Sunday, January 12, 2025
2:00-3ish
Discussion with author, Elizabeth Graver --On Zoom (link will be coming as it gets closer to the date)
A kaleidoscopic portrait of one family’s displacement across four countries, Kantika―“song” in Ladino―follows the joys and losses of Rebecca Cohen, feisty daughter of the Sephardic elite of early 20th-century Istanbul. When the Cohens lose their wealth and are forced to move to Barcelona and start anew, Rebecca fashions a life and self from what comes her way―a failed marriage, the need to earn a living, but also passion, pleasure and motherhood. Moving from Spain to Cuba to New York for an arranged second marriage, she faces her greatest challenge―her disabled stepdaughter, Luna, whose feistiness equals her own and whose challenges pit new family against old.
Exploring identity, place and exile, Kantika also reveals how the female body―in work, art and love―serves as a site of both suffering and joy. A haunting, inspiring meditation on the tenacity of women, this lush, lyrical novel from Elizabeth Graver celebrates the insistence on seizing beauty and grabbing hold of one’s one and only life.
*As you read the book, please write down your questions to ask the author!
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Professor Holli Levitsky will facilitate discussion with author Donna Stone.
IN THE LIBRARY - 2:00-3:00ish pm
No Past Tense : Love and Survival in the Shadow of the Holocaust by D.Z. Stone
No Past Tense is the biography of Katarina (Kati) Kellner and William (Willi) Salcer, two Czech Jews who as teenagers were swept up by the Holocaust in Hungary and survived Auschwitz and Mauthausen, respectively. Covering their entire lives, weaving in first person "real time" voices, the unique structure of No Past Tense provides a distinctive "whole life" view of the Holocaust. The book begins with their childhoods, education in Budapest, and 16-year-old Kati meeting 19-year-old Willi in the Jewish ghetto in Plesivec, a Slovak village annexed by Hungary in 1938. After liberation from the camps they returned to discover most Jews were gone, and the villagers did not want them back. In defiance, Kati took up residence in a shed on her family’s property, and in reclaiming what was hers, won Willi’s heart. They lived as smugglers in post-war Europe until immigrating illegally to Palestine in 1946. In 1958, saying he did not want the children to know war, Willi convinced Kati to move to America.
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Lisa Silverman, facilitator
IN THE LIBRARY - 2:00-3:00ish pm
“Brit Mila” by Ayelet Tzabari
--A Jewish grandmother arrives in Toronto to help care for her newborn grandson, but finds herself in conflict with her daughter about upholding religious traditions.
We will be discussing the short story, "Brit Mila". I will be emailing a copy of the story as we get closer to the date. However, the short story can also be found in the book, "The Best Place on Earth" by Tzabari.