Come meet Jane Loeb Rubin, author of the novel, “Threadbare, on Sunday, March 23 at 11 a.m. at Congregation Torat El in Oakhurst. The novel tells the story of a tenacious young Jewish girl named Tillie who joins with her neighbor, Sadie, in Victorian Era Harlem to start a unique garment company. Tillie had declined to move north with the rest her family as Harlem transitioned from farming to a more urban area and instead married lonely widower Abe, hoping it would allow her to attend high school. She has a rude awakening to the filth and overcrowding of the Lower East Side’s tenements and never does go to school. However, Tillie helps Abe build a successful button business before going into business with Sadie, encountering antisemitism and becoming wealthy until her life is upended by an unforeseen devastating challenge.
“Threadbare” is the prequel to the first book of the Loeb Rubin’s trilogy, “In the Hands of Women.” Her other publications include an essay memoir, “Almost a Princess,” “My Life as a Two-Time Cancer Survivor” and multiple magazine
articles. She left a 30-year career as a healthcare executive to launch a writing career.
The book can be purchased from bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores or amazon.com.
Cost is $15 if pre-paid by March 19 at torat-el.org or calling (732) 531-4410 or $20 at the door. A light brunch will be served.
Explore the remarkable life and writings of journalist, literary critic and memoirist Rokhl Auerbach at the annual Abram Matlofsky Memorial Lecture on Monday, March 24 at 7:30 p.m. at the Douglass Student Center in New Brunswick featuring renowned Holocaust scholar Samuel D. Kassow. The program is being presented by Rutgers University’s Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life.
Kassow is the Charles H. Northam Professor of History at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. who won a National Jewish Book Award for Holocaust Memoir in January for his translation of Auerbach’s writings into “Warsaw Testament,” a vivid portrait of Warsaw’s prewar Yiddish literary and artistic community and its destruction at the hands of the Nazis.
Auerbach was a central member of Oyneg Shabes, a top-secret underground archival team in the Warsaw Ghetto that documented daily life at great personal risk. Her writings were collected and translated for the first time into English by Kassow, also the author of “Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive,” which was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award, was translated into eight languages and adapted into an award-winning documentary that had its New Jersey premiere at the Rutgers Jewish Film Festival in 2018.
The free program is being funded by the Karma Foundation. A dessert reception will follow. Registration is required at bildnercenter.rutgers.edu. Free campus parking is available.
A documentary produced by the Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County, “Life in Roosevelt: A Tapestry of the Jewish American Dream,” will be shown as part of the 23rdannual Garden State Film Festival. The festival, which features films at various venues, will run from March 27-30. The museum film will be shown at the Jersey Shore Arts Center in Ocean Grove on Sunday, March 30 as one of three films to be viewed from 2:30-5:15 p.m.
The documentary, an oral history project of the museum, was produced in collaboration with Gellman Images of Freehold. It tells the story of the Monmouth County community of Roosevelt, created as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Depression for Jews from New York City’s garment district. Originally called Jersey Homesteads, it had a garment factory and farm but became a haven for Jewish artists. That led to the establishment of the Roosevelt Arts Project, which is still active today. The town, which was renamed for Roosevelt after his death in 1945, is on the both the state and National Register of Historic Places.
The documentary features the history and first-person accounts of those living in Roosevelt weaving together newly captured images and videos of the town and its surroundings, authentic town and family photos and historic videos, along with the oral history interviews from current and past residents and community members.
Tickets can be purchased at gsff.org.
The annual Donald and Ruth Kahn Jewish Book and Author Event will be held at Congregation Neve Shalom in Metuchen on Sunday, March 30 at 10 a.m. This year’s program will feature three authors whose books will be available to purchase after the event, including a non-fiction book, “Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life,” by Joshua Leifer, sections of which provided background for the two nonfiction books, “Lolita at Leonard’s of Great Neck and Other Stories from the Before Times” by Shira Dicker and “Street Corner Dreams” by Florence Kraut.
Leifer’s book traces the American Jewish community and how its behavior and activities have changed since its arrival in the early 20th century. It centers on what historically has been important to American Jewish communities and their focus not only worship but education, communal action and responses to events in Israel. It also showcases reactions to issues such as antisemitism and suggests paths for future American Jewish life.
Kraut tells the tells the story of Golda, who arrives in New York after a harrowing ship voyage with her sister’s baby. She eventually marries and has a family that suffers from poverty, infectious disease and threats to their livelihood and values from the Jewish gangs that demand protection money from shop owners. When her son joins one of the gangs he finds he hates it despite the cash benefits and struggles to leave without being victimized by their wrath.
Dicker’s first book is a collection of short stories that take place from Jerusalem to New York. Its characters have more means than the immigrants of the two other books and can afford bar mitzvah parties at Leonard’s and to send their children to summer camps.
Leifer will be on zoom from Israel but the other two authors will be in person. For information contact Melissa Boxer at (732) 259-2380.
