Contemporary Jewish Fiction with Cynthia Good: Fall Fiction Class 2024
Thursdays, October 31, November 7, November 14, and November 21, 10:30 am
We look forward to in-person (and online) learning and the opportunity for in-depth study. Join us this fall for our usual lively discussion around two novels with important Jewish content and profound explorations of love, war and the importance of moral decisions.
Let It Destroy You by Harriet Alida Lye
August Snow (based on physicist Leo Szilard) invented a radiation machine to cure his young daughter’s cancer, despite knowing that the very same technology was capable of great destruction. But are his intentions relevant when the fate of the world is at stake? And how does his wife respond to his invention?
Inspired by the true story of a dangerous atomic weapon and the man who designed it, here is a stunning novel of morality, creation, and loss.
“Let It Destroy You” examines idealism and ambition, intent and outcome, and, with particular acuity, marriage and the complex, unpredictable ways its faltering can play out.” The Toronto Star
We Must Not Think of Ourselves by Lauren Grodstein
The central character of this powerful novel is the fictional Adam Paskow, a secular Jew married to a Catholic woman, teaching English at a prestigious Warsaw Lyceum. When his wife dies, he tries to carry on.
Then, in November 1940, Adam is removed from his comfortable apartment and imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto. There, he teaches English to a small group of children. He is approached by Emanuel Ringelblum, a real person, who began a secret project at the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941. Its mission was to record interviews with confined Jews and preserve them for posterity. Adam interviews all of those in his life, always seeking to help others survive and hoping for his own release. Eventually, Adam will be surprised by where his help comes from, in this novel of perfect storytelling and powerful history.
