Added July 2022
The Last Watchman of Old Cairo
by Michael David Lukas
Online and In-Person Discussion led by Rabbi Barbara Symons
Wednesday, August 17 at 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Copies are available at the temple.
Online via www.templedavid.org/athome
From amazon.com: Joseph, a literature student at Berkeley, is the son of a Jewish mother and a Muslim father. One day, a mysterious package arrives on his doorstep, pulling him into a mesmerizing adventure to uncover the centuries-old history that binds the two sides of his family.
From the storied Ibn Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, where generations of his family served as watchmen, to the lives of British twin sisters Agnes and Margaret, who in 1897 leave Cambridge on a mission to rescue sacred texts that have begun to disappear from the synagogue, this tightly woven multigenerational tale illuminates the tensions that have torn communities apart and the unlikely forces that attempt to bridge that divide.
In this “wonderfully rich” novel from the author of the internationally bestselling The Oracle of Stamboul, a young man journeys from California to Cairo to unravel centuries-old family secrets.—San Francisco Chronicle
“A beautiful, richly textured novel, ambitious and delicately crafted, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo is both a coming-of-age story and a family history, a wide-ranging book about fathers and sons, religion, magic, love, and the essence of storytelling. This book is a joy.”—Rabih Alameddine, author of the National Book Award finalist An Unnecessary Woman.
“Brilliant.”—The Jerusalem Post
“Lyrical, compassionate and illuminating.”—BBC
WINNER OF: THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’S SOPHIE BRODY AWARD; THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD IN FICTION; THE SAMI ROHR PRIZE FOR JEWISH LITERATURE; Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the BBC; Longlisted for the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Fiction Prize; A Penguin Random House International One World, One Book Selection; Honorable Mention for the Middle East Book Award.
Also from amazon.com: About the author: Michael David Lukas has been a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, a night-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and a waiter at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Maryland, he is a recipient of scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Summer Writers’ Institute, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Elizabeth George Foundation. His writing has appeared in VQR, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and Georgia Review. He lives in Oakland, California, less than a mile from where he was born. When he’s not writing he teaches creative writing to third and fourth graders at Thornhill Elementary School.
Added April 2022
Another Very Special Book Discussion!
In Two-Parts—Sundays May 22 & 29 at 1 p.m.
Via www.templedavid.org/athome
Join us for a two-part book discussion with Israelis from our sister city Karmiel-Misgav. It will be about the book Last Bullet Calls It by Israeli author Amir Gutfreund, z’’l (translated by Yardenne Greenspan and Evan Fallenberg). The discussions, co-led by Rabbi Symons and an Israeli will be on Sundays May 22 and 29 at Noon via Zoom.
Temple David has copies of the book available to be borrowed. The best way to support Israel, of course, is to purchase the book and then share it.
From amazon.com: In this award-winning mystery by one of Israel’s best-loved authors, a plot of vengeance reveals deeper truths about the complexity of being human.
Coupon-clipping police superintendent Jonah Merlin thinks he has an open-and-shut case on his hands after the body of a beautiful woman is found discarded in a run-down building in Tel Aviv. All evidence points to two suspects, but finding them will require unorthodox methods to decode the cryptic words sprayed at every crime scene.
As the body count rises, graffiti expert Rai Zitrin and precocious seventeen-year-old Zoe Navon agree to help Merlin uncover the connection between the killing spree and the words of Polish writer Bruno Schulz, who was murdered by Nazis seventy years ago.
Why would a serial killer quote the famous author’s poetic words of unrequited love? The search leads this unlikely trio on a race against the clock to solve the case before the killer has the last laugh…and the last bullet.
Amir Gutfreund, z’’l, was born in Haifa in 1963. After studying applied mathematics at the Technion, he joined the Israeli Air Force, where he worked in the field of mathematical research. The author of five novels and a collection of short stories, he received the Buchman Prize from the Yad Vashem Institute in 2002, the Sapir Prize in 2003, the Sami Rohr Choice Award from the Jewish Book Council in 2007, and the Prime Minister’s Award in 2012. Last Bullet Calls It was awarded the 2015 Ramat-Gan Prize for Literature. Gutfreund lived with his family in the Galilee in northern Israel. In November 2015, at the age of fifty-two, he passed away after a brave battle with cancer.
Thank you to Partnership2Gether from the
Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh
for helping to arrange this.
https://jewishpgh.org/partnership2gether/
Book Discussion in Celebration of Pride Month:
What We Will Become: A Mother, a Son,
and a Journey of Transformation
by Mimi Lemay
Thursday, June 23 at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.
In-Person and Online
Online via www.templedavid.org/athome
(From amazon.com) A mother’s memoir of her transgender child’s odyssey, and her journey outside the boundaries of the faith and culture that shaped her.
From the age of two-and-a-half, Jacob, born “Em,” adamantly told his family he was a boy. While his mother Mimi struggled to understand and come to terms with the fact that her child may be transgender, she experienced a sense of déjà vu—the journey to uncover the source of her child’s inner turmoil unearthed ghosts from Mimi’s past and her own struggle to live an authentic life.
Mimi was raised in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family, every aspect of her life dictated by ancient rules and her role as a woman largely preordained from cradle to grave. As a young woman, Mimi wrestled with the demands of her faith and eventually made the painful decision to leave her religious community and the strict gender roles it upheld.
Having risen from the ashes of her former life, Mimi was prepared to help her son forge a new one — at a time when there was little consensus on how best to help young transgender children. Dual narratives of faith and motherhood weave together to form a heartfelt portrait of an unforgettable family. Brimming with love and courage, What We Will Become is a powerful testament to how painful events from the past can be redeemed to give us hope for the future.
Added February 2022
Social Justice Book Club
People Love Dead Jews:
Reports From A Haunted Present
by Dara Horn
Wednesday, April 13 at 7 p.m.
“A guided tour of the hypocrisy that serves as the mechanism by which antisemitism rages on unchecked.”—Kirkus
Finding herself increasingly asked to write about Jewish culture in the aftermath of deadly attacks, novelist Dara Horn uses this collection of essays to confront why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present.
For more information, contact Monroeville Librarian Cory Little at littlec2@einetwork.net.
The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh will be providing copies which will be available for borrowing from Temple David. Please contact the office at 412-372-1200 for availability and to set up a pick-up time.
Added December 2021
A Very Special Book Discussion!
In Two-Parts—Sundays February 20 & 27 at Noon
Join us for a two-part book discussion with Israelis from our sister city Karmiel-Misgav. It will be about the book More Than I Love My Life by Israeli author David Grossman (translated by Jessica Cohen). The discussions, co-led by Rabbi Symons and an Israeli will be on Sundays February 20 and 27 at Noon via Zoom.
To obtain the book: Temple David has a few copies and others are available by e-mailing our Monroeville Public Library librarian Pam Bodziock at bodziockp@einetwork.net, or by calling the library and asking for Pam. The best way to support Israel, of course, is to purchase the book and then share it.
Because we want to have a good discussion in which we can hear all voices, we are limiting participation, so please either let Rabbi Symons or Beverly know that you would like to join in. Remember: the commitment is for both sessions.
If there is a waiting list, we will do our best to include everyone or to create a second two-part series.
From amazon.com: More Than I Love My Life is the story of three strong women: Vera, age ninety; her daughter, Nina; and her granddaughter, Gili, who at thirty-nine is a filmmaker and a wary consumer of affection. A bitter secret divides each mother and daughter pair, though Gili—abandoned by Nina when she was just three—has always been close to her grandmother.
With Gili making the arrangements, they travel together to Goli Otok, a barren island off the coast of Croatia, where Vera was imprisoned and tortured for three years as a young wife after she refused to betray her husband and denounce him as an enemy of the people. This unlikely journey—filtered through the lens of Gili’s camera, as she seeks to make a film that might help explain her life—lays bare the intertwining of fear, love, and mercy, and the complex overlapping demands of romantic and parental passion.
More Than I Love My Life was inspired by the true story of one of David Grossman’s longtime confidantes, a woman who, in the early 1950s, was held on the notorious Goli Otok (“the Adriatic Alcatraz”). With flashbacks to the stalwart Vera protecting what was most precious on the wretched rock where she was held, and Grossman’s fearless examination of the human heart, this swift novel is a thrilling addition to the oeuvre of one of our greatest living novelists, whose revered moral voice continues to resonate around the world.
DAVID GROSSMAN was born in Jerusalem. He is the author of numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker and has been translated into more than forty languages. He is the recipient of many prizes, including the French Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Buxtehuder Bulle in Germany, and the Man Booker International Prize.
He lives in Jerusalem.
Thank you to Partnership2Gether from the
Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh
for helping to arrange this.
https://jewishpgh.org/partnership2gether/
Added November 2021
Online Discussions led by Rabbi Barbara Symons
Thursday, December 9 at 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Please visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the links
From amazon.com: A young bride shuts herself up in a bedroom on her wedding day, refusing to get married. In this moving and humorous look at contemporary Israel and the chaotic ups and downs of love everywhere, her family gathers outside the locked door, not knowing what to do. The bride’s mother has lost a younger daughter in unclear circumstances. Her grandmother is hard of hearing, yet seems to understand her better than anyone. A male cousin who likes to wear women’s clothes and jewelry clings to his grandmother like a little boy. The family tries an array of unusual tactics to ensure the wedding goes ahead, including calling in a psychologist specializing in brides who change their mind and a ladder truck from the Palestinian Authority electrical company. The only communication they receive from behind the door are scribbled notes, one of them a cryptic poem about a prodigal daughter returning home. The harder they try to reach the defiant woman, the more the despairing groom is convinced that her refusal should be respected. But what, exactly, ought to be respected? Is this merely a case of cold feet? A feminist statement? Or a mourning ritual for a lost sister? This provocative and highly entertaining novel lingers long after its final page.
About the author: Matalon was born in Ganei Tikva, Israel, in 1959 to a family of Egyptian-Jewish descent. She studied literature and philosophy at Tel Aviv University.
Matalon has worked as a journalist for Israel TV and for the daily Haaretz, covering Gaza and the West Bank during the First Intifada. She has also worked as a critic and book reviewer for Haaretz. At present, she is senior lecturer in Hebrew and comparative literature at Haifa University and teaches creative writing there as well as at the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem. Matalon is a member of the Forum for Mediterranean Culture at the Van Leer Institute. Two of her novels have been bestsellers in Israel, and her children’s story, A Story that Begins with a Snake’s Funeral, has been made into a movie.
Matalon has received the Prime Minister’s Prize (1994), the prestigious Bernstein Prize (2009), the Neuman Prize (2010), the Prix Alberto-Benveniste (France, 2013) for The Sound of Our Steps and the EMET prize (2016). In 2010, she received an Honorary Doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Added October 2021
Online and In-Person Discussion
led by Rabbi Barbara Symons
NEW DATE: Thursday, November 4 at 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Please visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the links
From amazon.com: An Amazon Best Book of February 2020: Colum McCann’s 2009 novel, Let the Great World Spin, was a kaleidoscopic tale of New Yorkers in the 1970s that became an instant bestseller, won a National Book Award, and was named an Amazon Best Book of the Year, among many other honors. Ten years later, he has pushed the limits of kaleidoscopic with Apeirogon. The definition of the title is a shape with a countably infinite number of sides, and the book lives up to its meaning. In Apeirogon, McCann unfurls the story of two fathers, one Palestinian and one Israeli, who have both lost their daughters to the violence that surrounds them. Over the course of the day, these two men’s lives intertwine as they attempt to use their grief as a weapon for peace. Told in one thousand and one short vignettes, McCann flashes from the present to the past, sharing the lives of these men, the lives of their daughters, the experience of crossing police checkpoints and surviving jail, meditations on the migration pattern of birds, the making of bullets, and the history of the region. With these bursts, the novel centers on the unlikely friendship of two fathers and takes on a cinematic quality that vibrates with empathy, presenting a sweeping portrait of the complex conflict at the heart of the Holy Land. Apeirogon is a soaring and revelatory reading experience that is at once intimate and vast, heartbreaking and hopeful, and, yes, kaleidoscopic.
—Al Woodworth, Amazon Book Review
About the author: Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic. Apeirogon, has been acclaimed as a “transformative novel” (Raja Shehadeh). A contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review, he teaches in the Hunter College MFA Creative Writing Program. He lives in New York City with his wife and their three children.
Online and In-Person Discussion
led by Rabbi Barbara Symons
Thursday, December 2 at 10 a.m. and Sunday, December 12 at 10 a.m.
Please visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the links
From amazon.com: Israel. The small strip of arid land is 5,700 miles away but remains a hot-button issue and a thorny topic of debate. But while everyone seems to have a strong opinion about Israel, how many people actually know the facts.
Offering a fresh, 360-degree view, Tishby brings her “passion, humor, and deep intimacy” (Yossi Klein Halevi, New York Times bestselling author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor) to the subject, creating an accessible and dynamic portrait of a tiny country of outsized relevance. Through bite-sized chunks of history and deeply personal stories, Tishby chronicles her homeland’s evolution, beginning in Biblical times and moving forward to cover everything from WWI to Israel’s creation to the disputes dividing the country today. Tackling popular misconceptions with an abundance of facts, Tishby provides critical context around headline-generating controversies and offers a clear, intimate account of the richly cultured country of Israel.
“In a funny, surprising, and straightforward voice, Noa Tishby rolls the entire history of Israel into a blunt and insightful read. The perfect anti-textbook for anyone who slept through class, this is not your Bubbie’s history book.”
—Bill Maher, host of Real Time with Bill Maher
About the author: Actress, producer, writer, and activist Noa Tishby was born and raised in Tel Aviv. She served two and a half years in the Israeli army before she landed a starring role on the nation’s highest-rated prime time drama Ramat Aviv Gimmel. She became a household name, appearing in numerous TV shows, films, theater productions, and national fashion campaigns, before moving to Los Angeles, where she sold the Israeli TV show In Treatment to HBO, making history as the first Israeli television show to become an American series. She coproduced over 150 episodes, which earned a Peabody Award and twelve Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. A passionate political activist, Tishby founded the nonprofit “Act for Israel,” Israel’s first online advocacy organization, and has become widely known as Israel’s unofficial ambassador.
Upcoming Book Discussion
Book Discussion in Two Parts: Thursdays, January 13 and 20, at 7:30 p.m.
Contested Utopia: Jewish Dreams and Israeli Realities
by Rabbi Marc J. Rosenstein
Added September 2021
Online and In-Person Discussion
led by Rabbi Barbara Symons
Wednesday, October 13 at 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Please visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the links
From amazon.com: An Amazon Best Book of February 2020: Colum McCann’s 2009 novel, Let the Great World Spin, was a kaleidoscopic tale of New Yorkers in the 1970s that became an instant bestseller, won a National Book Award, and was named an Amazon Best Book of the Year, among many other honors. Ten years later, he has pushed the limits of kaleidoscopic with Apeirogon. The definition of the title is a shape with a countably infinite number of sides, and the book lives up to its meaning. In Apeirogon, McCann unfurls the story of two fathers, one Palestinian and one Israeli, who have both lost their daughters to the violence that surrounds them. Over the course of the day, these two men’s lives intertwine as they attempt to use their grief as a weapon for peace. Told in one thousand and one short vignettes, McCann flashes from the present to the past, sharing the lives of these men, the lives of their daughters, the experience of crossing police checkpoints and surviving jail, meditations on the migration pattern of birds, the making of bullets, and the history of the region. With these bursts, the novel centers on the unlikely friendship of two fathers and takes on a cinematic quality that vibrates with empathy, presenting a sweeping portrait of the complex conflict at the heart of the Holy Land. Apeirogon is a soaring and revelatory reading experience that is at once intimate and vast, heartbreaking and hopeful, and, yes, kaleidoscopic.
—Al Woodworth, Amazon Book Review
About the author: Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic. Apeirogon, has been acclaimed as a “transformative novel” (Raja Shehadeh). A contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review, he teaches in the Hunter College MFA Creative Writing Program. He lives in New York City with his wife and their three children.
Added August 2021
Future Book Discussions
Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth
by Noa Tishby
Thursday, December 2 at 10 a.m. OR Sunday, December 12 at 10 a.m.
Book Discussion in Two Parts
Contested Utopia: Jewish Dreams and Israeli Realities
by Rabbi Marc J. Rosenstein
Thursdays, January 13 and 20, at 7:30 p.m.
Added July 2021
Please visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the links
“Horn does not hedge her bets, whipping up a Jewish telenovela of ancient-world drama and present-day complications. It’ll put you off immortality for good.”―Marion Winik, Newsday
From amazon.com: What would it really mean to live forever? Rachel is a woman with a problem: she can’t die. Her recent troubles―widowhood, a failing business, an unemployed middle-aged son―are only the latest in a litany spanning dozens of countries, scores of marriages, and hundreds of children. In the 2,000 years since she made a spiritual bargain to save the life of her first son back in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, she’s tried everything to free herself, and only one other person in the world understands: a man she once loved passionately, who has been stalking her through the centuries, convinced they belong together forever.
But as the twenty-first century begins and her children and grandchildren―consumed with immortality in their own ways, from the frontiers of digital currency to genetic engineering―develop new technologies that could change her fate and theirs, Rachel knows she must find a way out.
Gripping, hilarious, and profoundly moving, Eternal Life celebrates the bonds between generations, the power of faith, the purpose of death, and the reasons for being alive.
About the author: Dara Horn is the author of five novels and one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. She has taught Jewish literature at Harvard, Sarah Lawrence College, and Yeshiva University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and four children.
Added June 2021
Online (and IN-PERSON) Discussion led by Rabbi Barbara Symons
Thursday, July 15 at 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Please visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the links
Please call Monroeville Public Library to hold a copy (412-372-0500)
From amazon.com: In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.
Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
About the author: Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, is the author the critically acclaimed New York Times bestsellers The Warmth of Other Suns, and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.
Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for her work as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times in 1994, making her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer and the first African-American to win for individual reporting. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded her the National Humanities Medal for “championing the stories of an unsung history.”
Published May-June 2021
Online Discussion led by Mindy Norman
Wednesday, June 16 at 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Please visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the links
Books are available for pickup at Monroeville Public Library
(Call Pam at 412-372-0500)
“A rare blessing…a smart and witty novel…infused with delight.”—The Washington Post
“Satirical, inventive, and brimming with gallows humor, this novel’s whip-smart look at the clash of religious and secular worlds showcases Englander at his best.”—Esquire
“Ingenious.”—Houston Chronicle
From amazon.com: When his father dies, it falls to Larry—the secular son in a family of Orthodox Brooklyn Jews—to recite the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, every day for eleven months. But to the horror and dismay of his sister, Larry refuses, imperiling the fate of his father’s soul.
To appease her, he hires a stranger through a website called kaddish.com to say the prayer instead—a decision that will have profound, and very personal, repercussions. Irreverent, hilarious, and wholly irresistible, Nathan Englander’s tale of a son who makes a diabolical compromise brilliantly captures the tensions between tradition and modernity.
About the author: Nathan Englander is the author of the story collections What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank and the internationally bestselling story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, as well as the novel The Ministry of Special Cases (all published by Knopf/Vintage).
His short fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Washington Post, as well as The O. Henry Prize Stories and numerous editions of The Best American Short Stories.
Published April-May 2021
Online Discussion led by Rabbi Symons
Thursday, May 20 at 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Please visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the links
Books are available for pickup at the temple
(Mon., Wed., Fri. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.)
“A deeply human book, suffused with desire and melancholy.”—Jerusalem Post
“Nevo has created an engrossing work…This is a compelling novel which I never wanted to end.”—Julia Pascal/The Independent)
“The novel’s heartfelt bass note is the beauty and difficulty of human relationships, evoked with sympathy and an ear for the nuances of different voices which is as playful as it is precise.”—Times Literary Supplement
“A warm, wise and sophisticated novel. I read it with much pleasure.”—Amos Oz, author of A Tale of Love and Darkness
From amazon.com: Shifting characters and perspectives, this multilayered novel looks at the lives of a handful of neighbors in the small Israeli town of Mevasseret. It’s 1995 and Amir, a college student studying psychology in Tel Aviv, and Noa, a photography student attending classes in Jerusalem, move together into a small apartment. A passionate couple, they nonetheless find themselves struggling to adjust to their new life in the same room. Their landlords, Sima and Moshe, share the thin walls in the apartment next door, and their marriage is tested when they disagree on the religious upbringing of their two young children. A few houses away, a family is devastated over the death of their eldest son. The neglected brother, Yotam, finds solace in a budding friendship with the introspective Amir. And there is the mysterious Arab construction worker determined to return to his childhood home after being displaced along with the village’s other Arab inhabitants in 1948. Nevo’s characters are diverse, yet their desires, histories, and interactions blend seamlessly to create an engrossing portrait of a restless community.
—Leah Strauss/Booklist
About the author: Eshkol Nevo was born in Jerusalem in 1971 and spent his childhood years in Israel and Detroit. He teaches creative writing at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Tel Aviv University, Sapir College, and the Open University.
He has published a collection of short stories, a book of nonfiction, and two novels, both of which have been bestsellers in Israel.
Published February-March 2021
Online Discussion led by Rabbi Symons
Thursday, March 18 at 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Please visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the link
“I was blown away…The Lost Shtetl is a Jewish fantasy in the vein of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and Steve Stern’s Jewish magical realism novels. There are even echoes of Simon Rich’s New Yorker story, Sell Out, about a time-travelling Orthodox Jewish immigrant, soon to be the major motion picture An American Pickle starring, yes, Seth Rogen…The novel’s narrator, a kind of first-person collective, sounds both contemporary and folkloric, as if one of the great Yiddish writers had somehow survived, like Kreskol, to tell its story. The Lost Shtetl stands on its own.”—Jewish Week
From amazon.com: A remarkable debut novel—written with the fearless imagination of Michael Chabon and the piercing humor of Gary Shteyngart—about a small Jewish village in the Polish forest that is so secluded no one knows it exists…until now.
What if there was a town that history missed?
For decades, the tiny Jewish shtetl of Kreskol existed in happy isolation, virtually untouched and unchanged. Spared by the Holocaust and the Cold War, its residents enjoyed remarkable peace. It missed out on cars, and electricity, and the internet, and indoor plumbing. But when a marriage dispute spins out of control, the whole town comes crashing into the twenty-first century.
Pesha Lindauer, who has just suffered an ugly, acrimonious divorce, suddenly disappears. A day later, her husband goes after her, setting off a panic among the town elders. They send a woefully unprepared outcast named Yankel Lewinkopf out into the wider world to alert the Polish authorities.
Venturing beyond the remote safety of Kreskol, Yankel is confronted by the beauty and the ravages of the modern-day outside world–and his reception is met with a confusing mix of disbelief, condescension, and unexpected kindness. When the truth eventually surfaces, his story and the existence of Kreskol make headlines nationwide.
Returning Yankel to Kreskol, the Polish government plans to reintegrate the town that time forgot. Yet in doing so, the devious origins of its disappearance come to the light. And what has become of the mystery of Pesha and her former husband? Divided between those embracing change and those clinging to its old world ways, the people of Kreskol will have to find a way to come together…or risk their village disappearing for good.
About the author: Max Gross was born in New York City and graduated from Dartmouth College. He wrote from the Forward newspaper and the New York Post and is currently the editor of the Commercial Observer.
His first book was a memoir called From Schlub to Stud. He lives in New York with his wife and son. The Lost Shtetl is his first novel.
Published December 2020 – January 2021
Online Discussion led by Rabbi Symons
Thursday, January 14 at 10 a.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Please visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the link
“Rabinyan’s book is a sort of Romeo and Juliet, a forbidden love affair between a Jewish girl from Tel Aviv and a Palestinian boy from Hebron… [A] beautiful novel.”—The Guardian
From amazon.com: A controversial, award-winning story about the passionate but untenable affair between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man, from one of Israel’s most acclaimed novelists
When Liat meets Hilmi on a blustery autumn afternoon in Greenwich Village, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Charismatic and handsome, Hilmi is a talented young artist from Palestine. Liat, an aspiring translation student, plans to return to Israel the following summer. Despite knowing that their love can be only temporary, that it can exist only away from their conflicted homeland, Liat lets herself be enraptured by Hilmi: by his lively imagination, by his beautiful hands and wise eyes, by his sweetness and devotion.
Together they explore the city, sharing laughs and fantasies and pangs of homesickness. But the unfettered joy they awaken in each other cannot overcome the guilt Liat feels for hiding him from her family in Israel and her Jewish friends in New York. As her departure date looms and her love for Hilmi deepens, Liat must decide whether she is willing to risk alienating her family, her community, and her sense of self for the love of one man.
Banned from classrooms by Israel’s Ministry of Education, Dorit Rabinyan’s remarkable novel contains multitudes. A bold portrayal of the strains—and delights—of a forbidden relationship, All the Rivers (published in Israel as Borderlife) is a love story and a war story, a New York story and a Middle East story, an unflinching foray into the forces that bind us and divide us. “The land is the same land,” Hilmi reminds Liat. “In the end all the rivers flow into the same sea.”
About the author: Dorit Rabinyan is the bestselling author of the acclaimed Persian Brides and Strand of a Thousand Pearls. She is the recipient of the Itzhak Vinner Prize, the Prime Minister’s Prize, an ACUM award, and the Jewish Quarterly–Wingate Prize.
All the Rivers, originally published as Borderlife, was named as a book of the year by Haaretz and awarded the prestigious Bernstein Prize. In January 2016 it became the center of a political scandal in Israel when the Ministry of Education banned the book from the high school curriculum. All the Rivers has been translated into seventeen languages.
Published November and December 2020
Online Discussion led by Rabbi Symons
Thursday, December 17 at 10 a.m. AND 7:30 p.m.
Please visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the link
“Highly relatable…Nevaeh learns that identity is as beautiful as it is complicated, and readers will cheer her on as she gradually becomes empowered to stand up for herself and others.”–Jewish Book Council
From amazon.com: A powerful coming-of-age novel, pulled from personal experience, about the meaning of friendship, the joyful beginnings of romance, and the racism and religious intolerance that can both strain a family to the breaking point and strengthen its bonds.
Growing up in an affluent suburb of New York City, sixteen-year-old Nevaeh Levitz never thought much about her biracial roots. When her Black mom and Jewish dad split up, she relocates to her mom’s family home in Harlem and is forced to confront her identity for the first time.
Nevaeh wants to get to know her extended family, but because she inadvertently passes as white, her cousin thinks she’s too privileged, pampered, and selfish to relate to the injustices African Americans face on a daily basis. In the meantime, Nevaeh’s dad decides that she should have a belated bat mitzvah instead of a sweet sixteen, which guarantees social humiliation at her posh private school. But rather than take a stand, Nevaeh does what she’s always done when life gets complicated: she stays silent.
Only when Nevaeh stumbles upon a secret from her mom’s past, finds herself falling in love, and sees firsthand the prejudice her family faces does she begin to realize she has her own voice. And choices. Will she continue to let circumstances dictate her path? Or will she decide once for all who and where she is meant to be?
About the author: Natasha Díaz is a born and raised New Yorker, currently residing in Brooklyn with her tall husband. Natasha is both an author and screenwriter. Her scripts have placed as a quarterfinalist in the Austin Film Festival and a finalist for both the NALIP Diverse Women in Media Fellowship and the Sundance Episodic Story Lab. Her essays can be found in The Establishment and Huffington Post.
Published October 2020
ONLINE Discussion led by Rabbi Symons
Thursday, October 22 at 7 p.m.
Visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the link
“A sensitive and memorable coming-of-age story…Imagine Frank McCourt as a Jewish virgin, and you’ve got Unorthodox in a nutshell.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“A brave, riveting account…Unorthodox is harrowing, yet triumphant.”—Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle
“Compulsively readable, Unorthodox relates a unique coming-of-age story that manages to speak personally to anyone who has ever felt like an outsider in her own life.”—School Library Journal
“[Feldman’s] matter-of-fact style masks some penetrating insights.”—The New York Times
“Eloquent, appealing, and just emotional enough…No doubt girls all over Brooklyn are buying this book, hiding it under their mattresses, reading it after lights out—and contemplating, perhaps for the first time, their own escape.”—The Huffington Post
“Riveting…extraordinary.”—Marie Claire
From amazon.com: Unorthodox is the bestselling memoir of a young Jewish woman’s escape from a religious sect, in the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, featuring a new epilogue by the author.
As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read.
Yet in spite of her repressive upbringing, Deborah grew into an independent-minded young woman whose stolen moments reading about the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott helped her to imagine an alternative way of life among the skyscrapers of Manhattan.
Trapped as a teenager in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she barely knew, the tension between Deborah’s desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until she gave birth at nineteen and realized that, regardless of the obstacles, she would have to forge a path—for herself and her son—to happiness and freedom.
Published September and October 2020
Discussion led by Rabbi Symons
Thursdays, October 29 and November 5, 12, and 19,
at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.
ONLINE on Zoom
“One of the best one-volume introductions to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians”—The Atlantic
“A clarion call, not to arms but to empathy”—The Wall Street Journal
This is a must-read. And a must-discuss. We will discuss 1-2 chapters per session.
“I don’t believe that peace without at least some attempt at mutual understanding can endure.” So writes Yossi Klein Halevi, a wonderful Israeli author and my friend, in his new book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor.
From the Back Cover: “Lyrical and evocative, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor is one Israeli’s powerful attempt to reach beyond the wall that separates Israelis and Palestinians. In a series of letters, Yossi Klein Halevi endeavors to untangle the ideological and emotional knot that has defined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for nearly a century. Using history and personal experience as his guides, he unravels the complex strands of faith, pride, anger, and anguish he feels as a Jew living in Israel.
In an unprecedented effort to share both sides of this terrible struggle, this new edition includes an extensive Epilogue of Palestinian letters to Halevi. Some angry, some empathetic, but all respectful, these responses break open the conversation between Israelis and Palestinians, laying bare the heartfelt emotion on both sides and showing that peace may be possible if one is only willing to listen.
Speaking to all concerned global citizens, this provocative collection of letters from each side of the conflict models the kind of passionate, respectful discourse that is sorely missing in the world today, and helps us understand the painful choices confronting Israelis and Palestinians that will ultimately determine the fate of the region.”
About the Author (amazon.com): “Yossi Klein Halevi is an American-born writer who has lived in Jerusalem since 1982. He is a senior fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and the author of At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew’s Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land and Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation, which won the Jewish Book Council’s Everett Family Book of the Year Award for Best Jewish Book in 2013. Together with Imam Abdullah Antelpi of Duke University, he co-directs the Hartman Institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative. He and his wife, Sarah, have three children.”
Published July and August 2020
Discussion led by Rabbi Symons
ONLINE Thursday, August 13 at 7 p.m.
Written in 1945, Focus was Arthur Miller’s first novel and one of the first books to directly confront American anti-Semitism. It remains as chilling and incisive today as it was at the time of its controversial debut. As World War II draws to a close, anti-Semitism is alive and well in Brooklyn, New York. Here, Newman, an American of English descent, floats through a world of multiethnic neighborhoods indifferent to the racism around him. That is, until he begins to wear glasses that render him “Jewish” in the eyes of others, making him the target of anti-Semitic prosecution. As he and his wife find friendship and support from a Jewish immigrant, Newman slowly begins to understand the racial hatreds that surround him.
Arthur Miller (Oct. 17, 1915-Feb. 10, 2005) was born in New York City and studied at the University of Michigan. His plays include All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge and A Memory of Two Mondays (1955), After the Fall (1963), Incident at Vichy (1964), The Price (1968), The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), and The American Clock (1980). He has also written two novels, Focus (1945), and The Misfits, which was filmed in 1960, and the text for In Russia (1969), Chinese Encounters (1979), and In the Country (1977), three books of photographs by his wife, Inge Morath. More recent works include a memoir, Timebends (1987), and the plays The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993), Broken Glass (1993), which won the Olivier Award for Best Play of the London Season, and Mr. Peter’s Connections (1998). His latest book is On Politics and the Art of Acting (2001). Miller was granted with the 2001 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He has twice won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and in 1949 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. (from amazon.com)
Four-Part Book Discussion:
Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor
by Yossi Klein Halevi
Please save the dates:
Thursdays, 10/29, 11/5, 11/12, 11/19
at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.
“One of the best one-volume introductions to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians”—The Atlantic
“A clarion call, not to arms but to empathy”—The Wall Street Journal
This is a must-read. And a must-discuss.
We will discuss 1-2 chapters per session.
“I don’t believe that peace without at least some attempt at mutual understanding can endure.” So writes Yossi Klein Halevi, a wonderful Israeli author and my friend, in his new book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor.
Published June 2020
(revised for ONLINE programs)
Earlier instances have been removed
ONLINE with Rabbi Symons
Wednesday, June 10
at 7 p.m.
Visit www.templedavid.org/athome
for the Zoom link
For most Americans, the October 27, 2018 massacre at Tree of Life, the synagogue where author Bari Weiss became a bat mitzvah, came as a total shock. But anti- Semitism is the oldest hatred, commonplace across the Middle East, and on the rise for years in Europe. So that terrible morning in Pittsburgh raised a question Americans can no longer avoid: Could it happen here? How to Fight Anti-Semitism is Bari Weiss’s answer to that question.
ONLINE with Rabbi Symons
Wednesday, June 17
at 10 a.m.
Visit www.templedavid.org/athome
for the Zoom link
From www.amazon.com:
Rosellen Brown’s The Lake on Fire is an epic narrative that begins among 19th century Jewish immigrants on a failing Wisconsin farm. Dazzled by lore of the American dream, Chaya and her strange, brilliant, young brother Asher stow away to Chicago; what they discover there, however, is a Gilded Age as empty a façade as the beautiful Columbian Exposition luring thousands to Lake Michigan’s shore. An examination of family, love, and revolution, this profound tale resonates eerily with today’s current events and tumultuous social landscape.
Published May 2020
(revised for ONLINE programs)
Earlier instances have been removed
ONLINE on Thursday, May 7 at 10 a.m.
Visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the link
Rabbi Barbara Symons will lead this discussion of The World That We Knew
Please join us!
From www.amazon.com:
This instant New York Times bestseller and longlist recipient for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal takes place in 1941, during humanity’s darkest hour, and follows three unforgettable young women who must act with courage and love to survive.
In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it’s his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked.
ONLINE on Thursday, May 14 at 10 a.m.
Visit www.templedavid.org/athome for the link
Barbara Holst will lead this discussion of The Fortune Teller’s Kiss
This was originally planned for March; please join us!
From www.amazon.com:
“There was always the incantation: “Whoever wishes you harm, may harm come to them!” And just in case that didn’t work, there were garlic and cloves to repel the Evil Eye—or, better yet, the dried foreskin from a baby boy’s circumcision, ground to a fine powder. But whatever precautions Brenda Serotte was subjected to, they were not enough. Shortly before her eighth birthday, in the fall of 1954, she came down with polio—painfully singled out in a world already marked by differences. Her bout with the dreaded disease is at the heart of this poignant and heartbreakingly hilarious memoir of growing up a Sephardic Jew among Ashkenazi neighbors in the Bronx.
This was a world of belly dancers and fortune tellers, shelter drills and vast quantities of Mediterranean food; a world of staunchly joined and endlessly contrary aunts and uncles, all drawn here in loving, merciless detail. The Fortune Teller’s Kiss is a heartfelt tribute to a disappearing culture and a paean to the author’s truly quirky clan, especially her beloved champion, her father. It is also a deft and intimate cultural history of the Bronx fifty years ago and of its middle-class inhabitants, their attitudes toward contagious illness, womanly beauty, poverty, and belonging.”
Published March 2020
Book Review: The Haunted Smile
by Lawrence J. Epstein
Thursday, March 12 at 7 p.m.
Monroeville Public Library
Temple David member Skip Davis will review the book The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America, by Lawrence J. Epstein.
Skip is a stand-up comedian and will perform Jewish Humor from Woody Allen, Myron Cohen, Rodney Dangerfield, and many other Jewish Comedians.