Wednesday, May 9th!

CBT's Eshet Chayil Group invites you to our stimulating, thought-provoking and fascinating..

CBT's May Book Club

Reading the book

Outwitting History

by Aaron Lansky

Wednesday, May 9th, 2018

6:30 pm

Hosted by Linda Benaderet
Please join us promptly at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 9th, at the home of Linda Benaderet, 6166 N. Scottsdale Road, A3003, Scottsdale AZ 85253. 
Directions from CBT: Head south on Scottsdale Road to 6166 N. Scottsdale Rd. (just south of Lincoln). Turn right. 

Please RSVP directly to Linda at 602-999-5232 or email phxlindy@gmail.com.

“Yiddish has not yet said its last word.”
(prediction made by Isaac Bashevis Singer when he accepted the Nobel Prize in literature in 1978)

Today Aaron Lansky, author of Outwitting History, is the President and founder of the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. In the early 80’s, he was a long haired grad student in a Yiddish class having difficulty finding enough books to read and study. “What began as a quixotic journey was also a picaresque romp, a detective story, a profound history lesson, and a poignant evocation of a bygone world.” (The Boston Globe)

Yiddish, which means ‘Jewish,’ was a dying language written in Hebrew, but combining German, Eastern Europe Polish, Russian, Aramaic and Hebrew. By the second half of the 19th century, roughly three-quarters of Jews spoke some Yiddish, many as their first language. Yiddish novels, plays, short stories, poetry, memoirs, music, film and theaters thrived in many countries.  

Aaron and his team accomplish their book searching task with endless shlepping to rescue an entire culture from dustbins, garbage cans and old folks passing on their ‘inheritance’. His  perseverance is interwoven with a history of Yiddish language, culture, literature, colorful characters and thought-provoking philosophical musings that led me to wonder what other cultural phenomena could be preserved in today’s melting pot. 

If you haven’t purchased Outwitting History yet, I recommend the audio book version that captures the pronunciation. We also encourage you to invite your Yiddish-speaking friends. 

Upcoming Book:

June 13      All Other Nights, Dara Horn

We welcome your book suggestions for September 2018 to June 2019. We’d also love your participation on our book club committee (one meeting) in June. Please contact us with your suggestions.