The Ner Shalom Book Club
Join us as we explore the wonderful world of Jewish literature, non-fiction, and Jewish authors.
We look forward to discussing these books in person
If you are not on the ner shalom email list and would like to be, sign up here.
For more information on our Book Club, please contact Amy Gray at president@nershalom.org.
Links for purchase are found on the calendar listing for each event.
May 2, 2024
Fiction: The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
Nearly two thousand years ago, nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert. According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived. Based on this tragic and iconic event, Hoffman’s novel is a spellbinding tale of four extraordinarily bold, resourceful, and sensuous women, each of whom has come to Masada by a different path.
June 6, 2024
Non Fiction: Magic of the Ordinary: Recovering the Shamanic in Judaism by Gershon Winkler
A spiritual crisis sent Orthodox rabbi Gershon Winkler to remote regions of the Southwest, where he studied with Native American healers. From them he began to recover the long-lost wisdom of what he calls “Aboriginal Judaism”: the religion’s tribal roots. This book tracks his personal journey and draws from a dazzling mix of sources to detail the surprising connections between two seemingly unrelated religions.
July 11, 2024 (the first Thursday is July 4)
Fiction: The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict
From the author of The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, in the tradition of The Paris Wife and Mrs. Poe, The Other Einstein offers us a window into a brilliant, fascinating woman whose light was lost in Einstein's enormous shadow. It is the story of Einstein's wife, a brilliant physicist in her own right, whose contribution to the special theory of relativity is hotly debated and may have been inspired by her own profound and very personal insight.
August 1, 2024
Non Fiction: Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel Maddow
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens’ confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule.
Sept. 5, 2024
Fiction: The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende
The lives of a Jewish boy escaping Nazi-occupied Europe and a mother and daughter fleeing twenty-first-century El Salvador intersect in this ambitious, intricate novel about war and immigration.
October 10, 2024
Non Fiction: Growing Up Below Sea Level by Rachel Biale
This beautifully written memoir is composed of linked stories about growing up on a kibbutz in Israel in the 1950s and 60s, when children spent most of their time, from birth on, in a Children’s House. This memoir starts with a Prologue drawn from the diaries of Rachel Biale’s mother and the letters her parents exchanged while her father served in the British army. With excerpts from these documents, she describes how the long trials and tribulations that encompassed her parents dangerous escape from Eastern Europe to Israel – fleeing from the Nazis from Prague in 1939, five years of dangerous sea voyages, and long internments in British refugee camps
November 7, 2024
Kantika by Elizabeth Graver
A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family’s displacement across four countries, Kantika—“song” in Ladino—follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way—a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure and motherhood.
Dec 5
Fiction: The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
For sixty years Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. The Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. But now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end.
At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.