February 6, 2022 @ 2:00-3:00pm – Zoom link forthcoming
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant.

Discussion facilitated by Sarah Emanuel, Assistant Professor of Theological Studies, LMU

In the Bible, Dinah's life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that tell of her father, Jacob, and his twelve sons. The Red Tent begins with the story of the mothers--Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah--the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sustain her through childhood, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate connection with the past. Deeply affecting, The Red Tent combines rich storytelling and the valuable achievement of presenting a new view of biblical women's lives.

[There are 20+ copies in the L.A. Public Library system]

March 13, 2022 @ 2:00-3:00pm – Zoom link forthcoming

Spies of No Country: Israel's Secret Agents at the Birth of the Mossad by Matti Friedman
Discussion facilitated by Michael Davidson, lecturer, Jewish Studies, LMU

Journalist and award-winning author Matti Friedman’s tale of Israel’s first spies has all the tropes of an espionage novel, including duplicity, betrayal, disguise, clandestine meetings, the bluff, and the double bluff—but it’s all true.
The four spies were young, Jewish, and born in Arab countries. In 1948, at the outbreak of war in Palestine, they went undercover in Beirut, spending two years running sabotage operations and sending crucial intelligence back home. It was dangerous work. Of the dozen members of their ragtag unit, five would be caught and executed—but the remainder would emerge as the nucleus of the Mossad, Israel’s vaunted intelligence agency. 
Spies of No Country is about the slippery identities of these spies, but it’s also about the complicated identity of Israel, a country that presents itself as Western but in fact has more citizens with Middle Eastern roots, just like the spies of this fascinating narrative.

[There are 20+ copies in the L.A. Public Library system]

April 10, 2022 @ 2:00-3:00pm – Zoom link forthcoming
People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by Dara Horn
Discussion facilitated by Rabbi Zachary Zysman, LMU campus rabbi/director of Jewish Student Life
Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture—and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks—Horn was troubled to realize what all these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present.

[This is a highly new, popular book, so be sure to get it in plenty of time in the L.A. Public Library system in ebook or hardcover. And, if that doesn’t work, it is only $9.32 on Kindle…]