Led by BJ members Jennifer Sylvor and Carole Balin, the long-running Israeli Authors Discussion Group is expanding its reading selection to include authors from across the globe. For this year, we will read important books of Jewish interest by authors from global Jewish literatures, in addition to Israel.
We look forward to welcoming new readers along with our beloved regulars for rich and thought-provoking discussion.
We meet on the third Thursday of the month, 7:00-8:30 PM.
In this session, we’ll discuss Sons and Daughters: A Novel by Chaim Grade. 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 the novel.
