Summer Book Club Is Back! Do you love to read? Enjoy meaningful discussions? The Bender JCC is thrilled to announce that we are bringing back our in-person Summer Book Club, as part of our Lessans Family Literary Series. We are fortunate to welcome Bender JCC community member and author, Deborah Kalb who will serve as our moderator.
It’s a great way to gather, make new friends, and engage in interesting conversation. All are welcome!
*Please note all books are available to borrow at the Montgomery County Public Library. Click Here: https://montgomerycountymd.gov/library/services/borrowing.html
Tuesday, June 18 | 11:30 AM | Free
Hotel Cuba by Aaron Hamburger
Fleeing the chaos of World War I and the terror of the Soviet Revolution, practical, sensible Pearl Kahn and her lovestruck, impulsive younger sibling Frieda sail for America to join their sister in New York. But discriminatory new immigration laws bar their entry, and the young women are turned back at Ellis Island. With few options, Pearl and Frieda head for Havana, Cuba, convinced they will find a way to overcome this setback.
A heartbreaking, epic family story, Hotel Cuba explores the profound courage of two women displaced from their home who strive to create a new future in an enticing and dangerous world far different from anything they have ever known.”
Tuesday, July 9 | 11:30 AM | Free
The Prison Minyan by Jonathan Stone
As the only prison in the federal system with a kosher deli, Otisville is the penitentiary of choice for white-collar Jewish offenders, many of whom secretly like the place. They’ve learned to game the system, so when the regime is toughened to punish a newly arrived celebrity convict who has upset the 45th president, they find devious ways to fight back.
Shadowy forces up the ante by trying to ‘Epstein’ – i.e. assassinate – the newcomer and visiting poetry professor Deborah Liston ends up in dire peril when she sees too much. She helped the minyan look into their souls. Will they now step up to save her?
Jonathan Stone brings the sensibility of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth to the post-truth era in a sharply comic novel that is also wise, profound and deeply moral.”
Tuesday, August 13 | 11:30 AM | Free
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.
For more information, please contact Marcie Blackman at mblackman@benderjccgw.org or 301.348.3808.
All Bender JCC programs are open to everyone. Contact Kate Falls, Director of Inclusion, at kfalls@benderjccgw.org or 301.348.3767 to discuss support and accommodations.
