Literature at Lunch

We are living in a troubled time when negative rhetoric, violence and hate crimes against Jews, African Americans, Moslems and other minorities are escalating. Join Gail Lipsitz, Fred Emil Katz and Mary Dagold for this important and timely discussion, a week after the anniversary of Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938). Fred Katz, who lived through Kristallnacht as a boy, has written and taught about what we can learn from the past: the warning signs of the rise of Fascism and how to respond.

In preparation, please read 3 excerpts from Fred's published works and 2 short stories. "The Porcelain Monkey" by Shira Naiman (2006) uncovers a mystery about a German-born Jewish woman who tried to bury her past when she emigrated to the USA. In Karen E. Bender's "Where to Hide in a Synagogue" (published in 2018 before the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh), two women members of an American congregation are asked to develop a plan to protect their temple from potential hate crimes