by dan pine
staff writer
In the Bay Area, the people of the book also happen to be the people of the book club.
Synagogues, JCCs, federations and other sponsoring institutions are all on the same page when it comes to book clubs. Those involved say clubs are a great way to make friends, explore Jewish identity and keep their grey matter in the pink.
“It doubles your pleasure,” says Marilyn Waldman, a six-year veteran of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s Women’s Alliance book group. “You read, and while you read you think about what others might say.”
Waldman’s group meets on the first Thursday morning of the month, usually at a member’s home. Over the years the club has grown to about 20 members, large enough for organizers to launch a second club. Waldman, Sari Swig and Rhona Edelbaum oversee logistics, while Wendy Shanin, formerly of A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books, serves as discussion leader.
“[Wendy] comes in with significant questions,” says Waldman of a typical club meeting. “Questions like ‘Do you think the author was trying to confound you?’ or ‘Why did he use this character is such a way?’ They don’t necessarily have a clear answer, but they evoke a discussion. People talk, sometimes disagree with each other.”
The Women’s Alliance book club sticks strictly to fiction. Among Waldman’s favorite titles in recent months, Philip Roth’s “American Pastorale,” “The Coffee Trader” by David Liss, and Irene Nemerovsky’s “Suite Francaise.”
Over at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, they’re reading books like Elizabeth Rosner’s “Speed of Light” and Samuel Freedman’s biography of his mother, “Who She Was.”
“There’s a sense of community that comes with the club,” says Wendy Bear, associate director of the JCC and coordinator of the JCC book club. “It almost always increases your appreciation of the book, even if you didn’t like it. People’s minds do get changed.”
Bear manages JCC adult programs geared toward constituency groups, such as interfaith families, seniors, young adults and émigrés. She started an evening book club in June 2005, and a daytime club six months ago. She says the groups have core memberships of around 15 people.
As for the title selection process, Bear and the members pick three books at a time, all voted on months in advance. Her group is run fairly democratically, while Waldman’s group finds having a consistent discussion leader works best.
“A leader,” she says, “should have a profound understanding of literature, be extremely well read and be able to elicit a good discussion without dominating it. That helps keep the group on track, and helps a group unpack a novel.”
For the last four years at Lafayette’s Temple Isaiah, Rabbi Judy Shanks has helmed the congregation’s book group (“We don’t call it a club,” she says. “That sounds too ‘clubby’”). The first two years, the group read a fairly random selection of fiction and nonfiction titles, but for each of the last two years, with the help of Temple Isaiah librarian Val Morehouse, the group has assigned themes to its annual reading list.
“Last year was a literary trip through Jewish history,” says Shanks. “This year we focused on Israel.” That meant books like Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America,” Amos Oz’s acclaimed autobiography “A Tale of Love and Darkness” and “Israelis: Founders and Sons” by Amos Elon.
Says Shanks of the latter title, “I told the group, ‘I know it’s not easy but I know you’d never read it unless you were here.’ I want people to be exposed to books they probably wouldn’t read on their own.”
Having a rabbi for a leader can be handy for a book group, especially when the text involves arcane facts from Jewish history. When the group read a book about the first century CE historian Flavius Josephus, Shanks helped the group better grasp the historical context.
There are plenty of good reasons to join a book club. Reason No. 458: Bookstores like Book Passage in Corte Madera and San Francisco offer a discount to customers who belong to book clubs.
But the best reasons, say group members, have less to do with discounts than with discourse.
“It makes you read differently,” says Waldman. “You read much more carefully, or you’ll listen for the poetry.”
Adds Bear, “People really want to come together and share ideas. Books are a neat way to bring people together.”
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California