The October 2 book will be “Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books” by Aaron Lansky.
This is a true story of a quest to save Jewish literature.
In 1980 Aaron Lansky, a twenty-three-year-old graduate student, issued a worldwide appeal for unwanted Yiddish works. Lansky’s project would go on to save over 1.5 million volumes, from famous writers like Sholem Aleichem and I. B. Singer to one-of-a-kind Soviet prints.
Lansky’s account of salvaging books is both hilarious and moving, filled with Jewish humor, conversations with elderly Jewish immigrants for whom the books evoke memories of a faraway past, stories of desperate midnight rescues from rain-soaked dumpsters, and touching accounts of Lansky’s trips to what were once thriving Jewish communities in Europe.

We will meet via Zoom.

First timer? Email bookclub@beth-tikvah.org to sign up.