Book Circle’s Selection Considers J.S. Bach’s Death: Was It Murder?

In 1789, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visits the grave of Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig, looking for a sign, a signal, an answer to an enigma that has haunted him since childhood: Was Bach murdered? Allegro by Ariel Dorfman follows the investigation, from the salons of London to the streets of Paris. Parallel is the rise of Mozart, his fame and his losses. The Book Circle meets monthly to explore books by Jewish authors writing on [...]

Book Circle’s Selection Considers J.S. Bach’s Death: Was It Murder?2025-06-27T18:55:07-04:00

Book Circle Considers ‘Generation Gap’ In Stories About Three Women

This month, the Book Circle will read and discuss The Hebrew Teacher by Maya Arad, winner of a National Jewish Book Award for Hebrew Fiction in Translation. The group will meet on Thursday, June 19, at 3 p.m., in the community room of the shul. Three Israeli women, their lives altered by immigration to the United States seek to overcome crises in their lives. In three novellas, the celebrated Israeli writer Maya Arad probes the [...]

Book Circle Considers ‘Generation Gap’ In Stories About Three Women2025-06-19T22:49:13-04:00

Book Circle’s Selection Introduces A Shocking Revelation In Identity

The Book Circle will meet on Thursday, May 15, at 3 p.m., in the community room at the shul, where the group will talk about Goyhood, a debut novel by Reuven Fenton. Here, a devoutly Orthodox man discovers in middle age that he is not, in fact, Jewish. He is, however, a Talmud scholar, married into one of the greatest rabbinical families in the world. Now what? Meyer Belkin grapples with a God he [...]

Book Circle’s Selection Introduces A Shocking Revelation In Identity2025-05-15T21:34:52-04:00

Random Reads

Last Twilight In Paris by Pam Jenoff             A trail of clues leads Louise from a discovered necklace to a department store in Paris that once served as a Nazi prison. Nothing is as it seems. Will the truth be buried forever? For fans of mystery stories, this one is gripping, mixed with the triumph of love even in the darkest hours. Songs for The Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari             In this debut novel, Ayelet [...]

Random Reads2025-05-06T16:56:20-04:00

Book Circle Discovers A House And Its People Are Not What They Seem

The Book Circle will meet on Wednesday, April 30, at 3 p.m., in the community room at the shul, where the group will talk about The Safekeep, by Yael Van Der Wouden, in whose debut novel it is learned that a house and its people are not what they seem. It is a dark tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the [...]

Book Circle Discovers A House And Its People Are Not What They Seem2025-05-06T16:45:42-04:00

Book Circle Discovers A House And Its People Are Not What They Seem

The Book Circle will meet on Wednesday, April 30, at 4 p.m., in the community room at the shul, where the group will talk about The Safekeep, by Yael Van Der Wouden, in whose debut novel it is learned that a house and its people are not what they seem. It is a dark tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer [...]

Book Circle Discovers A House And Its People Are Not What They Seem2025-03-30T20:57:48-04:00

Book Circle Selection’s Heroines Defy Nazis With Power Of The Word

The Book Circle will meet on Thursday, March. 20, at 3 p.m., in the community room at the shul, to talk about Paper Bullets by Jeffrey H. Jackson, a Nazi resistance story by an unlikely pair of heroines. Paper Bullets tells the story of two French women who drew on their skills as artists to write and distribute “paper bullets” —  wicked insults against Hitler, calls to rebel, and subversive dialogues to demoralize Nazi [...]

Book Circle Selection’s Heroines Defy Nazis With Power Of The Word2025-04-24T14:09:12-04:00

Book Circle Takes On The World In A Plot-Packed Global-Sited Novel

The Book Circle will meet on Thursday, Feb. 20, at 3 p.m. to talk about The World and All That It Contains by Aleksandar Hemon. Opening in Sarajevo as WWI is triggered, this globe-trotting century-spanning novel mingles fact with fiction, taking readers on a journey through years and lives that span continents. Find here falling empires, storied cities, wars galore, loves, losses, dreams, delusions, allusions, and the occasional rude joke. According to book reviewer [...]

Book Circle Takes On The World In A Plot-Packed Global-Sited Novel2025-02-20T20:53:23-05:00

Book Circle Explores Drama Surrounding John Singer-Sargent’s Portraits Of The Wertheimer Family

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 [...]

Book Circle Explores Drama Surrounding John Singer-Sargent’s Portraits Of The Wertheimer Family2025-01-16T21:49:26-05:00

Book Circle Considers Inventive Novel Centered On Netanyahu Family

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 [...]

Book Circle Considers Inventive Novel Centered On Netanyahu Family2024-12-18T19:15:05-05:00
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