Presenting the 27th Annual Book Festival of the Jewish Federation of the Greater San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys!
Jewish Book month is November, though our Jewish Book Festival cannot be so easily contained. Our twelve events run from October 26th through December 7th. Our authors come to us from as far away as London and as close to us as Los Angeles, and bring stories set in medieval Spain, 1930’s Bombay and contemporary New York City. We present poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, including fiction based on fact, and fact stranger than fiction.
As is Book Festival tradition, we start with a bagel brunch hosted by the Sisterhood of Temple Sholom of Ontario. On Sunday, October 26th at 10 am, our featured author is Rachel Cockerell, author of “Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for the Promised Land.” Cockerell, who intended to write a family history focusing on her grandmother and great-aunt, assumed her Kyiv-born great-grandfather would take up a paragraph or two, perhaps a footnote. She was surprised to discover that he had been involved with the Zionist movement from its inception with Theodore Herzl’s first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. He was also instrumental in the “Galveston movement” to redirect Eastern European refugees from crowded cities on the Eastern Seaboard to the relatively uninhabited American West. In addition, descendants of his unknown (to her) first family were part of the avant-garde theater scene in New York in the 1920’s.
Next, on Wednesday October 29th at 7 pm, we go on Zoom to Buenos Aires with Betina Anton, discussing her book, “Hiding Mengele: How a Nazi Network Protected the Angel of Death.” Anton, an award-winning investigative journalist for more than 20 years, grew up in a German enclave within Sao Paulo, speaking both German and Portuguese. As an adult she found out that her beloved kindergarten teacher, who disappeared mid-year, had been arrested for harboring Joseph Mengele as part of a network of collaborators who hid him for more than 30 years.
Temple Beth Israel of Highland Park and Eagle Rock welcomes children and their families to an event with Emily Raij, author of more than 40 books for children, including her newest “Just Say Welcome!” on Sunday November 2nd at 10 am. This delightful and charming book draws both on the author’s family’s experience with refugees and the Jewish value of welcoming strangers.
From a family of restauranteurs and great cooks, journalist, food writer, and chef Bonny Reichert’s earliest clear memory was discovering the numbers tattooed on her father’s arm. Her father taught her to “find the wonder” in life, but her childhood was besieged by nightmares and anxiety. Years later, a bowl of borscht in a Warsaw restaurant propelled her to reflect on her life and those of her family members. She shares her heartbreaking and heartwarming memoir, “How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty” at brunch in a private home on Wednesday November 5th at 11 am.
Every year the University of La Verne commemorates Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, by hosting an event in conjunction with the Jewish Federation Book Festival. This year Matthew Goodman speaks about his book, “Paris Undercover: A Wartime Story of Courage, Friendship and Betrayal,” on Sunday, November 9th at 4 pm. American Jewish widow, Etta Shiber and British Kate Bonnefous, friends and roommates in Paris when the Nazis invaded, were able to help at least 150 Allied soldiers escape. Their activities were discovered by the Gestapo and Shiber was sentenced to hard labor, but was freed in a prisoner exchange after eighteen months. Goodman hoped to write about the women, largely based on Shiber’s supposed memoir, Paris Underground, published in 1943, only to find that the book was not only factually incorrect, but had endangered Bonnefous, still a prisoner of the Nazis.
As is our tradition, we enjoy a festive Saturday night at Temple Beth Israel of Pomona. This year on November 15th at 7 pm, Jane Eisner celebrates the beloved singer/songwriter with her biography, “Carole King: She Made the Earth Move.” Eisner, first female editor of the Forward, often found herself the first woman to hold a particular job as her career in journalism advanced. She identifies with King’s trailblazing ambition, and the conflicts she navigated between family and career. Her book places King in cultural and historical context.
Amrita Sher-Gil, born to a Sikh Indian father and a Hungarian Jewish mother, was the most influential Indian woman painter of her time, likened to an Indian Frida Kahlo. She studied painting in Paris in the 30’s with the most prominent artists of the era, and then returned to India, only to die mysteriously in 1941. On Sunday, November 16th at 4 pm, author Alka Joshi speaks about her novel, “Six Days in Bombay,” featuring a famous artist with an Ashkenazi Jewish father and an Indian mother, who dies under mysterious circumstances. This event, at Temple Ami Shalom of West Covina, is sponsored by the family of Lynn Zeller (z”l), beloved member of the Book Festival Committee from 2001 to 2009.
The Jewish Book Council is sponsoring a Zoom presentation with Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl, author of the memoir, “Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi’s Story of Faith, Identity and Belonging,” on Tuesday, November 18th at 10 am. Senior Rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York, Buchdahl’s formative years were influenced by her father’s Ashkenazi Jewish and her mother’s Korean Buddhist communities in Tacoma, Washington.
Returning author Mary Morris was on vacation in Alberobello in the Puglia region of Italy when she came upon a plaque thanking the citizens for helping Jews during the Holocaust. Her further research led to a strange abandoned structure on the outskirts of town. At Temple Beth David on Wednesday, November 19 at 7 pm she discusses her novel, “The Red House,” which masterfully combines historic fiction and mystery. A young woman whose mother disappeared from her seemingly perfect family when she was twelve, discovers nothing was as she supposed. Her only clues are numerous depictions of a “red house” that her mother obsessively painted.
Temple Beth Sinai of Glendale hosts Dan Slater and his new book “The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters and the Birth of the American Underworld” on Sunday, November 23rd at 4 pm. A lawyer and former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Slater immersed himself in original sources detailing criminal activities in the Lower East Side at the turn of the last century, highlighting the uptown Jews who funded a team of vigilantes to destroy them.
We go on Zoom to join poet Owen Lewis and his “Prayer of Six Wings” on Wednesday December 3rd at 7 pm. A professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University, Lewis was confronted by pro-Palestinian protestors after the attacks of October 7, 2023. An award-winning poet, he evocatively portrays the complex feelings many in the Jewish community are experiencing in the face of the horrific assault, continuing war in Gaza, and rising antisemitism.
Leigh Bardugo is best known for her young adult fantasy novels, particularly “Shadow and Bone,” which became a Netflix series. She joins us for our final program on Sunday, December 7th at 7:30 pm with The Familiar. This event, sponsored by the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, is preceded by a reception with author for members of the Literary Circle, whose contributions make our Jewish Book Festival possible. “The Familiar: A Novel” is set in a medieval Spain where the Inquisition forbids Judaism but allows magic. The protagonist, a hidden Jew, learns to master her powers, outwit the inquisitors, and find romance.
Now in our 27th year, our Book Festival continues to support Jewish literature, encourage cultural understanding, promote pride in our history and heritage, and make a lasting impact on our community. Using the resources of the Jewish Book Council (JBC), which sends authors to over 130 communities across North America, the Book Festival Committee watched over 270 authors via zoom. After spirited discussion among our dedicated committee members, and some complex negotiations by our talented Jewish Federation Program Coordinator, Rebecca Russell, we have once again assembled a fabulous list of presentations guaranteed to enlighten, educate, inspire, and entertain.
Last year we lost our beloved Myra Weiss (z’”l), who was involved with the book festival since its inception. Our book sale area at in-person events will now be designated “The Myra Weiss Pop Up Book Shoppe” in her memory.
Pre-registration is required for Zoom programs and the November 5th brunch, and greatly appreciated for all other events. Registration information is available in this issue of JLIFE and at our Jewish Federation website www.jewishsgpv.org.
Shelly Klein is the 2025 Jewish Book Festival Committee Chair and a contributing writer to JLife Magazine.
