The Ner Shalom Book Club

Join us as we explore the wonderful world of Jewish literature, non-fiction, and Jewish authors.

We look forward to discussing these books in person

If you are not on the ner shalom email list and would like to be, sign up here.

For more information on our Book Club, please contact Amy Gray.

2025 Book Club Picks

February 6 at 3 pm

The Length of a String by Elissa Brent Weissman  (Hosted by Susan Miller)

Imani knows exactly what she wants as her big bat mitzvah gift: to find her birth parents. She

loves her family and her Jewish community in Baltimore, but she has always wondered where

she came from, especially since she’s Black and almost everyone she knows is White. Then her

mom’s grandmother - Imani’s great-grandma Anna - passes away, and Imani discovers an old

journal among her books. It’s Anna’s diary from 1941, the year she was 12 and fled Nazi-

occupied Luxembourg alone, sent by her parents to seek refuge in Brooklyn, New York. Anna’s

diary records her journey to America and her new life with an adoptive family of her own. And as

Imani reads the diary, she begins to see her family, and her place in it, in a whole new way.

March 6 at 3 pm

Shechinah at the Art Institute by Rabbi Irwin Keller (hosted by Barbara)

Shechinah at the Art Institute is a long-awaited collection of luminous essays, memoir, and

poetry by rabbi, former drag queen, and self-proclaimed “hope-monger”, Irwin Keller. In this

book, Keller, most recently known for his viral protest poem, “Taking Sides” leads us on

dazzling journeys into Jewish mysticism, love, loss, memory, gender, AIDS, and the Milky Way

itself. Buckle your seatbelts.

April 3 at 3 pm

With Roots in Heaven by Tirzah Firestone (hosted by Lissa)

Firestone’s autobiography has all the suspense and excitement of a good novel as it details her

complex journey from a meticulously observant Orthodox Jewish background to her current

faith. She takes readers from the static faith she experienced growing up through the geography

of her spiritual search in many religious traditions to her marriage to a Christian minister and

rejection of her birth family (with whom she later reconciled) and then to her rediscovery of her

Jewish roots in a renewed form. Her story is a wonderful example of the transformation of what

was, to the author, almost a dead faith into one that is vital and transformational.

May 1 at 3 pm

A Journey to the End of the Millenium by A.B. Yehoshua (Hosted by Joan)

“A masterpiece” about faith, race, and morality at a medieval turning point, from the National

Jewish Book Award winner and “Israeli Faulkner” (The New York Times).

 It’s edging toward the end of the year 999 when Ben Attar, a Moroccan Jewish merchant from

Tangiers, takes two wives—an act of bigamy that results in the moral objections of his nephew

and business partner, Raphael Abulafia, and the dissolution of their once profitable enterprise of

importing treasures from the Atlas Mountains. Abulafia’s repudiation triggers a potentially

perilous move by Attar to set things right—by setting sail for medieval Paris to challenge his

nephew, and his nephew’s own pious wife, face to face.

June 5 @ 3 pm

Love and Treasure by Ayalat Waldman (Hosted by Barbara)

Maine, 2012. An old man is dying with the weight of a plundered necklace on his conscience. As

an US Army Captain in 1946 Salburg, guarding the “Hungarian Gold Train” full of looted Jewish

treasure, he fell in love with camp survivor and helped her escape to Israel. Now, as his

granddaughter sets out to repatriate the necklace, secrets buried in the past are uncovered,

stories of love and deceit linked to that beautiful, peacock-shaped pendant and to a priceless,

long-lost painting. Spanning a century of European and Jewish history, from 1913 Budapest to

contemporary Israel, and filled with a vivid supporting cast of art dealers, freedom fighters,

psychoanalysts and suffragette dwarfs, Love and Treasure is a thrilling, moving and haunting

novel, one that bears an ever elusive question at its core, nested like a photograph hidden in a

locket: Where does the worth of a people and its treasure truly lie?

July 3 at 3 pm

The Last Palace by Norman Eisen (hosted by tbd)

When Norman Eisen moved into the US ambassador’s residence in Prague, returning to the

land his mother had fled after the Holocaust, he was startled to discover swastikas hidden

beneath the furniture in his new home. These symbols of Nazi Germany were remnants of the

residence’s forgotten history, and evidence that we never live far from the past. From that

discovery unspooled the twisting, captivating tale of four of the remarkable people who had

called this palace home. Their story is Europe’s, and The Last Palace chronicles the upheavals

that transformed the continent over the past century.

August 7 at 3 pm

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd (hosted by Amy)

In her mesmerizing fourth work of fiction, Sue Monk Kidd takes an audacious approach to

history and brings her acclaimed narrative gifts to imagine the story of a young woman named

Ana. Raised in a wealthy family with ties to the ruler of Galilee, she is rebellious and ambitious,

with a brilliant mind and a daring spirit. She engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes

narratives about neglected and silenced women. Ana is expected to marry an older widower, a

prospect that horrifies her. An encounter with 18-year-old Jesus changes everything.

Sept 4 @ 3 pm

The Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman (hosted by Ellen)

First in a series of mysteries. A report of rape in a Los Angeles yeshiva brings police detective

Peter Decker into an insular Orthodox Jewish community but the strict religious practices and

customs of the community prevent him from following his standard investigative procedures

Oct 9 @ 3 pm (date change due to Yom Kippur)

Honey from the Rock by Lawrence Kushner (host TBD)

Lawrence Kushner describes Honey from the Rock as “an attempt to synthesize some of the

world view of classical Jewish mysticism, or Kabbala, with the ordinary life experience of its

author.” In the introduction, Kushner also explains that the book “works best, not as a primer on

Kabbalah, nor as a glimpse into the private places of a liberal Rabbi, but as a means of enticing

the reader to allow a Kabbalistic world view to inform his or her everyday life.” After providing

that explanation of his project, Kushner’s book takes flight. He begins: “There is a place as far

from here as breathing out is from breathing in. For the word is very near you.”