Jew­ish Book Month traces its ori­gins to Fan­ny Gold­stein’s 1920s cre­ation of Jew­ish Book Week. In 1925, Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try adopt­ed the week-long cel­e­bra­tion, tim­ing the events to coin­cide with Shavuot. In 1940, the event was shift­ed to the month before Hanukkah, when it is still observed today. 

Excite­ment and enthu­si­asm built for the numer­ous activ­i­ties planned across the coun­try, and in 1943 Jew­ish Book Week was extend­ed to Jew­ish Book Month. One year lat­er, Fan­ny Gold­stein’s Nation­al Com­mit­tee for Jew­ish Book Week was trans­formed into the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. Each year, a unique poster was cre­at­ed in hon­or of the month-long joy­ful cel­e­bra­tion of Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture. See below for select past JBM posters.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the JBC Net­work grew out of this nation­al desire to bring authors and lit­er­a­ture to wide­spread com­mu­ni­ties. Today, the JBC Net­work has rough­ly 120 mem­ber orga­ni­za­tions across North Amer­i­ca and pro­vides over 250 authors with a plat­form for shar­ing their books each year. JBC Net­work arranges over 1,300 pro­grams a year, both vir­tu­al­ly and in-per­­son, for our mem­ber sites, with wide-rang­ing and engag­ing programming. 

His­tor­i­cal­ly, Jew­ish Book Month has been cel­e­brat­ed with rich and nuanced activ­i­ties and events. See below for a peek at what’s been done! Write us a note at info@​jewishbooks.​org — we’d love to hear and see what your com­mu­ni­ty has done to cel­e­brate Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture through­out the years!

• Jew­ish Writ­ers’ Con­fer­ence falls dur­ing dur­ing JBM
• JBC cre­at­ed unique book­marks for each month
• The 30 Days 30 Authors series fea­tured an author video for each day of JBM, you can find past videos on our web­site!
• Each year our annu­al lit­er­ary jour­nal, Paper Brigade, is pub­lished dur­ing Jew­ish Book Month
• Cur­rent and past JBM posters can be pur­chased on our web­site here. 
• In 2023, JBC and The Bet­sy Writ­ers Room are thrilled to announce our inau­gur­al writer’s res­i­den­cy con­test. Answer the form here and be entered to win a writer’s res­i­den­cy at the sto­ried Bet­sy Hotel.