🎤︎︎ New Five Books Episode: Kitty Zeldis On Passing and the Relief of Being "Kitty"

At Vassar College, Kitty Zeldis confronted what she calls a “WASP tsunami,” sparking lifelong questions about what it means to be Jewish in a wider, often unwelcoming world. In our conversation, she reflects on how that tension shaped her new novel One of Them, and shares the moments and stories that shaped her Jewish identity: from a German-Jewish poet who challenged her assumptions about culture and belonging, to her parents’ formative years in Israel, to the haunting family memory of a murdered great-grandfather in Russia. 

In One of Them, Anne Bishop seems like a typical Vassar sophomore—one of a popular group of privileged WASP friends. None of the girls in her circle has any idea that she’s Jewish, or that her real first name is Miriam. Pretending to be a Gentile has made life easier—as Anne, she no longer suffers the snubs, snide remarks, and daily restrictions Jews face. She enjoys her college life of teas, late-night conversations, and mixers. She turns a blind eye to the casual antisemitism that flourishes among her friends and classmates—after all, it's no longer directed at her.

But her secret life is threatened when she becomes fascinated by a girl not in her crowd. Delia Goldhush is sophisticated, stylish, brilliant, and unashamedly Jewish—and seems not to care that she’s an outcast among the other students. Knowing that her growing closeness with Delia would be social suicide if it were discovered, Anne keeps their friendship quiet. Delia seems to understand—until a cruelty on Anne’s part drives them apart and sends them scattering to other corners of the world, alone and together. 

Kitty Zeldis is the pen name of Yona Zeldis McDonough, a Brooklyn-based author of nine novels, numerous essays, articles and works of short fiction as well as forty books for children. She has worked for over twenty years as the Fiction editor for the Jewish feminist magazine Lilith.

1. ⁠Dark Soliloquy by Gertrude Kolmar

2. ⁠Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

3. ⁠Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

4. ⁠Empresses of Seventh Avenue by Nancy MacDonell

5. ⁠One of Them by Kitty Zeldis

Other Books Mentioned:

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

• A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

• Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Other Episodes Featuring the Challenges of Young Adulthood:

• Yael van der Wouden on Rage, Desire, and Magic

• Samantha Greene Woodruff on Blacklists and being a ‘Christmas Tree Jew’

• Toby Lloyd on Biblical Horror and being a Jewish Atheist

• Jennifer Weiner on Pushing Back Against De-Jewified Last Names, “Women’s Fiction,” and Activism in the Face of Despair

What Else We’re Reading Now:

Dog by Yishay Ishi Ron

In Dog, his searing debut novella, Yishay Ishi Ron draws on his own experiences of war and addiction to portray an Israeli soldier shattered by trauma and haunted by loss. As Geller, a former combat officer turned addict, struggles to care for a stray dog and make sense of his past, the story becomes a raw meditation on violence, tenderness, and survival. Read against today’s headlines, this haunting work, brought to English in Yardenne Greenspan’s lyrical translation, feels more urgent than ever.

We hope you enjoy this week’s episode! Tell us what you think at [email protected] or by replying to this email!

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