Jean Meltzer is the Queen of Jew­ish Romance, an inter­na­tion­al­ly best­selling author, and founder and CEO of The Jew­ish Joy Book Club and The Jew­ish Joy Box. Her fourth book, Mag­i­cal Meet Cute, came out this August. Beth Kan­der is a play­wright whose debut nov­el, I Made It Out of Clay, will be released this Decem­ber. In this con­ver­sa­tion, the authors dis­cuss golems, grief, mag­ic, and what it means to claim one’s own stories.

Beth Kan­der: Jean! I feel like our meet-cute was on Insta­gram. We were online cheer­lead­ers for each oth­er for a sol­id year or two before final­ly con­nect­ing more recent­ly over Zoom. I tru­ly appre­ci­ate the sto­ries you share, the way you cham­pi­on your fel­low authors and empha­size Jew­ish joy. We’re both writ­ing the sto­ries we want to see in the world, which feels spe­cial. I was espe­cial­ly intrigued when I heard about your lat­est nov­el, Mag­i­cal Meet Cute.

Jean Meltzer: Yes, same! I was so excit­ed to hear about your book, I Made It Out of Clay, and was thrilled when I was able to snag an advance copy. I was imme­di­ate­ly drawn to your hero­ine, Eve. When we first meet Eve, she’s strug­gling. She’s reel­ing from the death of her father, and dis­traught over turn­ing forty and being sin­gle — while her lit­tle sis­ter is get­ting mar­ried! But although Eve begins this book in a very dark place emo­tion­al­ly, it’s actu­al­ly a very comedic sto­ry over­all. I love her reac­tions to her neigh­bor ​“Hot Josh,” her friend­ships, and, of course, her even­tu­al cre­ation of the golem. What inspired you to write this sto­ry? Was it a con­scious choice to write a dark com­e­dy about grief and golems?

BK: My book actu­al­ly start­ed as a movie pitch — ​“Broad City meets Sean of the Dead, at Hanukkah” — which is 100 per­cent a movie I’d love to see. I love rom-coms, but I also love things that are a lit­tle weird. Clever sto­ries with unex­pect­ed twists … like, you know, a lone­ly woman decid­ing that the best solu­tion to her prob­lems is to make a golem rather than, oh, say, go to ther­a­py. (And the golem/​Hanukkah mash-up is where the title came from, of course — a wicked lit­tle ​“spin” on a clas­sic hol­i­day melody!) I Made It Out of Clay won the Hey Alma Hanukkah Movie Pitch Com­pe­ti­tion in 2022. To my shock, film pro­duc­ers start­ed reach­ing out to me about actu­al­ly mak­ing this movie, and that’s when my incred­i­ble agent, Alli­son Hel­legers, gave me some real­ly sol­id advice: ​“Write it as a book first.” To be hon­est, I didn’t start with much beyond the big idea of ​“a fun­ny, weird, kin­da deep tale of a woman mak­ing a golem and things going hor­ri­bly awry.” As soon as I start­ed writ­ing, though, I added the ele­ment that she was mourn­ing her father, and that she and her sis­ter and moth­er had nev­er tru­ly reck­oned with the loss. Eve is most­ly man­ag­ing to hold it togeth­er, but when a few oth­er things in her life start unrav­el­ing and her lit­tle sister’s big wed­ding is loom­ing, the whole house of cards falls apart. When we don’t attend to our grief, it can become a mon­ster — in this case, lit­er­al­ly. The more I wrote, researched, and revised, the more I saw par­al­lels between the cre­ation of the golem and the dif­fi­cul­ty of nav­i­gat­ing loss, past, present, and future. Golems are the embod­i­ment of Jew­ish anx­i­ety. I became com­plete­ly obsessed with them, and who might make them, and why.

Which is why when I heard about Mag­i­cal Meet Cute, I was so intrigued. At a glance, our books sound sim­i­lar — but they’re so dif­fer­ent! Mag­i­cal Meet Cute is a delight­ful­ly upbeat and dis­tinct­ly Jew­ish rom-com. Your main char­ac­ter, Faye, is anx­ious about recent anti­se­mit­ic paper­ing in her neigh­bor­hood. The morn­ing after con­duct­ing some (no spoil­ers) rit­u­als, she hits a good-look­ing red­head­ed guy with her bicy­cle, he gets amne­sia, and she soon starts won­der­ing if he’s a golem of her own mak­ing. It has clas­sic rom-com vibes but also weaves in seri­ous themes like anti­semitism and child­hood abuse. I love that Faye isn’t your typ­i­cal Jew­ish lead­ing lady … espe­cial­ly because she iden­ti­fies as a ​“Jew­itch.” That’s what hooked me most, and what I think is going to hook so many read­ers. Can you talk a lit­tle bit about why you want­ed to write a rom-com about a Jew­itch and a golem?

JM: I love how you described Mag­i­cal Meet Cute as ​“delight­ful­ly upbeat and dis­tinct­ly Jew­ish”! One of my favorite things about being the Queen of Jew­ish Romance is that I’m able to take famil­iar roman­tic tropes and hooks and retell those nar­ra­tives through a Jew­ish world­view. Witch rom-coms are extreme­ly pop­u­lar in tra­di­tion­al romance. But while many peo­ple con­sid­er those books sec­u­lar, they’re actu­al­ly writ­ten from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive. For exam­ple, there are demons mak­ing bar­gains with Satan, swoony lovers ris­ing up from the depths of hell … all things that, as it turns out, aren’t very Jew­ish. I want­ed to be the first author of a tra­di­tion­al­ly pub­lished rom-com to write a witch romance through a Jew­ish lens. I did about fif­teen months of research into Jew­ish myth and mag­ic to cre­ate a tex­tu­al­ly accu­rate Jew­itch romance.

I had want­ed to write a book about anti­semitism for some time. After my first book, The Matzah Ball, was pub­lished, I became the vic­tim of a Goodreads review-bomb­ing cam­paign, and my hus­band and I were both harassed online. I already knew I want­ed to write a Jew­itch romance, and so it was an easy leap from there to Jew­ish folk­lore. The golem seemed like the per­fect vehi­cle for explor­ing anti­semitism in our world today. Beth, your book also touch­es on anti­semitism. Why did you want to talk about it? Did you have any fears about pub­lish­ing a Jew­ish book in a post – Octo­ber 7th world? 

BK: Ugh, I hate to hear that The Matzah Ball was review-bombed and you and your hus­band were trolled. That’s gross, and I’m so sor­ry you had to deal with that. (Side note for any­one who wants to see authen­tic and heart­felt chron­ic dis­abil­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion in a Jew­ish romance: pick up The Matzah Ball!) Yes, this is a com­pli­cat­ed time to bring Jew­ish sto­ries into the world. But I also think it’s an incred­i­bly impor­tant time to bring Jew­ish sto­ries into the world — espe­cial­ly ones that show the full human­i­ty of Jew­ish char­ac­ters. Our humor, our love, our loy­al­ty, our screw-ups. I wrote this book in 2022, so it’s not a response to more recent tragedies, but it’s absolute­ly a response to the omnipresent real­i­ty of anti­semitism and the dan­ger of let­ting fear over­take us.

A few years before I wrote this sto­ry, sev­er­al garages in my neigh­bor­hood in Chica­go were spray-paint­ed with swastikas and anti-Jew­ish rhetoric. It wasn’t my first expe­ri­ence with anti­semitism, but it was my first encounter with it after becom­ing a par­ent. I was gut­ted, and scared in an entire­ly new way. I didn’t even want to leave the apart­ment. But my hus­band and I took our then two-year-old with us to a local Ral­ly Against Hate orga­nized that very same week. Hun­dreds of my neigh­bors gath­ered, and I was just cry­ing the whole time, see­ing the sol­i­dar­i­ty in our diverse and devot­ed com­mu­ni­ty that morn­ing. It gave me hope for my kids, and for all of us. It made me real­ize we don’t have to face these things alone — which is what Eve comes to under­stand in I Made It Out of Clay.

For me, the most mean­ing­ful thing about both of our sto­ries is that they don’t just cen­ter fear, anx­i­ety, or trau­ma; they empha­size laugh­ter, friend­ship, and a fierce belief in claim­ing not only our own sto­ries but also our own joy. Which also makes both books FUN to read! Jean, can you share a lit­tle about why you think Jew­ish books with hap­py end­ings are impor­tant? And also maybe even men­tion your Jew­ish Joy Box, *nudge nudge wink wink*?

JM: Oh, I could talk for­ev­er about this top­ic! But real­ly, it’s more than just writ­ing a Jew­ish book with a hap­py end­ing. Rather, it’s about show­cas­ing entire nar­ra­tives in which Jews are the heroes of their own sto­ry. And the rea­son I have made Jew­ish joy the cen­ter of my life’s work and mis­sion is sim­ple. Grow­ing up, I didn’t have many pos­i­tive female Jew­ish role mod­els in fic­tion — or even sto­ries that cel­e­brat­ed Jew­ish life.

Instead, most of the sto­ries I had were Holo­caust nar­ra­tives, sto­ries that pre­sent­ed Jews as vic­tims, peo­ple need­ing to be saved, often by non-Jew­ish char­ac­ters. When they weren’t being mur­dered, Jew­ish women were side char­ac­ters. The wise best friend with frizzy hair and a big nose, or the com­ic relief, but nev­er a per­son deserv­ing of their own story.

It was even worse in terms of find­ing chron­ic ill­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tion. I was diag­nosed with ME/CFS in 1998, a dis­ease that robbed me of nor­mal­cy and left me home­bound for over a decade. But what made the diag­no­sis par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult is that I had no role mod­els. I had no hero­ines in the media, no sto­ries of women who man­aged love, their careers, or par­ent­ing chil­dren while chron­i­cal­ly dis­abled. There is so much pow­er in see­ing your­self as the hero in your own story.

I know this because ever since I pub­lished The Matzah Ball, I have been inun­dat­ed with emails and mes­sages. One read­er told me that see­ing a proud Jew­ish woman on the page changed the way they felt about their own Jew­ish iden­ti­ty. Count­less oth­ers, Jews and non-Jews alike, have writ­ten that my books have allowed them to find access points into their own spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Read­ers liv­ing with chron­ic ill­ness have shared with me that after read­ing my book, they final­ly had the courage to use a wheel­chair, or real­ized that they, too, are deserv­ing of safe and healthy love. More than one per­son has told me that my books have saved their life.

It was because of these mes­sages that I tru­ly began to under­stand the impor­tance of the sto­ries I was writ­ing. I wasn’t just fight­ing for me; I was fight­ing for my read­ers. I was fight­ing for all the books that cel­e­brat­ed Jew­ish life. And, per­haps more impor­tant: as the Queen of Jew­ish Romance, I was fight­ing for all the Jew­ish authors of Jew­ish joy that would come after me.

I have always been an advo­cate, and so, despite my dis­abil­i­ty, for years I hopped on planes and trav­eled the US tak­ing on speak­ing engage­ments, meet­ing with every­one from small syn­a­gogue book clubs to For­tune 500 com­pa­nies such as Google. When that reach didn’t feel far enough, I launched a Face­book group: Jew­ish Women Talk About Romance Books. And after Octo­ber 7th, when our online group was inun­dat­ed with read­ers seek­ing safe spaces, I got to work again. I cre­at­ed the Jew­ish Joy Book Club and The Jew­ish Joy Box, the first Jew­ish sub­scrip­tion book box.

In less than a year, Jew­ish Joy LLC has grown to over two thou­sand mem­bers and sold out of our first round Jew­ish Joy Box­es. We’re now expand­ing sub­scrip­tions for orders of The Jew­ish Joy Box in 2025, plan­ning our first in-per­son events, and start­ing the paper­work to cre­ate a Jew­ish Joy Con in 2026. All of these endeav­ors I have built from my own home, with my own mon­ey, while being chron­i­cal­ly disabled.

Yet despite the risk to both my bank account and my health, I do it because I love it. Because it’s my pas­sion. And because I know with all my heart that this work is impor­tant. We’re not just writ­ing Jew­ish books with hap­py end­ings — we’re build­ing a Jew­ish joy movement.

Speak­ing of Jew­ish joy, I’d love to know what you are work­ing on next, Beth. Can we expect more nov­els that bring us feisty and lov­able Jew­ish heroines?

BK: Yes! I’m work­ing on a dual-POV/­d­ual-era Sher­lock Holmes book called Always the Woman. I can’t say too much about it right now, but in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes sto­ries, the one per­son who ever best­ed Sher­lock Holmes was a woman, Irene Adler. And Irene is canon­i­cal­ly Jew­ish, which is what ini­tial­ly inspired me to tack­le this sto­ry. The con­tem­po­rary sto­ry­line weaves in a lot of the places I’ve called home, while the his­tor­i­cal sto­ry­line is going to give me plen­ty of excus­es to vis­it my favorite city, Lon­don. Get­ting to play with two extreme­ly inde­pen­dent, smart women in two dif­fer­ent eras, and try­ing to solve two dif­fer­ent mys­ter­ies, is so much fun. I can’t even tell you how excit­ed I am about this next project, and I can’t wait to share more about it soon.

Can I ask what’s next from the Queen of Jew­ish Romance?

JM: Absolute­ly! I’m so excit­ed to announce that for the five-year anniver­sary of The Matzah Ball, I will be writ­ing anoth­er Hanukkah rom-com! The Eight Heart­breaks of Hanukkah, ten­ta­tive­ly titled, is my very Jew­ish retelling of Charles Dickens’s A Christ­mas Car­ol. This book is extreme­ly spe­cial to me, but oth­er­wise, I don’t want to give away too many spoil­ers. You’ll be able to snag a copy your­self on Octo­ber 25th, 2025. Of course, pre­orders are always appre­ci­at­ed! And don’t for­get to talk to your libraries!