Announcing Keri'ah B'yachad-SWF Reads Together. Reading To Be a Jew Today by Noah Feldman

Keriah B’Yahad: SWF Reads Together is a new Shabbat with Friends program to build a stronger Shabbat community through the common experience of reading the same book and exploring its themes together during selected SWF Shabbat gatherings in the coming month. 

Shabbat is a time to reflect and discuss ideas and insights into our spiritual and Jewish lives and what it means to live through our unique moment in history. We not only learn about ourselves, but we also learn about each other and the world around us. As a result, when we read together, we grow together.

The first book for Keriah B’yahad is Noah Feldman’s To Be a Jew Today. It is extremely timely, beautifully written, and extraordinarily thought-provoking. Both my partner, Melissa, and I are enjoying the book so much, that we read excepts to each other before we go to bed at the end of the day. 

Here is an excerpt from a piece by Feldman about the book that appeared in the Washington Post 

“To avoid oversimplifying would take a whole book — and in fact this essay is drawn from a book about being a Jew today that I’ve been writing for the past three years and thinking about most of my adult life. In it, I argue that the Jews are like a big, loving, sometimes dysfunctional family, united in their struggle to make sense of their relationship to God (whether He exists or not) and one another. Indeed, what makes the Jewish way of seeing the world distinctive is precisely that love and struggle are inextricably intertwined in it, as they are in most families.” Washington Post. March 5, 2024 LINK

While participating in Keriah B’yahad is totally voluntary, we hope many of you will read the book with us. As part of our programming in late May and all of June, we will create opportunities to discuss it. Here are Shabbat occasions when there will be a presentation on the book and discussion.  

1. SWF Shabbaton on May 24-26th 

1. SWF Shabbat Meal and Conversation Gathering in ABQ, Saturday Afternoon, June 8th. Location to be announced. 

1. Joint Shavuot Tikun (Torah Study Vigil held on the festival of Shavuot) and EJE Siyum (Conclusion of the Winter/Spring EJE trimester with HaMakom Santa Fe), Tuesday night, June 11th.  

1. SWF Shabbat meal and Conversation Gathering, Saturday Afternoon in Santa Fe. June 15th. Location to be announced.