Laurie Frankel on the Jewish Ability to Hold Multiple Truths
From The Five Books: Jewish Authors on the Books That Shaped Them by Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
June 9, 2026 · 54 min
About this episode
Laurie Frankel discusses the Jewish ability to hold multiple truths and the impact of trauma in literature.
Is two Jews, three opinions a good thing? In this episode, Laurie Frankel discusses the very Jewish capacity of holding space for many different ideas and views, and how this capacity might be exactly what we need in this moment. We’ll also discuss the power and devastation of Cythnia Ozick’s short story “The Shawl,” its contribution to the conversation around trauma, and how a difficult-to-believe premise followed by realism (like that in Naomi Alderman’s The Power) is one of Laurie’s favorite structures for fiction. Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of six novels. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Publisher’s Weekly, People Magazine, Lit Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald, and more. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. A proponent of transgender rights, she wrote about her child’s transition in an essay in the New York Times titled, “From He to She in First Grade.” Her novel This Is How It Always Is, also about a transgender child, was a Reese’s Book Club Pick and was listed as one of the best books of 2017 by People Magazine…
People in this episode
Host: Tali Rosenblatt Cohen
Guest: Laurie Frankel
Topics covered
- Jewish identity
- multiple truths
- fiction structure
- trauma
- transgender rights
Keywords
- Jewish capacity
- Cythnia Ozick
- The Shawl
- Naomi Alderman
- transgender rights
- Laurie Frankel
- fiction
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: The Shawl, The Power
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