and subscribe to our youtube channel. for everyone here, i'm charles davis, and we'll see all of you right back here next time. (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (bright music)

good morning. welcome to mosaic. it's an honor to be your host. technology's force in the world is changing all sorts of ways in which we live fundamentally. it changes how we read. in honor of jewish book month we are honored to have in our conversation howard free man, executive director of jewish community library. welcome. >> thanks. it's great to be here. >> tell us what's new at the library. >> what i am really excited about now is our one bay one book program for the year. one bay one book, a lot of communities do this where they encourage people to read a book over the course of a time. we choose a jewish oriented book and encourage people to read it and discuss it. our selection this year is the periodic

table. the italian writer was born in 1919 and grew up in the fascist area. he wrote a number of books on this experience but this is unlike any of those that he wrote. >> so what is "one bay one book." >> really the idea is we want people to be not only reading books but discussing them. the idea is really that we are encouraging people to pick up this book and either get together with friends or if they're part of an institution like a synagogue or community center, to get together and talk about the book. i am really convinced after all the years as a librarian that we get such a different experience out of discussing a book than we do just out of reading it alone. >> we see over time that independent book stores are growing, and use of technology

for reading in terms of the pleasure of reading is kind of plateauing out, it seems. >> i think it's hard to say. we are in a period of such radical change and it changes year to year. i think it is really difficult to be overly general. for people saying that the physical book was on its way out, there have been statistics showing that's not the case. i do think there is a lot of stepping back a bit. what's happened is we have embraced a lot of the technologies rapidly, enthusiastically without assessing longterm impacts and without also assessing some of the research. for instance, i have a daughter in middle school. she's assigned books to read on her computer. i have seen that her experience is not as pleasurable as it would be reading a physical book. then her learning is also different. i think what we have to do is make judicious decisions about how we encourage reading and

also what makes sense for us. for me there is not a one size fits all. i love physical books but i also think there are a lot of great advantages for e readers as well. >> what are other services that the jewish community library offers the community? >> we are a full service library but the caveat is we really deal only with jewish related topics. that said, it's really the entire range of the jewish experience from religion, culture, history, music, art. we have every possible perspective from left to right, from atheist to orthodox. the idea is we want to be a true community library that serves and reflects the community that we live in. >> every culture struggles with how it defines itself and what is its own culture. it's a big question. but how do you define a jewish book? >> for me it's very broad. it's that it has a jewish dimension to it meaning it

somehow reflects oregon informs, tells us something about the jewish experience. that does not necessarily have to be religiously oriented. for one some people it's accidental fact of life that they were born jewish. in his case it determined very much the course of his life because he was imprisoned because he was jewish even though he was a secular jew. i think what we learn is that the depth, breath of the experience when we see it in the big picture is what we come to appreciate the jewish experience that much more because of how broad it is. >> so for you, the one bay one book is essentially a book club on behalf of the jewish community library. how does somebody access that service? >> contact us at jewishcommunitylibrary.org. and we have copies we can

distribute free of charge. we also have a lot of events that are related to it. for instance, because the book deals with interface of chemistry and the rest of life, we have some events coming up dealing science and judaism or things dealing with italian jewelry. there are events at the library that enrich the experience of reading the book. >> fantastic. we will take a quick break. join us in just a moment when we return to mosaic.

welcome back to mosaic. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation in honor of jewish book month with howard friedman, executive director of the jewish community library. welcome back. >> thank you. >> what trends do you see in what we think of as jewish books? >> i think there are always new kinds of developments. one thing that's been gratifying in the last years is there was a famous essay a number of years ago and literary critic said american jewish culture would be less interesting the

more removed we became from the immigrant generations. whether or not that's true, what we have seen in the last years is the most exciting trend in jewish literature has been literature by young writers born in former soviet union who maybe came when they were young and are writing in english but reflecting on experience as american jewish immigrants sort of caught or torn between two worlds of russia and united states in terms of negotiating their identity. some of the books are in russia and some in america, some both. it's been some great literature. >> what are some of their themes? >> boris fischman wrote a replacement life in which we have a young man who was born in russia and grew up in brighton beach in the large russian community in brooklyn and is trying to get out of there and divorce himself from the russian world. he moves to manhattan and is sort of sucked

back into that world through a complicated plot around applying for holocaust restitution benefits. it's an example of the sort of being torn and trying to succeed in america which has its rules and ultimately formed by the russian experience. >> you have been a librarian for so many years. what do you make of this theme in the jewish community when we talk about writing and reflecting on experience for the reader of the push and pull between assimilation, becoming an american, retaining one's own culture and one's identity and yet living in the american world? >> i think that's the essential american dance for jews. when we have the opportunity to assimilate, it's a different sort of challenge than in other places where jews lived where the opportunity was largely closed off and there really wasn't

the same kind of being torn apart. one of the interesting things, we are seeing another trend in jewish literature, for lack of other world, the memoir, we have a lot of books coming out by people who left ultra orthodox community and talking about the experience. some cases it was an angry experience. and some cases they felt they had to leave but still have positive feelings. what we see is a community that's done its best to stave off the assimilation but still you can't completely close yourself off from the greater society. >> that category of story is mostly in the form of personal he is aand memoir? >> memoir, men and women but mostly women. >> interesting. any other trends you are seeing?

>> one really great thing has been culinary history. books about food used to be cook books. in recent years, we have had more books on the history of jewish food and what it tells us of the for instance this past month there was a book a history of the jewish delicatessan. it's neat that we think about it as food and what the author is telling us is it is telling a narrative about american assimilation and how jews see themselves in relation to society in terms of relationship to religion and how you can read all this through what we are eating. >> wonderful. we are going to have a quick break and come back as we continue this conversation in honor of jewish book month.

welcome back to mosaic. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation in honor of jewish book month. i would like to introduce you, joining our conversation is summer brenner who is an author and whose most recent work is an anthology. welcome. >> thank you so much. >> i think it is important to start with the definition of summer noire. you will get many different definitions. i would like to give my definition. i

define it as something that's harsh , violent, often a critique, somewhat assault tim. the best noire books i have read have punched me. i have had visceral feelings from reading them. it is its own genre as is film noir which many are familiar with. there are great jewish directors and all different phases of movie making that in fleeing europe during and before second world war came to hollywood and are credited with creating what we call noir film. but in fact, they came from a jewish

sensibility. many of them, not all. they came of course from a place of persecution. there is a story in the anthology jewish noir where the writer comments that noir is a very popular term, you might say a hip term. in publicizing books they wanted to brand a book as noir. but in fact people want to have identified with that term. but when it comes to publishing actually noir, it is much, much harder. >> so you have a piece in this anthology. tell us a little bit about your particular piece. >> my story is called devil for a witch. it comes from an old southern expression, you trade a double for a witch which is not a bargain on either end. my pro tag nist leon greenberg is

in financial straits. he has committed crimes. he gets an offer from the fbi that he can die and go under ground into a clandestine operation in mississippi undercover to try to identify some of the patrician class that are financing the clan and not only their virulent and violent campaign against african americans during this period but also their virulent and violent. >> to what degree is your story fiction and to what degree is it based in current events or historic reality? >> my story takes place in the 1960s. it is fueled by the fact that i actually attended the temple in atlanta, georgia, where i grew up. that temple

was bombed. it was bombed particularly because of the rabbi jacob rothchild's very vocal and possible affiliation with dr. king. that would have been, i think, the primary motivation. there has been a book called the temple bombing that melissa fay green has written that's a nonfiction book about that time. as a child experiencing that, it was an experience not my only experience but my most extreme experience of domestic terror. >> howard, you talked earlier about trends in jewish books. and here we have noir and specifically jewish noir. is this kind of literature new within the context of the jewish community? >> it is not actually. we are seeing more. there is more

jewish detective fiction. there is actually even a large sub genre in israel of detective fiction. but there is also -- this fathers release of the novel compulsion which is about leopold case, fictional take from that. one of the things that's interesting, there is a book from the '50s or '60s but there has been great discomfort among jews with violence. we are all uncomfortable with violence. but when it happens within the community and some of the novels are sort of showing the under belly, parts that we don't like to acknowledge that happen among jews. so i think that's something that was explored certain will i in cool pummeled shun and in a number of novels today. >> interesting. we will take a quick break and return in just a moment here to mosaic.

welcome back to mosaic. we are in the middle of wonderful organization with author summer brenner and executive director of jewish community library in san francisco howard friedman. welcome back, howard and summer. >> thank you. >> summer, every anthology has a rationale behind it. so can

you talk a little bit about what you understand to be the rationale and essentially the framing of jewish noir? >> yes. i spoke about the definition of noir itself. but why jewish noir? i think howard brought in a good dimension about how more jewish writers are writing about the under belly or crime but in the introduction to the anthology jewish noir the editor has done an explanation that goes back in fact to many references in the bible where crimes are committed, where the heroes lionized in literature are flawed beings struggling with their own demons. the introduction is very important in terms of setting the tone of the book. then what follows are 30 plus authors writing in very

different voices about very different subjects so you get just a great wide range of jewish perspectives on what a crime story is. >> is jewish noir or the genre of noir by definition intended to elicit a visceral reaction from the reader? is that part of its requirement? >> no. i think that was something i was personally defining in my own response to some things i have read and also some of the stories that are in this anthology. but not all of them. as i said, there are many definitions of noir. people will tell you things that would either complement or even more contradict some of the things i have said. >> i have kind of a big question for both of you. jewish life is filled with a relationship to text, a kind of love affair with the word. in

that context, every culture has its own hesitancy about revealing perhaps to the broader world or even to itself whatever its under belly might be. what do you think is going on for us in the jewish community perhaps here in america that we are seeing some literature that takes in some ways that risk to both reveal to the world and to ourselves a bit of this under belly? >> for me i think there is an expression to be a shame in front of nonjews, there is a sense of insecurity that jews or immigrants, people who felt they haven't fully belonged. there is insecurity feeling that we have to look good in front of others and don't want to show the airing dirty laundry. the fact that there is more dirty laundry is probably an indication of a greater

feeling of security. >> interesting. so perhaps this literature signifies a kind of security or maturity in some ways on behalf of the community itself to sort of say well we are like everybody else and this is a part of what makes us human as well. >> exposing ourselves. >> exposing ourselves for self reflective capacity. we have a little bit more time left. let's talk about a genre we haven't talked about yet which is children's literature. i am wondering, summer, from your perspective as an author, what about children's literature in the jewish world and howard as well from the perspective of the jewish community library. summer. >> for a decade, i have been writing young adult books. young, young adults. early teen books, middle school. they're place based. the first one is called ivy homeless in san

francisco. and it's about a girl, a 12-year-old girl and her artist father who are homeless. so it addresses the city as a character in the way that they move around and camp out. she's prevented most days from going to school. it addresses homelessness and has been used in classrooms to introduce the conversation, open the conversation about homelessness in classrooms where again kids are embarrassed to talk about it. they're ashamed or they're afraid. so it's been a catalyst for discussion. >> interesting. >> the other two books about richmond or oakland are even more about place because they time travel to the history of a place. they try to create bridges among very diverse cultures. while pro tag nists of both books is an african

american girl and latino boy, there are characters that enter into the book that are from all periods of history but in contemporary life, the diverse world we are living in. >> we will have to put a comma in the conversation among us. as we end, howard, do you have say one book you would recommend folks try? >> since i talked about the russian immigrant authors i would say a bear, a backpack and eight crates of vodka which is a memoir. >> wonderful. one book? >> i would like to recommend jewish noir, a wonderful christmas or hanukkah present. >> wonderful. please enjoy the rest of your day and of course get a book and read and talk about it. thank you so much for being with us here on mosaic.

♪♪ ♪♪ dreams begin here. welcome to the goodnight club.

strike from cbs news bay area, this is the morning edition