Max Gross is an American writer, journalist, and editor. The Lost Shtetl is his first novel and established him as an imaginative new voice in contemporary Jewish fiction. He published it on October 13, 2020. It is the winner of the National Jewish Book Award and the Jewish Fiction Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries. Before becoming a novelist, he worked as a journalist, editor, and staff writer for the New York Post and The Forward, writing on politics, culture, and Jewish life. He later became Editor-in-Chief of the Commercial Observer, a publication covering commercial real estate and business.

His novel begins with a fascinating “what if?” question: What if a tiny Jewish village in Poland escaped the Holocaust because no one outside knew it existed? It contains 396 mind-opening pages, with 5 pages of Glossary that introduce readers to the meanings of non-English words.

The book is filled with currently relevant symbols. In Yiddish and Slavic languages, the village’s name Kreskol suggests “the edge,” “border,” or “fringe.” It mirrors Kreskol’s role as a town on the fringes of civilization, hidden deep within a dense Polish forest like a thick protective wall that completely conceals it from the modern world.

The village is called a shtetl, a Yiddish word meaning “little town.” It is a diminutive of the Yiddish word shtot, which means “city”. It refers to the small, vibrant historical towns with a large Jewish population that existed across Eastern Europe before the Nazis tragically destroyed them during the Holocaust.

The protagonist Yankel Lewinkopf’s name is also symbolic. It is the Yiddish diminutive of Jacob (Hebrew: Ya’akov), meaning “supplanter” and “one who follows at the heel.” In Jewish folklore, a “Yankel” often represents a simple, everyday everyman. Lewinkopf means “Lion’s Head” in Yiddish and German (Löwenkopf). The name reflects the book’s themes of hidden courage and the Jewish diaspora experience. At the start........

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