Dec

2 2020

Read & Rendezvous Book Club

3:00PM - 4:00PM  

Zoom

Contact Ruby Vargeson
rvargeson@sbjf.org

The book for December is On Division: A Novel by Goldie Goldbloom. 

Winner of the 2020 Jewish Fiction Award

Synopsis: Through one woman's life at a moment of surprising change, the award-winning author Goldie Goldbloom tells a deeply affecting, morally insightful story and offers a rare look inside Brooklyn's Chasidic community

On Division Avenue, just a block or two up from the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Surie Eckstein is soon to be a great-grandmother. Her ten children range in age from thirteen to thirty-nine. Her in-laws, postwar immigrants from Romania, live on the first floor of their house. Her daughter Tzila Ruchel lives on the second. She and Yidel, a scribe in such demand that he makes only a few Torah scrolls a year, live on the third. Wed when Surie was sixteen, they have a happy marriage and a full life, and, at the ages of fifty-seven and sixty-two, they are looking forward to some quiet time together.

Into this life of counted blessings comes a surprise. Surie is pregnant. Pregnant at fifty-seven. It is a shock. And at her age, at this stage, it is an aberration, a shift in the proper order of things, and a public display of private life. She feels exposed, ashamed. She is unable to share the news, even with her husband. And so for the first time in her life, she has a secret—a secret that slowly separates her from the community.

The book is available for purchase locally at Chaucer's Books or Amazon.

We will convene on Zoom to discuss the book. Link and password will be provided to those who request to join. Let’s get reading!

Please contact Ruby Vargeson at rvargeson@sbjf.org to sign up.