Congregation for Humanistic Judaism of Fairfield County

This month is special for we are meeting in person at a restaurant outdoors.

Come join us. It’s a great way to make new friends.  Everything is confidential.

RSVP Roberta Frank 

10:30 a.m. Sunday School Session
11:00 a.m. Congregation Service & BYO Picnic

Members’ Private Residence
Redding, CT

9:30 Nosh

10:00 Meeting

               Jewish Journeys Committee 

Our first fall program on Sunday morning October 3^rd at 9:30 AM via Zoom (link to be sent the week before) will be a slideshow talk on (in)famous author Isaac Bashevis Singer, presented by Dave Shafer.                                                                                

 Isaac B. Singer won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1978 for his writings in both Yiddish and English.

He was also irresistible to women. After abandoning his common-law wife and child in Poland, Singer had an affair with a married woman he met in the Catskills. She divorced her husband, Singer grudgingly married her, and for the next 50 years she worked to support them while his large harem of women “translated” his Yiddish writing. 

Singer’s main mistress was with him for 30 years.  His last conquest began when he was 72 and she was 21 and married.   

The slideshow talk will consider the author’s life and works along with the very interesting Singer family dynamics. Bring your curiosity!

        For additional information contact adulted@humanisticjews.org.

Inspired by the true story of a woman who changed the way we understand our world.

In 1933 three young, gifted anthropologists are thrown together in the jungle of New Guinea. They are Nell Stone, fascinating, magnetic and famous for her controversial work studying South Pacific tribes, her intelligent and aggressive husband Fen, and Andrew Bankson, who stumbles into the lives of this strange couple and becomes totally enthralled. Within months the trio are producing their best ever work, but soon a firestorm of fierce love and jealousy begins to burn out of control, threatening their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives.

Please RSVP Irene Blumenthal if you are planning to attend. The Zoom  link will be sent out just prior to the meeting.

Megha Majumdar’s excellent debut novel begins with a pile-on, the kind of digital public shaming… . A young Muslim woman named Jivan reads on her phone about a terrorist attack at a railway station near the slum in Kolkata where she lives. More than a hundred people were killed in the blaze. She posts a question – simple, pointed, instinctive: “If the police didn’t help ordinary people like you and me, if the police watched them die, doesn’t that mean the government is also a terrorist?” Her question spreads across social media like forest fire. Monstrous accusations are hurled at her. She is alleged to have been spotted at the station carrying a bulky package and, worse, chatting online with someone the local police declare is a known terrorist recruiter. Charged with the heinous crime, she’s sent to jail to await trial.

A Burning isn’t just about Jivan. Her fate lies in the hands of two people who might be able to vouch for her character. One of them is Lovely, a young hijra (a long-established class of intersex and transgender people in India) to whom she has been giving English lessons. The other is a PE teacher, known as PT Sir, who sometimes fed her when she was one of his pupils. Both are set on changing their lives – Lovely is taking acting lessons to become a movie star; PT Sir, earnest and efficient, is courted by a political party that wants to be known for its law and order credentials. The novel is both a crime thriller in which Jivan battles to avoid execution, and a moral drama: will her old acquaintances risk their burgeoning careers to speak up for a vilified Muslim woman?

All members are invited to join the discussion. Please RSVP Irene Blumenthal if you plan to attend. A Zoom link will be sent out closer to the date.

Save the Date:
Federation for Jewish Philanthropy of Upper Fairfield County
Mitzvah Heroes Awards