SUNDAY, 4/19/2026, 3:00-5:00 PM PACIFIC What makes the story Fear frightening in itself? How could it have been written so that it would have been less frightening? What are your thoughts about the last line in Fear: "With every limb and all his senses, he understood the value, the enormous singular power of being, of naked being. . .?" What does the title mean to the story Do Not Punish Us? If you recall the stories of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, can you interpret the story Do Not Punish Us...

SUNDAY, MARCH 29, 2026 3:00-5:00 pm WITH SPECIAL GUEST TRANSLATOR JESSICA KIRZANE Subscribe to Yiddish Shmoozers (In Translation) to receive Zoom link Miriam Karpilove's novel, Diary of a Lonely Girl, portrays a secular Jewish immigrant woman's search for a love match on New York's Lower East Side. The unnamed narrator, a single and self-supporting worker without family in America, seeks a modern Jewish man to match her intellect and desires. The narrator wants a love match with a man...

Sunday June 29 4:00-6:00 PM Pacific Start Reading: Voices of the Matriarchs , by Chava Weissler (Boston: Beacon Press), Introduction and Chapters 3, 5, 9 Our recent reading of S. Y. Abramovitsh's work, Fishke the Lame, introduced us to the 19th century world of Mendele the Bookseller, who traveled from shtetl to shtetl selling religious books, miscellaneous ritual merchandise, and, importantly, booklets of prayers in Yiddish written for and sold to women. The Yiddish Shmoozers (In...