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JEWISH PROGRAM AIMS TO SPOTLIGHT 'PEOPLE OF THE BOOK'
By Holly Lebowitz Rossi
Jews have long been known as a "people of the book," and a
new organization is taking that concept literally.
The group, called Nextbook, has launched a series of Jewish cultural
and literary programs to show secular Jews that Judaism does not live
only in the synagogue, and to give non-Jews insight into the cultural
import of this minority but influential faith.
Armed with a generous endowment from Keren Keshet-The Rainbow
Foundation, Nextbook hopes to open people's eyes in cities across
America to the impact that Jewish culture, history and literature have
on the world around them.
Nextbook's programming is comprised of several distinct but
interrelated initiatives.
In addition to maintaining a Web site that features a daily
"cultural digest" of Jewish life and publishing, the group is partnering
with public libraries to bolster Jewish non-fiction and fiction
collections.
Nextbook is also creating book clubs, presenting a lecture series by
noted Jewish authors and publishing an original series of books on
Jewish topics.
Though Nextbook has been in the planning stages for more than a
year, the group "went live" this past May, launching pilot programs in
Chicago and Seattle, with an additional pilot being planned for the
Washington, D.C., area.
It all started with public libraries.
"Libraries have been great civic and cultural institutions for waves
and waves of Jewish immigrants to teach them how to be American," said
Julie Sandorf, the director of Nextbook.
Now, with studies showing synagogue affiliation declining among
American Jews, Sandorf thinks that a free, ubiquitous institution like a
library could return the favor to the Jewish community.
"Could the door swing open both ways, to teach (secular Jews) how to
be Jewish?" she said.
Sandorf, who was raised in a secular Jewish household, became
curious about Judaism when she had a daughter whom she wanted to give a
strong Jewish identity. So she hit the books, frequenting bookstores and
libraries to hunt for Jewish content.
"The impulse was not going to a synagogue or a traditional
institution," she said. "In my own finding out what does it mean to be a
Jew, my great impulse was to ask, `What do Jews read?'"
Sandorf's inclination is a common phenomenon among Jews, say Jewish
book experts. "Literary culture is a way that a lot of people connect
with their Jewish heritage," said Josh Lambert, editor of the online
magazine JBooks.com.
With this in mind, Nextbook has developed a "reading list" that it
is distributing to libraries and 400 independent bookstores nationwide.
Listed books will be marked by a distinctive bookmark, organized by
topics such as "Discovering Myself" or "Zionism & Israel."
In addition, the Nextbook writers series is designed to get
"distinguished writers to talk abut their relationship with Judaism,"
said Matt Brogan, the program director for Nextbook.
From folk tales to poetry to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael
Chabon's discussion of the history of Jews in the comic book industry,
the series' only requirement is that its authors engage in some way with
Jewish life or history.
"We're not trying to dictate what that engagement means," said
Brogan. "We're looking for people who are imaginatively interpreting
history and culture, engaged with a Jewish tradition."
So far, the lectures are drawing large crowds. More than 500 people
signed up for Chabon's talk in Seattle, and the four events that
Nextbook has done in Chicago in the past month have been well-attended
as well.
Also, five book clubs have been launched around the writers series
in Chicago, two in Seattle.
Brogan is one of two non-Jewish staff members at Nextbook, and he
said he has learned a lot about the importance of Judaism through his
work.
"It's a culture that in significant ways continues to live on,
especially in America," he said. But like many of his Jewish colleagues,
he is looking at Jewish culture as just that -- a culture that is
separate from religion. "My interest in it is a secular interest," he
said.
Nextbook's next project will be to stock the shelves of the
bookstores that distribute its reading lists. The group's publishing
venture is a partnership with the Knopf Group and its imprint, Schocken
Books.
So far, 15 books by top authors are in the works, according to
Jonathan Rosen, who is the series editor of the "Jewish Lives, History
and Culture Publishing Series." The first in the series will be
published in 2005, he said.
The books, by authors ranging from David Mamet to former U.S. poet
laureate Robert Pinsky, will be on specific Jewish ideas or historical
figures, like the medieval Jewish physician-philosopher Maimonides or
the biblical King David, who is said to have written the Psalms.
"There's so much of Jewish learning that is ... not automatically
accessible" to a general, secular readership, said Rosen, who is also
the author of "The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds."
"They lived inside a rabbinic world, a world of commentary," he
continued. "The question was how to make accessible people who live
inside those worlds."
Scholars of Jewish literature say that to understand the Jewish
people, one must understand the cultural phenomena that surround the
religious center of the tradition.
"The Jews are not just a religion. They're a people, they're a
culture," said Murray Baumgarten, who is the director of Jewish studies
at the University of California at Santa Cruz as well as the editor of
the American Jewish Congress-produced journal "Judaism."
"Not only is Jewish culture connected to American and European
culture in a foundational way, Jewish literature is. There has been a
great interest by Jews and non-Jews in that," he said.
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