Jewish Book Festival

                                                                                                                                                                             

2011 Jewish Book Festival Returns to the JCC
November 1-13!

For the past 23 years, The Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor has hosted the Jewish Book Festival in November.  The Book Festival offers a unique opportunity to hear from many talented authors on a variety of subjects during weekday Lunch & Learn events, evening events and on Sundays throughout the multi-day festival at the JCC.  Events are free and open to the public.   The event which is supported by many local community organizations and businesses, including the Fred and Ned Shure Endowment.

BECOME A SPONSOR!

Support this incredible event by becoming a sponsor! 
Please click here to download a pdf of our Sponsor Form.

-To download our 8 page brochure, please click here.
-For a one page calendar of events, please click here.


2011 JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1
NOON
Jaimy Gordon

Lord of Misrule
LUNCH & LEARN EVENT!  Lunch is $10 in advance or $12 at the door. 12:30 author presentation is free and open to the community.

At the rock-bottom end of the sport of kings sits the ruthless and often violent world of cheap horse racing, where trainers and jockeys, grooms and hot-walkers, loan sharks and touts all struggle to take an edge, or prove their luck, or just survive.  Lord of Misrule (2010 National Book Award Finalist) follows five characters through a year and four races at Indian Mound Downs, downriver from Wheeling, West Virginia. 

Jaimy Gordon's third novel, Bogeywoman was on the Los Angeles Times list of Best Books for 2000. Her other writings include She Drove Without Stopping,  A Nights Work,  Circumspections from an Equestrian Statue, and the fantasy classic novel Shamp of the City-Solo.  She teaches at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and in the Prague Summer Program for Writers. 

 Sponsored by Carolyn and Larry Hiss

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2
7:00-9:00 p.m.
An Evening with the Frankel Scholars
Guests include Deborah Dash Moore, Benjamin Paloff, Todd Endelman, and Shachar Pinsker.
Caroline Helton and her pianist, Katherine Fulton, will also perform from Voices of the Italian Holocaust.

Sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3

Noon 
Lyn Coffin
With special guest, Laz Slamovits.  Laz will be performing music has composed music which is inspired by the poems.

White Picture

Jiri Orten was one of the great poets of the 20th century. A Czech Jew who narrowly avoided being sent to a concentration camp, Orten was hit by a speeding German car in Nazi-occupied Prague in 1941. He was refused admission to a nearby hospital and died shortly afterwards  in a “Jewish Hospital” which was basically a warehouse. "Jiri Orten is a powerful, visionary poet whose work has been beautifully translated by Lyn Coffin. These are poems we can return to again and again—for their courage, for their sustenance." - Sam Hamill

Sponsored by Rita and Chuck Gelman

7:30 p.m.
COMMUNITY READS- Purchase the book now at the JCC, and have a sit-down with the author at the event.
Lee Kravitz

Unfinished Business- One Man’s Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things
FREE and open to the community.

This is the inspirational book about rediscovering the best parts of ourselves.  After losing his job, Lee Kravitz-a man who had always worked too hard and too much-took stock of his life and decided to spend an entire year making amends and reconnecting with the people and parts of himself he had neglected.  Kravitz travels across the globe and along the way learns that the things we let slip are exactly what have the power to transform, enrich, enlarge, and complete us. 

Kravitz grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and attended Yale and Columbia universities.  An award-winning journalist, he most recently was editor in chief of Parade magazine.  He is currently the board president of Youth Communication, and lives in New York City and Clinton Corners, New York, with his wife and three children.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4
Welcome the Sabbath with gourmet challah and wine at this pre-Shabbat event! 

4:30 p.m.
Dr. Marc Agronin

How We Age: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Growing Old
FREE and open to the community.

Dr. Marc Agronin writes luminously and unforgettably of life as he sees it as a physician. His beat is a nursing home in Miami that some would dismiss as “God’s waiting room.” As Agronin learned, the true scales of aging aren’t one-sided—you can’t list the problems without also tallying the hopes and promises. Drawing on moving personal experiences and in-depth interviews with pioneers in the field, Agronin conjures a spellbinding look at what aging means today.

Marc Agronin, M.D., is a board-certified adult and geriatric psychiatrist currently serving as the Medical Director for Mental Health and Clinical Research at Miami Jewish Health Systems. A Harvard University graduate, Dr. Agronin received his medical degree from Yale University. His articles have appeared in The New York Times and many other publications. He lives in Cooper City, Florida.

Sponsored by Mary and Art Schuman

 

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6
9:00-11:00 a.m.
Local Authors Breakfast
FREE and open to the community.

Celebrating Our Community’s Creativity!

*Featuring….


                                                                                                                                                      
Jane Alkon, author of The Remarkable Mr. Boy                 




Marvin Brandwin, author of A Taste of Rhyme

 

 


                                                                      
 Valerie Scho Carey, author of 
 Harriet and William and the Terrible Creature                  

Judith Laikin Elkin, author of Walking Made My Path


                                                                                                          
Shelly Kovacs and David Schoem, authors of
College Knowledge for the Student Athlete                           
 

Rabbi Robert Levy, author of The Jewish Pedaler

                                                                                       
Doug Moffat, author of In God's Shadow
                            

Martin Stolzenberg, author of Through Brooklyn Eyes

Sponsored by Sharon & Chuck Newman and Judy & Al Gourdji

 

Noon
Rachel DeWoskin

Big Girl Small
FREE and open to the community.

Judy Lohden is your above-average 16-year-old, full of big dreams for a big future. With a singing voice that can shake an auditorium, she should be the star of Darcy Academy. So why is she hiding out in a seedy motel room?  The fact that the national media is on her trail after a controversy that might bring down the whole school could have something to do with it. And that scandal has something—but not everything—to do with the fact that Judy is three feet nine inches tall.

Rachel DeWoskin's first book, the memoir Foreign Babes in Beijing, is being developed as an HBO series. Her debut novel Repeat After Me, won a Foreword Magazine Book of the Year award.  Rachel is currently working on an article about Chinese twitter for Vanity Fair, a screenplay about concubines, and a new novel, Statutory.

Sponsored by Pamela and Stephen Landau

7:30 p.m.
Jeremy Ben Ami

A New Voice for Israel-Fighting for the Survival of the Jewish Nation
FREE and open to the community.

As the likelihood of a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine recedes, many Americans are growing frustrated with the hard-line unquestioning stance of traditional Israel advocates, yet remain pro-Israel and want to ensure its future security.  In A New Voice for Israel, moderate Jeremy Ben-Ami explores how our current policies toward Israel are largely based on a handful of assumptions that do not hold up against the current realities. 

Jeremy Ben-Ami is the founder and president of J Street, and advocacy group and political action committee that is both pro-Israel and pro-peace.  During his 25-year career in government, politics, and communications, Ben-Ami has worked with both President Bill Clinton and Howard Dean. He also started the Israeli firm Ben-Or Communications while living in Israel in the late 1990s. He lives in Washington, D.C.

 Sponsored by J Street and Heather & Stuart Dombey

 

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7

NOON
COOKING DEMONSTRATIONG
Ma Baseema- Middle Eastern Cooking with Chaldean Flair

FREE and open to the community.

Join us for this very special cooking demonstration and enjoy samples!

Guests will enjoy a taste of a culture that has one of the world’s oldest cuisines, dating back to ancient Mesopotamia. This culinary journey will show the essence of Chaldean food and delight the palate with a tempting collection of recipes ranging from soups, appetizers, salads, main-course dishes, breads and desserts.

Sponsored by Shira and Steve Klein

7:30 p.m.
Mitchell Bard

The Arab Lobby-The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America’s Interests in the Middle East
FREE and open to the community.


This is the first book to challenge the idea that an all-powerful Israeli lobby controls U.S. Middle East policy and demonstrate that a countervailing Arab lobby exists and is actually more powerful. Documenting 70 years of complicity at the highest levels of government and corporate America, The Arab Lobby challenges us to shake off long-standing, toxic alliances and cement ties with countries that share our values and interests.

Mitchell Bard, Ph.D., is one of the leading authorities on U.S. - Middle East policy. He is the Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise and director of the Jewish Virtual Library, the world’s most comprehensive online encyclopedia of Jewish history and culture. He has written or edited more than 20 books.   

Sponsored by Mae and Len Sander



TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8
NOON
Charles Butter

Crossing Cultural Borders: Universals in Art and their Biological Roots
LUNCH & LEARN EVENT!  Lunch is $10 in advance or $12 at the door. 12:30 author presentation is free and open to the community.

Crossing Cultural Borders: Universals I Art and Their Biological Roots is a book written for art lovers. It describes how artists from prehistoric to modern times have exploited brain systems that evolved for survival to create art that viewers around the world admire today. This neuroesthetic approach to art offers new insights into several universal aspects of art and suggests new solutions to old puzzles.  

Charles Butter is a retired psychologist and neuroscientist who has written numerous articles on brain, vision and behavior. He wrote Crossing Cultural Borders for art lovers, who would consider looking at art in a different way- by looking at the art of different cultures in terms of their similarities rather than through the customary lens of culturally-specific styles and subjects.

Sponsored by Esther Ullman & Morley Witus and Jonathan Trobe & Joan Lowenstein


6:30 p.m.
Sponsor Reception honoring Jewish Book Festival sponsors who donate $180 and more to the 2011 JCC Book Festival

6:30-7:30 p.m.- Sponsors will enjoy wine, hors d’oeuvres, meet the author and attend a book signing

7:30 p.m.- Author Presentation- Free and open to the community

Dr. Howard Markel
An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine

From acclaimed medical historian Dr. Howard Markel, author of When Germs Travel, the astonishing account of the years-long cocaine use of Sigmund Freud, young, ambitious neurologist, and William Halsted, the equally young, path-finding surgeon. Markel writes of the physical and emotional damage caused by the then-heralded wonder drug, and how each man ultimately changed the world in spite of it—or because of it. One became the father of psychoanalysis; the other, of modern surgery. 

Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D. is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine and Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan.  He also holds professorial appointments in Psychiatry, Public Health, History and Pediatrics.  Dr. Markel is the author, co-author, or co-editor of ten books.  His newest book, An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine was published to great critical acclaim and was both a New York Times Best Seller and a New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Choice”.

Sponsored by the Maimonides Society of the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor.  Maimonides Society is underwritten by Fifth Third Bank.

Catering is sponsored by Simply Scrumptious Catering.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9
Kristallnacht Commemoration Day 

4:30 – 8:00 p.m.
WORKSHOP-Teaching with Defiance
Geared toward educators and youth group leaders

Jewish Resistance and the Bielski Partisans
A Hands-On Educator Institute on Teaching with the Film
Taught by the Jewish Partisans Educational Foundation
Free for educators.  Vegetarian dinner included. 

In conjunction with the photo exhibit Pictures of Resistance, showing at the
University of Michigan Graduate Library)

Each participant will receive:
Defiance DVD with Excerpts
Defiance / Bielski Partisans Curriculum
DVD of Ten Short Films on the Jewish Partisans
Produced by the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation

This workshop is made possible by Robin and Alan Bell
Partner organizations include The Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor Public Schools, University of Michigan Judaic Studies Program and University of Michigan School of Education

 

7:30 p.m.
Film Showing at the JCC
The Forgotten Refugees

Tickets are FREE!

The Forgotten Refugees explores the history, culture, and forced exodus of Middle Eastern and North African Jewish communities in the second half of the 20th century. Using extensive testimony of refugees from Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, and Morocco the film recounts the stories of joy and suffering that nearly one million individuals have carried with them for so long. The film weaves personal stories with dramatic archival footage to tell the story of how and why the Jewish population in the Middle East and North Africa declined from one million in 1945 to several thousand today.

 Sponsored by Robin & Brad Axelrod and Babette and Mark Daskin

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10
Noon
George Bornstein

The Colors of Zion- Blacks, Jews and Irish from 1845-1945
LUNCH & LEARN EVENT!  Lunch is $10 in advance or $12 at the door. 12:30 author presentation is free and open to the community.

A major re-evaluation of relationships among Blacks, Jews, and Irish in the years between the Irish Famine and the end of World War II, The Colors of Zion (Harvard University Press) argues that the cooperative efforts and sympathies among these three groups was much greater than often acknowledged. . For the Black, Jewish, and Irish writers, poets, musicians, and politicians at the center of this transatlantic study, a sense of shared wrongs inspired repeated outpourings of sympathy.

George Bornstein is the C. A. Patrides Professor of Literature Emeritus at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  Professor Bornstein joined University of Michigan as associate professor in 1970,and is one of the most distinguished scholars of Modernism in his generation. He is the author of six critical books on 19th and 20th century literature.

Sponsored by Barb and Bernie Banet

7:30 p.m.
Ellen Feldman

Next to Love
FREE and open to the community.

Next to Love follows the lives of three young women and their men during the years of World War II and its aftermath, beginning with the men going off to war and ending a generation later, when their children are on the cusp of their own adulthood. The novel follows three childhood friends, whose lives are unmoored when their men are called to duty. And yet the changes that are thrust upon them move them in directions they never dreamed possible .

Ellen Feldman, a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, is the author of Next to Love, Scottsboro, The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank, and Lucy. She writes both fiction and social history, and has published numerous book reviews.  Ellen attended Bryn Mawr College and after further graduate studies at Columbia University, she worked for a New York publishing house. She lives in New York City.

 Sponsored by Jewish Cultural Society and ORT Book Club

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11
Noon
Mira Bartók

The Memory Palace
LUNCH & LEARN EVENT!  Lunch is $10 in advance or $12 at the door. 12:30 author presentation is free and open to the community.

“People have abandoned their loved ones for much less than you’ve been through,” Mira Bartók is told at her mother’s memorial service. It is a poignant observation about the relationship between Mira, her sister, and their schizophrenic mother. The Memory Palace is a breathtaking literary memoir about the complex meaning of love, truth, and the capacity for forgiveness among family, and explores the connections between mother and daughter that cannot be broken .

Mira Bartók is author of twenty-eight books for children. Her writing has appeared in several literary journals and anthologies and has been noted in The Best American Essays series. She lives in Western Massachusetts where she runs Mira’s List, a blog that helps artists find funding and residencies all over the world. The Memory Palace is Mira’s first book for adults.  

 Sponsored by Zelma Weisfeld

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13
9:00-10:30 a.m.
CHILDREN’S PROGRAM
America’s favorite little monkey swings into action when
Curious George Comes to the Jewish Book Festival!

COST: $5 per person

Enjoy a pancake breakfast with our very special guest, Curious George!
Guest readers will read from the Amazing Adventures of Curious George.

For more than 70 years, generations of young children have been charmed by the literary adventures of Curious George.  Curious George is the protagonist of a series of popular children's books by the same name, written by Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey. The books feature a curious monkey named George, who is brought from his home in Africa by "The Man with The Yellow Hat" to live with him in a big city.

Sponsored by Temple Beth Emeth


11:00 a.m.- 6:30 p.m.
Global Day of Jewish Learning
All speaker talks are FREE and open to the community!

11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.- Ilana Blumberg: “Being Human: Animals and Humans in Genesis”
                                             in the JCC’s Newman Lounge

12:30-1:00 p.m.- Kosher Lunch catered by Monica and Emil Boch
                               at the JCC
                               Reservations required. $10 in advance;  $12 at door for lunch

1:00-2:30 p.m. - Richard Primus: “It’s Not Your Money: Tzedakah and Taxation”
                             in the JCC’s Newman Lounge

3:30-5:00 p.m. -  Michael Weiss: “Judaism on the Fringe: The Samaritans”
                              at the Michigan League, University of Michigan

5:00-6:30 p.m. - Seth Winberg and Aliza Storchan, “All in the Family: Lot and his Daughters”
                              at the Michigan League, University of Michigan

 For more information, contact Karen Freedland at karenfreedland@jccfed.org or 971-0990.