyn’s streets. Ben, Golda, Morty and Sylvia captivate readers as the family struggles with loss, danger, financial disaster and passionate love.Like Kraut’s acclaimed novel How to Make a Life, this well-researched page-turner is a great book club read, and first place winner of the 2025 CIBA Goethe Award for late historical fiction. Author will meet in person or Zoom with book clubs.
Available on Amazon

Life Against Death
Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg

A new two-volume collection of essays by RabbiIrving “Yitz” Greenberg.

Rabbi Irving Greenberg reflects on his mostimportant essays on America and Israel, theHolocaust, and Jewish-Christian relations, writ-ten over his lifetime in the U.S. and Israel, from1965 to 2025. These influential works identifyturning points in Jewish life, along with policieskey to successful Jewish living in the modern

world. Includes new introductions, Greenberg’s evolving thoughts, and new es-says on “The Religious Significance of the State of Israel,” and “Israel and WorldJewry After October 7.”
Save 40% with code 6AF26 at jps.org/books/life-against-death

Ping
Lisa Lucas & Steve Landsberg

In 1950, British Jewish aristocrat Ivor Montagu founded the International Table Tennis Federation, not for sport, but to spread communism.Twenty-one years later, a wayward American player accidentally hijacked his scheme, spark-ing the Cold War’s famous “ping-pong diplomacy.” PING (Historium Press, 2024) dramatizes this true story through Miriam Stahl, a Jewish athlete banned from tennis by antisemitic rivals in 1940s Ohio, who finds belonging in ping-pong until it becomes a geopolitical weapon. Fifty years later, her grand-daughter Jenny chafes under her grandmother’s legacy. Both women, generations apart, ultimately refuse to play games they didn’t choose.
Available on Amazon

SHAVUA
Dalia Youngerwood

What if your personal reflections could also become part of something larger? SHAVUA is a beautiful linen-bound journal that follows the full arc of the Jewish year, melding substantive Jewish wisdom with personal journaling and reflection. Across 55 entries, each inspired by that week’s Torah portion, holiday, or moment in Jewish time, SHAVUA creates space for your own thoughts to become part of the continu-ing Jewish conversation. Beautifully designed, deeply substantive, and made to be written in rather than just read, SHAVUA was created and published in Jerusalem and makes a meaningful gift for yourself or someone you love.
Available on shavuajournal.com and Amazon

Jewish Changemakers 
Karin Brygger & Anneli Rådestad

You may have heard of Anne Frank, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Marilyn Monroe, but what about Susan Faludi, Rochelle Shoretz or Doña Gracia? These women were changemakers who contributed to breaking down barriers in their own ways. One of them has explored space, another fought to make the world a better place and many have accomplished great deeds simply by daring to be themselves. Jewish Changemakers is a biographical collection of heroines and gender-diverse trailblazers, and their life stories and achievements that celebrate courage, creativity and diversity. Their stories dismantle stereotypical conceptions about the Jewish people and showcase the incredible depth of Jewish identity.
Available on orcabook.com

A Rabbi and A Doctor Walk Into A Bar
Dr. Frank Boehm & Rabbi Mark Schiftan

This book is a shared dialogue between two friends: a man of faith and a man of science, exploring questions of belief, ethics, values, and the profound moments that give meaning to our lives.

Dr. Frank Boehm is professor emeritus and former director of Maternal/Fetal Medicine inNashville, TN. Rabbi Mark Schiftan is rabbi

emeritus of The Temple in Nashville, TN.If you are interested in hosting Dr. Boehm and Rabbi Schiftan for a book discussion, please email: mschiftan@aol.com.
Available on goodfaithmedia.org

RBG’S Brave & Brilliant Women: 33 Jewish Women to Inspire Everyone
Nadine Epstein

Learn who Justice Ginsburg admired—and why her work was so important. This collection of biographies of brave and brilliant Jewish women selected in collaboration with the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg includes an introduction writ-ten by the late Supreme Court justice herself.

This intergenerational book also recounts the life story of Justice Ginsburg and tells why these Jewish women were important to her. Published by Random House, it includes a call to action.
Available on Momentmag.com and wherever books are sold

Can Robots be Jewish?
Amy E. Schwartz

Should we edit our children’s genes? Are there things that can’t be forgiven? Should Jews strive to be happy? Do Jews believe in the afterlife? Can robots be Jewish? In this book, rabbis spanning the range of modern Jewish thought, from Humanist to Reform to Orthodox and beyond, consider these difficult and provocative questions and many others. Sometimes they agree—but not often. Editor

Amy E. Schwartz provides delightful commentary, celebrating the rabbinic impulse to question every assumption and highlighting the many and sometimes surprising ways ancient texts can speak to us today.
Available on Momentmag.com

The post Moment’s Fall Reading Guide 2026 appeared first on Moment Magazine.