Jewish

Casey Cohen, a Middle Eastern Jew, is a sixteen-year-old in New Orleans in the 1970s when she starts hanging out with the wrong crowd. Then she gets in trouble and her parents turn her whole world upside down by deciding to return to their roots, the Orthodox Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn. In this new and foreign world, families gather weekly for Shabbat dinner; parties are extravagant events at the Museum of Natural History; and the Marriage Box is a real place, a pool deck designated for teenage girls to put themselves on display for potential husbands.

In a near-future Jerusalem, harrowing omens plague the city: a desecrated altar, an unbearable stench, a rampant famine. Shaken but devout, Jonathan, the royal family's third son, continues to hold services and offer animal sacrifices at the prophesied Third Temple, built to consecrate the founding of the new Kingdom of Judah. His father, Israel's self-appointed king, has abolished the Supreme Court. The Torah is the law of the land, and only people of the Jewish faith are allowed in.

“Don’t tell anyone we’re Democrats,” warned Mother when we moved to Bakersfield, CA, a town often referred to, back then, as redneck central. “And for heaven’s sake, don’t tell them you’re Jewish.”

When the Nazis invade the Netherlands in 1940, the Jews of Amsterdam know nothing of the Final Solution and the Holocaust. As the measures imposed by the cruel SS become ever more repressive, sister and brother, Rachael and Hendrik, join the Dutch Resistance.

What if achieving your dream means destroying your family, and obtaining your desire means losing who you love? In 1st century Galilee, two Jewish brothers, Judah and Seth, face this dilemma. They run from their father, but in opposite directions, leaving heartache in their wake. Judah's actions are inconceivable; Seth's behavior is rigidly outrageous; but their Abba's? His love and forgiveness makes no sense to anyone!