Learn about our children’s Jewish studies programme >
ur Adult Programming Committee is committed to being responsive to the intellectual and educational needs of our community. Education and enrichment are our priorities.
We've completed a highly successful speaker series, and in November 2003 launched The DJC Book Club. Our format is informal; discussions are facilitated by prominent community leaders. Each leader structures the meeting with questions prompting lively and passionate debates with the book’s central themes guiding the discussion. We’ve had very entertaining and thoughtful discussions led by Rabbi Larry Englander, Professor Kalman Weiser and Rabbi Debra Landsberg.
2011-2012 Book Club Season
Thursday, October 27, 2011
TO THE END OF THE LAND, BY DAVID GROSSMAN
FACILITATED BY DEREK PENSLAR
“David Grossman is an Israeli author of fiction, nonfiction, and youth and children's literature. His books have been translated into many languages and he was awarded the Prime Minister's Prize for Hebrew literature (1984) and the Israeli Publishers Association Prize for best Hebrew novel (1985). To The End of the Land is a powerful meditation on war, friendship, and family. Instead of celebrating her son Ofer’s discharge from the Israeli Army, Ora finds her life turned upside down and inside out when her son reenlists and is sent back to the front for a major offensive. Unable to bear the thought of sitting alone waiting for the notifiers to bring her bad news, the recently separated Ora decides to hike in the Galilee, where the toll exacted by living in a land and among a people constantly at war is excruciatingly evident. Grossman, whose own son was killed during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, writes directly from the heart in this scorching anti-war novel. Grossman lives in Mevasseret, Zion on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
Derek Penslar is the Samuel Zacks Professor of Jewish History at the University of Toronto. He has written or edited ten books, most recently: The Origins of Modern Israel: A Documentary History. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Academy for Jewish Research. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard and Columbia, and next fall he will assume the Lewis Professorship of Israel Studies at Oxford.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
THE COOKBOOK COLLECTOR,
BY ALLEGRA GOODMAN
FACILITATED by CYNTHIA GOOD
“Allegra Goodman has been heralded as “a modern day Jane Austen” by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfillment. Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Bicoastal, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can’t find what we’re looking for, but above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: love that stays.
Cynthia Good is director of the Creative Book Publishing Program at Humber College, and former president of Penguin Group (Canada). At Penguin she originated the Penguin's Canadian Program, which has grown to one of the most successful in Canada, boasting a list of premier Canadian writers. She has taught in both Ryerson University's and Centennial College's publishing certificate programs, and been a featured speaker on cultural, literary and business subjects at many universities and colleges across Canada.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
FROM THAT PLACE AND TIME: A MEMOIR,
BY LUCY DAWIDOWICZ
FACILITATED BY KALMAN WEISER
Lucy Dawidowicz, pioneering Holocaust historian, narrates her own remarkable memoir recalling the year (1938-1939) she spent as a student at YIVO (the Yiddish Scientific Institute) in Wilno (Vilna), Poland (today's Vilnius, Lithuania) and the role she played in reclaiming Jewish cultural treasures in the immediate aftermath of World War II. A graduate of both American public schools and Yiddish secular schools in New York City before traveling to Wilno, Dawidowicz reflects as much on the nature of Eastern European as American Jewish life, yielding fascinating insights into both. Lucy Dawidowicz was born in New York City, in 1915 and moved to Wilno, Poland in 1938 to learn Yiddish. Her writings include The War against the Jews’, The Holocaust and the Historians’, What is the Use of Jewish History?, On Equal Terms: Jews in America 1881-1991 as well as From That Place and Time? amongst others. She died in 1990.
Kalman Weiser is the Silber Family Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at York University. He is the co-editor of Czernowitz at 100: the First Yiddish Language Conference in Historical Perspective (2010) and author of the recently published Jewish People, Yiddish Nation. Noah Prylucki and the Folkists in Poland (2011).
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
EATING ANIMALS,
BY JONATHAN FOER
FACILITATED BY ANDREA MOST
Jonathan Safer, like many young Americans, spent much of his teenage and college years oscillating between enthusiastic carnivore and occasional vegetarian. As he became a husband, and then a father, the moral dimensions of eating became increasingly important to him. Faced with the prospect of being unable to explain why we eat some animals and not others, Foer set out to explore the origins of many eating traditions and the fictions involved with creating them.
Andrea Most is Associate Professor of American Literature and Jewish Studies in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. Dr. Most’s book, Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical Press, won the 2005 Kurt Weill Prize for distinguished scholarship on music theatre. She also received the 2004 Polanyi Prize for Literature.
ABOUT THE DANFORTH JEWISH CIRCLE – 2011/2012 BOOK CLUB SEASON
Now in its eighth glorious year, the Danforth Jewish Book Circle is a favourite among our book-loving members, bringing us together throughout the year for interesting and animated discussions about a variety of books that touch on Jewish themes. And of course, when we’re done there’s always a little “noshe”. After all, this is a Jewish book group!
Currently we have four evenings planned for the 2011/2012 season with an exciting, varied selection of books and stimulating guest facilitators. This year, for our 5th evening in May, we will once again, depart from the usual format; book club members will choose the title and enjoy an open “leader-less” discussion. Last year’s discussion of People of the Book followed this model and was a very stimulating departure from the “norm”.
The Danforth Jewish Book Circle is open to all adult DJC members at no charge. We do “cap” our numbers for each session so that we can continue to meet in the warmth and intimacy of fellow DJC members’ homes. To attend an evening, all you need do is drop us a line (by phone or e-mail: 416.580.6303, info@djctoronto.com) to let us know you want to join us. But please remember to do so early!
The book circle “kicks off” this year on Wednesday, October 27th with one of our favourite facilitators, Derek Penslar, discussing David Grossman’s To The End of the Land. It promises to be a memorable and interesting evening.
Based on the book circle calendar, meeting notices and reminders will be sent out via the newsletter, requesting an Rsvp for each session. Names will be accepted on a “first come, first served basis”, according to the number of people each venue can accommodate. Members who have “Rsvp-ed” will be informed about the details of time and location for the evening via e-mail.
If you have questions or comments, please contact us via the DJC contact information above.
Happy Reading!
Your Danforth Jewish Circle Book Circle Organizing Committee
Past speakers and topics have included:
- Clayton Ruby, Noted Canadian Civil Rights Attorney
- Erna Paris, Author, Historian, and Women’s Rights Advocate
- Rachel Schlesinger on the role of women in Judaism
- Alan Borovoy, Head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Union
- Naomi Klein, Internationally recognized journalist and author
- Alex Pomson. The first Professor of Jewish Education at a Canadian University. discussing “Will my kids inherit the Jewish Identity gene?”
- Frank Bialystok, Writer and Historian on “Making sense of a complex chessboard: AlQaeda, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Israel.”
- Faith to Faith: A roundtable discussion with a Jewish woman who became a minister and an Anglican woman who converted to Judaism.
- 101 Questions to Ask a Rabbi
Future events currently under consideration include a film series and other special events.
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