Jewish Literature: Identity & Imagination

A Reading and Discussion Series

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Let's Talk About It!

The Watsonville Public Library will host a five-part reading and discussion series, Jewish Literature: Identity and Imagination, beginning this fall. This exciting program is designed to offer participants an opportunity to explore Jewish literature and culture through scholar-led discussions of contemporary and classic books centered on a common theme. Dr. Murray Baumgarten will lead and facilitate the book discussions which center on the theme Demons, Golems, and Dybbuks: Monsters of the Jewish Imagination.

This program will bring together interested readers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, for thoughtful talks about five works of Jewish literature as well as an accompanying scholarly essay. The essay, written by project scholar Jeremy Dauber, Atran Assistant Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture at Columbia University, is designed to introduce the theme and illuminate discussion.

Book discussions will be held in the Meeting Room on the second floor of the Watsonville Main Library, 275 Main St. Attend all five sessions or as many as you can to get to know other readers and enjoy the variety of viewpoints!

Series Reading List:

1. Satan in Goray / Isaac Bashevis Singer
2. The Dybbuk and Other Writings / S. Ansky
3. The Metamorphosis / Franz Kafka
4. The Puttermesser Papers / Cynthia Ozick
5. Angels in America / Tony Kushner

Copies of these titles are available from the Watsonville Public Library. Check the Watsonville Public Library Catalog for availability, or call Watonka Addison, Watsonville Public Library Adult Services Librarian at 831-768-3400.

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NEW!

Visit the blog for the Watsonville Public Library's Jewish Literature discussions. The blog is an online forum designed to provide a venue for questions, comments, and continued engagement with the issues raised in our lively book discussion programs.

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Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 5:30-7 p.m.
Discussion of Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer

The residents of Goray, having survived Bogdan Khmelnitsky's notorious 1648 massacre, are convinced that the Messiah will arrive at any moment. So when followers of purple-robed mystic Sabbatai Zevi come to the Polish shtetl offering a return to the Promised Land, the villagers are quick to join their ranks—with disastrous results. Dietary laws and society's basic civilities are quickly forgotten. Life in the isolated village deteriorates in a blaze of famine and chaos. Originally published in Singer's native Poland in 1935—the same year he emigrated to America—this dark, chilling tale clearly reflects the anxieties of its era. The Nobel laureate's first novel is an epic story of desperation and religious fervor.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 5:30-7 p.m.
Discussion of The Dybbuk and Other Writings by S. Ansky

Rejecting his Orthodox upbringing, Ansky (né Solomon Rappoport) became at turns a Russian revolutionary, a miner, and a bookbinder in Paris. He was in his mid-thirties when, already a successful writer, he gravitated back to his roots. In 1911, he embarked on an ambitious trek throughout Polish and Galician shtetls, gathering materials for folkloric research.

His best known work, The Dybbuk, was directly inspired by this ethnographic quest. The four-act play, a metaphysical take on Romeo and Juliet, tells the story of Leah, who, on the eve of her wedding, is possessed by the spirit of the dead Khonon, a poor rabbinical student who had been in love with her. First performed in Vilna in 1920, weeks after Ansky died, The Dybbuk quickly became a cornerstone of Jewish literature.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008, 5:30-7:00 p.m.
Discussion of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

In November 1919, Kafka drafted a long, angry letter to his father, calling him a "vermin" who drained other's blood to sustain himself. At 36, the Czech writer had spent the previous ten years trying to wrest free from his controlling parents, who demanded financial support and denigrated his literary efforts.

In that difficult decade, Kafka composed the now-classic tale of Gregor Samsa, a put-upon salesman who finds himself transformed into a "monstrous vermin," often rendered as a cockroach. Read as both an allegory of Jewish alienation in Europe and a perverse rewriting of Yiddish folk tales, The Metamorphosis resonates because of Kafka's furious and at times hilarious portrayal of a family at war with itself, struggling first to care for, and then destroy the child it no longer understands or loves.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 5:30-7:00 p.m.
Discussion of The Puttermesser Papers by Cynthia Ozick

One expects a formidable critic like Ozick to be erudite and incisive, but the surprise of her haunting, fantastical 11^th book is how funny it is. The novel's interlinked stories, most of which appeared over the past 20 years in The Atlantic and The New Yorker, chronicle the life of Ruth Puttermesser (Yiddish for butter knife): a friendless, uncommonly learned, unmarried civil servant with a law degree, whose "only irony" is "to postulate an afterlife."

But one morning Puttermesser finds a golem in her bed, and everything changes: she becomes Mayor of New York; forms an "ideal friendship" with a younger man; grows old; is brutally murdered; and ascends to Paradise. Ozick's distinctive, poetic style, meanwhile, elevates a novel of ideas to a work of art.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008, 5:30-7:00 p.m.
Discussion of Angels in America by Tony Kushner

This two-part play opens with a rabbi's eulogy for Louis Ironson's immigrant grandmother, but the nebbishy paralegal soon becomes embroiled in a personal drama emblematic of the Reagan years. Louis abandons his AIDS-stricken lover for a married Mormon lawyer, a protégé of Roy Cohn, the censorious powerbroker who lives in denial of his own identity and terminal illness.

At a time when many playwrights were thinking small, Kushner crafted a sprawling tapestry unafraid to embrace large political, social, and spiritual themes or to weave the phantasmagoric into everyday life. By invoking the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg as well as Aramaic texts, this Pulitzer Prize-winning epic, full of mordant humor and literary zest, uses its ethnic and sexual specificity to illuminate the American experience.

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Program Scholar

The discussions will be led by Dr. Murray Baumgarten, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Neufeld-Levin Chair, with Peter Kenez, in Holocaust Studies, and Director, Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Program Partners

• Jewish Studies Department, UCSC
• Temple Beth El

Program Sponsors  

Let's Talk About It: Jewish Literature, a reading and discussion series, has been made possible through a grant from Nextbook and the American Library Association.

The mission of the American Library Association Public Programs Office is to foster cultural programming as an integral part of library service in all types of libraries. Established in 1990, the office helps thousands of libraries nationwide develop and host programs that encourage dialogue among community members and works to establish libraries as cultural centers in their communities.

Nextbook is a national initiative to promote books that illuminate 3,000 years of Jewish civilization. Their programs include partnerships with public libraries to build collections and create innovative public programs; annotated reading lists that guide readers to exciting works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry; and a Web site featuring a daily cultural news digest with links to stories and reviews from around the world.

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Let's Talk About It: Jewish Literature Discussion Groups at Nearby Libraries

Sunnyvale Public Library

The Let's Talk About It series taking place at the Sunnyvale Public Library starts in July and continues through November. The theme will be "Your Heart's Desire: Sex and Love in Jewish Literature." Victoria Harrison, Ph.D, Jewish Studies Coordinator and Lecturer in the History Department and San Jose State University will be the scholar and discussion coordinator. Guest lecturers will lead discussions of different books in the series. Discussion dates, books and special guest lecturers include:

Please register for this series at the Sunnyvale Public Library by calling the Adult Information/Reference Desk at (408) 730-7300 or in person at the Library. Books discussed in the series will be available for check out from the Sunnyvale Public Library. For more information about this special series, please contact Susan Denniston at (408) 730-7332.

San José Public Library

The Let's Talk About It series taking place at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library starts in January, 2009 and continues through May, 2009. The theme will be "Modern Marvels: Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel." Victoria Harrison, Ph.D., Jewish Studies Coordinator and Lecturer in the History Department at San Jose State University will be the scholar and discussion coordinator. Discussion dates and books include:

Books discussed in the series will be available for check out from the San José Public Library. For further information or to sign up for this series, please contact Deborah Estreicher at (408) 808-2357.

For More Information

Watonka Addison, Adult Services Librarian
Watsonville Public Library
831-768-3400
waddison @ ci.watsonville.ca.us