Temple Beth Emet Book Club
Every month we read a work connected to Judaism, either by subject or author (or both!)
We welcome everyone with a love of books and learning.
Conducted by Fran Bourne-Johnson
Where: Blum Hall at Temple Beth Emet of Burbank
When: March 24, 2020 — 7:00PM to 8:30 PM
What is the book we will read and discuss: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani
A richly evocative and nostalgic depiction of prewar Italy. The narrator, a young middle-class Jew in the Italian city of Ferrara, has long been fascinated from afar by the Finzi-Continis, a wealthy and aristocratic Jewish family, and especially by their daughter Micol. But it is not until 1938 that he is invited behind the walls of their lavish estate, as local Jews begin to gather there to avoid the racial laws of the Fascists, and the garden of the Finzi-Continis becomes an idyllic sanctuary in an increasingly brutal world. Years after the war, the narrator returns in memory to his doomed relationship with the lovely Micol, and to the predicament that faced all the Ferrarese Jews, in this unforgettably wrenching portrait of a community about to be destroyed by the world outside the garden walls
Where to get the book: The book is available at Amazon.com and other retailers. Please read the book and be prepared to discuss it.
Cost of Participating: Free!
* Synopsis courtesy of penguinrandomhouse.com
