Category Archives: A Jewish Appendix

‘Patrick Leigh Fermor Among the Jews’ (New Essay)

October 8, 2025A Jewish Appendix, A Jewish Appendix, Books, Romaniasobsey

My essay, “Patrick Leigh Fermor Among the Jews” has recently been published in Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts. (It starts on page 58.) I hope you’ll take a few moments to read it.

The essay includes some of the same narrative elements of my book A Jewish Appendix, but it’s strongly focused on one of the book’s prominent figures, the great English travel writer (and war hero) Patrick Leigh Fermor. Throughout the legendary yearlong walk Leigh Fermor undertook, at age eighteen, all the way from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul, his adventures included some memorable encounters with Jews, mostly in Romania, where my Jewish maternal ancestors came from and where the heart of A Jewish Appendix is set. Leigh Fermor’s retailing of these encounters yields some of the most vivid and impassioned writing in his three-volume memoirs of what he later became fond of calling “The Great Trudge.”

Young Paddy, as he was then known, developed an affectionate and keen curiosity about Jewish life and language. This was remarkable in itself — growing up in England, he had no background in Judaism and little previous association with Jews — and even more surprising and unusual for the period in which the Great Trudge took place: 1934, just after Hitler’s ascension to power in Germany, which was met with widespread approval on both sides of the Atlantic in a time of what’s often called the “fashionable antisemitism” that then prevailed.

Do have a look at my essay, if you’re so inclined, in these Jewish Days of Awe.

New ‘A Jewish Appendix’ Review

October 7, 2025A Jewish Appendix, A Jewish Appendix, Bookssobsey

Here is a nice recent review of A Jewish Appendix in the Shepherd Express, a venerable Milwaukee-based arts and culture magazine. Critic Dave Luhrssen, who also had nice things to say about my biography of Chrissie Hynde, writes: “A Jewish Appendix is an engaging travelog and a highly personal odyssey [that] will speak to anyone of any background trying to make sense of the nature and nurture behind who they are.”

I’ll be appearing as a sponsored speaker and reading from A Jewish Appendix at the Pittsburgh Jewish Book Festival on November 11.

‘A Jewish Appendix’ events this week

April 12, 2025A Jewish AppendixA Jewish Appendix, writingsobsey

This past week, I was interviewed about A Jewish Appendix by Yonat Shimron of Religion News Service. I really enjoyed this conversation, which was tied to Passover and the ideas of exodus, emigration, and self-reinvention.

If you live in the Triangle area of North Carolina, please come to my reading this Thursday, April 17 at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill! This event will include a post-reading conversation with Rabbi Hannah Bender of Durham’s Judea Reform congregation. I’m looking forward not only to talking about A Jewish Appendix with Rabbi Bender and the public, but also to a wider discussion of Jewish life, culture, and identity.

And a happy Passover to all!

‘A Jewish Appendix’ in the news & the world

February 17, 2025A Jewish Appendix, BooksA Jewish Appendix, Books, writingsobsey

My new book, A Jewish Appendix, will be published on March 15, 2025, by Spuyten Duyvil Publishing. A Jewish Appendix is a memoir and travel adventure, a story of epigenetic inheritance, a search for home and belonging, and a reckoning with the power and paradox of Jewish identity. It’s an exploration of roots, and it’s for anyone who has ever explored their own. You can read more about A Jewish Appendix here, and preorder it here.

Where to find me:

In the Los Angeles Review of Books, where I recently published an essay about the new film A Real Pain and its resonances with my own search for Jewish roots.
Also recently in the Los Angeles Review of Books (not related to my book!): on the occasion of the reissue of the Rain Parade’s 1983 debut album, Emergency Third Rail Power Trip — one of the great psychedelic pop albums — an essay about the Paisley Underground, an indie pop music scene that flourished in Los Angeles in the early 1980s.
Jewish Book Festival, Durham, NC, March 21 — time changed, 12 noon! — where I will read from A Jewish Appendix and lead a Q&A afterwards. The event is at the Levin Jewish Community Center.
Scuppernong Books, Greensboro, NC, April 10, 6:00 PM: reading, Q&A, book signing.
Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, NC, April 17, 5:30 PM, in conversation with Rabbi Hannah Bender of Judea Reform Congregation: reading, discussion, Q&A, book signing.

Advance praise for my book:

Mark Oppenheimer, author of Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood, calls A Jewish Appendix “unique, thrilling, and epically weird, in the very best sense.” Sam Stephenson, author of Gene Smith’s Sink: A Wide-Angle View, calls my memoir “unusual, understated, and brilliant […] a journey into geographic roots of [the author]’s family tree overseas and the inner evidence of his own past,” and “the most variable and memorable use of the metaphor of the appendix since Brian Eno’s A Year with Swollen Appendices.”