“The Workmen's Circle is my Jewish community because it allows me to express all the different aspects of my Jewish identity in one place. It’s where I act for change while being part of a larger, inter-generational community.”
Circle Book Group
The Circle Book Group reads both fiction and non-fiction, and meets monthly on Sunday mornings for collegial and provocative discussion. Book selections are chosen by participants at least one month in advance of meetings.
The Book Group is hosted in member homes near Inman Sq. in Cambridge. Bagels and coffee are provided (with a suggested $2 donation). Go to the calendar for the current book selection and upcoming meetings, or email Marie [mgariel@redpine.info] to get on the Book Group mailing list.
Next Meetings:
Sunday, February 26
BOOK: An island called home : returning to Jewish Cuba/ Ruth Behar. Rutgers University Press, c2007. The discussion will be followed by a 45-minute movie Adio Kerida (Goodbye Dear Love): A Film By Ruth Behar. Six copies of the book in the Minuteman Library Network and three copies at the BPL.
A professor at the University of Michigan, Behar seeks a better understanding of her roots and of the Jewish experience in her native Cuba. Traversing the island, Behar becomes a confidante to myriad Jewish strangers. Through one-on-one interviews and black-and-white images taken by her photographer, Humberto Mayol, she uncovers the diasporic thread that connects Cuban Jews. Familial stories of wandering beginning in the 1920s tell of displaced Polish and German Jews-escapees from anti-Semitism and Auschwitz-opening mom-and-pop shops in La Habana Vieja, becoming peddlers, replacing Yiddish with Spanish and settling into Latino life only to be uprooted within decades. An estimated 16,500 Jews lived in Cuba in the late 1950s, when a mass exodus to Miami and New York took place-a reaction to Castro's budding communist revolution. This diligent recounting and pictorial collage of interviews with adolescents, the aging, the impoverished and the political by Behar preserves in memory the people and places that make up Cuba's Jewish story. [Review from Publishers Weekly]
Sunday, March 25
BOOK: The Sacrifice of Isaac / Noah Gordon. Random House, c1995. There are many copies in the Minuteman Library Network and a few in the BPL.
For twenty-six-year-old Luke Benami, life has always been a study in absolutes: black and white, good and evil, truth and lies. A father hailed as a national hero, a pioneer in the birth of Israel. A brother scorned as an army deserter, a criminal on the run. But his father's sudden death will change everything Luke has ever known or believed...about his father, his history, his homeland. Searching for his estranged brother, Luke finds only Danni's lover in Paris and his business partner in Florence, both claiming to know nothing of his whereabouts. Danni has undertaken his own quest, into the heart of a dark secret that has long haunted the family. It will become Luke's quest too, taking them both into a dangerous world of moral ambiguity, desperate choices, and profound betrayal. Spellbinding and provocative,Sacrifice of Isaacis the stunning debut of a remarkable talent. [Summary from the Minuteman catalog]
April meeting - date and place to be decided
BOOK: The Cross and the Pear Tree : a Sephardic Journey / Victor Perera. Random House, c1995. There are 10 copies in the Minuteman Library Network and one “In-Library Use” copy at the BPL.
Past reading selections have included:
The adventures of Mottel: the cantor’s son by Sholem Aleichem.
My father's paradise : a son's search for his Jewish past in Kurdish Iraq by Ariel Sabar
The end of the Jews : a novel by Adam Mansbach.
The story of Yiddish : how a mish-mosh of languages saved the Jews by Neal Karlen.
Beyond the Pale : a novel by Elana Dykewomon (also known as Nachman/Dykewomon)
The Merchant of Venice: modern version side-by-side with full original text, edited and rendered into modern English by Alan Durband
Escape to Shanghai: a Jewish Community in China by James R. Ross
The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
Scoundrel Time by Lillian Hellman
Heading South, Looking North by Ariel Dorfman
The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers by Harry Bernstein
He, She and It by Marge Piercy
Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir by Carl Bernstein
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander
The Harlot by the Side of the Road by Jonathan Kirsch
Rashi’s Daughters, Book I: Joheved by Maggie Anton
The life of Glückel of Hameln, 1646-1724, written by herself / Translated from the original Yiddish
A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer
