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Our newly revitalized TI Book Group will focus on contemporary Jewish fiction. We will meet both in person and on Zoom.

Upcoming Sessions

Dec 11

Take What You Need

by Idra Novey

From award-winning novelist Idra Novey comes a “deft and surprising novel” with two unforgettable female voices. (Rumaan Alam) Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania, Take What You Need follows the estrangement and reconciliation of stepmother and daughter, Jean and Leah. Leah always felt her path diverged from Jean’s and left her hometown without looking back, making a life for herself in the city as a young mother and academic. Now that Jean’s gone, Leah must return to sort through all Jean has left behind. What she wasn’t expecting to find was Jean’s studio filled with metal sculptures born from the scraps of Pennsylvania’s industrial history – its beauty challenging all she had initially thought of her hometown, and her own skepticism for why Jean had held onto to it so dearly. Told in alternating points of view, Take What You Need is a refreshing portrait of complex and resilient family relationships, and ultimately challenges our ideas about success in order to reaffirm values we all hold dear.

Jan 22

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew
by Emmanuel Acho and Noa Tishby

From two New York Times bestselling authors, a timely, disarmingly honest, and thought-provoking investigation into antisemitism that connects the dots between the tropes and hatred of the past to our current complicated moment.

For Emmanuel Acho and Noa Tishby no question about Jews is off-limits. They go there. They cover Jews and money. Jews and power. Jews and privilege. Jews and white privilege. The Black and Jewish struggle. Emmanuel asks, Did Jews kill Jesus? To which Noa responds, “Why are Jewish people history’s favorite scapegoat?” They unpack Judaism itself: Is it a religion, culture, a peoplehood, or a race? And: Are you antisemitic if you’re anti-Zionist?

The questions—and answers—might make you squirm, but together, they explain the tropes, stereotypes, and catalysts of antisemitism in America today.

The topics are complicated and Acho and Tishby bring vastly different perspectives. Tishby is an outspoken Israeli American. Acho is a mild-mannered son of a Nigerian American pastor. But they share a superpower: an uncanny ability to make complicated ideas easy to understand so anyone can follow the straight line from the past to our immediate moment—and then see around corners. Acho and Tishby are united by the core belief that hatred toward one group is never isolated: if you see the smoke of bigotry in one place, expect that we will all be in the fire.

Informative and accessible, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew has a unique structure: Acho asks questions and Tishby answers them with deeply personal, historical, and political responses. This book will enable anyone to explain—and identify—what Jewish hatred looks like. It is a much-needed lexicon for this fraught moment in Jewish history. As Acho says, “Proximity breeds care and distance breeds fear.”

Previous Selections

TI Book Group

The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother 

by James McBride

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The Postcard
by Anne Berest