The Beit Tikvah Bagels and Books will meet the second Saturday of each month at 10:00 a.m. in the Beit Tikvah Library. All of our books are easily accessible at public libraries or bookstores in the community.

Discussion facilitators will provide bagels and fixings. Bring a drink for yourself, and a little something to share with the group (veggies, fruit, a sweet, etc.).

Join The Beit Tikvah Bagels and Books Club on September 13 for discussion of:

 Waiting for God: Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist

by Lawrence Bush

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The reading schedule for 2008-2009 is:

September 13 - Waiting for God: Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist by Lawrence Bush (Non-Fiction). The editor of Reconstructionist Today details his struggle to reconcile his intellect with his spirituality and Jewish heritage.

November 15 - The Ladies' Auxillary by Tova Mirvis (Fiction). Recently widowed, an unconventional New York convert brings her five year old daughter into a tightly knit Orthodox Jewish community in Memphis,Tennessee.

December 13 - The Invisible Wall: A Love Story that Broke Barriers by Harry Bernstein (Non-Fiction). A people's history of the experience of a working class Jewish boy learning to navigate the balkanized world of Christians and Jews within a single English mill town.

January 10 - The Border of Truth by Victoria Redel (Fiction). A professional woman uncovers her father's harrowing escape from Nazi Germany as she seeks to complete a foreign adoption.

February 14 - Half Life: Jewish Tales from Interfaith Homes by Laurel Snyder, ed. (Non-Fiction). Snyder presents a series of stories that illustrates the existence of a "half" identity for many Jews from interfaith families as "an interesting, incorrigible, perplexing, and profound moniker in its own right".

March 14- The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer (Fiction). A dramatization of just-post-revolutionary Iran captures its small tensions and larger brutalities, which play vividly upon a family that cannot, even if it wishes to,conform.

April 11- The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs. (Non-Fiction). Jacobs, a Jewish agnostic from New York City, decides to follow the laws and rules of the Bible for one year.

May 9- People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (Fiction). One of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illuminated with images, the Sarajevo Haggadah survived centuries of purges and wars. Brooks turns the intriguing, but sparsely detailed history, into an emotionally rich, thrilling fictionalization that retraces its turbulent journey.

June 13- Katterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman (Fiction). The story of three Orthodox Jewish families in a small town in upstate New York, each of whom is tugged between religious tradition and the secular world.

If you have any questions, contact Beth Bugnaski or Marjorie Davis.