Zibby interviews author Jessica Elisheva Emerson about OLIVE DAYS, a stunning, smoldering debut novel about a young mother in an Orthodox Jewish community of LA whose quest for authenticity erupts in a passionate affair following a night of wife-swapping. Jessica delves into her novel’s theme of duty vs. desire and her protagonist's struggle with faith, intimacy, identity, and a crumbling marriage. She also shares her deep research into Orthodox Jewish customs, her writing process, and how current events and rising antisemitism have impacted Jewish authors like herself.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Jessica. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Olive Day's congratulations. 

Jessica: Thank you. Congratulations to you. You debuted a novel this year. 

Zibby: Oh, thank you. Feels like old news. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Thank you so much. So tell listeners what your book is about, please.

Jessica: Right. So writ large, you could say it's about the, the sort of the struggle between duty and desire, but on a more specific level, it's about a young, youngish, modern Orthodox wife in the Pico Robertson neighborhood, a very Jewish neighborhood of Los Angeles, whose husband on page one, this is not a spoiler, asked her to do a night of wife swapping in the community and has his own reasons for asking.

And, and she does it. Okay. She, she does it of her own volition, although she struggles with it. And in the wake of this, she really can't recover what was already a crumbling marriage. And at the same time, she's struggling with her belief. She doesn't think she believes in God anymore, but she's still living this life sort of imbued with holiness.

And according to the kind of relentless Jewish calendar. And so in the wake of this, she, she has an affair first with an ultra Orthodox rabbi who she volunteers with. And then when she tries to return to her practice of art from college, she falls in love with her older art teacher from this community college.

And it's really their sort of sad story. They're both on a path of looking for identity and they're both on really different paths and it's, it's kind of their love story. 

Zibby: Wow. Um, well, I have to say, I haven't read such a clear, modern depiction of what it's like to be Orthodox today and things like how you'd go to spin class and details like putting the kippah on a pillow when you want to, when the husband wants to have relations at night and like all of these day to day things that I had not as a Jewish woman, I just didn't even know, hadn't heard about.

And I feel like I learned a lot. Tell me about all of those customs and, you know, putting all of that in alongside all of the holidays and the rituals and everything. It was really fount of knowledge in addition to a story. 

Jessica: So first of all, thanks for bringing up the Kipa thing because I think you bring up a great point, which for Rena, the main character in my book.

That even is a bit of a stereotype or a myth like that's one of the things that she's like, well you hear about that happening and and which is to say that everybody has their own Judaism, and everybody practices in a way that's most meaningful to them or where they came from or where their parents or grandparents came from.

And I really tried to show that. And I tried to a little bit also differentiate between things which people, um, live because it's halacha, because it's a law that was written, and because it's, or it's a minchag, a minchagim, or like customs that people have, have come to. And sometimes if you're an outsider or new to orthodoxy, you really can't tell the difference between one or the other.

And at the same time, I wanted to show what I feel is really a depth of beauty. In in orthodox life and what I think based on sort of being out in the world is a depth of beauty in many forms of an observant life that there's a real beauty there and and for some people a real struggle and for some people a tremendous amount of duty and burden to sort of execute.

This life. Um, and for my character, Rena, it feels very burdensome, burdensome, and I, I am not trying to say that that's endemic. A lot of my friends in the modern orthodox community live really happy and, and fulfilling lives, but like in any part of our world, some people don't, and that's what I was interested in as a writer.

That's the story I was interested in telling. So listen, I didn't grow up modern orthodox. I lived for a long time in modern orthodox neighborhoods. They were actually really vibrant neighborhoods in Los Angeles where I had all sorts of different neighbors. And I was thinking as I crafted this story, and now we live in a time where we have a steeple on TV and unorthodox was a big hit.

And there have been more recent windows into a more, even a karate, we would call it to a really deep, deep observance, but not a lot of windows into this world of modern orthodoxy. where people are going to work every day, um, outside of jobs like rabbis and scholars and teachers and living sort of a secular life in a, in an extremely pious way.

So I, I wanted to give a peek into that and I'm glad that you noticed or were delighted or surprised by some of the details of their lives. 

Zibby: Yeah, no, I totally appreciated it. And I was wondering as I read it, if that was your background or not, and if not, how you got such deep intel on it. Um, and I was also 

Jessica: Observation.

Zibby: No, amazing. It's also, I mean, for, I mean, people have different beliefs or misconceptions perhaps about what it means to be trans. orthodox or very religious or whatever and yet this book is like filled with sex. Like there is so much like, detail and steamy scenes that you might not think were going to follow if you just heard sort of a top line about.

You know, who it's about. And it's another sort of misconception. Like, just because of the way you're dressed or whatever does not mean that you don't have the same desire or anything like that. So speak to me about that and the, you know, sort of the dichotomy or misconceptions that are around. 

Jessica: As my husband likes to say, there are like a lot of boners in this book and like so many.

And in my writing, generally, I am really fascinated by, by desire and particularly women's desire. And I think a lot of women have been writing for a long time now about desire, but there will be such a long time before we can even begin to catch up to the amount of writing that has been done in this world about men's desire.

And so I'm fascinated by it. And I'm focused on it. And that's true for almost, really almost all of my characters. And I agree, people have a lot of sex, I hope, in all walks of life. I didn't get too deeply into it in my book, but you know, my assumption and talking to very observant friends of mine is that in fact, within a very religious marriage, it's extraordinarily holy and it's considered to be extraordinarily holy.

And it's very important that, that now in that context, it's husbands and wives. So that's obviously not true for all marriages or for all people. But in that context, very important that husbands and wives have a lot of intimacy. So I felt comfortable with that. But you know, I also write, you might notice a lot about food that food shows up in a lot of places.

And I think food and sex are two things that all human beings experience. You know, if they're not experiencing it every day, they're certainly thinking about it every day, and so it was, it was important to me, um, and usually when I come to a character that I want to write, and it took me a little bit to come to Rena, it's because I see an angle where I can explore that character's desire and what it means in their context in life.

Zibby: Interesting. Love that. So, All of Days refers to the camp where Rena worked and like summer days and all of that and the halcyon memories of that and blah, blah, blah. So, tell me about the title, why you chose to call it All of Days and, and even that part of her life and why bring it back? 

Jessica: Right. That part of her life, it makes me a little bit sad.

First of all, I'll say that was not my working title. And for, it took me 10 years to write this book and I'm writing my second book much faster. My three children were low. I have two in college and a little guy who just turned seven and, and my, my kids were much littler when I started writing and it took me incentivizing to sell one book to, you know, like get going on the next one.

So it wasn't my working title, but I did not care for my working title. It was super long. It was clunky. And so when I sold the book, I thought this is going to be great. My publishers are going to give me the title of my dreams. And my publishers very wisely were like, what do you think it should be called?

And I said, no, why don't you just tell me what you think it should be called? And they said, well, why don't you think of a list and we'll think of a list? Because we think it's important that an author have input here, which is a generous and amazing way for them to approach it. Um, I love the team at counterpoint and, uh, All of Days was on both lists.

And so that seems like a winner. And, and I think what both, um, my editor and I were thinking of was this sense that there's a, there's a real nostalgia in Rena. And it's a little bit unclear. I think to her, I think to the reader, if it's for something that was real or if it's just for a life that she's not living.

And so what she has to hold on to are these days before she had so much responsibility days when eventually her body starts to awaken in this orchard that she goes to on Shabbat afternoons at her camp and lays in these olives. She doesn't, I don't, I'm not, I'm not clear. She really wants to be a child again with no responsibilities or if what she really just wants is a different life.

And sometimes when she thinks about it, she thinks about herself being alone in this orchard, but sometimes when she thinks about it, she thinks, ah, and there was that boy at camp and what if I'd married him, then my life would be different. And I thought it was important to get to the crux of her also Rena marks time and I don't think that's unique to somebody who's living a particularly Jewish life because we have so many things to think about Shabbat, thank goodness comes every week.

And then we have this very full calendar of other holidays and festivals. And so she marks time. This is how she processes time after the wife swap. How many Shabbats has it been? She felt traded. And she processes time, uh, generally, and so it didn't, you know, as I was writing her, it seemed like she would place herself somewhere in time specifically, as she felt nostalgic or regretful, but anyway, that's where it comes from.

And then olives become important to her in other ways. She sort of makes them important in her life. She notices them at the college campus that she goes to, and that leads to a formative experience, and she, Tell sort of a weird story about olives to this man, Will, just that she's sort of starting to fall into an obsessive love with him.

So she makes it a through thread of her own life. 

Zibby: So 10 years to write this book, where, tell me about that. Where did the idea originally come from? And just in the context of your life in general, what kept bringing you back to it? What piece of it was like, I have to get this out? 

Jessica: Yeah, so, so I was living in Pico Robertson in the Pico Robertson neighborhood with my very young children and, and my ex husband and not long after we moved in, like within, I want to say days, maybe it was a week, a friend of ours, a young, an unmarried friend, um, so this wasn't his story, told me a story of a sort of like a tea party that had happened that he heard about, and I'm a writer, so I was like, go on.

And I didn't know, I didn't know what the story would be. I just really wanted to know more. And so I, I sort of asked around and I ended up taking a couple of people out for coffees or lunches and hearing the story. I never heard a story first person. I heard some stories with amazing detail, but I never heard it was always like my cousin or my neighbor.

And I didn't know what to do with it. And for a while I was writing a story that was sort of a love triangle, like a woman and her husband and this other man from a key party. And it really felt flat. It was not an interesting story. And, and eventually I sort of settled in on the, on the story and Rena, the character that you see in the book.

But, but it took a while and part of it was, I was really struggling. Cause I didn't want to put a story out into the world that seemed to say, I think it's endemic to a community that there's this practice happening. And it didn't want to put out a story into the world. That said, and I'm judgy of this practice because I'm not, I think that consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want in their lives and in their bedrooms.

But as the years went on, it was also a time when polyamory and non monogamy were rising in the cultural conscientiousness and I was curious, I think for a lot of people it might be, uh, a method that works well for them, I, I, but I was curious about for a character for whom it did not work well, and, and who could not sort of recover, or who felt something was lost, I don't know that Rena recognizes this, but as, as the author, and I think audiences will recognize that her marriage was in trouble before this night, this night was meant to be a band aid, and it's not actually the night of wife swapping that sort of torpedoes marriage.

But that's what I was thinking of. And then to get the angle in, there's also a joke in my family that I love to write about adultery. I have several stories that are about adultery, but I actually think for adult women, sometimes that is, that is sort of a moment in their lives when desire is reawakened or they're allowed to reexamine their desire.

And in the case of Rena, I really felt like adultery had been done to her in a certain way. One of her big struggles is that her husband's like, it's not adultery. We all agreed and came here together. And she really feels like it is. And so, so that was some of my process in, in getting to the story.

And then it just took me a really long time to write and I wrote a lot of it. So I'm, I'm remarried and I have been for a long time and my, and my second husband and Zibby, I don't know if you're familiar with this at all, it's quite a bit younger than I am and not, not quite a bit. Other people like to say quite a bit, he's like, uh, seven, six or seven years younger than I am, and he's been in my kids life for a long time since they were quite young, and they had this stepfather, but we had these these weekends when they were with my ex husband, and oftentimes on those weekends, we would drive up the coast, take out a tiny motel room in this little coastal town that we love, and I would write for three days straight or then edit for three days straight.

And that's when a lot of the book happened when my kids were little in really intensive three day burst. I would work on it here and there in between, but I was working full time. I love to cook. So I'm also making dinner every night. And so a lot of it was done. I would just like wake up, take a walk on the beach, write all day, you know, eat some peanut butter on a spoon and write all night.

And that's how a lot of it got done. 

Zibby: You're, I think, one of the only people I've met who has the same thing exactly as me. Having remarried a man six years younger, who was part of my kids lives from a very young age, and on those weekends, I get so much, I get so much stuff done. It's like amazing. 

Jessica: It was amazing.

So I have now, my husband and I also have a seven year old together, and so I really actually have had to find a different rhythm, and that's, there's also been a lot of beauty in that. But I do, I do have some wistfulness over those sort of very intensive bursts of work. 

Zibby: Wow. Well, now sort of some of the musings about divorce and all that in the book make even more sense.

Everything is clarified. 

Jessica: I will say, and if you read the acknowledgements, which I know you don't have to, but I, I like, I name check my ex husband who's been a co parent with us for all of these years and who has never been anything but supportive of my writing. And I think that that's also really marvelous.

You know, uh, when we talk to each other and we talk to each other, it used to be every day because we had to, and now my two big kids are in college and it's less often. And every time we check in, you know, he first asked how the progress is going with the book. And I, and I think that that's really lovely.

And of course, if you've been through a divorce, you're able to access. You're able to access thoughts and feelings about divorce. 

Zibby: Right. Did he get remarried? Not that it's any of my business. 

Jessica: He's not remarried right now, but he is in a long term relationship. 

Zibby: Gotcha. Awesome. How do you feel with the book coming out in the context of the larger world and all of the, you know, blacklisting of Jewish authors and some of the book tours being canceled?

Have you experienced sort of antisemitism related to this book yet? I know. 

Jessica: Yeah. 

Zibby: Tell me about that. 

Jessica: So it weighs really heavily on me and I don't also want to like claim an experience that's not mine. And look, it's all speculation, but I do feel like there was some interest in some excitement around opting in the rights that sort of disappeared after October 7th.

There was also a strike, so I don't want to attribute it, you know, to only only one thing. And I feel, you know, you can't really make a living. Very few people can make a living writing fiction. Some really big bestsellers can and that's amazing. And that is a chance really for somebody to make money to make a little bit of money.

And that's not the only reason you would want to see your work options. But it makes me sad. And there's nothing to say that I was on the fence, verge of selling it, but I feel that, listen, the Gabrielle Devins thing, uh, has really, um, hit me hard in the, in the last couple of weeks since it happened, which is she was sort of, her book Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow was taken out of rotation pretty publicly at a, at a bookstore.

And so, and so it worries me and I'm not a stranger to it. I'm a Jewish communal professional in my day to day life. And so, professionally, I also think about, uh, anti Semitism a lot. It's, it's one of my roles. I used to be the executive director of a Hillel on a campus, and when you're on a campus, you can't not think about anti Semitism.

And in my current job, I think about anti Semitism. So, it's on my mind. It's also on my mind that not all Jews will love my book. But that I've been sort of comfortable with. For a long time. My main assumption is that people have better things to think about than what one lady wrote in a book and people are entitled to their, to their own lived experience.

And I don't speak for anybody. So I assume there will be people mad at me in many different ways when the book comes out. And, and I assume that broadly Nobody even cares that I wrote a book, right? Like, like, like I'm not the center of anybody's universe except my own. But I worry about it. I worry for all Jewish writers, and I'm in a lot of Jewish writing groups online, and I think that broadly in America, Jews have had a lot of privilege.

Jews publish, have been able to publish widely. It's been sort of a golden age for Jews in America writ large, and, and things really feel like they've changed. So I guess right now I'm more in a moment of anticipation and nervousness, but I do before I fall asleep at night, I'm like, am I going to be on list or are people not going to buy my book?

You know, and then in moments you think and then should I leverage that with the Jewish community and that doesn't feel good either. You don't want to tell Jews buy my book because they're being mean to me. You want people to buy your book because they're readers and they're interested in stories and they're building empathy.

So I think about it a lot and I guess we'll see what happens. I will say that the book is coming out. I'm sure everybody's book comes out in its own and imperiled time, but You know, like people, people have other stuff on their mind in this country. There's like a sort of contentious election happening, you know, there's still a war happening in Israel, Gaza, and it's actually the last and, and with the North now with Hezbollah.

So a lot happening in the world as my book comes out and selfishly, of course, I think every day, like, where will my book land? 

Zibby: Yeah. Well, how can you not? Well, having been sort of through all of that, I feel like maybe, I mean, who knows, maybe it's better now because there's so much awareness of this like it's not a shock.

So unlike people where it was just starting to happen to Jewish authors I feel like now at least it's been covered by all the major outlets and it's a thing at least anyway But letting that go. 

Jessica: And a lot of Jewish particularly women worked really hard to make sure That attention was being called to it and I'm very you know I'm very grateful to them because you have to bring it out of the shadows 

Zibby: So tell me about this second book that you're whipping out.

Jessica: I was whipping it out until you have to start writing, I'm sure, I mean, you know, you know, until you have to start writing essays about the book, like you wrote a book and then they're like, you want to write some more stuff, but I'm working on it. It's also set in Los Angeles and I know your debut novel was set, I think at least in part in Los Angeles.

Zibby: Yeah. 

Jessica: It's also set in Los Angeles, which is not where I live now. I, towards the end of like COVID quarantine, I moved home to Tucson, Arizona, my hometown. And it's that, and it's about an aging Jewish folk singer, but like megastar folk singer, you know, somebody who's everybody knows their name who has decided he's 70.

He's not so old and decided to self immolate for climate change. This is like a plan that he makes and nobody in his life knows about it. One employee and he makes the planning. He starts to put it into place and he's not delusional, right? He doesn't think he's going to, Change the world. He just he's he can't stop thinking about it.

And he thinks maybe some kids will see this on TV and grow up to be the scientists that makes the difference. And so he put these plans into place. And then he meets a neighbor just sort of out walking in his Hancock Park neighborhood. He meets this this 51 year old woman. Who herself is a climate change activist.

She works on water programs worldwide and they fall in love really quickly. Obsessive love. It won't surprise you that it's an awesome story about obsessive love and and they they get married. They both have grown children. They fall in love quickly. They get married. They have an extremely like burning blue relationship. And, and it's about what happens between these two people. She, he doesn't tell her his plan right away. She sort of uncovers it. And then, and then the dynamics between these two people and his worldview and his plan for his life and how it was upended by love. 

Zibby: Sounds great. Is the, is the title coming more easily to you this time?

Jessica: I'm calling it Blaze. 

Zibby: Blaze. Ooh, I like it. That's cool. 

Jessica: Thanks. Thank you. We'll see, you know, we'll see if that sticks. 

Zibby: Amazing. So what advice do you have for aspiring authors? 

Jessica: I don't think I have anything that's so creative. I think most people would say, you know, if you want to be a writer, you have to write.

I think there's a certain amount of persistence in it, too. You have to be a person who's willing to sit down and, you know, make lists of agents and send out queries in small batches and revise your work, right? You have to be willing to revise your work. I think work becomes great in the editing, but that's something you have to be comfortable with.

And then you have to be comfortable with sometimes a short and sometimes a long process as your agent that you worked so hard to get. Takes your story out to sell it. And then you have to be willing to work on all aspects of the book. So I think there is a certain amount of perseverance on the path to getting published, but begin with, you just have to write.

My main perspective is that write in a way that works for you. You know, I wrote in three day bursts because I had little children. Some people write early in the morning, some people write late at night. I think all of that is fine. And, and, and I think that you can get sort of stuck actually reading about other writers methodologies or the way that other famous artists create, and I think each person should create according to, you know, their capacity and their time.

And, and I think that writers should be reading a lot. I don't actually read during all parts of my process. There are times when I'm writing a first draft, I usually read very, very lightly. Otherwise, you know, I'm just like, I just read Northwoods recently and it blew my mind. It was so, so good. But I chose to read it while I'm writing a first draft and I was like, Oh, now I'm just going to want to sound like this brilliant, brilliant book.

And I have to be careful with that. But outside of a first draft process, I would say writers should be reading. Really widely and also maybe not sneezing at things that aren't up their alley. I read a lot of literary fiction, a lot, but when things are in the zeitgeist, I try to read them. I don't really gravitate towards romance, although there are many boners in my book, but I pick up a book every once in a while because a lot of people are reading romance and I would like to know what that experience is and what it means.

And so I would say read widely and read outside of your genre. 

Zibby: Amazing. Anything you just finished that you loved? 

Jessica: Well, Northwoods. I mean, I like I can't stop talking about that book. It blew my mind what I and I also feel like I have a book that I'm about to read that I want to talk about. So Lauren Roth's Matrix was a breathtaking book.

I've I've recommended that book to so many people and she and she put out a new book last year. And because I'm not reading heavily while I draft, I haven't read it yet, but every day I look at my shelf and I have a very big TBR pile at all times. I buy a lot more books than I can read, but I'm looking at this Lauren Groff book and I'm thinking I'm going to love that book.

Zibby: It's a good feeling though. Right? Like all of that is just waiting. Anytime I want to dip in. Amazing. 

Jessica: It's amazing. I like to be surrounded by books. 

Zibby: Jessica, thank you so much. Thanks for coming on and congratulations on your book. I'll be reading for you. 

Jessica: You're welcome. Thank you so much. It was really nice to meet you, Zibby.