Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation

book club

A Book Group for People of the Book

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by Greg Saltzman, written for the November 2021 edition of the Washtenaw Jewish News

Photo of monthly book club before COVID-19 Restrictions

Jews sometimes are called “people of the Book,” referring to the Torah.  Books, interpreted more broadly, are the focus of the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation (AARC) book group.  We have met since 2014 about eight times per year, discussing a different book each time.  AARC book group meetings are open to members of the local Jewish community regardless of whether they belong to AARC.

Besides the intellectual stimulation of reading and discussing books, the AARC book group helps provide a sense of community and connection among the participants.  Before COVID forced us to meet via Zoom, our meetings began with tasty food.  (My wife, Audrey, loves feeding people.)  May the pandemic end soon and the tasty food return!

Many of the books we discussed recently won National Jewish Book Awards.  For example:

  • Max Gross, The Lost Shtetl, a novel about a hidden Jewish village in Poland that escaped the Shoah.
  • Colum McCann, Apeirogon, a novel based on a true story of an Israeli and a Palestinian who each lost a daughter to violence related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but nevertheless reached out to each other to build peace.
  • Yossi Klein Halevy, Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation, a nonfiction account following the lives of seven Israeli soldiers from 1967 to more recent years.
  • Michael David Lukas, The Last Watchman of Old Cairo, historical fiction based on Solomon Schechter’s discovery of a treasure trove of Jewish documents in the Cairo geniza.
  • Rachel Kadish, The Weight of Ink, a novel about a Sephardic Jewish woman in 17th century England who chafes at restrictions on women’s education.
  • Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni, a novel about the immigrant experience in New York around 1900, with a twist: one of the immigrants is a golem.

I’ve also loved some Jewish-themed books we’ve discussed that did NOT win National Jewish Book Awards, such as:

  • Sophie Judah, Dropped from Heaven, short stories about Jews of India.
  • Lucette Lagnado, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World, a family memoir of the experiences of a prosperous Jewish family forced to flee Egypt after Nasser took over.

We discussed several books that did not have specifically Jewish themes:

  • J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, a family memoir of the experiences of working-class Appalachian whites, which helps explains some of the political support for Trump.
  • Mohsin Hamid, Exit West, a novel about war refugees that was a finalist for the Booker Prize.
  • A special treat was a discussion led by AARC member Jonathan Cohn, a journalist, of his book The Ten Year War:  Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage.  It’s not often that the author himself leads a discussion in a small book group.
  • AARC’s Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner has led the discussion for one meeting each year of the the AARC book group.  In 2021, her session focused on Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, a nonfiction account of unfair treatment by the criminal justice system of those who are impoverished or Black.

Previews of coming attractions:

  • On Sunday, November 7, 2021 from 11:30 AM to 1 PM, we’ll have a Zoom discussion of Aaron Lansky, Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books.  This is a memoir of Lansky’s efforts (for which he later won a McArthur Award) to rescue old Yiddish books before they were discarded in dumpsters.  It also provides some insight into Yiddish culture in Canada and the U.S.
  • On a yet-to-be-determined Sunday in December 2021, from 11:30 AM to 1 PM, we’ll have a Zoom discussion of Yehuda Avner and Matt Rees, The Ambassador.  This is an alternative history novel that assumes the British government implemented the 1937 Peel Commission recommendation to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab.  The novel tells the story of the Israeli ambassador to Nazi Germany who desperately tries to save as many Jews as possible from being murdered by the Nazis.

If you would like to be added to the email distribution list for AARC book group announcements and Zoom links for our meetings, please email me at gsaltzman@albion.edu.

To see this article in the November 2021 Washtenaw Jewish News, scroll to Page 10 here. https://washtenawjewishnews.org/PDFs/WJN-11-21-web.pdf

Radical Judaism with the AARC Book Group and Rabbi Ora

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The AARC Book group invites you to join our upcoming discussion of a part of the book Radical Judaism: Rethinking God & Tradition, by Arthur Green, on Sunday, February 24, 2019 at 9:45am, at the home of Greg Saltzman and Audrey Newell. You can read the portion we will be discussing in this PDF file. It’s the preface, intro, and first chapter of the book.

Full details, including exact location, are found here. All are welcome. Please RSVP to Greg Saltzman at gsaltzman@albion.edu if you plan to attend.

Rabbi Ora will be leading our discussion of Radical Judaiasm. This is the second year in a row that Rabbi Ora has agreed to join the book group to lead a discussion on a text of her choosing.

We asked Rabbi Ora to provide background on the Arthur Green book. Below are her thoughts.

I first met Rabbi Art Green in February 2010 – after I’d decided to attend rabbinical school, but before I’d chosen RRC and was still considering Hebrew College as an option. At the time and now, ‘Art,’ as he’s often called, was the dean of Hebrew College. I don’t recall many details from the few hours I spent there in his presence – just an overall sense of warmth, joyfulness, and curiosity coming from him. Over the past 9 years, though, I’ve had the chance to study a number of his books, including Radical Judaism, of course, but also his Guide to the Zohar and his beautiful translation of R. Yehuda Leib Alter’s writings, Language of Truth: the Torah Commentary of the Sefat Emet.

I wanted our book group to get a taste of Radical Judaism because Art Green so artfully weaves together the theological with the personal. In the Introduction, he shares how he struggled with what some might call a ‘loss of faith,’ but what he calls ‘the pillars of naïve faith [giving] way’ as he came to reject a personal God in favor of a more pantheistic sense of holiness and unity in the world. Green describes how, as a teenager, he could ‘affirm neither particular providence nor a God who governed history,’ and writes: ‘…I am not a ‘believer’ in the conventional Jewish or Western sense. I simply do not encounter God as ‘He’ is usually described in the Western religious context, a Supreme Being or Creator who exists outside or beyond the universe, who created this world as an act of personal will, and who guides and protects it.’

Art Green’s process feels very Reconstructionist to me – both the God-wrestling, and the image of God that he ultimately settles on. Many of us raised in the Jewish tradition go through, at one time or another, a similar kind of wrestling. And that’s precisely what Reconstructionism invites us to do – to not just sit (comfortably or uncomfortably) with the beliefs that have been passed down to us, but to work towards a faith tradition that feels honest, spiritually nourishing, and even transcendent.

Rabbi Ora leading the book group in Feb. 2018. Please join us at Greg and Audrey’s house for the “second annual” on Feb. 24, 2019.

Art Green also has a powerful vision for the role that religion can play in shaping what he calls ‘this moment of transition in planetary and human history’ – a moment in which ‘unless we take drastic steps to change our way of living, our patterns of consumption, and our most essential understanding of our relationship to the world in which we exist, we are at great risk of destroying our earthly home and rendering it a wasteland.’ Art Green sees Judaism’s deep truths as tools to help us rise to these challenges.

We look forward to seeing you on Sunday, February 24. Be sure to RSVP to Greg at the email above. Happy reading!

Why another book club?

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By Judith Jacobs

When I first heard that the AARC was forming a book club, I thought it was a good idea. After thinking about it, I asked myself “Why join another book club, when you already belong to two?” I decided to give it a try and here is what I learned:

The book selection can be described as eclectic. We read about China’s reaction to protests and the tragedies at Tiananmen Square and how they have ben wiped from people’s memories and are not considered a significant part of China’s history. We enjoyed visiting The Worlds of Sholom Aleichem. I found that a particular delight because his world in Russia was my family’s world and he left Russia around the time my great uncle left. “The Seven Beggars was a disaster for me. I did not understand anything that Rebbe Nachman of Breslov was telling us. Our last book, The Dalai Lama’s Cat, was an absolute delight. What could be bad? Here was a book about a prescient cat and Buddhism.

The real treat of the book club has been getting to know members of the congregation in a whole new way. People’s stories always are interesting and such a diverse group of people brings many different perspectives to the discussion.

Try the book club. It will be a different take on the AARC.

Books read so far in 2014 and 2015:

  • November: The Dalai Lama’s Cat, by David Michie.
  • October:  “The Seven Beggars,” a short story by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov.
  • September: The Worlds of Sholom Aleichem: The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created Tevye, by Jeremy Dauber
  • August: The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, by Louisa Lim.

[Book club meetings are on the Calendar, and are included in the Monday Mailer–subscribe at the right on this page.]

See also  Happy 5th birthday to the AARC Book Club (Click Here) from October 2019  

Read About Sholem Aleichem with the Book Group

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[Here’s a note from Jon Sweeney on the next meeting of the Congregation’s book club.]

By Jon Sweeney

The AARC Book Group meets again on Sunday, September 7, 7pm at the home of Greg Saltzman.

We are all reading The Worlds of Sholom Aleichem: The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of the Man Who Created Tevye, by Jeremy Dauber, a professor of Yiddish at Columbia University. Aleichem was a fascinating character, probably the most important Yiddish writer of the twentieth century, and there is much to discover beyond Fiddler!

Everyone and anyone is invited to join us. You are welcome to join for one meeting only or every time. No RSVP needed, but if you have any questions, feel free to contact jonsweeney AT gmail.com.

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