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Temple Israel’s Sisterhood is dedicated to a wide variety of religious, educational, social, philanthropic, and advocacy efforts. We are an outlet for the vibrant energy, creativity, and passion of Reform Jewish women, a social hub of Reform Jewish life, and an integral part of our congregation. Would you like to join us? Please contact either of us.
Donna Seldes and Wendy Saltzburg
Temple Israel Sisterhood Co-Presidents

Temple Israel Book Club Events

At noon on the First Monday of each month, we get together to review and discuss a wide assortment of books including novels, biographies, memoirs, and non-fiction. Everyone is welcome -- please join us for a special experience. Although this is a Sisterhood event, men are welcome and encouraged to attend. We are now meeting via Zoom until such time as we can all get together again.   

February 6th Selection:

The Lincoln Highway: A Novel by Amor Towles  (2021)

“Welcome to the enormous pleasure that is The Lincoln Highway, a big book of camaraderie and adventure in which the miles fly by and the pages turn fast.  Set over the course of ten riveting days, the story of these four boys unfolds, refolds, tears, and is taped back together.  When you aren’t actually reading the book, you’ll be worrying about the characters, so you might as well stay in your chair and keep reading.” —Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House
 
The Lincoln Highway might just be one of the best novels of this decade, which is a feat considering A Gentleman in Moscow, also holds that distinction (in this reviewer’s mind, anyway). Set in the 1950s, The Lincoln Highway is filled with nostalgia as well as the gentle naïveté and hijinks of those who are young, optimistic, and on a mission. The story follows four boys who set out to travel the country in search of a fresh start: Sometimes their dreams are aligned but often they are not. In other words, adventure ensues: There’s train hopping and car stealing, and with that comes the inevitability of trouble sparked from both good and bad intentions. Each of these young men is chasing his dreams, but their pasts—whether violent or sad—are never far behind. A remarkable work of storytelling. —Al Woodworth, Amazon Editor
 
March 6th Selection:
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry  (2022)
 
WINNER OF THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION
“An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South—and thus of America—by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time. An inspiration.” —Isabel Wilkerson
 
Weaving together stories of immigrant communities, contemporary artists, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes, her own ancestors, and her lived experiences, Imani Perry crafts a tapestry unlike any other. With uncommon insight and breathtaking clarity, South to America offers an assertion that if we want to build a more humane future for the United States, we must center our concern below the Mason-Dixon Line. 
 
April 3rd Selection:
The Night Watchman: A Novel by Louise Erdrich  (2020)
 
"Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman is a singular achievement even for this accomplished writer. . . Erdrich, like her grandfather, is a defender and raconteur of the lives of her people. Her intimate knowledge of the Native American world in collision with the white world has allowed her, over more than a dozen books, to create a brilliantly realized alternate history as rich as Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi.” — O, The Oprah Magazine
 
Louise Erdrich pays poignant homage to her grandfather in this sweeping novel about Native American dispossession in the 1950s. Like her grandfather, our titular hero is a humble night watchman, also the tribal chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota. Initially, an uneventful post, Thomas Wazhashk’s life is upended when he learns that the U.S. government has earmarked them for “emancipation” (an odd term, he points out, since they were not enslaved). The Night Watchman follows Thomas’s tireless efforts to persuade the U.S. government to honor treaties that protected what remained of their already picked-over lands. And Erdrich further expounds on the scourge of systemic racism, sexual exploitation, and other unsavory sundries through the stories of his extended family, and those in their orbit. Dark much? Yes. But The Night Watchman is tempered by Erdrich’s signature wit and humanity, exposing the light in the wounds of individuals, and people, fighting for their place in the world. —Erin Kodicek, Amazon Book Review
 
May 1st Selection:

 An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong  (2022)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling” (The New York Times), “dazzling” (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong

In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have a complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved.

June 5th Selection:

Demon Copperhead: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver  (2022)

"Maybe the best novel of 2022. . . . Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love.” (Ron Charles, Washington Post)

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenage single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story.

 

If you are interested in attending our virtual meetings, contact Ellen Rosichan at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. so she can send you an invitation to attend the Zoom meeting.