Next readings....

Thank you for those that made the Zoom a little early! Next meeting will be December 16th at 7pm... we'll have to assess how everyone feels about meeting in person versus zoom, and gift exchange ideas. If you have any thoughts on this, please email/text me.

The Vanishing Half: A Novel by Brit Bennett

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.

Einstein and the Rabbi: Searching for the Soul by Naomi Levy

Einstein and the Rabbi is an inspiring and deeply affecting book for people of all faiths, Rabbi Naomi Levy sets off on a three-year exploration of the mystery behind a moving and mystical letter that Albert Einstein wrote to a grieving father about the unity that underlies all existence. In the letter Einstein perfectly captures what Rabbi Levy has come to believe about the human condition: that we are intimately connected and that we are blind to this truth. Wondering what had elicited such spiritual wisdom from a man of science, Levy leads us on a breathtaking journey full of wisdom, empathy, and humor, all the while helping us to reclaim our souls and glimpse the oneness that has been eluding us, live up to our gifts, and understand why we are here.