Upcoming Programs

"America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story" with Bruce Feiler

Sunday, April 11, 2010
10:00 am

Rabbi Paul Cohen will discuss this groundbreaking book, in which New York Times bestselling author Bruce Feiler reveals how Moses became America’s true founding father. Traveling through touchstones in American history, Feiler traces the biblical prophet’s influence from the Mayflower through today. Feiler visits the island where the pilgrims spent their first Sabbath, climbs the bell tower where the Liberty Bell was inscribed with a quote from Moses, retraces the Underground Railroad where “Go Down, Moses” was the national anthem of slaves, and dons the robe Charlton Heston wore in The Ten Commandments.

* Please note the February 14 Reading Table program has been canceled.

Past Programs

2009/10

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Sunday, October 11, 2009
10:00 am

Rabbi Paul Cohen reviewed this riveting bestseller, which revolves around a tragic incident in the Holocaust - Vel d' Hiv' or Operation Spring Breeze. A special guest at the discussion was Helga Franks, one of the sole survivors of this horrendous event.

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She closed the door on the little white face, turned the key in the lock. Then she slipped the key into her pocket. The lock was hidden by a pivoting device shaped like a light switch. It was impossible to see the outline of the cupboard in the paneling of the wall. Yes, he’d be safe there. She was sure of it. The girl murmured his name and laid her palm flat on the wooden panel. “I’ll come back for you later. I promise.” - From Sarah’s Key

Paris. Spring 1942. The Vel’d’Hiv’ (Operation Spring Breeze). Tatiana de Rosnay’s novel Sarah’s Key revolves around this deplorable historic event. Operation Spring Breeze was a French-led “round-up”of more than 13,000 Parisian Jews (mostly women and children) under order of the Nazis. Initially kept in inhumane conditions at the Vélodrome d’Hiver (an indoor cycle track), these victims of the Holocaust were eventually moved to concentration camps inside France (where they were guarded by French gendarmes) and later moved to Auschwitz where they were slaughtered. The roundup accounted for more than a quarter of the 42,000 Jews sent from France to Auschwitz. The Vel’d’Hiv’has become of symbol of national shame in France.

De Rosnay has created a work of fiction which imagines a child caught in the round-up and how that one moment in history can have repercussions far into the future. Sarah is a ten year old girl who is awakened on the night of July 16, 1942 to French policemen pounding on her family’s door. In an attempt to save her four year old brother, she locks him in a closet –their secret hiding place –and promises to return later.

Julia Jarmond is an American married to a French man and living in Paris in 2002. A journalist, she is given the assignment to write about the Vel’d’Hiv’for the 60 year remembrance of this tragic event.

The novel alternates between Sarah’s POV after her arrest with that of present-day Julia as she begins to unravel not only the historical significance of the 1942 Jewish round-up, but discovers a connection to her own life.

De Rosnay writes with empathy and does not spare the reader any details of the horror which concentration camp victims faced.

Sarah’s Key is a riveting piece of literature which is hard to put down.

(Review from www.caribousmom.com)

 

2008/09

A Pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Winner of the 2007 National Jewish Book Award for fiction, A Pigeon and a Boy lyrically interweaves two love stories into a multi-layered whole that attests to the mesmerizing nature of storytelling.

The first tale, set before and during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, describes the love that binds two young pigeon-handlers who are secretly training pigeons for the Palmach (the fighting force of the Haganah, the unofficial army of the Jewish community of Palestine, 1941-1948)—a kibbutz boy turned soldier nicknamed “the Baby” and his great love, a girl from Tel Aviv. Having courted by sending private messages via the pigeons, the lovers continue to communicate this way during the war until, in the moments before his death, the boy dispatches his final pigeon with a secret message.

The second tale takes place in contemporary Israel. At its center is Yair Mendelsohn, an Israeli tour guide who specializes in tours for birders and is unhappily married to his domineering American-born wife, who also happens to be his boss. Tired of wife and job, middle-aged Yair is ready to abandon both when his dying mother gives him a substantial sum of money and the advice to find himself a home. "Lech, lecha, go forth from your land" (Genesis 12:1), she instructs metaphorically. Yair takes her advice, finding not only a home but the rekindled love of his childhood girlfriend, the contractor for his new home.

Shalev fills both tales with tenderness and humor, with passionate characters keenly observed and portrayed, with vivid portraits of pre-independence and modern Israeli society and with biblical allusions. The beauty and lasting impact of Shalev’s novel are the connections between the stories and the ideas he explores, keeping the reader in suspense about the nature of the connections. A Pigeon and a Boy is a “classical novel,” as Shalev describes his fiction—an enduring tale of the power and tenacity of love and one’s longing for home. From tales about homing pigeons and home building, readers reflect on the wholeness that comes with finding one’s home, one’s mate and one’s place in the world.

Betraying Spinoza by Rebecca Goldstein

Sunday, December 14, 2008
10:00 am

A breathtaking biography of the renegade Jewish philosopher who gave us the modern world. On July 27, 1656, Amsterdam's Jewish community declared Baruch Spinoza excommunicated, and, at the age of 23, he became the most famous heretic in Judaism. His "abominable heresies"? He denied the immortality of the soul and challenged the accepted belief that the Torah was literally given by God. His work remains as resonant and provocative today as it was when it first appeared.

In Betraying Spinoza, Rebecca Goldstein sets out to rediscover the flesh-and-blood man often buried beneath the veneer of rigorous rationality and to provide a comprehensive cultural and religious context for the formation of his ideas. Here is a Spinoza both hauntingly emblematic and deeply human, both heretic and hero—a surprisingly contemporary figure ripe for our own uncertain age.

The World to Come by Dara Horn

Sunday, March 22, 2009
10:00 am

A million-dollar painting by Marc Chagall is stolen from a museum during a singles' cocktail hour. The unlikely thief is Benjamin Ziskind, a lonely former child prodigy who writes questions for quiz shows and who is sure the painting used to hang on a wall of his parents' living room. As Ben tries to evade the police, he and his twin sister, Sara, seek out the truth of how the painting got to the museum, whether the "original" is actually a forgery, and whether Sara, an artist, can create a convincing forgery to take its place.

Eighty years prior, in the 1920's in Soviet Russia, Marc Chagall taught art to orphaned Jewish boys. There Chagall befriended the great Yiddish novelist known by the pseudonym "Der Nister," The Hidden One. And there, with the lives of these real artists, the story of the painting begins, carrying with it not only a hidden fable by the Hidden One but also the story of the Ziskind family -- from Russia to New Jersey and Vietnam.

Prize-winning author Dara Horn interweaves mystery, romance, folklore, theology, history, and scripture into a spellbinding modern tale. She brings us on a breathtaking collision course of past, present, and future -- revealing both the ordinariness and the beauty of "the world to come." Nestling stories within stories, this is a novel of remarkable clarity and deep inner meaning.

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2007/08

Rashi's Daughters by Maggie Anton

October 14, 2007

This work of historical fiction chronicles the lives and loves of Rashi's family in 11th century France, focusing on Rashi's three daughters - Joheved, Miriam and Rachel. Despite Rashi's fame as a great Jewish scholar and the many studies of his works in the generations succeeding him, little is know about his personal life. Set in the town of Troyes, Frances, this novel explores what his life might have been like over nine centuries ago.

The first volume in the trilogy focuses on Joheved. The eldest of Rashi's daughters, her mind and spirit are awakened by learning as her father teaches her and her sisters the intricacies of Mishna and Gemara. But she is forced to keep her passion for learning and prayer hidden even from her betrothed. Maggie Anton weaves her knowledge of history and Talmud with her rich imagination to create a captivating story of life, love and learning in an era when educating women in Jewish scholarship was unheard of. Learn more about Maggie Anton and Rashi's Daughters.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

February 10, 2008

The starting premise of this novels rests on a single fact: On the eve of World War II, President Roosevelt proposes resettling European Jewish refugees in the Alaskan territory. For 60 years, the refugees and their descendants have prospered in this safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust - a gritty, vibrant frontier that moves to the music of Yiddish. But that is about to end as the District is set to revert to Alaskan control.

Amidst this backdrop, homicide detective Meyer Landsman investigates the murder of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy. When the case is about to be dropped, Landsman finds himself struggling with the powerful forces of faith, hopefulness, evil and salvation. A gripping whodunit, love story and exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policement's Union is a tribute to the story-writing skills of this Pulitzer Prize winning novelist.

The Ministry of Special Cases by Nathan Englander

April 27, 2008

This long-awaited novel is a timeless tale of fathers and sons. From its unforgettable opening scene in a forgotten cemetery in Buenos Aires, The Ministry of Special Cases casts a powerful spell. In the heart of Argentina's Dirty War, Kaddish Poznan struggles with a son who won't accept him, strives for a wife who forever saves him and spends his nights protecting the good name of a community that denies his existence. When the nightmare of children who have disappeared brings the Poznan family to its knees, they are thrust into the Ministry of Special Cases as the refuge of last resort.

In a world turned upside down, one man fights to overcome his history and his name to make things right. Englander's wit, cosmic sense of the absurd and genius for balancing joyfulness and despair shine through. The Ministry of Special Cases is a celebration of our humanity - its weaknesses and hope.

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2005/06

As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg

December 11, 2005

This historical novel is set in Roman Palestine. The protagonist, Elisha ben Abuyah, a Talmudic rabbi in the first half of the second century, was excommunicated for heresy. Drawing on Talmudic and historical sources, Steinberg portrays the clash between Judaism and a modern, secular society. In the novel you will meet some of the great sages of the Talmud, watch them at work in the Sanhedrin, hear them dispensing legal decisions, become immersed in their arguments about theology and Torah, agonize with them on whether to cooperate with or rebel against an increasingly oppressive Rome, and visit the centers of learning in ancient Palestine.

A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz

February 19, 2006

“Though set mostly during the author's childhood in Jerusalem of the 1940s and '50s, the tale is epic in scope, following his ancestors back to Odessa and to Rovno in 19th-century Ukraine, and describing the anti-Semitism and Zionist passions that drove them with their families to Palestine in the early 1930s.…Oz's personal trajectory is set against the background of an embattled Palestine during World War II, the jubilation after the U.N. vote to partition Palestine and create a Jewish state, the violence and deprivations of Israel's war of independence and the months-long Arab siege of Jerusalem. This is a powerful, nimbly constructed saga of a man, a family and a nation forged in the crucible of a difficult, painful history.” (Excerpted from Publishers Weekly)

The Cubs and the Kabbalist: How a Kabbalah Master Helped the Chicago Cubs Win Their First World Series Since 1908 by Byron Sherwin

April 16, 2006

Jay Loeb is the protagonist of the book who, like its author, is a rabbi and professor married to an attorney who suffers from a life-long obsession with the Chicago Cubs. For her and her fellow fans, each spring is a season of hope, and each autumn a time of despair. To address this situation, Jay Loeb successfully accomplishes a task that has eluded the author. He uses his knowledge of the Kabbalah to help the Cubs win the World Series.