Jewish LearningWorks' One Bay One Book extends this embrace of collaborative learning, with its spirit of inquiry and interpretation, from sacred text to literature.

Now in its second year, the program connects readers throughout the Bay Area in conversation around a single book and its themes. Our inaugural year featured the award-winning short stories of Nathan Englander, and this year's selection is Dara Horn's suspenseful new novel, A Guide for the Perplexed, which is inspired by the biblical story of Joseph and includes subplots that feature the Cairo Genizah and Maimonides.

With more than forty organizations involved as community partners, the program has already reached hundreds of readers this year. And, regardless of whether you are affiliated with a participating institution, you can find upcoming discussions of A Guide to the Perplexed open to the public in seven Bay Area counties.

One gratifying dimension of the program is that Jewish LearningWorks provides a framework, but participants determine their own direction. For example, a book group at San Francisco's Congregation Beth Sholom decided to follow A Guide for the Perplexed with the nonfiction title Sisters of Sinai, which tells the story of the adventurous Scottish twins (featured as characters in Horn's novel) who helped lead Solomon Schechter to the riches of the Cairo Genizah. And, for its next meeting, the group will be studying portions of Maimonides' great philosophical work, A Guide to the Perplexed, which also figures prominently in Horn's novel. Engaging with literature, history, theology, and philosophy, this group is challenging most people's conception of what a book group can do.

Not that there is anything wrong with sticking to fiction. In the many years that the Jewish Community Library has run its Book Club in a Box program, which offers book groups free access to sets of a wide variety of Jewish-themed titles, I have become convinced that literary discussion can provide some of our most meaningful opportunities for Jewish engagement. And it can help us transcend barriers of ideology and religious belief that can sometimes divide us from each other, or keep us at a distance from some aspects of the Jewish experience.

One Bay One Book is one of many ways we can remain active Jewish learners as adults. This year's program will continue through May, culminating as Dara Horn joins us in Palo Alto (April 30) and San Francisco (May 1). Whether or not you have participated in a discussion of the novel, you can remain involved through related events and through our Facebook page or website, which features reflective essays from community members that we will continue to post periodically to keep the conversation going strong all year long.  

May the light of learning together brighten our winter.

Howard Freedman
Director, Jewish Community Library