Book Group
Bet Mishpachah’s lively, long-running Book Group meets every six to eight weeks. All are welcome and there's nothing to join.
Books generally have either a Jewish and/or an LGBTQ+ theme, and alternate between fiction and non-fiction works. Recent meetings have discussed non-fiction work such as David: The Divided Heart by Rabbi David Wolpe; An Improbable Friendship: The Remarkable Lives of Israeli Ruth Dayan and Palestinian Raymonda Tawil by Anthony David; and The Liar by Israeli writer Ayelet Gundar-Goshen to name a few.
For further information, or to obtain the Zoom link for any meeting, please contact bookgroup@betmish.org
The Bet Mishpachah Book Group will meet (via Zoom) on Sunday, March 12th, starting at 4:00 pm, to discuss The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, by Hugh Ryan. Although intended for short-term female prisoners awaiting trial or sentencing, the Women’s House of Detention, located in New York City's Greenwich Village from 1929 to 1974, housed tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people for months or even years, crammed into small cells, with no recreational, educational, or vocational programs, and with woeful medical care. Relying on extensive archival research, historical and contemporary oral histories and other primary sources, the author provides a window into the policing of "queernesss" and radical politics in the 20th century. The resulting narrative is part history, part horror story and part blistering critique of the legal justice system. (The prison was demolished after riots by inmates helped expose its dangerously overcrowded and inhuman conditions.)