Nextbook: Local Programs

<a name='Sherwin Nuland with Milt Rosenberg '></a>Sherwin Nuland with Milt Rosenberg The Sherwin Nuland event has been cancelled November 10 2005, 6:00 PM Harold Washington Library Center 400 South State Street, Chicago Robert Pinsky The Life of David <IMG SRC="http://www.nextbook.org/images/event.0506.pinsky.jpg" width=80 hspace=5 vspace=0 align=right> September 22 2005, 6:00 PM Harold Washington Library Center "For the hero to be celebrated requires the artist who imagines the celebration: David the warrior-artist is both." So writes Robert Pinsky in his new book on King David. Drawing on the biblical chronicle of David as well as on later commentaries, Pinsky crafts both a detailed biography and an ecstatic song to Davidwarrior, outlaw, poet, king; golden boy and enfeebled old man; slayer of Goliath, lover of Bathsheba, successor to Saul, and founder of Jerusalem. Robert Pinsky is the author of six books of poetry, four works of criticism, and the translation The Inferno of Dante. He was Poet Laureate of the United States from 1997 to 2000. Susan Stamberg & Friends Hanukkah Lights: Stories of the Season <IMG SRC="http://www.nextbook.org/images/event.0506.stamberg.jpg" width=80 hspace=5 vspace=0 align=right> December 7 2005, 6:00 PM Harold Washington Library Center 400 South State Street, Chicago A grandmother shakes up the Hanukkah party at the Coney Island Sephardic Home with some tambourine-whooping belly dancing. A young rabbi must decide whether to give in to a four-year-old animal rights activist and retract the story of the Maccabees spearing an elephant, or be true to the original and suffer the consequences. For fifteen years, National Public Radio has celebrated Hanukkah with readings of original stories by distinguished American writers. Local actors join NPR's Susan Stamberg for an evening of dramatic readings. Stories from the series have been collected in a new anthology, Hanukkah Lights: Stories of the Season. Classic Jews: A Staged Reading Adapted and directed by Laura Ferri <IMG SRC="http://www.nextbook.org/images/event.0506.ferri.jpg" width=80 hspace=5 vspace=0 align=right> January 11 2006, 6:00 PM Harold Washington Library Center 400 South State Street, Chicago Before Philip Roth or Saul Bellow picked up a pen, the most famous (and notorious) Jewish characters in the English tradition were created by non-Jews. In imagining these heroes, heroines, and villains, British and American authors pondered the place of Jews in society, and bolstered many of the stereotypes, positive and negative, that later writers would revisit, reinvent, and react against. Laura Ferri directs an evening of readings from Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and others. Ferri has been a company member of Book-It Repertory Theatre in Seattle for twelve years, where she has adapted and directed numerous literary productions. Ruth Gruber From Holocaust to Haven <IMG SRC="http://www.nextbook.org/images/events.0506.gruber.jpg" width=80 hspace=5 vspace=0 align=right> March 1 2006, 6:00 PM Harold Washington Library Center 400 South State Street, Chicago Born in 1911, Ruth Gruber first made her reputation as an enterprising journalist in the 1930s, writing a series of articles about the Soviet arctic for The New York Herald Tribune, which were syndicated throughout Europe. A decade later, in 1944, Harold Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, asked Gruber to lead a secret mission to escort 1,000 Jewish refugees from Italy to America. After WWII she worked as a correspondent in Europe and Palestine, where she became an advocate for Jews in dp camps. She was the only American reporter allowed to board the ship Exodus. Gruber is the author of 17 books. Shalom Auslander with Ira Glass Beware of God <IMG SRC="http://www.nextbook.org/images/event.0506.glass.jpg" width=80 hspace=5 vspace=0 align=right> April 3 2006, 7:00 PM Thorne Auditorium, Northwestern University School of Law—Chicago Campus 375 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago In his book of short stories, Beware of God, Shalom Auslander kicks and screams at all things divine, yet can never quite let go. In one story God orders a man to get supplies from Home Depot to build an ark; in another he reveals himself as a chicken, causing both spiritual and dietary confusion. At once poignant and wickedly funny, the stories remind us that blasphemy can be its own form of observance. Raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, Auslander fled his family as a young man and began writing fiction as a way of understanding the distance he had traveled. Ira Glass is the producer and host of This American Life; Auslander is a frequent contributor to the show. An Evening with Cynthia Ozick <IMG SRC="http://www.nextbook.org/images/event.0506.ozick.jpg" width=80 hspace=5 vspace=0 align=right> May 23 2006, 6:00 PM Harold Washington Library Center 400 South State Street, Chicago If we blow into the narrow end of the shofar, we will be heard far," said Cynthia Ozick in 1970. "But if we choose to be mankind rather than Jewish and blow into the wider part, we will not be heard at all." Through books like The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories, The Shawl, and The Puttermesser Papers, Ozick has become one of the most recognized Jewish American authors. Her most recent novel, Heir to the Glimmering World, is the Depression-era story of Rose Meadows, an 18-year-old orphan, who finds herself caught up in the domestic and intellectual dramas of the Mitwissers, a family of German Jewish refugees.