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The J of Greater Ann ArborContact UsSearch for: Home2030 Vision JCC Board of Directors Staff Community Directory New to Ann Arbor? Employment Opportunities JCC History Rental Space Departments Early Childhood Center Registration Enrichment Classes Paperwork Camp, Youth, & Family KidZone KidZone Vacation Days Camp Raanana PJ Library® @ the J Arts & Culture Book Festival Film Festival Amster Gallery Conversations Special Events Annual Golf Outing Apples & Honey A Night of Comedy and Fundraising One Candle for Tzedakah JCC Maccabi Games® Older Adults WISE at the J! JCC Membership Fitness Zumba Yoga and Meditation Tai Chi for Seniors Calendar Donate General Donation and Tribute Life & Legacy Sponsorship Opportunities Member Log In Login Become a Member Contact Us Home Supporters Become a Supporter Tickets Donate Contact Book Festival2023 Ann Arbor Jewish Book Festival NOVEMBER 5-19, 2023 The Ann Arbor JCC is excited to bring a wide range of authors and their amazing books to our community, through in-person, virtual, and hybrid events! Click on each book cover to visit the the Ann Arbor JCC’s Virtual Bookstore ! *Not every book is on Bookshop.org ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ WEEK ONE ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Sponsor Night with Benyamin Cohen | The Einstein Effect: How the World’s Favorite Genius Got into Our Cars, Our Bathrooms, and Our Minds Sunday, November 5, 2023 @ the JCC | 5:30 pm Sponsors’ Dinner | 7 pm Public Program Moderated by Tim Chupp, Professor of Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan Almost 70 years after his death, Albert Ein­stein’s genius con­tin­ues to define our every­day lives and his endur­ing lega­cy has shaped him into a mod­ern-day pop cul­ture icon. Albert Ein­stein’s face is still one of the most rec­og­niz­able in the world and he’s wide­ly con­sid­ered to be the first mod­ern-day celebri­ty. While many of his dis­cov­er­ies co n­tin­ue to define our daily lives, it’s not just his genius that con­tin­ues to shape our world. Today, more peo­ple know Ein­stein as an icon rather than a the­o­rist — decades after his death, he’s a celebri­ty with a mas­sive online following. The Ein­stein Effect shows all the ways his influ­ence is still with us today — in our sys­tems and our cul­ture. Inter­spersed between chap­ters on his long-last­ing sci­en­tif­ic lega­cy, author Benyamin Cohen (the mind behind Ein­stein’s Twit­ter account!) also tells the sto­ry of how Ein­stein became an unlike­ly social media fig­ure and pop cul­ture icon in the mod­ern age. Benyamin Cohen man­ages the offi­cial social media accounts of Albert Ein­stein. He is the News Direc­tor of the For­ward . Cohen is also the author of My Jesus Year: A Rab­bi’s Son Wan­ders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith , named one of the best books of the year by Pub­lish­ers Week­ly and for which he received the Geor­gia Author of the Year award. He is based in Mor­gan­town, West Virginia. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Virtual Event with Rabbi Diana Fersko | We Need to Talk About Antisemitism Monday, November 6, 2023 | 7 pm over Zoom Moderated by Jonathan Trobe, MD, Professor Emeritus, Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Click HERE to view the recording! Password: 1#ss@HJU A mil­le n­ni­al rab­bi explores why w e’re reluc­tant to dis­cuss anti­semitism — and empow­ers us to fight against it. Anti­semitism is on the rise in Amer­i­ca, in cities and rur­al areas, in red states and blue states, and in guis­es both sub­tle an d ter­ri­fy­ing­ly overt. Rab­bi Diana Fer­sko is used to hav­ing dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions with mem­bers of her con­gre­ga­tion about the issues they face — from the threat of vio­lence to microag­gres­sions and iden­ti­ty denial. In We Need to Talk About Anti­sem itism , she gives all of us the ulti­mate guide to mod­ern anti­semitism in its many forms. Explor­ing top­ics like vile myths about Jew­ish peo­ple and the inter­sec­tion of anti­semitism with oth­er forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion, We Need to Talk About Anti­semitism gives read­ers the tools they need to under­stand the state of anti­semitism today. Fer­sko shows Jews and non-Jews alike how to speak up and come togeth­er, spread­ing a mes­sage of sol­i­dar­i­ty and hope. This is a time­ly read for any­one pas­sion­ate about fight­ing for social justice. Rabbi Diana Fer­sko is the Senior Rab­bi at the Vil­lage Tem­ple in Man­hat­tan. She is the nation­al vice pres­i­dent of the Wom­en’s Rab­binic Net­work and a mem­ber of the New York Board of Rab­bis. Fer­sko has been pro­filed in The New York­er and has been pub­lished in Huff­Post . She lives in New York City. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Virtual Event with Jennifer Rosner | Once We Were Home Tuesday, November 7, 2023 | 12 pm over Zoom Moderated by Jenny Traig Click HERE to view the recording! Password: *#?w0i^w From Jennifer Rosner, National Jewish Book Award Finalist and author of The Yellow Bird Sings , comes a novel based on the true stories of children stolen in the wake of World War II. Ana will never forget her mother’s face when she and her baby brother, Oskar, were sent out of their Polish ghetto and into the arms of a Christian friend. For Oskar, though, their new family is the only one he remembers. When a woman from a Jewish reclamation organization seizes them, believing she has their best interest at heart, Ana sees an opportunity to reconnect with her roots, while Oskar sees only the loss of the home he loves. Roger grows up in a monastery in France, inventing stories and trading riddles with his best friend in a life of quiet concealment. When a relative seeks to retrieve him, the Church steals him across the Pyrenees before relinquishing him to family in Jerusalem. Renata, a post-graduate student in archaeology, has spent her life unearthing secrets from the past–except for her own. After her mother’s death, Renata’s grief is entwined with all the questions her mother left unanswered, including why they fled Germany so quickly when Renata was a little girl. Two decades later, they are each building lives for themselves, trying to move on from the trauma and loss that haunts them. But as their stories converge in Israel, in unexpected ways, they must each ask where and to whom they truly belong. Beautifully evocative and tender, filled with both luminosity and anguish, Once We Were Home reveals a little-known history. Based on the true stories of children stolen during wartime, this heart-wrenching novel raises questions of complicity and responsibility, belonging and identity, good intentions and unforeseen consequences, as it confronts what it really means to find home. Jen­nifer Ros­ner is author of The Yel­low Bird Sings , a 2020 Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award final­ist in Debut Fic­tion and Book Club. She also wrote the mem­oir If a Tree Falls: A Fam­i­ly’s Quest to Hear and be Heard , and the Sydney Taylor Book Award Notable pic­ture book, The Mit­ten String , about deaf­ness in her fam­i­ly, which she has traced back to Gali­cia in the 1800s. Jennifer’s books have been translated into a dozen languages. Her short writing has appeared in the New York Times , The Times of Israel , The Massachusetts Review , the Forward , and elsewhere. In addition to writing, Jennifer has taught philosophy. She earned her B.A. from Columbia University and her Ph.D. from Stanford University. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her family. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Virtual Event with Jeff Bender and A.J....