We have two active book groups meeting. Book Group Aleph meets monthly in members’ homes and focuses on fiction—most with a Jewish author or theme—selected by group members and chooses six books at a time, generally completing 6-8 books per year. Book Group Bet meets every other month at a local diner and reads mostly fiction—some non-fiction, and some with a Jewish author or theme—selected by group members and generally completes 6 books per year.  Following is a sampling of books read by each of the groups:

Book Group – Aleph

2018

Daniel Deronda

George Eliot

A Horse Walks into a Bar

David Grossman

Judas

Amos Oz

The Plot Against America

Philip Roth

Einstein: His Life and Universe

Walter Isaacson

Binocular Vision

Edith Perlman

The Hilltop

Assaf Gavron

Moonglow

Michael Chabon

2017

It Can't Happen Here

Sinclair Lewis

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

Nathan Englander

As a Driven Leaf

Milton Steinberg

Comedy in a Minor Key

Hans Kielson

Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought

David Biale

2016

Between Friends

Amos Oz

The Last of the Just

Andre Schwartz-Bart

Brooklyn Follies

Paul Auster

Dissident Gardens

Jonathan Lethem

The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories

Cynthia Ozick

The Rise of David Levinsky

Abraham Cahan

2015

Falling Out of Time

David Grossman

The Favored Daughter

Fawzia Koofi

Collected Poems in English

Joseph Brodsky

The Moor's Last Sigh

Salman Rushdie

The UnAmericans: Stories

Molly Antopol

Call It Sleep

Henry Roth

The Dreyfus Affair: J'accuse and Other Writings

Emile Zola

2014

An Officer and A Spy

Robert Harris

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Inheritance

Edmund de Waal

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Jonathan SafranFoer

Herzog

Saul Bellow

A Guest for the Night

SY Agnon

Once We Were Brothers

Ronald Balson

Telegraph Avenue

Michael Chabon

2013

Friendly Fire

A.B. Yehoshua

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Michelle Alexander

Queen of the Jews

Judith Petsonk

When General Grant Expelled the Jews

Jonathan D. Sarna

Until the Dawn’s Light

Aharon Appelfeld

Nemesis

Philip Roth

A Knock on the Door

Etgar Keret

2012

Eating Animals

Jonathan Safran Foer

The Book Thief

Markus Zusak

Super Sad True Love Story

Gary Shteyngardt

My Son’s Story

Nadine Gordimer

Ahead of My Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent

Ruth Gruber

A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories

Will Eisner

The Memory Chalet

Tony Judt

2011

A People’s History of the United States

Howard Zinn

A Pigeon and A Boy

Meir Shalev

36 Arguments for the Existence of God

Rebecca Goldstein

The Finkler Question

Howard Jacobson

To the End of the Land

David Grossman

2010

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit

Lucette Lagnado

The Persistence of Memory

Tony Eprile

Maimonides

Sherwin Nuland

Ragtime

E.L. Doctorow

Homesick

Eshkol Nevo

Exodus & Revolution

Michael Walzer

People of the Book

Geraldine Brooks

Khirbet Khizeh

S. Yizhar

2009

The Ministry of Special Cases

Nathan Englander

Palestinian Walks

Raja Shehadeh

A Tranquil Star

Primo Levi

Beware of God

Shalom Auslander

Bech, A Book

John Updike

Betraying Spinoza

Rebecca Goldstein

The Family Markowitz

Allegra Goodman

2008

A Woman in Jerusalem

AB Yehoshua

The Collected Stories

Grace Paley

None to Accompany Me

Nadine Gordimer

Journey from the Land of No

Roya Hakakian

The Counterlife

Philip Roth

Salonica, City of Ghosts

Mark Mazower

Fima

Amos Oz

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union

Michael Chabon

2007

The Pity of It All

Amos Elon

The I.L. Peretz Reader

IL Peretz

The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner

Isaac Goldemberg

The History of Love: A Novel

Nicole Krauss

A Tale of Love and Darkness

Amos Oz

The Yacoubian Building

Alaa Al Aswany

Absurdistan

Gary Shteyngardt

Suite Francaise

Irene Nemirov

Uncle Tungsten

Oliver Sacks

2006

American Pastoral

Philip Roth

Disgrace

J.M. Coetzee

The House Gun

Nadine Gordimer

God Knows

Joseph Heller

The Madonna of Excelsior

Zakes Mda

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Azar Nafisi

Stone from the River

Ursual Hegi

2005

City of Glass

Paul Auster

Where She Came From

Helen Epstein

All My Sons

Arthur Miller

In America

Susan Sontag

Mr. Mani

A. B. Yehoshua

The Song of Names

Norman Lebrecht

The Periodic Table

Primo Levi

Mr. Sammler's Planet

Saul Bellow

The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini

The Bible - Genesis and Isaiah

2004

Out of Place: A Memoir

Edward Said

Austerlitz

W.G. Sebald

Lost Tribe

Paul Zakrzewski (ed.)

The Centaur in the Garden

Moacyr Scliar

The Tattoed Girl

Joyce Carol Oates

Ten Thousand Lovers

Edeet Ravel

World's Fair

E.L. Doctorow

The Assistant

Bernard Malamud

The Known World

E.P. Jones

2003

The Satanic Verses

Salman Rushdie

The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel

Isaac Babel

Operation Shylock

Philip Roth

You Shall Be As Gods

Erich Fromm

Everything is Illuminated

Jonathan Safran Foer

Revenge: A Story of Hope

Laura Blumenfeld

The Same Sea

Amos Oz

2002

Tevye the Dairyman

Sholem Aleichem

The Bread Givers

Anzia Yezierska

The Book of Daniel

E L Doctorow

The Human Stain

Philip Roth

The Iron Wall

Avi Shlaim

The Shawl/The Messiah of Stockholm

Cynthia Ozick

Fugitive Pieces

Anne Michaels

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Michael Chabon

White Teeth

Zadie Smith

2001

Patrimony

Philip Roth

The Issue is Power

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges

Nathan Englander

An Empire of Their Own

Neal >Gabler

The Red Tent

Anita Diamant

Sleeping on a Wire

David Grossman

A Journey to the End of the Millennium

A B Yehoshua

Enemies, A Love Story

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Joshua Then and Now

Mordechai Richler

Joshua Then and Now

Film

Book Group - Bet

2016

The Plot against America

Philip Roth

Where’d You Go, Bernadette?

Maria Semple

2015

Hope: A Tragedy

Shalom Auslander

The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes

The New Jim Crow

Alan Michelle Alexander

The Book of Unknown Americans

Peter Cristina Henriquez

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith

Everything I Never Told You

Celeste Ng

2014

The Devil in the White City

Erik Larson

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini

The Husband’s Secret

Alan Liane Moriarty

The Signature of All Things

Peter Elizabeth Gilbert

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

The Kommandant’s Mistress

Sherri Szeman

2013

The Thirteenth Tale

Diane Setterfield

Henna House: A Novel

Nomi Eve

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

Alan Jan-Philipp Sendker