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The Book of Life is an interview-format podcast about Jewish kidlit, mostly, with occasional coverage of YA/adult books, music, film and web,  established in December 2005. Host Heidi Rabinowitz is a Judaica librarian at Congregation B'nai Israel of Boca Raton, FL, and the podcast reveals the backstory of materials that might be found in a synagogue library like Heidi's. As director of the Feldman Children's Library at B'nai Israel, Heidi focuses on material aimed at youth, but the podcast does cover a range of subject matter for all ages. If you are a creator of Jewish books, music, film, or web content, please see our submission guidelines.

  1. All Episodes
  2. 2018
  3. 10

Light the Menorah!

Oct 14, 2018

At the 2018 Association of Jewish Libraries conference, I bumped into author Jacqueline Jules. She's been on the podcast before in 2014 to talk about Never Say a Mean Word Again. Her new picture book is Light the Menorah: A Hanukkah Handbook, which offers meditations for candle lighting. We grabbed a quick interview...

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The Girl with the Red Balloon

Oct 14, 2018


 The Girl with the Red Balloon is a magical time travel, historical fiction, kind-of-sort-of Holocaust book that won a Sydney Taylor Honor in the Teen Readers Category for 2018. I met the author, Katherine Locke, at the Association of Jewish Libraries conference in Boston, where we snuck into a side room to talk –...

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Barbara Bietz and The Sundown Kid

Oct 1, 2018

Before I moved back to Florida from Massachusetts, my friend Barbara Bietz, author of The Sundown Kid: A Southwestern Shabbat, came to Amherst, MA for a workshop about Jewish kidlit. We got together while she was in town and recorded our conversation for...

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