The OZ Monthly Book Club meets monthly and welcomes adult readers.
Book selections are determined by the group, with topics that are related to Jewish themes and concepts. Join these casual discussions about the book. To learn more contact our team here. Join us on the 2nd Wednesday each month 8-9:00 pm via ZOOM for a lively book discussion. REGISTER on the OZ Calendar and find the ZOOM link: https://ohavizedek.org/events/
FALL 2023 Line Up:
- September 13, 2023 Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai by Matti Friedman
“In October 1973, the poet and singer, 39 year old Leonard Cohen traveled from his home on the Greek island of Hydra to the chaos and bloodshed of the Sinai desert when Egypt attacked Israel on the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur. Moving around the front with a guitar and a group of local musicians, Cohen met hundreds of young soldiers. Those who survived never forgot the experience. And the war transformed Cohen. Journalist Matti Friedman gives us a riveting account of those weeks in the Sinai.
- October 11, 2023 The Unfinished Corner by Dani Colman
“Jewish mythology has it that when God created the universe, one corner of it was left unfinished, a dangerous place full of monsters. Twelve-year-old Miriam neither is preparing for her Bat Mitzvah, wrestling with whether she even wants to be Jewish–until a peculiar angel appears, whisking her, her two best friends, and her worst frenemy off to this monstrous land with one mission: finish the Unfinished Corner.”
- November 8, 2023 The Interpreter by A.J. Sidransky
“In the heat of wartime Manila, 23-year-old American GI Kurt Berlin is recruited by the OSS to return to Europe to aid in the interrogation of captured Nazis. A refugee from the Nazis himself, Berlin discovers the Nazi he’s interpreting is responsible for much of the torment and misery he endured during his escape. And that very same Nazi may hold the key to finding the girl he left behind.”
- December 13, 2023 The Matzah Ball by Jean Meltzer
“Chronically-ill Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt is a “nice Jewish girl‚” with a secret: she loves Christmas. As the best-selling author of over twenty Christmas romance novels, and four made-for-TV movie spin-offs, she’s kept her stellar career secret . But when Rachel’s publishing house tells her they won’t renew her contract unless she writes them a Hanukkah romance, she’s desperate for inspiration. She finds it in a high-end Jewish music celebration, the Matzah Ball, scheduled for the last night of Hanukkah. There is only one problem…. she has to contact her summer camp arch enemy.”
EARLY 2023 BOOKS:
- May 10, 2023 “The Book of Daniel” by E.L. Doctorow “The central figure of this novel is a young man, Daniel Isaacson, whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia. As the story opens, his parents have been dead for many years. He has not adjusted to their deaths. Out of the shambles of his childhood, he has constructed a new life. It is a life that enrages him…”
- June 14, 2023 “A Boy in Winter” by Rachel Seiffert “Early on a gray November morning in 1941, a small Ukrainian town is overrun by the SS. Penned in with his fellow Jews, a father anxiously awaits word of his two sons, a young woman, coming to fetch her sweetheart away from the invaders, must confront new and hard truths about those closest to her; a German engineer, here to avoid a war he considers criminal, is faced with an even greater crime unfolding behind the lines and only himself to turn to. And during it all, a boy determined to survive must throw in his lot with strangers…”
- July 12, 2023 The Art of Leaving by Ayelet Tsabari
A memoir by Tsabari, from her early love of writing and words, to her rebellion during her mandatory service in the Israeli army, her travels around the world, marriage, parenting, her struggle to define herself as a writer in a new language, and finally her rediscovery and embrace of her family history… Eventually, she realizes that she must reconcile the memories of her father and the sadness of her past if she is ever going to come to terms with herself.
- August 9, 2023 Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman
A collection of selected short stories by a premier storyteller, takes us around the world, from Jerusalem to Central America, from tsarist Russia to London during the Blitz, from central Europe to Manhattan, and more. These charged locales, and the lives of the endlessly varied characters within them, are evoked with a tenderness and incisiveness found in only our most observant seers.”
