We have two active book groups meeting. Book Group Aleph meets monthly in members’ homes and focuses on fiction—most with a Jewish author or theme—selected by group members and chooses six books at a time, generally completing 6-8 books per year. Book Group Bet meets every other month at a local diner and reads mostly fiction—some non-fiction, and some with a Jewish author or theme—selected by group members and generally completes 6 books per year. Following is a sampling of books read by each of the groups:
Book Group – Aleph
2018 |
|
Daniel Deronda |
George Eliot |
A Horse Walks into a Bar |
David Grossman |
Judas |
Amos Oz |
The Plot Against America |
Philip Roth |
Einstein: His Life and Universe |
Walter Isaacson |
Binocular Vision |
Edith Perlman |
The Hilltop |
Assaf Gavron |
Moonglow |
Michael Chabon |
2017 |
|
It Can't Happen Here |
Sinclair Lewis |
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank |
Nathan Englander |
As a Driven Leaf |
Milton Steinberg |
Comedy in a Minor Key |
Hans Kielson |
Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought |
David Biale |
2016 |
|
Between Friends |
Amos Oz |
The Last of the Just |
Andre Schwartz-Bart |
Brooklyn Follies |
Paul Auster |
Dissident Gardens |
Jonathan Lethem |
The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories |
Cynthia Ozick |
The Rise of David Levinsky |
Abraham Cahan |
2015 |
|
Falling Out of Time |
David Grossman |
The Favored Daughter |
Fawzia Koofi |
Collected Poems in English |
Joseph Brodsky |
The Moor's Last Sigh |
Salman Rushdie |
The UnAmericans: Stories |
Molly Antopol |
Call It Sleep |
Henry Roth |
The Dreyfus Affair: J'accuse and Other Writings |
Emile Zola |
2014 |
|
An Officer and A Spy |
Robert Harris |
The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Inheritance |
Edmund de Waal |
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close |
Jonathan SafranFoer |
Herzog |
Saul Bellow |
A Guest for the Night |
SY Agnon |
Once We Were Brothers |
Ronald Balson |
Telegraph Avenue |
Michael Chabon |
2013 |
|
Friendly Fire |
A.B. Yehoshua |
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness |
Michelle Alexander |
Queen of the Jews |
Judith Petsonk |
When General Grant Expelled the Jews |
Jonathan D. Sarna |
Until the Dawn’s Light |
Aharon Appelfeld |
Nemesis |
Philip Roth |
A Knock on the Door |
Etgar Keret |
2012 |
|
Eating Animals |
Jonathan Safran Foer |
The Book Thief |
Markus Zusak |
Super Sad True Love Story |
Gary Shteyngardt |
My Son’s Story |
Nadine Gordimer |
Ahead of My Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent |
Ruth Gruber |
A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories |
Will Eisner |
The Memory Chalet |
Tony Judt |
2011 |
|
A People’s History of the United States |
Howard Zinn |
A Pigeon and A Boy |
Meir Shalev |
36 Arguments for the Existence of God |
Rebecca Goldstein |
The Finkler Question |
Howard Jacobson |
To the End of the Land |
David Grossman |
2010 |
|
The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit |
Lucette Lagnado |
The Persistence of Memory |
Tony Eprile |
Maimonides |
Sherwin Nuland |
Ragtime |
E.L. Doctorow |
Homesick |
Eshkol Nevo |
Exodus & Revolution |
Michael Walzer |
People of the Book |
Geraldine Brooks |
Khirbet Khizeh |
S. Yizhar |
2009 |
|
The Ministry of Special Cases |
Nathan Englander |
Palestinian Walks |
Raja Shehadeh |
A Tranquil Star |
Primo Levi |
Beware of God |
Shalom Auslander |
Bech, A Book |
John Updike |
Betraying Spinoza |
Rebecca Goldstein |
The Family Markowitz |
Allegra Goodman |
2008 |
|
A Woman in Jerusalem |
AB Yehoshua |
The Collected Stories |
Grace Paley |
None to Accompany Me |
Nadine Gordimer |
Journey from the Land of No |
Roya Hakakian |
The Counterlife |
Philip Roth |
Salonica, City of Ghosts |
Mark Mazower |
Fima |
Amos Oz |
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union |
Michael Chabon |
2007 |
|
The Pity of It All |
Amos Elon |
The I.L. Peretz Reader |
IL Peretz |
The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner |
Isaac Goldemberg |
The History of Love: A Novel |
Nicole Krauss |
A Tale of Love and Darkness |
Amos Oz |
The Yacoubian Building |
Alaa Al Aswany |
Absurdistan |
Gary Shteyngardt |
Suite Francaise |
Irene Nemirov |
Uncle Tungsten |
Oliver Sacks |
2006 |
|
American Pastoral |
Philip Roth |
Disgrace |
J.M. Coetzee |
The House Gun |
Nadine Gordimer |
God Knows |
Joseph Heller |
The Madonna of Excelsior |
Zakes Mda |
Reading Lolita in Tehran |
Azar Nafisi |
Stone from the River |
Ursual Hegi |
2005 |
|
City of Glass |
Paul Auster |
Where She Came From |
Helen Epstein |
All My Sons |
Arthur Miller |
In America |
Susan Sontag |
Mr. Mani |
A. B. Yehoshua |
The Song of Names |
Norman Lebrecht |
The Periodic Table |
Primo Levi |
Mr. Sammler's Planet |
Saul Bellow |
The Kite Runner |
Khaled Hosseini |
The Bible - Genesis and Isaiah |
|
2004 |
|
Out of Place: A Memoir |
Edward Said |
Austerlitz |
W.G. Sebald |
Lost Tribe |
Paul Zakrzewski (ed.) |
The Centaur in the Garden |
Moacyr Scliar |
The Tattoed Girl |
Joyce Carol Oates |
Ten Thousand Lovers |
Edeet Ravel |
World's Fair |
E.L. Doctorow |
The Assistant |
Bernard Malamud |
The Known World |
E.P. Jones |
2003 |
|
The Satanic Verses |
Salman Rushdie |
The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel |
Isaac Babel |
Operation Shylock |
Philip Roth |
You Shall Be As Gods |
Erich Fromm |
Everything is Illuminated |
Jonathan Safran Foer |
Revenge: A Story of Hope |
Laura Blumenfeld |
The Same Sea |
Amos Oz |
2002 |
|
Tevye the Dairyman |
Sholem Aleichem |
The Bread Givers |
Anzia Yezierska |
The Book of Daniel |
E L Doctorow |
The Human Stain |
Philip Roth |
The Iron Wall |
Avi Shlaim |
The Shawl/The Messiah of Stockholm |
Cynthia Ozick |
Fugitive Pieces |
Anne Michaels |
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay |
Michael Chabon |
White Teeth |
Zadie Smith |
2001 |
|
Patrimony |
Philip Roth |
The Issue is Power |
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz |
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges |
Nathan Englander |
An Empire of Their Own |
Neal >Gabler |
The Red Tent |
Anita Diamant |
Sleeping on a Wire |
David Grossman |
A Journey to the End of the Millennium |
A B Yehoshua |
Enemies, A Love Story |
Isaac Bashevis Singer |
Joshua Then and Now |
Mordechai Richler |
Joshua Then and Now |
Film |
Book Group - Bet
2016 |
|
The Plot against America |
Philip Roth |
Where’d You Go, Bernadette? |
Maria Semple |
2015 |
|
Hope: A Tragedy |
Shalom Auslander |
The Sense of an Ending |
Julian Barnes |
The New Jim Crow |
Alan Michelle Alexander |
The Book of Unknown Americans |
Peter Cristina Henriquez |
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn |
Betty Smith |
Everything I Never Told You |
Celeste Ng |
2014 |
|
The Devil in the White City |
Erik Larson |
A Thousand Splendid Suns |
Khaled Hosseini |
The Husband’s Secret |
Alan Liane Moriarty |
The Signature of All Things |
Peter Elizabeth Gilbert |
To Kill a Mockingbird |
Harper Lee |
The Kommandant’s Mistress |
Sherri Szeman |
2013 |
|
The Thirteenth Tale |
Diane Setterfield |
Henna House: A Novel |
Nomi Eve |
The Art of Hearing Heartbeats |
Alan Jan-Philipp Sendker |