Book Club

 
Join us to discuss contemorary Jewish fiction. We'll gather around a table, share a meal, and have a rich and meaningful discussion. Our facilitators are Hannah Pressman and Jeremy Derfner.

Here are the dates and books for 2010:
 

Thurs. Jan. 21 - Valley of Strength, by Shulamit Lapid

This scenic, moving novel, set at the end of the 19th Century, follows the life-altering trials and experiences of a pioneer woman in pre-state Israel. Fania, a 16 year old survivor of a pogram in the Ukraine, arrives in Israel with her uncle, her deranged brother, and her unwanted baby a product of rape. She meets Yehiel, a 26 year old widower and father of two. Fania moves in with Yehiel and throws herself into the life of a peasant woman, trying to squeeze a living out of the stony ground despite hunger and disease. Wearing Arab robes, she breaks into the male-dominated world of commerce, politics, and even defense. -- Amazon.com product description

• The food will be either contemporary Israeli, or whatever the Russian pioneers in the book might have eaten (borscht! tea!)

Thurs. April 1 - All Other Nights, by Dara Horn

A Civil War spy page-turner meets an exploration of race and religion in 19th-century America in Horn's enthralling latest. Jacob Rappaport, the 19-year-old scion of a wealthy Jewish import-export family, flees home and enlists in the Union army to avoid an arranged marriage. When his superiors discover his unique connections, he is sent on espionage missions that reveal an American Jewish population divided by the Mason-Dixon line, but united by business, religious and family ties. After being sent to assassinate his uncle in New Orleans on Passover, Jacob's next assignment proves even more daunting: marry the feisty Confederate spy Eugenia Levy. What starts out as a dangerous game for both Jacob and Eugenia ends up being a genuine romance, fraught with the potential for peril, betrayal, tragedy and redemption. Horn propels the love story at a thriller's pace; the mix of love and loyalty played out in a divided America is sublime. -- Publishers Weekly

• The food will be a kosher for passover potluck, with bonus points for Southern-type cooking that goes with the book's Civil War theme.

Thurs. June 10 - My Father's Paradise, by Ariel Sabar

For his first 31 years Sabar considered his father, Yona, an embarrassing anachronism. Ours was a clash of civilizations, writ small. He was ancient Kurdistan. I was 1980s L.A. Yona was a UCLA professor whose passion was his native language, Aramaic. Ariel was an aspiring rock-and-roll drummer. The birth of Sabar's own son in 2002 was a turning point, prompting Sabar to try to understand his father on his own terms. Readers can only be grateful to him for unearthing the history of a family, a people and a very different image of Iraq. Sabar vividly depicts daily life in the remote village of Zahko, where Muslims, Jews and Christians banded together to ensure prosperity and survival, and in Israel (after the Jews' 1951 expulsion from Iraq), where Kurdish Jews were stereotyped as backward and simple. Sabar's career as an investigative reporter at the Baltimore Sun and elsewhere serves him well, particularly in his attempt to track down his father's oldest sister, who was kidnapped as an infant. Sabar offers something rare and precious—a tale of hope and continuity that can be passed on for generations. --Publisher's Weekly

• The food will be (you guessed it) Kurdish food.
   

Please buy the books for yourself, and start reading. Be sure to rsvp so we can get you the address. And if you love to cook and want to help with book club meals, we'd love your help - please let us know!