Imagining Other Jewish Worlds with Simone Zelitch and Max Gross

Big Blue Marble is an Independent Bookstore in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Northwest Philadelphia. We opened in 2005, and are proud to house a curated collection of diverse books for our diverse, progressive, book-loving community. We host more than 200 events a year, including author visits, writing classes, book clubs, readings, a Kids' Literature Festival, and more.

Big Blue Marble Bookstore

Big Blue Marble invites you to imagine alternative paths for post WWII European Jews with novelists Simone Zelitch and Max Gross. 

Big Blue Marble invites you to imagine alternative paths for post WWII European Jews with novelists Simone Zelitch and Max Gross. Simone Zelitch's novel "Judenstaat" imagines a world in which a Jewish state is founded not in Palestine but in Germany, where citizens find themselves pulled into the pressures of the Cold War while dealing with trauma and secrets. Max Gross's nove "The Lost Shtetl" imagines a village so remote and isolated that it goes untouched by the Holocaust and the Cold War, until a bitter divorce crashes the town into the 21st century.Simone Zelitch is the author of five novels, most recently Judenstaat (PM Press 2020), a alternative history about a Jewish State established in Germany after World War Two. Her novels range in subject matter from a medieval peasant revolt, to 1964’s Mississippi Freedom Summer, to re-imaginings of Exodus and Numbers and the Book of Ruth. Her work has been taught in colleges across the country, including at the University of Miami in a class called “Bad Jews”. She teaches at Community College of Philadelphia where she and her students recently survived their first semester online. Find out more about the author and her work at www.simonezelitch.com Max Gross was born in New York City and grew up in Brooklyn. He is the son of two writers and attended Saint Ann's School and Dartmouth College. Gross lived in Israel for a year after college and worked for the Forward newspaper and the New York Post. He is currently the editor in chief of the Commercial Observer, a weekly real estate publication. He lives in Forest Hills, N.Y. with his wife and son. "The Lost Shtetl" is his first novel.