B'nai Book Club 2023 - B'nai Israel: The Downtown Synagogue

B'nai Book Club 2025

All Book Club sessions are announced in the weekly B'nai Israel newsletter along with a Zoom link or other information for attending. The Book Club usually meets on Zoom every other month on the last Tuesday at 8 pm. Occasionally, we gather in-person.

The Jewish State From Opposition to Opportunity
A Vision for Unity in Israel and Why the World Needs It
by Doron Perez

Book Club Date: Tuesday, February 25, 2025, 8 pm

Why has antisemitism mutated into a potent form of anti-Zionism? What is the goal of a Jewish state in the twenty-first century? How can we bring unity to Israel’s diverse society? Rabbi Doron Perez offers a fresh approach to these pressing questions. Drawing on thinkers from the Vilna Gaon to Rav Kook, Rabbi Sacks to Robert Wistrich, this book weaves together an old-new spiritual approach to the Jewish state – both to understand its challenges and to lay out a vision for the future.

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE THE BOOK

The Hebrew Teacher by Maya Arad

Book Club Date: Tuesday, April 29, 2025, 8 pm

Three Israeli women, their lives altered by immigration to the United States, seek to overcome crises. Ilana is a veteran Hebrew instructor. When a young Hebrew literature professor joins the faculty, she finds his post-Zionist politics pose a threat to her life’s work. Miriam, whose son left Israel to make his fortune in Silicon Valley, pays an unwanted visit to meet her new grandson and discovers cracks in the family’s perfect façade. Efrat, another Israeli in California, is determined to help her daughter navigate the challenges of middle school, and crosses forbidden lines when she follows her into the minefield of social media.

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE THE HEBREW TEACHER

The Secret Chord: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks

Book Club Date: Tuesday, June 24, 2025

Brooks traces the arc of King David’s journey from obscurity to fame, from shepherd to soldier, from hero to traitor, from beloved king to despot and into his remorseful and diminished dotage. We see David through the eyes of those who love him or fear him—from the prophet Natan, voice of his conscience, to his wives Mikhal, Avigail, and Batsheva, and finally to Solomon, the late-born son who redeems his Lear-like old age. Brooks has an uncanny ability to hear and transform characters from history in this beautifully written, unvarnished saga of faith, desire, family, ambition, and betrayal.

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE THE SECRET CHORD

Displaced Persons: Stories by Joan Leegant

Book Club Date: Tuesday, August 26, 2025, 8 pm

Set half in Israel and half in the United States, the stories in this prize-winning collection explore the experience of exile, belonging, and what it means to call a place home. A visiting professor from Boston forms an unlikely bond with an Israeli born in Iraq. Two teenage tourists are startled out of their naiveté in a restaurant in Jerusalem's Old City. A gifted yeshiva student spiraling into mental illness takes refuge in Walt Whitman poetry. An aged widower returns after 60 years to the Bronx neighborhood of his youth to make amends with a first love he abandoned to go to prison. Shimmering with insight and compassion, the stories illuminate pivotal moments of transition, longing, and hope.

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE DISPLACED PERSONS

BOOK STILL TO BE DETERMINED

Book Club Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2024

BOOK STILL TO BE DETERMINED

Book Club Date: Tuesday, December 23, 2024

Previous Book Club Selections

2021

2/1/2021   Guide for the Perplexed by Dara Horn

4/5/2021   Einstein and the Rabbi by Naomi Levy

8/31/2021 The Memory Monster by Yishai Said

10/12/2021 The Jew Store by Stella Suberman

8/9/2021 The Aleppo Codex by Matti Friedman

12/15/2021 The Tunnel by A. B. Yehoshua.

2022

2/8/2021 After Abel and Other Stories by Michal Lemberger

4/12/2022 X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War II by Leah Garrett

6/14/2022 Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish  by Abigail Pogrebin

8/9/2022 Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood by Mark Oppenheimer

10/25/2022 The Lost Shtetl: A Novel by Max Gross

12/13/2022 The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem: A Novel by Sarit Yishai-Levi

2023

2/12/2023   Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew by Michael W. Twitty

4/25/2023   Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman

6/27/2023   The Prophet of the Andes: An Unlikely Journey to the Promised Land by Graciela Mochkofsky and Lisa Dillman

8/29/2023   Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai by Matti Friedman

10/31/2023   A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka: A Memoir by Lev Golinkin

12/26/2023 The Seven Good Years: A Memoir by Etgar Keret

2024

2/27/2024   Kantika by Elizabeth Graver

4/16/2024   Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America by Ruth Gruber

6/25/2024   Most Fortunate Unfortunates by Marlene Trestman

8/27/2024   The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance by Rebecca Clarren

10/29/2024 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel by James McBride

12/24/2024 The Last Kings of Shanghai by Jonathan Kaufman