Antiquities
Cynthia Ozick's much anticipated Antiquities returns to her favorite themes of envy, drive, and...idolatry. Join us as we plumb the deep depths of Antiquities and put it in conversation with resonant biblical stories.
Previous Book Discussion
Homeland Elegies
In his second novel, Homeland Elegies, playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar offers us a sweeping, paradoxically fictive memoir about America, immigrant families, and the possibilities and impossibilities of finding oneself in a big story. For the next installment of 929’s Book Salon & Beit Midrash, Akhtar’s novel invites us to revisit our own textual tradition and explore the movements of individuals in and out of the incredible, impossible, Jewish story.
The Memory Monster
“A brilliant short novel that serves as a brave, sharp-toothed brief against letting the past devour the present” (New York Times Book Review), Yishai Sarid’s recently published Memory Monster invites us to consider the dangers of the sacred obligation to remember, while reminding us of the existential need to forget. In particular, Memory Monster encourages us to revisit the book of Deuteronomy’s exhortation to “remember what Amalek did to you,” and its paradoxical obligation to “blot out the memory of Amalek.”
Muck: A Novel
We are living through extraordinary times, where disorienting disturbances come at us fast, where talking-heads and pontificators preach their frightening predictions, and where stories and other literary forms still retain great power, even while taking on new forms.
In his novel Muck, award-winning Israeli novelist, Dror Burstein, vividly retells the Jeremiah story in a tale for the ages - though especially for today. Join us as we discuss Muck and put it in dialogue with the classical Jewish texts (especially the book of Jeremiah) that inspired it and which it inspires us to reread.
And The Bride Closed The Door
When one door closes another one opens. And sometimes, the closed door is the open one. In the next session of the 929/Idra Book Salon and Beit Midrash we will discuss the late Ronit Matalon’s And The Bride Closed The Door a short, masterful novella about a bride who refuses to come out of her room on her wedding day. Together, we will learn classical Jewish sources about brides, expectations, and what happens when those expectations are subverted.
Suddenly, Love
Suddenly, Love is a late novel about a late encounter between memory, kindness, and the power of the written word - even when the possibility of language seems lost. This marvelous novel by the great Israeli novelist, Aahron Appelfeld, encourages us to conceive of the power of Jewish learning and tradition even - especially - at this late hour.
To Be A Man: Stories
In her newest collection, Nicole Krauss considers the bewildering matter of gender, and particularly the becoming and undoing of manhood. With her unflinching gaze and finely-tuned writing, Krauss invites to reconsider foundational biblical stories, from the creation of Adam and Eve to Amnon’s rape of Tamar.