TI Book Group -

TI’s Book Group meets once a month for stimulating discussions of contemporary literature by Jewish authors, on Jewish and Israeli topics, and/or of current relevance to the Jewish Community.

Open to all! New participants are always encouraged to join.

Book Group is also always available by Zoom.

Join the Zoom Meeting here

Upcoming Sessions

Oct 15
Sons and Daughters: A Novel
by Chaim Grade

From “one of the great—if not the greatest—contemporary Yiddish novelists” (Elie Wiesel), the long-awaited English translation of a work, Tolstoyan in scope, that chronicles the last, tumultuous decade of a world succumbing to the march of modernity
“A great beard novel . . . Also a great food novel . . . A melancholy book that also happens to be hopelessly, miraculously, unremittingly funny . . . [Grade’s] fretful characters vibrate as if they were drawn by Roz Chast [and] Rose Waldman’s translation seems miraculous to me.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“It is me the prophet laments when he cries out, ‘My enemies are the people in my own home.’” The Rabbi ignored his borscht and instead chewed on a crust of bread dipped in salt. “My greatest enemies are my own family.”

Rabbi Sholem Shachne Katzenellenbogen’s world, the world of his forefathers, is crumbling before his eyes. And in his own home! His eldest, Bentzion, is off in Bialystok, studying to be a businessman; his daughter Bluma Rivtcha is in Vilna, at nursing school. For her older sister, Tilza, he at least managed to find a suitable young rabbi, but he can tell things are off between them. Naftali Hertz? Forget it; he’s been lost to a philosophy degree in Switzerland (and maybe even a goyish wife?). And now the rabbi’s youngest, Refael’ke, wants to run off to the Holy Land with the Zionists.

Originally serialized in the 1960s and 1970s in New York–based Yiddish newspapers, Chaim Grade’s Sons and Daughters is a precious glimpse of a way of life that is no longer—the rich Yiddish culture of Poland and Lithuania that the Holocaust would eradicate. We meet the Katzenellenbogens in the tiny village of Morehdalye, in the 1930s, when gangs of Poles are beginning to boycott Jewish merchants and the modern, secular world is pressing in on the shtetl from all sides. It’s this clash, between the freethinking secular life and a life bound by religious duty—and the comforts offered by each—that stands at the center of Sons and Daughters.

With characters that rival the homespun philosophers and lovable rouges of Sholem Aleichem and I. B. Singer—from the brooding Zalia Ziskind, paralyzed by the suffering of others, to the Dostoyevskian demon Shabse Shepsel—Grade’s masterful novel brims with humanity and heartbreaking affection for a world, once full of life in all its glorious complexity, that would in just a few years vanish forever.

Nov 12
Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy
by Letty Cottin Pogrebin

An intimate memoir from a founding editor of Ms. magazine who grew up in a Jewish immigrant family mired in secrets, haunted by their dread of shame and stigma, determined to hide their every imperfection—and in denial or despair when they couldn’t.

“A frank and often amusing tabulation of well-kept family secrets… a story of high-stakes melodrama and surreptitious relations, in which runaway brides, false marriages, lost children and other moral crises abound. But there is more here than mishegas.” —Jake Nevins, New York Times

“The richness of Pogrebin’s stories, the complexity and beauty of her storytelling, and her devastatingly honest soul-baring make Shanda a powerfully stunning piece of life and art.”
—Mayim Bialik, actor, author, neuroscientist, and co-host of Jeopardy

The word “shanda” is defined as shame or disgrace in Yiddish. This book, Shanda, tells the story of three generations of complicated, intense 20th-century Jews for whom the desire to fit in and the fear of public humiliation either drove their aspirations or crushed their spirit.

In her deeply engaging, astonishingly candid memoir, author and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin exposes the fiercely-guarded lies and intricate cover-ups woven by dozens of members of her extended family. Beginning with her own long-suppressed secret, the story spirals through the hidden lives of her parents and relatives—revealing the truth about their origins, personal traumas, marital misery, abandoned children, religious transgressions, sexual identity, radical politics, and supposedly embarrassing illnesses. While unmasking their charades and disguises, Pogrebin also showcases her family’s remarkable talent for reinvention in a narrative that is, by turns, touching, searing, and surprisingly universal.

Dec 17
The Goddess of Warsaw: A Novel
by Lisa Barr

USA TODAY BESTSELLER

“Utterly gripping. . . a transformative and immersive story so powerful and captivating that I could not put it down. . . . Truly one of the best books I’ve read.”—Liv Constantine, bestselling author of The Last Mrs. Parrish

“Lisa Barr’s new historical fiction, The Goddess of Warsaw, gifts the reader with jaw-dropping moments worthy of a Tarantino film, a story that could not be more timely, and a heroine whose ferocity and valor knows no bounds.”—Natalie Jenner, author of the instant international bestseller The Jane Austen Society

The Goddess of Warsaw is an enthralling tale of a legendary Hollywood screen goddess with a dark secret about her life in the Warsaw Ghetto. When the famous actress is threatened by someone from her past, she must put her skills into play to protect herself, her illustrious career, and those she loves, then and now.

Los Angeles, 2005. Sienna Hayes, Hollywood’s latest It Girl, has ambitions to work behind the camera. When she meets Lena Browning, the enormously mysterious and famous Golden Age movie star, Sienna sees her big break. She wants to direct a picture about Lena’s life—but the legendary actor’s murky past turns out to be even darker than Sienna dreamed. Before she was a Living Legend, Lena Browning was Bina Blonski, a Polish Jew whose life and family were destroyed by the Nazis.

Warsaw, 1943. A member of the city’s Jewish elite, Bina Blonski and her husband, Jakub, are imprisoned in the ghastly, cramped ghetto along with the rest of Warsaw’s surviving Jews. Determined to fight back against the brutal Nazis, the beautiful, blonde Aryan-looking Bina becomes a spy, gaining information and stealing weapons outside the ghetto to protect her fellow Jews. But her dangerous circumstances grow complicated when she falls in love with Aleksander, an ally in resistance—and Jakub’s brother. While Lena accomplishes amazing feats of bravery, she sacrifices much in the process.

Over a decade after escaping the horrors of the ghetto, Bina, now known as Lena, rises to fame in Hollywood. Yet she cannot help but be reminded of her old life and hungers for revenge against the Nazis who escaped justice after the war. Her power and fame as a movie star offer Lena the chance to right the past’s wrongs . . . and perhaps even find the happy ending she never had.

A gripping page-turner of one of history’s most heroic uprisings and an actress whose personal war never ends, The Goddess Of Warsaw is filled with secrets, lies, twists and turns, and a burning pursuit of justice no matter the cost.

Jan 14
Final Verdict: The Holocaust on Trial in the 21st Century
by Tobias Buck

The gripping narrative of one of the last Nazi criminal trials in Germany—that of Bruno Dey, a 93-year-old former concentration camp guard charged with aiding the murder of more than 5,000 people—and a larger exploration of Germany’s reckoning with the Holocaust, from silence to memory to today’s rising tide of fascism and antisemitism.

Bruno Dey’s trial formed part of an extraordinary series of Holocaust cases brought by German prosecutors in recent years in a belated attempt to deliver justice to the victims and reverse decades of judicial neglect. It also surfaced at a pivotal moment for Germany and its thinking about the Holocaust. The Nazi genocide continues to occupy a crucial space in German public life, but many of the country’s long-held certainties and convictions around the Holocaust are starting to fray. This reflects in part the passage of time, and the fact that the last surviving witnesses—victims and perpetrators alike—are rapidly fading away.

But it’s also the result of profound changes in German politics and society. The far-right has made electoral gains and is openly challenging the country’s historic commitment to Holocaust remembrance. At the same time, there is a small but vociferous group of intellectuals on the left who question Germany’s memory culture from a different angle, asking what political lessons the country should draw from the Holocaust today. What does it mean for the country’s new Muslim citizens from Syria and Afghanistan, many of whom arrived with their own traumas, to be expected to assume the nation’s guilt?

Final Verdict investigates questions that touch on German history, politics, and memory culture, and on the author’s own family history. Buck revisits the silence that surrounds his own family’s experiences and conduct during the Nazi period. In the face of rising anti-Semitism in Germany, the United States, and globally, Final Verdict examines the case for Holocaust justice in the twenty-first century—and the lessons that Germany’s struggle with its Nazi past holds for the world today.

Feb 11
Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi’s Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging
by Rabbi Angela Buchdahl

From the first Asian American to be ordained as a rabbi, a stirring account of one woman’s journey from feeling like an outsider to becoming one of the most admired religious leaders in the world

Angela Buchdahl was born in Seoul, the daughter of a Korean Buddhist mother and Jewish American father. Profoundly spiritual from a young age, by sixteen she felt the first stirrings to become a rabbi. Despite the naysayers and periods of self-doubt—Would a mixed-race woman ever be seen as authentically Jewish or chosen to lead a congregation?—she stayed the course, which took her first to Yale, then to rabbinical school, and finally to the pulpit of one of the largest, most influential congregations in the world.

Today, Angela Buchdahl inspires Jews and non-Jews alike with her invigorating, joyful approach to worship and her belief in the power of faith, gratitude, and responsibility for one another, regardless of religion. She does not shy away from difficult topics, from racism within the Jewish community and the sexism she confronted when she aspired to the top job to rising antisemitism today. Buchdahl teaches how these challenges, which can make one feel like a stranger, can ultimately be the source of our greatest empathy and strength.

Angela Buchdahl has gone from outsider to officiant, from feeling estranged to feeling embraced—and she’s emerged with a deep conviction that we are all bound to a larger whole and mission. She has written a book that is both memoir and spiritual guide for everyday living, which is exactly what so many of us crave right now.

Mar 11
Koshersoul: The Faith and Food Journey of an African American Jew
by Michael W. Twitty

“Twitty makes the case that Blackness and Judaism coexist in beautiful harmony, and this is manifested in the foods and traditions from both cultures that Black Jews incorporate into their daily lives…Twitty wishes to start a conversation where people celebrate their differences and embrace commonalities. By drawing on personal narratives, his own and others’, and exploring different cultures, Twitty’s book offers important insight into the journeys of Black Jews.”—Library Journal

“A fascinating, cross-cultural smorgasbord grounded in the deep emotional role food plays in two influential American communities.”—Booklist

The James Beard award-winning author of the acclaimed The Cooking Gene explores the cultural crossroads of Jewish and African diaspora cuisine and issues of memory, identity, and food.

In Koshersoul, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them.

The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. Jews of Color are not outliers, Twitty contends, but significant and meaningful cultural creators in both Black and Jewish civilizations. Koshersoul also explores how food has shaped the journeys of numerous cooks, including Twitty’s own passage to and within Judaism.

As intimate, thought-provoking, and profound as The Cooking Gene, this remarkable book teases the senses as it offers sustenance for the soul.

Koshersoul includes 48-50 recipes.

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