Weekly Updates --
Tuesday Lunch & Learn
Tuesdays at 12pm Virtually. Bring a friend! We are studying the Book of Deuteronomy. No prior experience necessary! Reach out to rabbi@portjewishcenter.org with any questions!
Please Note: No Lunch and Learn 4/4, 4/11, 5/16, 6/6
Brought to you by PJC Book Club: The word ‘shanda’ is defined as shame or disgrace in Yiddish. This book, Shanda, tells the story of three generations of complicated, intense 20th-century Jews for whom the desire to fit in and the fear of public humiliation either drove their aspirations or crushed their spirit. In her deeply engaging, astonishingly candid memoir, author, activist, and Ms. Magazine co-founder Letty Cottin Pogrebin exposes the fiercely-guarded lies and intricate cover-ups woven by dozens of members of her extended family. Beginning with her own long-suppressed secret, the story spirals through the hidden lives of her parents and relatives—revealing the truth about their origins, personal traumas, marital misery, abandoned children, religious transgressions, sexual identity, radical politics, and supposedly embarrassing illnesses. While unmasking their charades and disguises, Pogrebin also showcases her family’s remarkable talent for reinvention in a narrative that is, by turns, touching, searing, and surprisingly universal. 400p.
Brought to you by PJC Book Club: This novel is a gripping tale of a young, ambitious journalist embroiled in an international art scandal centered on a Nazi-looted masterpiece—forcing the ultimate showdown between passion and possession, lovers and liars, history and truth. After talking her way into a job with Dan Mansfield, the leading investigative reporter in Chicago, rising young journalist Jules Roth is given an unusual assignment. Dan needs her to locate a painting stolen by the Nazis more than 75 years earlier: legendary Expressionist artist Ernst Engel’s most famous work, ‘Woman on Fire’. World-renowned shoe designer Ellis Baum wants this portrait of a beautiful, mysterious woman for deeply personal.
Brought to you by PJC Book Club: When Lily and Alex entered a packed gymnasium in Queens, New York in 1972, they barely recognized their son. The boy who escaped to America with them, who was bullied as he struggled to learn English and cope with family tragedy, was now a young man who had discovered and secretly honed his basketball talent on the outdoor courts of New York City. That young man was Ernie Grunfeld, who would go on to win an Olympic gold medal and reach previously unimaginable heights as an NBA player and executive. In By the Grace of the Game, Dan Grunfeld, once a basketball standout himself at Stanford University, shares the remarkable story of his family, a delicately interwoven narrative that doesn't lack in heartbreak yet remains as deeply nourishing as his grandmother's Hungarian cooking, so lovingly described. The true improbability of the saga lies in the discovery of a game that unknowingly held the power to heal wounds, build bridges, and tie together a fractured Jewish family. 296p.