Shabbat Shalom 💕 ...

A century-old feminist Sephardi novel is back...and it’s incredible 💫

Lilith fiction editor Yona Zeldis McDonough says: "Mazaltob tells the story of a young woman raised in the Judería or Jewish quarter of Tetouan, Morocco, at the turn of the 20th-century. Sixteen-year-old Mazaltob is betrothed to José, a rather crude sort from her own community. But she is in love with Jean, who is French, half-Jewish, and an unconventional free spirit. Her competing desires—loyalty to her family, faith and culture, or freedom to love whom she chooses—form the spine of this novel, which exposes the chafing constraints that bound North African Jewish women poised on the cusp of emancipation and decolonization."

You can read an excerpt on Lilith.org, linked in our bio 📚 ...

"My Bubbe would have thought that Joan was a “pie in the sky.” She writes of California as if it were Poland."

In "The Cutting Room," writer Maggie Millstein unravels how Joan Didion is helping her process the current violence in the Middle East. A must-read, linked in our bio. 💥 ...