"What makes a bookstore Jewish?" asked Hadassah magazine in a feature headlined "America's distinctive Jewish-Owned bookstores."
"Is it the pickles sold at Sweet Pickle Bookshop, on Manhattan's Lower East Side, or the bat mitzvah photos that decorate the store's walls?" Hadassah continued. "Is it the ease of stumbling upon a compelling read like The Last Kings of Shanghai, Jonathan Kaufman's history of rivaling Persian Jewish families in China, which is a hit in the Judaica section of The Bookshop & Get Lit Wine Bar in Lenox, Mass.?
"There are probably as many answers as there are Jewish-owned bookstores--themselves an unquantifiable subset of the approximately 2,500 independent bookstores in America. While many of these shops aren't explicitly Jewish, their proprietors often connect their Jewish values with the bookseller's mission of creating community around literature and ideas."