Doris Bass Memorial Library & Book Club
Doris Bass, a beloved member of Israel Congregation, was a dedicated lover of books and literature. After a long career beginning in the Brooklyn Public Library and progressing to publishing, Doris moved to Vermont in 1996. Her passion for life was contagious and her passing has left us with a large hole in our lives. We have dedicated our extensive library in her memory. Today we are fortunate to have devoted congregants stewarding the library Doris championed.
The Doris Bass Library is currently overwhelmed with books that need to be catalogued and shelved with more coming in all the time and only two part time volunteers to do the work to sort through the donations. We deeply appreciate the huge effort our volunteers, are doing to accomplish this task having found some truly beautiful and special books among the donations received. We want to be able to continue to welcome the donation of engaging and educational books, but we need your help:
- Please box books or tie book donations—pre-approved by the library volunteers—with twine before dropping them off in the office, not in the library.
- If you would like your name or the name of your family member on a book plate in the book, please give us the pertinent information.
- Please consider making a donation to the Merkado Library Fund to help us in our work of making this a more user-friendly place for our congregation.
Thank You!
Join the Doris Bass Book Club!
Start your day off right with a good book. . .
On the 3rd Wednesday of each month participate in a lively and engaging conversation about
wonderful books of Jewish interest.
The next meeting of the Doris Bass Book Club is on
Wednesday evening, June 17th at
7:00 pm.
Join the club as we meet via Zoom to discuss this month's title.
May/June Reading recommendation
and Book Club title:
A Jewish Refugee in New York
Rivke Zilberg, a 20-year-old Jewish woman, arrives in New York shortly after the Nazi invasion of Poland, her home country. Struggling to learn a new language and cope with a different way of life in the United States, Rivke finds herself keeping a journal about the challenges and opportunities of this new land. In her attempt to find a new life as a Jewish immigrant in the US, Rivke shares the stories of losing her mother to a bombing in Lublin, jilting a fiancé who has made his way to Palestine, and a flirtatious relationship with an American "allrightnik."
In this fictionalized journal originally published in Yiddish, author Kadya Molodovsy provides keen insight into the day-to-day activities of the large immigrant Jewish community of New York. By depicting one woman's struggles as a Jewish refugee in the US during WWII, Molodovsky points readers to the social, political, and cultural tensions of that time and place.
In Praise of A Jewish Refugee in New York
"This novel invites the reader inside the mind of a Polish Jewish woman who has recently arrived in New York just after WWII began in Europe. She grapples with the twin challenges of being a refugee—agonizing over the fate of loved ones left behind and struggling to adapt to a strange new social, cultural, and economic environment, uncertain of her future." —Jeffrey Shandler, author of Anne Frank Unbound
"Molodovsky's novel adds further dimension to our ever-growing understanding of the diverse ways postwar Jewish literature responded to the destruction of Eastern European Jewish civilization."—Rachel Rubinstein, In Geveb A Journal of Yiddish Studies
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kadya Molodowsky was a major figure in the Yiddish literary scene in Warsaw (from the 1920s through 1935) and in New York (from 1935 until her death in 1975). A teacher in the Yiddish schools in Warsaw as a young woman, she was best known for her children's poems. In the United States, she wrote for the Yiddish press and founded and edited a journal,
Sviva (Surroundings), which she published for three decades. Living in Israel (1948-52), she founded and edited a journal,
Heym. She published six major books of poems (1927-1965), novels, short stories, plays, and essays. Recurrent themes in her work include the lives of Jewish women and girls, Jewish tradition in the face of modernity, Israel, and the Holocaust.
Hardcover and paperback editions are available from the Northshire Bookstore
Or check out your local library!