Book Club

The Book Circle will meet on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, at 3:30 p.m., on Zoom to discuss Jean Strouse’s A Family Romance.

          The story captures the drama, mystery and intrigue surrounding John Singer Sargent’s 12 portraits of the Wertheimer family. Asher Wertheimer, an eminent London art dealer bequeathed the portraits to the National Gallery in London, a controversial gift that would see a family of Jews appearing alongside the Anglo-Saxon aristocrats painted by earlier masters.

For more information about the Book Circle and its selection, email ctigreenport.org and leave a message for Susan Rosenstreich, coordinator of the group.

The Book Circle will meet on Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 3 p.m., in the shul’s community room to discuss Joshua Cohen’s novel, The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family.

          In this story, Ruben Blum is co-opted onto a college’s hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar. Benzion Netanyahu shows up. The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive comedy that blends identity with politics, mixing fiction with nonfiction, and a campus novel with a lecture — all with amusing results.

For more information about the Book Circle and its selection, email ctigreenport.org and leave a message for Susan Rosenstreich.

The Book Circle will meet on Thursday, Nov. 21, at 3 p.m. at the shul to delve into a chronicle by Edna Fernandes, who explores the hidden Jewish history of Southwestern India in her book, The Last Jews of Kerala.

           Two Thousand years ago, trade routes and the fall of Jerusalem took Jewish settlers seeking sanctuary across Europe and Asia. One little-known group settled in Kerala, in tropical southwestern India. Eventually, they prospered, numbering in the thousands, with eight synagogues, some possessing vast estates and plantations, and also enjoying privilege and influence. Yet the population was severed  —  black Jews and white Jews; the feud went on for centuries over who had arrived first.

Today, the combined group is in its dying days, numbering fewer than 50 Jews and only one synagogue. It is the story of the feud and its sad outcome, but also of family events, loyalty, individualism and hope.

The Book Circle meets monthly to discuss books by Jewish authors and/or writings on Jewish themes. For more information, email ctigreenport@gmail.org with a message for Susan Rosenstreich, coordinator of the group.