Jewish Book Club - South Street Temple

Interested in discussing books by and/or about Jewish people, events, or ideas? Join us for our every-other-month Sunday Book Club. Someone usually brings treats! This is not intended to be a women’s-only group; men are welcome.

The two subsequent dates and books are:

July 21 1:30 pm at Gere Library

Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger

Good Reads says:

Last Days of Summer is the story of Joey Margolis, neighborhood punching bag, growing up goofy and mostly fatherless in Brooklyn in the early 1940s. A boy looking for a hero, Joey decides to latch on to Charlie Banks, the all-star third basemen for the New York Giants. But Joey’s chosen champion doesn’t exactly welcome the extreme attention of a persistent young fan with an overactive imagination. Then again, this strange, needy kid might be exactly what Banks needs.

September 22, 1:30 pm at Gere Library

Spies of No Country by Matti Friedman

Good Reads says:

Award-winning writer Matti Friedman’s tale of Israel’s first spies has all the tropes of an espionage novel, including duplicity, betrayal, disguise, clandestine meetings, the bluff, and the double bluff–but it’s all true.

The four spies at the center of this story were part of a ragtag unit known as the Arab Section, conceived during World War II by British spies and Jewish militia leaders in Palestine. Intended to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage and assassinations, the unit consisted of Jews who were native to the Arab world and could thus easily assume Arab identities. In 1948, with Israel’s existence in the balance during the War of Independence, our spies went undercover in Beirut, where they spent the next two years operating out of a kiosk, collecting intelligence, and sending messages back to Israel via a radio whose antenna was disguised as a clothesline. While performing their dangerous work these men were often unsure to whom they were reporting, and sometimes even who they’d become. Of the dozen spies in the Arab Section at the war’s outbreak, five were caught and executed. But in the end the Arab Section would emerge, improbably, as the nucleus of the Mossad, Israel’s vaunted intelligence agency.

Some of the books we have discussed in the past few years are:

2018

Between Gods, Alison Pick
The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey: A Graphic Novel of Jewish Wisdom and Wit in the Wild West, Steve Sheinkin
Soviet Daughter: A Graphic Revolution, Julia Alekseyeva
Day After Night, Anita Diamant
The Girl From Human Street, Roger Cohen
Judas (1959 memoir) or other books by Amos Oz
My People, Laura French

2017

Norwegian By Night, Darrell Miller
Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books, Aaron Lansky
Marriage of Opposites, Alice Hoffman
A Thread Of Grace, Mary Doria Russell:
God Was in This Place and I, I Did Not Know, Lawrence Kusher
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon

2016

The Beast, Faye Kellerman
The Mathematician’s Shiva, Stuart Rojstaczer
Boston Girl. Anita Diamant
Love and Treasure, Ayelet Waldman
The Golem & the Jinni, Helene Wecker

2015

My Mother’s Shoes, Shirley Russak Wachtel
The Lawgiver, Herman Wouk
The List, Martin Fletcher
My Promised Land, Ari Shavit

2014

The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker
The Coffee Trader, David Liss T
The Fortune Tellers Kiss, Brenda Serotte
The Orientalist, Tom Reiss

2013

Heir the the Glimmering World, Cynthia Ozick
Clouds Against the Sun, Ellen Brazer (this one is best forgotten)
A Guide for the Perplexed, Dara Horn
The Girl from Foreign, Sadia Shepard
The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon

Before 2012

Peony, by Pearl Buck
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, Lucette Lagnado
The Dovekeepers, Alice Hoffman
The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
The Invisible Bridge, Julie Orringer
The World to Come, Dara Horn
In the Image, Dara Horn
The Hare With the Amber Eyes, Edmund DeWaal