Book Club

The Book Circle will meet on Wednesday, Nov. 17, at 2 p.m., on Zoom, to discuss the selection of the month, A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg by Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper.

The Hasidic community in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn is famously one of the most separatist and intensely religious groups of people in our country. By showing how Williamsburg’s Hasidim rejected assimilation while still undergoing distinctive forms of Americanization, Deutsch and Casper present a provocative history of a sect of American Jewry and a look at how race, real estate and religion intersected in the creation of a quintessential and deeply misunderstood New York neighborhood.

The book circle meets monthly to explore works about Jews and by Jewish writers. For information, call the shul at 631-477-0232 and leave a message for Susan Rosenstreich, coordinator.

The Book Circle will meet on October 20, at 2 PM, to unveil the WWII saga of the German-Jewish commandos who fought in Britain’s most secretive special-forces unit. The commandos — actually Jewish refugees who have escaped to Britain — will stop at nothing to thwart the Nazis. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, this top secret unit becomes known as X Troop.

Author Leah Garrett follows this unique band of brothers to British internment camps, the beaches of Normandy, the battlefields of Italy and Holland, and to the Terezin concentration camp — the scene of one of the most dramatic yet untold rescues of the war.

The Book Circle meets monthly to explore works about Jews and by Jewish writers. For information, call the shul at 631-477-0232 and leave a message for Susan Rosenstreich, coordinator of the group.

The Book Circle will meet Wednesday, Sept. 22, at 1 p.m., possibly in person, to talk about Cynthia Ozick’s latest masterwork, Antiquities. From one of our most preeminent writers comes a tale that captures the shifting meanings of the past, and how our own experiences color those meanings. Meet Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie, who is preparing a memoir of his days at the now-defunct Temple Academy for Boys. As he navigates the past and the present, he reconstructs the passions of a childhood encounter. Cynthia Ozick is a recipient of the PEN/Nabokov Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for fiction, and is a National Book Critics Circle winner for criticism.

The Book Circle meets monthly to explore works about Jews and by Jewish writers. For information, call the shul at 631-477-0232 and leave a message for Susan Rosenstreich, coordinator of the group.