Program Description: Discussion of historical novel, The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum: Rise & Fall of an American Crime Boss by Margalit Fox.

America’s first great organized-crime lord was a woman. Combining historical research with narrative, this is the true story of a once-famous notorious Jewish woman. Mrs. Mandelbaum came as an immigrant in steerage in 1850, and by the 1870s she had become a fixture of NY's Gilded Age high society, but she was also a criminal mastermind.
A PARADE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

12:30pm-Bring your non-meat lunch. Drinks & dessert are provided

1:00pm-Book discussion

When: Monday, April 7, 2024, at 12:30pm

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

Cost: JCC Members only

For assistance registering: registrar@shalomraleigh.org

Click here to register.

Program Description: Discussion of "Gateway to the Moon" by Mary Morris lunch at 12:30p lunch with drinks and dessert are provided, and the discussion to begin at 1:00p.

Entrada de la Luna is the sort of town that ambitious children try to leave behind them. Poor health, broken marriages, and poverty are the norm, and luck is unusual. So when Miguel Torres notices an advertisement for a position looking after two small boys a few towns over, he jumps at the opportunity.

Rachel Rothstein is not the sort of parent Miguel expected to be working for, though. A frustrated artist, Rachel moved her family away from New York looking for a fresh start, but so far New Mexico has not solved any of the problems they brought with them. But Miguel genuinely loves the work and he finds many of the Rothstein family's customs similar to ones he sees in his own community.

Studded throughout this present-day narrative are historical vignettes following the ancestors of Entrada's residents, beginning in fifteenth-century Spain and moving forward to the discovery of America, highlighting the torture, pursuit, and resistance of the Jewish people throughout history, leading to the founding of the enclave that Miguel now calls home. A beautiful novel of shared history, Gateway to the Moon is a moving and memorable portrait of home and community.

When: Monday, March 3, 2024, at 12:30pm

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

Cost: JCC Members only

For assistance registering: registrar@shalomraleigh.org

Click here to register.

Program Description: “Last Summer at the Golden Hotel” by Elyssa Friedland

In its heyday, The Golden Hotel was the crown jewel of the hotter-than-hot Catskills vacation scene. For more than sixty years, the Goldman and Weingold families – best friends and business partners – have presided over this glamorous resort which served as a second home for well-heeled guests and celebrities. But the Catskills are not what they used to be – and neither is the relationship between the Goldmans and the Weingolds. As the facilities and management begin to fall apart, a tempting offer to sell forces the two families together again to make a heart-wrenching decision. Can they save their beloved Golden or is it too late?

Long-buried secrets emerge, new dramas and financial scandal erupt, and everyone from the traditional grandparents to the millennial grandchildren wants a say in the hotel’s future. Business and pleasure clash in this fast-paced, hilarious, nostalgia-filled story, where the hotel owners rediscover the magic of a bygone era of nonstop fun even as they grapple with what may be their last resort.

When: Monday, January 6, 2024, at 12:30pm

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

Cost: JCC Members only

For assistance registering: registrar@shalomraleigh.org

Description: Finding Margaret Fuller by Allison Pataki

An epic reimagining of the life of Margaret Fuller—America’s forgotten leading lady and the central figure of a movement that defined a nation—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post.

Massachusetts, 1836. Young, brazen, beautiful, and unapologetically brilliant, Margaret Fuller accepts an invitation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the celebrated “Sage of Concord,” to meet his coterie of enlightened friends shaping a nation in the throes of its own self-discovery. By the end of her stay, she will become “the radiant genius and fiery heart” of the Transcendentalists, a role model to young Louisa May Alcott, an inspiration to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his scandalous Scarlet Letter, a friend to Henry David Thoreau as he ventures into the woods of Walden Pond . . . and a muse to Emerson himself. But Margaret craves more than poetry and interpersonal drama, and she finds her restless soul in need of new challenges and adventure.

And so she charts a singular course against a backdrop of dizzying historical drama: From Boston, where she hosts a women-only literary salon for students like Elizabeth Cady Stanton; to the editorial meetings of The Dial magazine, where she hones her pen as its co-founder; to Harvard’s library, where she is the first woman to study within its walls; to the gritty New York streets where she spars with Edgar Allan Poe and reports on the writings of Frederick Douglass. Margaret defies conventions time and again as an activist for women and an advocate for humanity, earning admirers and scathing critics alike.

When the legendary Horace Greeley offers an assignment in Europe, Margaret again makes history as the first female foreign news correspondent, mingling with luminaries like Frederic Chopin, Walt Whitman, George Sand, and more. But it is in Rome where she finds a world of passion, romance, and revolution, taking a Roman count as a lover—and sparking an international scandal. Evolving yet again into the roles of mother and countess, Margaret enters a new fight for Italy’s unification.

With a star-studded cast and epic sweep of historical events, this is a story of an inspiring trailblazer, a woman who loved big and lived even bigger—a fierce adventurer who transcended the rigid roles ascribed to women, and changed history for millions, all on her own terms.

When: Monday, October 14, 2024, at 12:30pm

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

Cost: JCC Members only

For assistance registering: registrar@shalomraleigh.org

Program Description: Join us for a covered dish potluck while we vote on the book club selections for 2024-2025!

Bring a non-meat dish to share, with a serving utensil. Drinks will be provided. Don't miss this delicious, fun afternoon

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

When: Monday, September 9, 2024, from 12:30-3pm

Cost: JCC Members Only 

For assistance registering contact: registrar@shalomraleigh.org

Program Description: Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

When: Monday, June 3, 2024, at 12:30 pm

Cost: JCC Members Only 

For assistance registering contact: registrar@shalomraleigh.org

Program Description: The Liar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

Nofar is an average teenage girl–so average, in fact, that she's almost invisible. Serving customers ice cream all summer long, she is desperate for some kind of escape.

But one afternoon, a terrible lie slips from her tongue. And suddenly everyone wants to talk to her: the press, her schoolmates, and even the boy upstairs. He is the only one who knows the truth, and he is demanding a price for his silence.

Then Nofar meets Raymonde, an elderly immigrant whose best friend has just died. Raymonde keeps her friend alive the only way she knows how, by inhabiting her stories. But soon, Raymonde's lies take on a life of their own.

Written with propulsive energy, dark humor, and deep insight, The Liar reveals the far-reaching consequences of even our smallest choices, and explores the hidden corners of human nature to reveal the liar, and the truth-teller, in all of us.

When: Monday, May 6, 2024, at 12:30pm

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

Cost: JCC Members only

Registration Opens: Monday, April 8, 2024, at 8:00am

For assistance registering: registrar@shalomraleigh.org

Program Description:  People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn

People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present is an intentionally provocative title, challenging us to confront reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, yet so little respect for Jewish lives as they unfold in the present.

Horn's twelve essays include among others, international veneration of Anne Frank, and “Auschwitz” a blockbuster traveling exhibit. She draws on her own family — trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious 10-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks at her children’s school, the essential Jewish perspective of religious practice, prayer, and study to assert the vitality and depth of Jewish life against antisemitism that is on the rise. 

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award, the New York Times Notable Book of 2021, Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year, Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, ALA Notable Book, Natan Notable Book, and a Kirkus Prize finalist.

Bring a non-meat or parve lunch. Drinks & dessert are provided.

12:30 pm lunch, 1:00 pm discussion.

When:  Monday, April 1, 2024, at 12:30pm

Where:  David R. Kahn Community Campus

Cost:  JCC Members Only

For more information contact:  919-676-6170

Program Description: Once We Were Home by Jennifer Rosner

Once We Were Home is based on the true stories of Jewish children whose parents had given them to Christians in order to save them from the Nazis. This historical novel provides insight into post-WWII long term consequences faced by the children and their families. For example some adoptive parents don't want to relinquish the children back to their biological parents. This heart-wrenching novel raises questions of identity, parenthood, belonging, and morality — as it confronts what it really means to find home.

Come at 12:30 pm with a dairy or parve lunch.  Drinks and cookies provided.

Discussion starts at 1:00 pm

When: Monday, March 4, 2024, at 12:30 pm

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

Cost: JCC Members Only

For more information contact: 919-676-6170

Program Description: When I Grow Up by Ken Krimstein

From the prize-winning author of The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt, a stunning graphic narrative of newly discovered stories from Jewish teens on the cusp of WWII.

When I Grow Up is New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein’s new graphic nonfiction book, based on six of hundreds of newly discovered, never-before-published autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish teens on the brink of WWII―found in 2017 hidden in a Lithuanian church cellar.

These autobiographies, long thought destroyed by the Nazis, were written as entries for three competitions held in Eastern Europe in the 1930s, just before the horror of the Holocaust forever altered the lives of the young people who wrote them.

In When I Grow Up, Krimstein shows us the stories of these six young men and women in riveting, almost cinematic narratives, full of humor, yearning, ambition, and all the angst of the teenage years. It’s as if half a dozen new Anne Frank stories have suddenly come to light, framed by the dramatic story of the documents’ rediscovery.

Beautifully illustrated, heart-wrenching, and bursting with life, When I Grow Up reveals how the tragedy that is about to befall these young people could easily happen again, to any of us, if we don’t learn to listen to the voices from the past.

Bring a non meat or parve lunch, drinks & dessert provided, 12:30 pm lunch, 1:00 pm discussion.

When: Monday, February 5, 2023, from 12:30-2:30 pm

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

Cost: JCC Members Only

For more information contact: 919-676-6170

Program Description: The Gown by Jennifer Robson

London, 1947: Besieged by the harshest winter in living memory, burdened by onerous shortages and rationing, the people of postwar Britain are enduring lives of quiet desperation despite their nation’s recent victory. Among them are Ann Hughes and Miriam Dassin, embroiderers at the famed Mayfair fashion house of Norman Hartnell. Together they forge an unlikely friendship, but their nascent hopes for a brighter future are tested when they are chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime honor: taking part in the creation of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gown.

Toronto, 2016: More than half a century later, Heather Mackenzie seeks to unravel the mystery of a set of embroidered flowers, a legacy from her late grandmother. How did her beloved Nan, a woman who never spoke of her old life in Britain, come to possess the priceless embroideries that so closely resemble the motifs on the stunning gown worn by Queen Elizabeth II at her wedding almost seventy years before? And what was her Nan’s connection to the celebrated textile artist and holocaust survivor Miriam Dassin?

With The Gown, Jennifer Robson takes us inside the workrooms where one of the most famous wedding gowns in history was created. Balancing behind-the-scenes details with a sweeping portrait of a society left reeling by the calamitous costs of victory, she introduces readers to three unforgettable heroines, their points of view alternating and intersecting throughout its pages, whose lives are woven together by the pain of survival, the bonds of friendship, and the redemptive power of love.

Bring a non-meat or parve lunch, drinks & dessert provided. 12:30 lunch; 1:00 discussion.

When: Monday, January 8, 2024, from 12:30-2:30pm

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

Cost: JCC Members Only

Program Description: Dinners with Ruth by Nina Totenberg

Celebrated NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg delivers an extraordinary memoir of her personal successes, struggles, and life-affirming relationships, including her beautiful friendship of nearly fifty years with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Four years before Nina Totenberg was hired at NPR, where she cemented her legacy as a prizewinning reporter, and nearly twenty-two years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, Nina called Ruth. A reporter for The National Observer, Nina was curious about Ruth’s legal brief, asking the Supreme Court to do something declare a law that discriminated “on the basis of sex” to be unconstitutional. In a time when women were fired for becoming pregnant, often could not apply for credit cards or get a mortgage in their own names, Ruth patiently explained her argument. That call launched a remarkable, nearly fifty-year friendship.

Dinners with Ruth is an extraordinary account of two women who paved the way for future generations by tearing down professional and legal barriers. It is also an intimate memoir of the power of friendships as women began to pry open career doors and transform the workplace. At the story’s heart is one, special Ruth and Nina saw each other not only through personal joys, but also illness, loss, and widowhood. During the devastating illness and eventual death of Nina’s first husband, Ruth drew her out of grief; twelve years later, Nina would reciprocate when Ruth’s beloved husband died. They shared not only a love of opera, but also of shopping, as they instinctively understood that clothes were armor for women who wanted to be taken seriously in a workplace dominated by men. During Ruth’s last year, they shared so many small dinners that Saturdays were “reserved for Ruth” in Nina’s house.

Dinners with Ruth also weaves together compelling, personal portraits of other fascinating women and men from Nina’s life, including her cherished NPR colleagues Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer; her beloved husbands; her friendships with multiple Supreme Court Justices, including Lewis Powell, William Brennan, and Antonin Scalia, and Nina’s own family—her father, the legendary violinist Roman Totenberg, and her “best friends,” her sisters. Inspiring and revelatory, Dinners with Ruth is a moving story of the joy and true meaning of friendship.

Please bring a non-meat or parve lunch. Drinks & dessert provided. 12:30 lunch; 1:00 discussion.

When: Monday, December 4, 2023, from 12:30-2:30pm

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

Cost: JCC Members Only

Program Description: How to Find Your Way in the Dark by Derek Miller

Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and a NYT Best Mystery of 2021: Twelve-year old Sheldon Horowitz is still recovering from the tragic loss of his mother only a year ago when a suspicious traffic accident steals the life of his father near their home in rural Massachusetts. It is 1938, and Sheldon, who was in the truck, emerges from the crash an orphan hell-bent on revenge. He takes that fire with him to Hartford, where he embarks on a new life under the roof of his buttoned-up Uncle Nate. Sheldon, his teenage cousins Abe and Mirabelle, and his best friend, Lenny, will contend with tradition and orthodoxy, appeasement and patriotism, mafia hitmen and angry accordion players, all while World War II takes center stage alongside a hurricane in New England and comedians in the Catskills. With his eye always on vengeance for his father’s murder, Sheldon stakes out his place in a world he now understands is comprised largely of crimes: right and wrong, big and small.

Bring a non-meat or parve lunch. Drinks & dessert provided. 12:30 lunch; 1:00 discussion.

When: Monday, November 6, 2023, from 12:30-2:30pm

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

Cost: JCC Members Only

Program Description: My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin

An incisive, deeply resonant debut novel about a nonconsensual sexual encounter that propels one woman’s final semester at an elite New England college into controversy and chaos—and into an ill-advised affair with a married professor.

It’s the winter of 1998 and Isabel Rosen has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire with a wealthy, elite student body and the sort of picturesque buildings college brochures were invented to capture. The only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, Isabel has always felt out of place at Wilder, and the death of her mother shortly before she arrived on campus left her feeling unmoored in a way that’s proven hard to shake. Now, right as she’s coming to believe she’s finally found her place, the fallout from a nonconsensual sexual encounter with one of the only other Jewish students on campus leaves Isabel reeling.

Enter R.H. Connelly: a once-famous poet and Isabel’s married writing professor, a man with secrets of his own. Connelly makes Isabel feel seen, beautiful, talented; the woman she longs to become. His belief in her ignites a belief in herself. The two begin an affair that shakes the foundation of who Isabel thinks she is, for better and worse.

Set against the backdrop of the Clinton and Lewinsky scandal, My Last Innocent Year is a coming-of-age story about a young woman on the brink of sexual and artistic awakening, navigating her way toward independence while recognizing the power, beauty and grit of where she came from. Timely and wise, it reckons with the complexities of consent, what it means to be an adult, and whether or not we can ever outrun our bad decisions.

Dessert and drinks provided. Book discussion starts at 1:00 pm

When: Monday, October 2, 2023, from 12:30-2:30pm

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

Cost: JCC Members Only, Free

Program Description:  The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict

Hedy Kiesler is lucky. Her beauty leads to a starring role in a controversial film and marriage to a powerful Austrian arms dealer, allowing her to evade Nazi persecution despite her Jewish heritage. But Hedy is also intelligent. At lavish Vienna dinner parties, she overhears the Third Reich's plans. One night in 1937, desperate to escape her controlling husband and the rise of the Nazis, she disguises herself and flees her husband's castle.

She lands in Hollywood, where she becomes Hedy Lamarr, screen star. But Hedy is keeping a secret even more shocking than her Jewish heritage: she is a scientist. She has an idea that might help the country and that might ease her guilt for escaping alone—if anyone will listen to her.

Dessert and drinks provided. Book discussion starts at 1:00 pm

When: Monday, September 11, 2023, from 12:30-2:30pm

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

Cost: JCC Members Only

For questions, contact: maxine.carr@shalomraleigh.org

Program Description: JCC Book Club members bring covered dishes to share. Discuss & vote on book suggestions for upcoming months.

When: Monday, August 28, 2023, from 12:30-2:45 pm

Where: David R. Kahn Community Campus

Registration Closes: Tuesday, August 21, at 12:00 pm

For more information contact: maxineecarr18@gmail.com

Details coming soon!