TBT Reads

We have an active book discussion group at Temple Beth Torah.  We read a variety of books, both fiction and non-fiction, either written by Jewish authors or with Jewish content. We enthusiastically welcome all new participants.  Currently we meet around six times a year, on Monday evenings at 7 pm via Zoom.

Contact Mary Ann Oppenheimer or Seth Novick to join the mailing list for one or more of the book discussions.

TBT READS: BOOK SELECTIONS 2025-2026

Monday August 11, 2025

A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg

After the death of Rudy Cohen, the bonds that connect his wife and two daughters in Chicago are stretched to their limits as each woman turns to a different path.  Shelly, the younger daughter, escapes to the West Coast and the developing field of technology.  Her older sister, Nancy, leaves college to marry a traveling salesman and have a baby hoping to eventually find happiness.  Meanwhile, Mrs. Cohen, Frieda, escapes to a booze-filled life in Miami trying to forget her past.

Starting in the 1970s, and moving through forty years, this novel takes the reader on a journey through motherhood, the American workforce, the tech industry, the self-help movement, inherited trauma, the ever-evolving ways we communicate with one another, and the many unexpected forms that love can take.

Monday October 20, 2025

The Whisper Sister by Jennifer S. Brown

Minnie Soffer learns the streets of New York are not paved with gold as promised when she, along with her mother and brother, arrives in 1920 to reunite with her father, Ike.  While Minnie and her brother work hard to learn English and make friends Ike opens his own soda shop.  It seems that stability and citizenship are within reach.  However, the soda shop is not what it seems – it’s a front for Ike’s real moneymaker: a speakeasy.

When tragedy strikes the Soffers, Minnie has no choice but to take over the bar.  She’s determined to make the speakeasy a success despite the risks it brings to herself, her family, and her freedom.  At what price does the American dream come true? Minnie won’t stop until she finds out.

Monday December 8, 2025

Hope: A Novel by Andrew Ridker

The year is 2013 and the Greenspans are the epitome of exceptional and the envy of Brookline, Massachusetts.  Scott Greenspan is a successful cardiologist.  His wife, Deb, is involved in the community and helps resettle refugees in her spare time.  Their daughter, Maya, works in publishing in New York and their son, Gideon, is preparing to follow in his father’s footsteps. 

A series of scandals is set in motion, and threatens to shatter the family, when Scott is caught falsifying blood samples at work.  Deb leaves him for a female power broker; Maya rekindles a hazardous affair; and Gideon drops out of college to test his principles. 

Over the course of a chaotic year this book follows the Greenspans from Brookline to Berlin to the battlefields of Syria, as they question, and compromise, the values that have shaped their lives only to their own capacity for resilience, connection, and, ultimately, hope.

Monday February 9, 2026

Have You Seen Luis Velez? by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Raymond Jaffe feels like he doesn’t belong whether it be with his mother’s new family, at the home of his father and his father’s wife, or at school.  Raymond has only two real connections: to the feral cat he’s tamed and to a blind ninety-two-year-old woman in his building who’s introduced herself with a curious question: “Have you seen Luis Velez?”

Mildred Gutermann, a German Jew who narrowly escaped the Holocaust, has been alone since her caretaker disappeared.  She turns to Raymond for help, and as he tries to track Luis down, a deep and unexpected friendship blossoms between the two.

As Mildred isolates herself further from the neighborhood Raymond helps her see that for every terrible act the world delivers, there is a mirror image of deep kindness, and Mildred helps Raymond see that there’s hope if you have someone to hold on to.

Monday April 6, 2026

House on Endless Waters by Emuna Elon

Author Yoel Blum reluctantly agrees to visit his birthplace of Amsterdam to promote his books, despite promising his late mother that he would never return to that city.  While touring the Jewish Historical Museum with his wife, Yoel stumbles upon footage of prewar Dutch Jewry and is astonished to see the face of his mother staring back at him, posing with his father, his older sister… and an infant he doesn’t recognize.  This unsettling discovery launches him into an intense search for the truth, shining a light on Amsterdam’s dark wartime history.  The deeper into the past Yoel digs to tell the story of his life, the better he understands his mother’s silence, and the more urgent the question that has unconsciously haunted him for a lifetime – Who am I? – becomes.

Monday June 8, 2026

Songs for the Broken Hearted by Ayelet Tsabari

As thousands of Yemeni Jews arrive in Israel in 1950, with the hope of a better life, Yaqub, a shy young man, happens upon Saida, a beautiful girl singing by the river in an overcrowded immigrant camp. Among the chaos and uncertainty of the camp they fall in love.  But they weren’t supposed to; Saida is married and has a child, and a married woman has no place befriending another man.

1995. Zohara, Saida’s daughter, has been living in New York City – a city that feels much less complicated than Israel – and she hasn’t looked back since leaving home.  When Zohara’s sister, Lizzie, calls to tell her their mother has died, she gets on a plane to Israel with no return ticket.  Soon Zohara finds herself discovering shocking truths about her family and secrets that force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, her heritage, and her own future.

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