Jewish Studies Sunday Book & Discussion Group

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A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales

Ruth Calderon

Sunday, February 21, 2016, 2:00-3:30pm

A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales, by Ruth Calderon

Facilitated by Dr. Judy Siker Department of Theological Studies

Ruth Calderon has recently electrified the Jewish world with her teachings of talmudic texts. In this volume, her first to appear in English, she offers a fascinating window into some of the liveliest and most colorful stories in the Talmud. Calderon rewrites talmudic tales as richly imagined fictions, drawing us into the lives of such characters as the woman who risks her life for a sister suspected of adultery; a humble schoolteacher who rescues his village from drought; and a wife who dresses as a prostitute to seduce her pious husband in their garden. Breathing new life into an ancient text, A Bride for One Night offers a surprising and provocative read, both for anyone already intimate with the Talmud and for anyone interested in one of the most influential works of Jewish literature.
The Optimists

Jacky Comforty and Lisa Comforty

Sunday, January 24, 2016, 2:00-3:30pm
FILM SHOWING: The Optimists
A film by Jacky & Lisa Comforty (2001, 81 mins.)

Tells the story of how Bulgarian Christians and Muslims found ways to protect 50,000 Bulgarian Jews from the Holocaust.
Pictures at an Exhibition

Sara Houghteling

Sunday November 6, 2016 -- 2:00-3:30pm

Pictures at an Exhibition by Sara Houghteling

Facilitated by Carolyn Peter, Director Laband Art Gallery

Set in a Paris darkened by World War II, Sara Houghteling’s sweeping and sensuous debut novel tells the story of a son’s quest to recover his family’s lost masterpieces, looted by the Nazis during the occupation.

Born to an art dealer and his pianist wife, Max Berenzon is forbidden from entering the family business for reasons he cannot understand. He reluctantly attends medical school, reserving his true passion for his father’s beautiful and brilliant gallery assistant, Rose Clément. When Paris falls to the Nazis, the Berenzons survive in hiding. They return in 1944 to find that their priceless collection has vanished: gone are the Matisses, the Picassos, and a singular Manet of mysterious importance. Madly driven to recover his father’s paintings, Max navigates a torn city of corrupt art dealers, black marketers, Résistants, and collaborators. His quest will reveal the tragic disappearance of his closest friend, the heroism of his lost love, and the truth behind a devastating family secret.

Written with tense drama and a historian’s eye for detail, Houghteling’s novel draws on the real-life stories of France’s preeminent art-dealing familes and the forgotten biography of the only French woman to work as a double agent inside the Nazis’ looted art stronghold. Pictures at an Exhibition conjures the vanished collections, the lives of the artists and their dealers, the exquisite romance, and the shattering loss of a singular era. It is a work of astonishing ambition and beauty from an immensely gifted new novelist.
The Archive Thief

Lisa Moses Leff

Sunday, September 11, 2016 -- 2:00-3:30pm

The Archive Thief by Lisa Moses Leff

Facilitated by Dr. Elizabeth Drummond, History Dept.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Jewish historian Zosa Szajkowski stole tens of thousands of archival documents related to French Jewish history from public archives and collections in France and moved them, illicitly, to New York. Why did this respectable historian become a thief? And why did librarians in the United States and Israel accept these materials from him, turning a blind eye to the signs of ownership they bore?

In The Archive Thief, Lisa Moses Leff reconstructs Szajkowski's gripping story in all its ambiguity. Born into poverty in Russian Poland in 1911, Szajkowski was a self-made man who managed to make a life for himself as an intellectual, first as a journalist in 1930s Paris, and then, after a harrowing escape to New York in 1941, as a scholar. Although he never taught at a university or even earned a PhD, Szajkowski became one of the world's foremost experts on the history of the Jews in modern France, publishing in Yiddish, English, and Hebrew. His work opened up new ways of thinking about Jewish emancipation, economic and social modernization, and the rise of modern anti-Semitism.

But beneath Szajkowski's scholarly accomplishments lay his shameful secret: his pathbreaking articles were based upon documents that he moved illicitly to New York. Eventually, he sold these documents, piecemeal, to American and Israeli research libraries where they still remain. Leff takes us into the backstage of the archives, revealing the powerful ideological, economic, and psychological forces that made Holocaust-era Jewish scholars care more deeply than ever before about preserving the remnants of their past. As Leff shows, it is only when we understand the issues at the heart of his story, in all their ambiguity and complexity, that we can begin to address the larger questions of the rightful ownership of Jewish archives, as well as other contested archives, that are still at issue today.
Midrashic Mirrors: Creating Holiness with Intimacy and Imagery

Debra Linesch

Sunday, December 4, 2016 -- 2:00-3:30pm

Midrashic Mirrors: Creating Holiness with Intimacy and Imagery, by Dr. Debra Linesch

Facilitated by author, Dr. Debra Linesch, Marital and Family Therapy Dept.

Midrashic Mirrors: Creating Holiness with Intimacy and Imagery was written by Dr. Debra Linesch and reflects years of studying biblical text and creating personal responses with images and words. It features the voices and artwork of various women, and is an exciting example of collaborative meaning-making. The imagery was created within a context of intimacy to celebrate that phenomenon which is at the heart of the Jewish endeavor: meaning and understanding. The book represents non-traditional ways to think about faiths and faith traditions.
Women Unchained

Beverly Siegel

Sunday, October 9, 2016 -- 2:00-3:30pm

Film Screening - Women Unchained, directed and written by Beverly Siegel. (2011, 60 mins.)

Facilitated by Rabbi Mark Diamond, Jewish Studies Dept.

Women Unchained, an important film documenting the experiences of modern-day agunot, or women whose husbands refuse to grant them a Jewish divorce. According to traditional Jewish law, a woman who is an aguna (from the Hebrew word meaning “chained”) cannot re-marry.

Among the women profiled are Susan Weiss, founder of the Center for Women’s Justice, who successfully sued in Israeli court a husband who refused for 16 years to grant his wife a get; Sharon Shenhav, director of the International Jewish Women’s Rights Watch, who represented the Israel Bar Association on the commission appointing judges to the Israel Rabbinical Courts; Rachel Levmore, author of the Agreement for Mutual Respect pre-nuptial agreement, who tracks down recalcitrant husbands around the world; and Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz, chief judge of the Chicago Rabbinical Council and the Beth Din of America.

Shot in New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and Israel, Women Unchained includes illuminating interviews with leading women’s rights advocates, rabbis and experts. The film provides helpful historical background on the state of women’s rights in Judaism and details of “get-o-nomics” and the outlandish extortion schemes levied against some women.

Women Unchained documents the religious court established by the late Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, which frees women from recalcitrant husbands through the issuing of annulments, and the efforts of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes on behalf of Jewish victims of domestic violence and get extortion.
David: A Divided Heart

David Wolpe

Sunday, March 20, 2016, 2:00-3:30pm

David: A Divided Heart, by Rabbi David Wolpe

Facilitated by Dr. Elaine Goodfriend, Department of Religious Studies, CSUN

Of all the figures in the Bible, David arguably stands out as the most perplexing and enigmatic. He was many things: a warrior who subdued Goliath and the Philistines; a king who united a nation; a poet who created beautiful, sensitive verse; a loyal servant of God who proposed the great Temple and founded the Messianic line; a schemer, deceiver, and adulterer who freely indulged his very human appetites.
David Wolpe, whom Newsweek called “the most influential rabbi in America,” takes a fresh look at biblical David in an attempt to find coherence in his seemingly contradictory actions and impulses. The author questions why David holds such an exalted place in history and legend, and then proceeds to unravel his complex character based on information found in the book of Samuel and later literature. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of an exceptional human being who, despite his many flaws, was truly beloved by God.
Bread Givers

Anzia Yezierska

Sunday, May 22, 2016, 2:00-3:30pm

Bread Givers, by Anzia Yezierska

Facilitated by Dr. Audrey Thacker, Department of English, CSUN

Anzia Yezierska's best-known novel, Bread Givers, received a glowing review in the New York Times on September 13, 1925. "Bread Givers enables us to see our life more clearly, to test its values, to reckon up what it is that our aims and achievements may mean. It has a raw, uncontrollable poetry and a powerful, sweeping design," the Times wrote. Yezierska, dubbed the "Cinderella of the Sweatshop" by the popular press, wrote Bread Givers about the daughter of an immigrant family who struggles against her Orthodox father's rigid idea of Jewish womanhood.
The Paris Architect: A Novel

Charles Belfoure

Sunday, November 15, 2015, 2:00-3:30pm

The Paris Architect: A Novel, by Charles Belfoure

Facilitated by Dr. Veronique Flambard-Weisbart, Professor, Department of Modern Languages & Literatures

How far would you go to help a stranger? What would you risk? Would you trade your life for another's in the name of what is right? Belfoure explores these questions and others in this debut novel set in Paris during the Nazi occupation. Lucien Bernard—who, like the book's author, is an architect—is offered a large sum of money to outsmart the Gestapo by devising unique hiding places for Jews, though he knows that anyone caught helping them will be tortured and killed by the Germans. Danger is everywhere: Lucien's mistress, Adele, a successful fashion designer, has an affair with a Gestapo colonel. Lucien's new assistant will betray him in a heartbeat. Offered a juicy German factory commission that involves working with a Nazi officer who admires architecture and art, Lucien's web weaves more complexly. And when he falls in love with Adele's assistant, rescues a child, and contacts some of the individuals he's saved, the stakes grow higher and Lucien's thoughts turn from money to vengeance. Seamlessly integrated architectural details add to the excitement. Belfoure's characters are well-rounded and intricate. Heart, reluctant heroism, and art blend together in this spine-chilling page-turner.
No. 4 Street of our Lady

Barbara Bird, Judy Maltz, and Richie Sherman

Sunday, September 20, 2015, 2:00-3:30pm

FILM SHOWING: No. 4 Street of our Lady

A film by Barbara Bird, Judy Maltz, Richie Sherman (90 min)

Tells the story of Francisca Halamajowa, a Polish Catholic woman who hid 15 of her Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust. The film draws on excerpts from a diary kept by one of the survivors, Moshe Maltz. It also incorporates testimonies from other Jews saved by Halamajowa, her descendants and former neighbors as they reconnect on a trip back to Sokal.
A Replacement Life

Boris Fishman

Wednesday, February 11, 2015, 3-4:30pm

A Replacement Life, by Boris Fishman

Author, Boris Fishman will be here in person to discuss, sell and sign his book

A singularly talented writer makes his literary debut with this provocative, soulful, and sometimes hilarious story of a failed journalist asked to do the unthinkable: forge Holocaust-restitution claims for old Russian Jews in Brooklyn, New York.

Yevgeny Gelman, grandfather of Slava Gelman, “didn’t suffer in the exact way” he needs to have suffered to qualify for the restitution the German government has been paying out to Holocaust survivors. But suffer he has – as a Jew in the war; as a second-class citizen in the USSR; as an immigrant to America. So? Isn’t his grandson a “writer”?

High-minded Slava wants to put all this immigrant scraping behind him. Only the American Dream is not panning out for him – Century, the legendary magazine where he works as a researcher, wants nothing greater from him. Slava wants to be a correct, blameless American – but he wants to be a lionized writer even more.

Slava’s turn as the Forger of South Brooklyn teaches him that not every fact is the truth, and not every lie a falsehood. It takes more than law-abiding to become an American; it takes the same self-reinvention in which his people excel. Intoxicated and unmoored by his inventions, Slava risks exposure. Cornered, he commits an irrevocable act that finally grants him a sense of home in America, but not before collecting a lasting price from his family.

A Replacement Life is a dark, moving, and beautifully written novel about family, honor, and justice.
The World to Come

Dara Horn

Sunday, October 18, 2015, 2:00-3:30pm

The World to Come, by Dara Horn

Facilitated by Dr. Holli Levitsky, Professor, English Dept. & Director of Jewish Studies

Following in the footsteps of her breakout debut In the Image, Dara Horn's second novel, The World to Come, is an intoxicating combination of mystery, spirituality, redemption, piety, and passion. Using a real-life art heist as her starting point, Horn traces the life and times of several characters, including Russian-born artist Marc Chagall, the New Jersey-based Ziskind family, and the "already-weres" and "not-yets" who roam an eternal world that exists outside the boundaries of life on earth. At the center of the story is Benjamin Ziskind, a former child prodigy who now spends his days writing questions for a television trivia show. After Ben's twin sister Sara forces him to attend a singles cocktail party at a Jewish museum, Ben spots Over Vitebsk, a Chagall sketch that once hung in the twins' childhood home. Convinced the painting was wrongfully taken from his family, Ben steals the work of art and enlists his twin to create a forgery to replace the stolen Chagall. What follows is a series of interwoven stories that trace the life and times of the famous painting, and the fate of those who come into contact with it. From a Jewish orphanage in 1920s Soviet Russia to a junior high school in Newark, New Jersey, with a stop in the jungles of Da Nang, Vietnam, Horn takes readers on an amazing journey through the sacred and the profane elements of the human condition. It is this expertly rendered juxtaposition of the spiritual with the secular that makes The World to Come so profound, and so compelling to readers. As we learn near the end of the beautiful tale, "The real world to come is down below--the world, in the future, as you create it."
The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara

David Kertez

Sunday, August 23, 2015, 2:00-3:30pm

The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara by David Kertez

Facilitated by Dr. Margarete Feinstein, Assoc. Professor, Department of Jewish Studies

Bologna, 1858: A police squad, acting on the orders of the Inquisitor, invades the home of a Jewish merchant, Momolo Mortara, wrenches his crying six-year-old son from his arms, and rushes him off in a carriage bound for Rome. His mother is so distraught that she collapses and has to be taken to a neighbor's house, but her weeping can be heard across the city. With this terrifying scene--one that would haunt this family forever--David I. Kertzer begins his fascinating investigation of the dramatic kidnapping, and shows how this now obscure saga would eventually contribute to the collapse of the Church's temporal power in Italy. As Edgardo's parents desperately search for a way to get their son back, they learn why he--out of all their eight children--was taken. Years earlier, the family's Catholic serving girl, fearful that the infant might die of an illness, had secretly baptized him (or so she claimed). Edgardo recovered, but when the story reached the Bologna Inquisitor, the result was his order for Edgardo to be seized and sent to a special monastery where Jews were converted into good Catholics. The Inquisitor's justification for taking the child was based in Church teachings: No Christian child could be raised by Jewish parents. The case of Edgardo Mortara became an international cause célèbre. Although such kidnappings were not uncommon in Jewish communities across Europe, this time the political climate had changed. As news of the family's plight spread to Britain, where the Rothschilds got involved, to France, where it mobilized Napoleon III, and even to America, public opinion turned against the Vatican. Refusing to return the child to his family, Pope Pius IX began to regard the boy as his own child. The fate of this one boy came to symbolize the entire revolutionary campaign of Mazzini and Garibaldi to end the dominance of the Catholic Church and establish a modern, secular Italian state. The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1997, and has been made into a play by Pulitzer and Oscar winning playwright, Alfred Uhry. Early versions of the play were performed at Hartford Stage in 2002 and the Guthrie Theater in 2006.
The Short, Strange Life of Hershel Grynszpan: a Boy Avenger, A Nazi Diplomat and a Murder in Paris

Jonathan Kirsch

Sunday, April 19, 2015, 2:00-3:30pm

The Short, Strange Life of Hershel Grynszpan: a Boy Avenger, A Nazi Diplomat and a Murder in Paris, by Jonathan Kirsch

Author, Jonathan Kirsch was on campus to discuss, sell and sign his book.

On the morning of November 7, 1938, a seventeen-year-old Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, walked into the German embassy in Paris and in an act of desperation assassinated Ernst vom Rath, a low-level Nazi diplomat. He did it, he said, out "of love for my parents and for my people." Two days later, vom Rath lay dead, and the Third Reich exploited his murder to inaugurate its long-planned campaign of terror against Germany's Jewish citizens, in the mass pogrom that became known as Kristallnacht. In a bizarre concatenation of events that would rapidly involve Ribbentrop, Goebbels, and Hitler himself, Grynszpan would become the centerpiece of a Nazi propaganda campaign that would later describe his actions as "the first shot of the Jewish War."
The Plot Against America

Philip Roth

Sunday, March 15, 2015, 2:00-3:30pm

The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth

Facilitated by Dr. Stella Setka, University Advisor & Fellowship Coordinator

In an astonishing feat of empathy and narrative invention, novelist Philip Roth imagines an alternate version of American history.
In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected President. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial “understanding” with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.

For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh’s election is the first in a series of ruptures that threaten to destroy his small, safe corner of America–and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.
Mendoza the Jew: Boxing, Manliness, and Nationalism: A Graphic History

Ronald Schecter

Sunday, January 25, 2015, 2:00-3:30pm

Mendoza the Jew: Boxing, Manliness, and Nationalism: A Graphic History by Ronald Schecter

Facilitated by Dr. Elizabeth Drummond, Department of History

Mendoza the Jew combines a graphic history with primary documentation and contextual information to explore issues of nationalism, identity, culture, and historical methodology through the life story of Daniel Mendoza. Mendoza was a poor Sephardic Jew from East London who became the boxing champion of Britain in 1789. As a Jew with limited means and a foreign-sounding name, Mendoza was an unlikely symbol of what many Britons considered to be their very own "national" sport. Whereas their adversaries across the Channel reputedly settled private quarrels by dueling with swords or pistols - leaving widows and orphans in their wake - the British (according to supporters of boxing) tended to settle their disputes with their fists. Mendoza the Jew provides an exciting and lively alternative to conventional lessons on nationalism. Rather than studying learned treatises and political speeches, students can read a graphic history about an eighteenth-century British boxer that demonstrates how ideas and emotions regarding the "nation" permeated the practices of everyday life. Mendoza's story reveals the ambivalent attitudes of British society toward its minorities, who were allowed (sometimes grudgingly) to participate in national life by braving pain and injury in athletic contests, but whose social mobility was limited and precarious.
The Aleppo Codex: In Pursuit of One of the World's Most Coveted, Sacred, and Mysterious Books

Matti Friedman

Sunday, April 27, 2014, 2:00-3:30pm

The Aleppo Codex: In Pursuit of One of the World's Most Coveted, Sacred, and Mysterious Books, by Matti Friedman

Facilitated by Dr. Elaine Goodfriend
Department of Jewish Studies, Calif. State University, Northridge

A thousand years ago, the most perfect copy of the Hebrew Bible was written. It was kept safe through one upheaval after another in the Middle East, and by the 1940s it was housed in a dark grotto in Aleppo, Syria, and had become known around the world as the Aleppo Codex.

Journalist Matti Friedman’s true-life detective story traces how this precious manuscript was smuggled from its hiding place in Syria into the newly founded state of Israel and how and why many of its most sacred and valuable pages went missing. It’s a tale that involves grizzled secret agents, pious clergymen, shrewd antiquities collectors, and highly placed national figures who, as it turns out, would do anything to get their hands on an ancient, decaying book. What it reveals are uncomfortable truths about greed, state cover-ups, and the fascinating role of historical treasures in creating a national identity.
Our Holocaust

Amir Gutfreund

Sunday, November 16, 2014 @ 2:00-3:30pm

Our Holocaust by Amir Gutfreund

Facilitated by Margarete Feinstein, Assistant Professor, LMU Jewish Studies Dept.

Amir and Effi collected relatives. With Holocaust survivors for parents and few other 'real' relatives alive, relationships operated under a "Law of Compression" in which tenuous connections turned friends into uncles, cousins and grandparents. Life was framed by Grandpa Lolek, the parsimonious and eccentric old rogue who put his tea bags through Selektion, and Grandpa Yosef, the neighborhood saint, who knew everything about everything, but refused to talk of his own past. Amir and Effi also collected information about what happened Over There. This was more difficult than collecting relatives; nobody would tell them any details because they weren't yet Old Enough. The intrepid pair won't let this stop them, and their quest for knowledge results in adventures both funny and alarming, as they try to unearth their neighbors' stories. As Amir grows up, his obsession with understanding the Holocaust remains with him, and finally Old Enough to know, the unforgettable cast of characters that populate his world open their hearts, souls, and pasts to him.
Bearing the Body

Ehud Havazelet

Sunday, September 14, 2014 @ 2:00-3:30pm

Bearing the Body by Ehud Havazelet

Facilitated by Dr. Holli Levitsky, Professor of English, & Director of Jewish Studies, LMU

At the start of Bearing the Body, Nathan Mirsky learns that his older brother has died in San Francisco, apparently murdered after years of aimlessness. On the spur of the moment, Nathan leaves his job as a medical resident and heads west from Boston to learn what he can about Daniel's death. His father, Sol--a quiet, embittered Holocaust survivor--insists on coming along. Piecing together Daniel's last days, Nathan and Sol are forced to confront secrets that have long isolated them from each other and to being a long process of forgiveness.
Nicky's Family

Matej Minac

Sunday, February 16, 2014, 2:00-3:30pm

--FILM SCREENING---Nicky's Family, directed by Matej Minac (2014)

Discover the inspirational true story of "Britain's Schindler" Sir Nicholas Winton in the award-winning film "Nicky's Family". An ordinary British stockbroker, Nicholas Winton organized the rescue of 669 Czech and Slovak children just before the outbreak of World War II. Winton, now 103 years old, did not speak about these events with anyone for more than half a century. His heroism would have probably been forgotten if his wife, fifty years later, hadn't found a suitcase in the attic, full of documents and transport plans. Today the story of this rescue is known around the world, and thousands of descendants of 'Nicky's Family' continue to follow in his footsteps to do good. "Nicky's Family" has earned rave reviews from audiences and critics around the world, winning over 29 awards - including 13 audience awards from U.S. film festivals! (100 minutes)
The Gatekeepers

Dror Moreh

Sunday, November 2, 2014 @ Film Screening: 2:00-4:00pm

The Gatekeepers, directed by Dror Moreh (2012, 101 mins.)

"Charged with overseeing Israel's war on terror, both Palestinian and Jewish, the head of the Shin Bet, Israel's Secret Service, is present at the crossroads for every decision made. This documentary features interviews with six former heads of the agency who have agreed to share their insights and reflect publicly on their actions and decisions. The Gatekeepers offers and exclusive account of the sum of their successes and failures. It validates the reasons that each man individually and the six as a group came to reconsider their hard-line positions and advocate a conciliatory approach based on a two-state solution.” Academy Award Nominee - 2012 Best Documentary
My Name is Asher Lev

Chaim Potok

Sunday, March 23, 2014, 2:00-3:30pm

My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

Special Guest: Akiva Potok
Facilitated by Dr. Audrey Thacker, Department of English, CSUN

Asher Lev is a Ladover Hasid who keeps kosher, prays three times a day and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Asher Lev is an artist who is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels even when it leads him to blasphemy.In this stirring and often visionary novel, Chaim Potok traces Asher’s passage between these two identities, the one consecrated to God, the other subject only to the imagination.
Asher Lev grows up in a cloistered Hasidic community in postwar Brooklyn, a world suffused by ritual and revolving around a charismatic Rebbe. But in time his gift threatens to estrange him from that world and the parents he adores. As it follows his struggle, My Name Is Asher Lev becomes a luminous portrait of the artist, by turns heartbreaking and exultant, a modern classic.
Crossing Cairo: A Jewish Woman’s Encounter with Egypt

Ruth Sohn

Sunday, August 17, 2014 @ 2:00-3:30pm

Crossing Cairo: A Jewish Woman’s Encounter with Egypt By Rabbi Ruth Sohn

Rabbi Sohn was on campus person to discuss, sell and sign her book.

In Crossing Cairo, Rabbi Ruth Sohn has written an exceptional family portrait of the experience of living in Egypt with her husband and children. Advised not to share the fact that they are Jewish, they discover what it means to hide and then increasingly share their identity. Would it be possible to cross the boundaries of language, culture and religion to form real friendships and find a home among Egyptians? As she navigates new routines of daily life to make friends, find an Arabic teacher, and get to know the mysterious veiled woman that came with the rental of their apartment, Sohn takes us on a remarkable journey as she encounters the many faces of Cairo. In the Epilogue she returns to Cairo after the fall of Mubarak to find a newly exuberant and infectious patriotism and hope. Throughout this probing contemplation of self and other in a world that is foreign and in many ways inimical to her own as an American Jew, Sohn shows how even the seemingly mundane events of daily life can yield unexpected discoveries.

"With remarkable evenhandedness and...openness, Sohn has written a provocative and mesmerizing book of extraordinary passion and insight. I could not put it down!" Rabbi David Ellenson, President Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
The Crooked Mirror: A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation

Louise Steinman

Sunday, January 26, 2014, 2:00-3:30pm

The Crooked Mirror: A Memoir of Polish-Jewish Reconciliation by Louise Steinman

Facilitated by Dr. Holli Levitsky, Department of English and Director of Jewish Studies

In the winter of 2000, Louise Steinman set out to attend an international Bearing Witness Retreat at Auschwitz-Birkenau at the invitation of her Zen rabbi, who felt the Poles had gotten a “bum rap.” A bum rap? Her own mother could not bear to utter the word “Poland,” a country, Steinman was taught, that allowed and perhaps abetted the genocide that decimated Europe’s Jewish population, including members of her own extended family.
As Steinman learns more about her lost ancestors, though, she finds that the history of Polish-Jewish relations is far more complex. Returning time and again to Poland over the course of a decade, Steinman finds Poles who are seeking the truth about the past, however painful, and creating their own rituals to teach their towns about the history of their lost Jewish neighbors. This lyrical memoir chronicles her immersion in the exhilarating, discomforting, sometimes surreal, and ultimately healing process of Polish-Jewish reconciliation.
A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile

Marjorie Agosin

November 17, 2013

A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile by Marjorie Agosin

Facilitated by Dr. Alicia Partnoy, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures

In this unique memoir, renowned poet, fiction writer, critic, and activist Marjorie Agosin writes in the voice of her mother, Frida, the daughter of European Jewish immigrants, living in Chile in the years before, during, and after World War II. Dr. Partnoy will share her personal experiences of the author.