42 | OCTOBER 24 • 2019 

SUZANNE CHESSLER
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Author, Author!

M

ultimedia presentations — 
including the actual taping 
of a podcast episode, a 
Broadway-style concert featuring a 
Tony Award nominee and a slideshow 
of places associated with a murder — 
enhance this year’
s Detroit Jewish Book 
Fair filled with a variety of notable 
authors. 
The 68th annual event, scheduled 
Nov. 2-10 at the Jewish Community 
Center in West Bloomfield, features 
some 50 presenters who will introduce 
new books and/or add to those 
introductions.
Three presenters — Mark 
Oppenheimer, Josh Young and Margalit 

Fox — previewed their participation in 
this year’
s programming. 

MARK OPPENHEIMER
The live taping of the podcast 
“Unorthodox” launches the fair 
Saturday evening, Nov. 2, with 
Tablet magazine podcaster Mark 
Oppenheimer joined by production 
partners Stephanie Butnick and Liel 
Leibovitz, who recently released their 
reference book The Newish Jewish 
Encyclopedia: From Abraham to Zabar’
s 
and Everything in Between. 
“Unorthodox” started four years ago, 
when podcasts in general were growing 
in popularity. 
“I had this idea that one of the 
missing podcasts was a good one 
about Jewish life and culture,
” explains 
Oppenheimer, a part-time Tablet editor 
working on the magazine with his two 
collaborators. 
“If we could take the fun, wit and 
humor of our editorial meetings and 
put all that into a podcast with great 

candor about Jewish life and culture, 
we were confident we could get an 
audience.
”
The three, wanting Jewish and gentile 
guests to keep conversations open, 
taped a few sample episodes, got a 
distributor and debuted in July 2015. 
The book was the idea of Stephanie’
s 
husband, Ben Cohen, a writer for the 
Wall Street Journal.
“Our listeners always have questions,
” 
says Oppenheimer, who can recall 
a range of guests including actress 
Kathryn Hahn, culinary historian 
Michael Twitty and former U.S. Sen. Joe 
Lieberman.
“We have religious listeners who 
don’
t know a lot about secular Jewish 
culture and we have secular listeners 
who don’
t know a lot about Jewish 
prayer or scripture, so we thought 
it would be fun to do a book with a 

Arts&Life

books

COURTESY OF DETROIT JCC

details
For specific information on the Detroit 
Jewish Book Fair and scheduled events, 
go to bookfair.jccdet.org. New this year, 
download the Whova event app and use 
the invitation code: bookfair. 

From Nov. 2-10, the 
Detroit Jewish Book
Fair offers something
for every reader.

