April

The Little Russian, by Susan Sherman

Thursday, April 11, 7:30 PM

When in 1903 Berta Lorkis is unceremoniously sent back to her family's village in Ukraine (Little Russia) after serving for years as the young companion to the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family in Moscow, she feels that her life is over. Then into her grocer father's store walks Hershel Alshonsky, an ambitious, well-to-do wheat merchant. The two fall in love, have two children, and enjoy a successful life in Cherkast. But to Berta's horror, she soon discovers that Hershel is a member of the Jewish Worker's League and supplies guns to the shtetlach to help them defend themselves against pogroms. When a smuggling action goes horribly wrong, Hershel must flee. Berta refuses to leave, and soon she and her children face unimaginable hardship and danger as the drumbeat of war comes ever nearer, eventually forcing them into a perilous journey to find Hershel in America. Sherman's extraordinary debut novel plunges her readers into the bitter cold, deprivation, and upheaval of early 20th-century wartime Russia. Berta is a fascinating mix of petty vanity, devoted parenting, and breathtaking courage, fleshed out with cinematic detail that's both irresistible and spectacularly illuminating. (Library Journal Review)

May

Unorthodox, by Deborah Feldman

Wednesday, May 8, 7:30 PM

Born into the insular and exclusionary Hasidic community of Satmar in Brooklyn, Feldman recounts in this nicely written memoir her rebellion and ultimate "escape" from her ultraorthodox life. Feldman's spark of rebellion started with sneaking off to the library and hiding paperback novels under her bed. Her boldest childhood revolution: she buys an English translation of the Talmud, which would otherwise be kept from her, so that she might understand the prayers and stories that are the fabric of her existence. At 17, she enters into an arranged marriage with a man she meets once before the wedding. The absence of a sex life and failure to produce a child dominate her life, with her family and in-laws supplying constant pressure. She starts to experience panic attacks and the stirrings of her final break with being Hasidic. It's when she finally does get pregnant and wants something more for her child that the full force of her uprising takes hold, and she plots her escape.

Please note that we will be meeting on Wednesday evening instead of our usual Thursday in May. Unorthodox author Deborah Feldman will be speaking on Thursday, May 9 at 7:00 PM at Temple B'nai Abraham, just down the road from the JCC. This event will be open to the public (although not free), and we wanted to allow interested Book Group members the opportunity to attend both our book discussion and the author event.

Daytime Book Group

For those who miss our old Wednesday morning book group, there is now a book group at The Woodlands, a condominium community on Pleasant Valley Way in West Orange, that will be discussing our same JCC Book Group books on Wednesdays at 11:00 AM.   JCC Book Group members are welcome to attend. For anyone who prefers meeting in the daytime, please join us at The Woodlands clubhouse, which is on the right just inside the main Woodlands entrance:

Wednesday, April 10, 11:00 AM

The Little Russian, by Susan Sherman

Wednesday, May 8, 11:00 AM

Unorthodox, by Deborah Feldman

Obtaining the Books 

If you would like to purchase in paperback one or both of the books above, please call Carol Berman at the JCC at 973-530-3421 no later than Friday, March  22 with your credit card information. Carol will order books for our members at a significant discount off cover price IF she receives orders from at least five people. Books will be available for pick-up at the main reception desk at the JCC.

Both books are widely available in the BCCLS interlibrary loan system, of which many local libraries are members. Unfortunately, the West Orange library does not belong to BCCLS, and we know that interlibrary loan is much more difficult there. If you obtain a ReBL (Reciprocal Borrowing and Lending) sticker on your library card, you can borrow books from any ReBL library by traveling there on your own and checking the book out with your ReBL card. ReBL libraries include West Orange, Livingston, Roseland, Caldwell, South Orange, Maplewood, Verona, Montclair, and a host of others. (You can find a complete list here: http://www.maplewoodlibrary.org/services/list-of-rebl-libraries/ )  Most of these libraries have an online catalogue that you can search from home. Once you locate the book in a local library, you can call and ask them to hold the book at their circulation desk for you, then stop by and pick it up.