Join us for a book discussion, A Jewish Refugee in New York, by Kadya Molodovsky via Zoom.

Registration required for Zoom link.

Rivke Zilberg, a 20-year-old Jewish woman, arrives in New York shortly after the Nazi invasion of Poland, her home country. Struggling to learn a new language and cope with a different way of life in the United States, Rivke finds herself keeping a journal about the challenges and opportunities of this new land. Kadya Molodovsky (1894–1975) was one of the most well-known and prolific writers of Yiddish literature in the twentieth century. Molodovsy provides keen insight into the day-to-day activities of the large immigrant Jewish community of New York.

February 16th 2021 7PM
Copies are available for check-out or curbside by calling the Borrowing Desk 860.347.2520.

Questions: Christy Billings of Information Services and Adult Learning. cbillings@russelllibrary.org

The Yiddish Book Center’s “Coming to America” Reading Groups for Public Libraries is a program in which librarians arrange reading groups to discuss three books of Yiddish literature in translation, and one book related to an immigrant community served by their library. The public is welcome to attend one, or more of the scheduled discussions.

This reading and discussion program is to engage teens and adults in thinking about immigrants' experiences encountering America. Using Yiddish literature as a portal, the program will feature Yiddish literature in translation that explores questions of identity, assimilation, language, cuisine, and generational change, presenting American identity as an ongoing conversation, a give-and-take between insiders and outsiders, and will compare these works written in the early 20th century to works by contemporary immigrant writers.

Russell Library will be hosting a series of four book discussion in 2020-2021 for adults and teens. The titles of the books of are Motl the Cantor’s Son, by Sholem Aleichem, and The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Mengestu, A Jewish Refugee in New York, by Kadya Molodovsky, Enemies, A Love Story, by Isaac Bashevis Singer. These discussions will take place on Tuesday evenings in partnership with The Racial Justice Book Group and Russell Readers. The goals of the program are to introduce Yiddish literature in the context of the broader immigrant experience in coming to America, and to help prompt and inform discussions about American immigration experiences—a topic as relevant today as it was one hundred years ago.

The Yiddish Book Center’s “Coming to America” Reading Groups for Public Libraries is made possible by a gift from Sharon Karmazin.

Russell Readers and the Racial Justice Book Group are sponsored by The Friends of Russell Library.