The Newsletter of Fig Tree Books

Nov '26: Issue #84 --- Fredric D. Price, Founder & Publisher

JEWS OF DIFFERENT HUES: Warch:

Ancient roots in India – The story of the Cochin Jews

The Cochin Jews are one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities, who lived for over a thousand years in southern India in peace and cultural blending before nearly all immigrated to Israel in the 1950s.

Your copy should address 3 key questions: Who am I writing for (audience)? Why should they care (benefit)? What do I want them to do (call-to-action)?

Create a great offer by adding words like "free," "personalized," "complimentary," or "customized." A sense of urgency often helps readers take action, so consider inserting phrases like "for a limited time only" or "only 7 remaining!"

MONTHLY BLOG: When Publishers Pick Sides, by Gerald Posner

Simon & Schuster can publish whomever it likes, including Susan Abulhawa. But if it stands by her antisemitic views, I will sadly look for another publisher. I hope that others will do the same.

Simon & Schuster published my last three books, Miami Babylon, God’s Bankers, and Pharma. Tracing the Vatican’s hidden finances and exposing the pharmaceutical industry’s capture of American medicine were particularly large, expensive, yearslong investigative projects. Jonathan Karp, then Simon & Schuster’s publisher, and my editor, Ben Loehnen, commissioned both without knowing where the reporting would land. That is no small thing in publishing, and I’ve said so publicly before. I say it again now because it’s relevant to what follows: This is not a grudge piece from an author Simon & Schuster wronged. It’s the opposite. It’s a piece from an author who has had the exact experience Simon & Schuster likes to say it offers about editorial risk-taking. But I am writing now about a case where I believe the company’s stated principle broke down.

FIG TREE BOOKS GIVE-AWAY:

Jacobo's Rainbow and Saving Free Speech

One Fiction and One Non-Fiction book about Free Speech

Purchase Jacobo's Rainbow and receive

a free copy of Saving Free Speech

Send proof of purchase (hard cover, soft cover, or ebook) dated on or after November 3, 2026 of David Hirshberg's multi-award winning novel Jacobo's Rainbow to Info@FigTreeBooks.net along with your name and address; you will receive a copy of Thane Rosenbaum's best-selling non-fiction book Saving Free Speech. Valid for first 24 respondents through December 3, 2026.

REPORT: The Army's only airborne rabbi,

by Benyamin Cohen

FORT BRAGG, N.C. — At dawn on Friday, two soldiers showed up for physical training. Their rabbi was already waiting.

Black T-shirts. Gold ARMY across the chest. Nothing to set them apart. They blended into the formation — hundreds of soldiers under the pine trees as reveille cut through the morning. The flag rose. They saluted, stretched, climbed ropes, ran into the dark.

For 30 minutes, they were indistinguishable. Then everything shifted.

The three men walked into a meeting room inside a battalion headquarters, their shirts still damp with sweat. One soldier held out his left arm. The other draped a camouflage tallit over his shoulders. Rabbi Scott Klein reached into his backpack, removed a pair of black leather tefillin, and began wrapping them around a soldier’s arm — seven times, the way it’s always done, the leather biting just enough to remind you it’s there.

At 36, Klein serves one of the most unusual pulpits in American Judaism. He is one of 140 chaplains at Fort Bragg, the world’s largest military base. And he is the Army’s only Jewish chaplain assigned to an airborne unit — which means that jumping out of an airplane, for him, is not a metaphor for faith. It’s a job requirement.

NON-FICTION BOOK: UPROOTED: Stories of a Jewish-American Family Navigating Life in the Deep South,

by Sherry Berlin

These stories were told to me by members

of the family. At best, these tales are secondhand

remembrances. Sometimes events from the past are altered in the telling, depending on the clarity of one’s recollection. While my aim is to represent these stories as accurately as possible, memories handed down often change according to each person’s perspective. Based on

interviews with two former factory workers who worked at A. Berlin & Sons manufacturing plant, I chose to use fictional characters to represent events in that setting. In keeping with this intention toward historical fidelity, some words in this book reflect the customs and vocabulary

of the 1950s. Such language appears only to portray the era as it was lived and to honor the experiences of the people whose stories inspired this work; it does not reflect current usage or values. Mentions of real companies are included only to reflect the story and era faithfully and are not intended to suggest any present-day association or endorsement.

BOOK REVIEW: My Father's Father, by Max Burger

Martin Jacobs confronts his father with a journal his grandfather wrote before his death from an assassin's bullet. Martin knew his father had lied about his grandfather being killed in the Holocaust and that Jacobs was not his real family name. He knew his grandfather had come to America and returned to Europe, but not why.

"My Father's Father" by Max Burger is an historical family saga novel that spans Europe and America at the turn of the century, through the Holocaust, and afterwards. "My Father's Father" is told through the eyes of three generations and, although a work of deftly crafted fiction, will hold a special appeal to those who have longed to know their family history, endured alienation without explanation, and grief without resolution.

Original, exceptional, emotionally engaging and intellectually fascinating, "My Father's Father" is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended pick for community/public library historical and holocaust fiction themed collections, and the personal reading lists. 

Midwest Book Review

INTERVIEW: Richard Pryor wrestled with the N-word. His Jewish daughter explores how it shaped her life, by Andrew Lapin

When Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor was a young girl, her Jewish mother, during an argument, once called her the N-word.

“She never used the word with me again,” Pryor, whose father is Black, recalled to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency of her mother, who belonged to the Jewish socialist group then called the Workman’s Circle. “But she never apologized.”

The incident stuck with Pryor, today a history professor at Smith College, for many years — and not just because of the source of the remark. Pryor is the daughter of Richard Pryor, the beloved comedian and actor whose life’s work interrogated the various forms of American racism, including the N-word. Richard had deployed the word frequently in his act (as well as in the Mel Brooks movie “Blazing Saddles,” which he co-wrote) before swearing off the word entirely.