CBB’s Jewish Book Club meets four times a year on Sunday mornings to read and discuss both fascinating and critically-acclaimed Jewish novels. All events start at 9:30 AM.
Our 2023-2024 selections are now posted below. We will be meeting in-person (with Zoom option)
Do you have ideas for other books we should read?
To submit suggestions, contact Stephen Stone, the book club coordinator, here.
Sun., Oct 15, 2023
9:30 AM
Chicago, 2018: Ole Henryks is a popular restauranteur, well known for his actions in Nazi-occupied Denmark during World War II. Most consider him a hero. Britta Stein, however, does not. The ninety-year-old Chicago woman levels public accusations against Henryks by spray-painting “Coward,” “Traitor,” “Collaborator,” and “War Criminal” on the walls of his restaurant, resulting in a criminal charge and a bitter lawsuit. This is thrilling take on a modern day courtroom drama, and a masterful rendition of Denmark’s wartime heroics.
Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024
9:30 AM
In the Middle Ages, Jews living in Portugal were dragged to the baptismal font and forced to convert to Christianity. But many persevered in their Jewish prayers and rituals in secret and at great risk; the hidden, arcane practices of the kabbalists, a mystical sect of Jews, continued as well. One such secret Jew was Berekiah Zarco, an intelligent young manuscript illuminator. Inflamed by love and revenge, he searches, in the crucible of the raging pogrom, for the killer of his beloved uncle Abraham, a renowned kabbalist and manuscript illuminator, discovered murdered in a hidden synagogue along with a young girl in dishabille.
Sun., March 17, 2024
9:30 AM
Call It Sleep is the magnificent story of David Schearl, the “dangerously imaginative” child coming of age in the slums of New York. When Henry Roth published his first novel, in 1934, it was greeted with critical acclaim. But in that dark Depression year, books were hard to sell, and the novel quickly dropped out of sight, as did its twenty-eight-year-old author. Only with its paperback publication in 1964 (and critic Irving Howe’s masterful reappraisal) did the novel receive the recognition it deserves.
Sun., June 23, 2024
9:30 AM
One of Israel’s most celebrated novelists—the acclaimed author of A Pigeon and a Boy—gives us a story of village love and vengeance in the early days of British Palestine that is still being played out two generations later. In a story rich with the grit, humor, and near-magical evocation of Israeli rural life for which Meir Shalev is beloved by readers, high school teacher Ruta Tavori weaves a tale of friendship between men, and of love and betrayal, which carries us from British Palestine to present-day Israel, where forgiveness, atonement, and understanding can finally happen.