TBE-W Book Club
Temple Beth El Book Club is congregant run and focuses on books by Jews, books about Jews, or books likely to be of interest to Jews – either in general, or with special reference to a Jewishly diverse congregation in Williamsburg. Each month, the member of book club who recommended the book will lead a discussion in the social hall at the synagogue.
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For more information, please contact the office.
01
January 11
Heart of a Stranger
by Rabbi Angela Buchdahl
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The story of the first ordained Asian American rabbi, Rabbi Buchdahl describes her upbringing as a biracial Jewish kid in an interfaith family, and how that has guided and impacted her path to being the lead rabbi at Central Synagogue in NYC, the one of the largest congregations in the world.
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Angela Buchdahl has gone from outsider to officiant, from feeling estranged to feeling embraced—and she's emerged with a deep conviction that we are all bound to a larger whole and mission. She has written a book that is both memoir and spiritual guide for everyday living, which is exactly what so many of us crave right now.
02
February 22
As a Jew
by Sarah Hurwitz
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An urgent exploration of how antisemitism has shaped Jewish identity and how Jews can reclaim their tradition, by the celebrated White House speechwriter and author of the critically acclaimed Here All Along.
At thirty-six, Sarah Hurwitz was a typical lapsed Jew. On a whim, she attended an introduction to Judaism class and was astonished by what she discovered: thousands of years of wisdom from her ancestors about what it means to be human. That class sparked a journey of discovery that transformed her life.
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In As a Jew, Hurwitz documents her quest to take back her Jewish identity, how she stripped away the layers of antisemitic lies that made her recoil from her own birthright and unearthed the treasures of Jewish tradition. With antisemitism raging worldwide, Hurwitz’s defiant account of reclaiming the Jewish story and learning to live as a Jew, without apology, has never been timelier or more necessary.
03
March 8
The Human Scale
by Lawrence Wright
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Tony Malik, a half-Irish, half-Arab FBI agent based in New York, specializes in tracking money from drug and arms deals. His life takes a dramatic turn when a long-term relationship ends and his job hangs in the balance. Amid personal turmoil, Malik becomes intrigued by his Palestinian father's past. He decides to visit his ancestral homeland for his niece's wedding, accepting a seemingly simple FBI assignment along the way.
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Upon arrival in the West Bank, Malik's world is upended when the Israeli police chief is murdered. Initially a suspect, Malik's investigative prowess soon earns him a place in the Israeli investigation. At the heart of the story is Malik's complex relationship with Yossi, the hardline anti-Arab Israeli police officer leading the case. They must learn to trust each other because, as they move closer to solving the case, they realize there is no one else they can trust on either side.
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More than a thriller, Wright's novel explores the complex history between Israel and Palestine, revealing the tragic human scale of this long-standing conflict and offering a nuanced perspective on a tragedy that continues to shape the region and the world.
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04
April 12
My Jewish Year
by Abigail Pogrebin
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The much-dissected Pew Research Center study of 2013, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” revealed that most U.S. Jews locate their Jewishness in their ancestry and culture―not in religion. Abigail Pogrebin wondered if perhaps that’s because we haven’t all looked at religion closely enough.
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Although she grew up following some holiday rituals, Pogrebin realized how little she knew about their foundational purpose and current relevance. She wanted to understand what had kept these holidays alive and vibrant, in some cases for thousands of years. Her curiosity led her to embark on an entire year of intensive research, observation, and writing about the milestones on the Jewish calendar.
My Jewish Year travels through this calendar’s signposts with candor, humor, and a trove of information, capturing the arc of Jewish observance through the eyes of a relatable, wandering―and wondering―Jew. The chapters are interspersed with brief reflections from prominent rabbis and Jewish thinkers.
05
May 17
Resurrecting Hebrew
by Ilan Stavans
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Here is the stirring story of how Hebrew was rescued from the fate of a dead language to become the living tongue of a modern nation. Ilan Stavans’s quest begins with a dream featuring a beautiful woman speaking an unknown language. When the language turns out to be Hebrew, a friend diagnoses “language withdrawal,” and Stavans sets out in search of his own forgotten Hebrew as well as the man who helped revive the language at the end of the nineteenth century, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda.
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The search for Ben-Yehuda, who raised his eldest son in linguistic isolation–not even allowing him to hear the songs of birds–so that he would be “the first Hebrew-speaking child,” becomes a journey full of paradox. It was Orthodox anti-Zionists who had Ben-Yehuda arrested for sedition, and, although Ben-Yehuda was devoted to Jewish life in Palestine, it was in Manhattan that he worked on his great dictionary of the Hebrew language.
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The resurrection of Hebrew raises urgent questions about the role language plays in Jewish survival, questions that lead Stavans not merely into the roots of modern Hebrew but into the origins of Israel itself. All the tensions between the Diaspora and the idea of a promised land pulse beneath the surface of Stavans’s story, which is a fascinating biography as well as a moving personal journey.
06
June 14
The Bible Unearthed
by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman
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In this iconoclastic and provocative work, leading scholars Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman draw on recent archaeological research to present a dramatically revised portrait of ancient Israel and its neighbors. They argue that crucial evidence (or a telling lack of evidence) at digs in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon suggests that many of the most famous stories in the Bible—the wanderings of the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, the legacy of Moses, Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, and David and Solomon’s vast empire—reflect the world of the later authors rather than actual historical facts.
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Challenging the fundamentalist readings of the scriptures and marshaling the latest archaeological evidence to support its new vision of ancient Israel, The Bible Unearthed offers a fascinating and controversial perspective on biblical scholarship, including when and why the Bible was written and why it possesses such great spiritual and emotional power today.
07
July 12
Our America
by Claudio Lomnitz
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In Nuestra América, eminent anthropologist and historian Claudio Lomnitz traces his grandparents’ exile from Eastern Europe to South America. At the same time, the book is a pretext to explain and analyze the worldview, culture, and spirit of countries such as Peru, Colombia, and Chile, from the perspective of educated Jewish emigrants imbued with the hope and determination typical of those who escaped Europe in the 1920s.
Lomnitz’s grandparents, who were both trained to defy ghetto life with the pioneering spirit of the early Zionist movement, became intensely involved in the Peruvian leftist intellectual milieu and its practice of connecting Peru’s indigenous past to an emancipatory internationalism that included Jewish culture and thought. After being thrown into prison supposedly for their socialist leanings, Lomnitz’s grandparents were exiled to Colombia, where they were subject to its scandals, its class system, its political life. Through this lens, Lomnitz explores the almost negligible attention and esteem that South America holds in US public opinion. The story then continues to Chile during World War II, Israel in the 1950s, and finally to Claudio’s youth, living with his parents in Berkeley, California, and Mexico City.
08
August 9
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
by Michael Chabon
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A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. From the shared fears, dreams, and desires of two teenage boys, they spin comic book tales of the heroic, fascist-fighting Escapist and the beautiful, mysterious Luna Moth, otherworldly mistress of the night. Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink.
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Spanning continents and eras, this superb book by one of America’s finest writers remains one of the defining novels of our modern American age.
09
September TBD
Description coming soon​
10
October TBD
Description coming soon​
11
November TBD
Description coming soon​
12
December TBD
Description coming soon​