The 38th Annual JCC Jewish Book Festival announces 2023 lineup
Key themes include mental health, diversity of Jewish communities, and political reality in literature
Margot Fedoruk. Photo by Vital Image Photography
Gabor Mate.
The Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver presents the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival from February 11 to 16 at various venues, with additional events on January 19, January 26, and February 28
THE CHERIE SMITH JCC JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL is back for its 38th year, with authors from across Canada, the U.S., Israel, and Germany taking part.
Key themes have emerged organically and include a focus on mental health and a better understanding of people’s inner selves; diversity within the Jewish communities in Canada and around the world; escalating relevance of political reality in literature; new waves of generational fiction; and the presence of a significant number of strong B.C. authors.
“We look forward to welcoming our live audiences to the joyful experience of a shared literary event,” festival director Dana Camil Hewitt says in a release. “The Jewish Book Festival strives to reflect and showcase recent literature that revels in the lively and pivotal ideas stemming from the modern world, and in the process expose our city and community to meaningful and captivating conversations about the written word in every shape and form.
“And while the nucleus of our festival is Jewish-themed, our speakers, events and audience happily represent a diversity of experiences and cultures that defy narrow categorization,” Camil Hewitt adds. “We are attuned to timely and universal themes and we thrive on the interdisciplinary, always inviting visual arts and performance art into our events”.
Max Czollek. Photo by Peter Andreas Hassiepen
With the fest itself running from February 11 to 16, there are two pre-festival events.
On January 19, a Germany-themed Pre-Fest Event with writer Max Czollek takes place. Czollek will launch the English version of De-Integrate! A Jewish Survival Guide for the 21st Century, “a polemical, often humorous examination of Jewish life in contemporary Germany that speaks to the position of minorities the world over”.
The Prologue Event, on January 26, features US/Israeli photographer Jason Langer presenting his coffee-table book Berlin: A Jewish Ode to the Metropolis along with an exhibition of the collection’s photographs.
The JCC Jewish Festival kicks off on Opening Night with Dr. Gabor Maté. With expertise in stress, trauma, and well-being, the author will discuss his latest bestselling book, The Myth of Normal Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture, in conversation with Marsha Lederman.
Dora Levy Mossanen.
The fest’s annual Book Clubs event will feature best-selling Iranian/American author Dora Levy Mossanen. Her novel Love and War in the Jewish Quarter is described as a “tender and tension-packed story of forbidden love in Tehran during WWII”.
For the festival’s Closing Night, which includes singers, best-selling investigative journalist Isabel Vincent’s Overture of Hope gets the spotlight. The book shares the story of British spinsters who masterminded a plan to save dozens of Jewish stars of the German and Austrian opera from the Third Reich, getting them safely to England.
On Valentine's Day, NYC best-selling author Lynda Cohen Loigman will present her novel, The Matchmaker's Gift, while Montreal's Gina Roitman will share her literary thriller Don't Ask. That evening, Yosef Wosk and Alan Twigg will discuss their latest collaboration in Gidal: The Unusual Friendship of Yosef Wosk and Tim Gidal.
Jews in Trench Coats highlights former CIA operative Douglas London, author of The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence, together with former CSIS operative Andrew Kirsch, who wrote I Was never Here: My True Canadian Spy Story of Coffees, Code Names and Covert Operations in the Age of Terrorism.
Two authors from Israel are participating in the festival: Yishai Sarid will talk about Victorious, his provocative novel of the psychology and morality of war; and Ayelet Tsabari will address identity and memory in The Art of Leaving.
In One Hundred Saturdays, Michael Frank brings to life the lost Jewish community of Rhodes and the story of one of the oldest living Holocaust survivors.
Among the B.C. authors participating for 2023 are Daniel Kalla, author of the thriller The Darkness in the Light, in a panel with S.M Freedman (Blood Atonement) and Ontario’s Samantha M. Bailey (Watch Out for Her). Tamar Glouberman and Margot Fedoruk will discuss their quirky memoirs Chasing Rivers and Cooking Tips for Desperate Fishwives, respectively, while Charlotte Schallié will talk about the artistic process involved in But I Live, an intimate co-creation of three graphic novelists and four Holocaust survivors, along with artists Miriam Libicki, Barbara Yelin, and Gilad Seliktar.
Helga Hatvany.
Local authors taking part in Literary Quick and other events include Helga Hatvany, Eliana Tobias, Gloria Levi, Rabbi Lauri Duhan Kaplan, Leo Burstyn, Marjie Zacks, and Jeffrey Groberman, to name a few.
Former Vancouverite and acclaimed illustrator Selina Alko will launch Stars of the Night: The Courageous Children of the Czech Kindertransport.
In a February 28 Epilogue Event, former federal cabinet minister and senator The Hon. Jack Austin will launch his memoir Unlikely Insider: A West Coast Advocate in Ottawa.
For more details and digital program guide, see www.jccgv.com/jewish-book-festival/.
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