Doris Bass Memorial Library & Book Club
Doris Bass, a beloved member of Israel Congregation, was a dedicated lover of books and literature. After a long career beginning in the Brooklyn Public Library and progressing to publishing, Doris moved to Vermont in 1996. Her passion for life was contagious and her passing has left us with a large hole in our lives. We have dedicated our extensive library in her memory. Today we are fortunate to have devoted congregants stewarding the library Doris championed.
The Doris Bass Library is currently overwhelmed with books that need to be catalogued and shelved with more coming in all the time and only two part time volunteers to do the work to sort through the donations. We deeply appreciate the huge effort our volunteers, are doing to accomplish this task having found some truly beautiful and special books among the donations received. We want to be able to continue to welcome the donation of engaging and educational books, but we need your help:
- Please box books or tie book donations—pre-approved by the library volunteers—with twine before dropping them off in the office, not in the library.
- If you would like your name or the name of your family member on a book plate in the book, please give us the pertinent information.
- Please consider making a donation to the Merkado Library Fund to help us in our work of making this a more user-friendly place for our congregation.
Thank You!
Join the Doris Bass Book Club!
Start your day off right with a good book. . .
Meeting four times a year, come participate in a lively and engaging conversation about
wonderful books of Jewish interest.
The next meeting of the Doris Bass Book Club will held on October 21st at 7:00 pm!
Join the club as we meet via Zoom to discuss the book, sharing your thoughts and ideas!
October Book Club title:
Everything is Illuminated
With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man—also named Jonathan Safran Foer—sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis.
Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.
As their adventure unfolds, Jonathan imagines the history of his grandfather’s village, conjuring a magical fable of startling symmetries that unite generations across time. As his search moves back in time, the fantastical history moves forward, until reality collides with fiction in a heart-stopping scene of extraordinary power.
In Praise of Everything is Illuminated
"Not since Anthony Burgess's novel 'A Clockwork Orange' has the English language been simultaneously mauled and energized with such brilliance and such brio." -- Francine Prose, New York Times Book Review Notable Book
"Read it, and you'll feel altered, chastened -- seared in the fire of something new." -- The Washington Post
"Comedy and pathos are braided together with extraordinary skill in a haunting debut. . .riveting intensity and originality." (Starred) Kirkus Reviews
"A certified wunderkind at 25 . . .a funny, moving...deeply felt novel about the dangers of confronting the past and the redemption that comes with laughing at it, even when that seems all but impossible." -- Time Magazine
"A book that illuminates so much with such odd and original beauty." -- Daniel Mendelsohn, New York Magazine
[A] dazzling literary high-wire act . . . brilliant . . . The payoff is extraordinary: a fearless, acrobatic, ultimately haunting effort" -- Janet Maslin, New York Times
"Maybe two or three times in a lifetime, a book transcends its genre to become experience. Everything Is Illuminated is an event of this order." -- Dorothea Strauss, Baltimore Sun About.com
"He has given us a deeply resonant work that could only be the first great American Jewish novel of the 21st century."--The Forward
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of the novels
Everything is Illuminated and
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and a work of nonfiction,
Eating Animals. His books have won numerous awards and have been translated into 36 languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Paperback, audio and e-book editions are available from the Northshire Bookstore
Or check out your local library!