May 17 2012
25 Iyyar 5772
25 Iyyar 5772
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Book Group
Welcome to JCC MetroWest's Monthly Book Group
Our book group is free, open to both members and non-members, and you can join and begin attending at any time!
March
Displaced Persons, by Ghita Schwarz
Wednesday, March 14, 11:00 AM
Thursday, March 15, 7:30 PM
Polish Jews Pavel, Fela, and Chaim, survivors of World War II who were first brought together in a displaced persons camp, manage to create their own patchwork families even as they keep an eye out for that passing stranger who just might be a lost relation. Pavel and Fela eventually marry and move to America, taking teenaged Chaim with them. Schwarz highlights their ordinary days in Queens, NY, as they try to adjust to America while always remembering their horrific past. Poignant and sharp, this engrossing first novel takes a first-person look at a time and a people defined by a deep inner strength.
April
The Far Euphrates, by Aryeh Lev Stollman
Wednesday, April 11, 11:00 AM
Thursday, April 12, 7:30 PM
Windsor, Ontario is the setting for this mystical debut novel, a coming-of-age story about the lonely son of Holocaust survivors. Alexander's parents, ‘a rabbi and his fearful wife, along with the cantor and his wife who live next door, try to protect the young boy, raising him in a tangle of "secrets and lies." But he learns that his mother has a brother in a mental institution and that the cantor and his sister were part of Josef Mengele's "medical" experiments on twins in Auschwitz. He tries to emulate his academic father and the grandfather he never knew by accumulating endless knowledge about the secrets of the universe. Alexander's small world is delightfully peopled by uncommon folk, and philosophical questions about the post-Holocaust world are probed through many of the boy's adventures.
May
Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English, by Natasha Solomons
Wednesday, May 9, 11:00 AM
Thursday, May 10, 7:30 PM
Screenwriter Solomons's debut novel tells the winsome story of German exile Jack Rosenblum and his unlikely postwar quest to build a golf course in the British countryside. Fresh off the boat, Jack dives passionately into assimilation, starting a booming carpet business, buying his suits at Henry Poole and his hats at Lock of St. James, and avoiding his native tongue at all costs. And while he can afford golf clubs at Harrod's, he can't check off the last item on his list: join a golf club. On impulse, he buys a damp acreage and embarks on the final leg of his assimilation. Meanwhile, his wife, Sadie, obsesses over the past, churning out Baumtortes and other confections.
