Library (Beit Midrash)
The Temple Beth Elohim library in the Beit Midrash provides the congregation with access to a wide variety of multimedia Jewish library materials for information, learning, personal enrichment, spiritual development, reference and enjoyment.
Its collection has been developed with the goal of offering uniquely Jewish content that is not available elsewhere and contains a rich array of noted Jewish writers, Jewish subject matter, history and reference materials. The Beit Midrash offers a comfortable environment in which all congregants can pursue their interest in Jewish learning, and relax, read, reflect and learn.
The library contains a lovely collection of children’s books, and books for teens, as well as adults. It has materials to support the Adult Learning classes that are taking place in the synagogue. It is a spot to catch up on the latest news in the Jewish Advocate or the Forward. The collection is catalogued and computerized, and there is a desk top work station in the library for the use of congregants who wish to find a book or do other library research, by topic, author or keyword.
The library is run by dedicated volunteers who maintain the collection, plan library programs for all ages in the congregation, and assist library patrons in finding what they seek. Volunteers are in the library on Tuesday afternoons when school is in session, on Wednesday mornings from 9:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m., and on Sunday mornings from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
For checking out and returning books, our library is self-service, and there is a sign-out clipboard in the Beit Midrash. Please sign your name, phone number, name and bar code number of the book you are borrowing on the sign-out sheet. All materials can be borrowed for up to three weeks with one three-week renewal period. Returned books and media go into the Return Bin.
If you have any questions or suggestions about the library, please contact
Debby Doktor.
TBE Book Club Meeting
May 30, 7:30 pm in the Beit Midrash - We will be discussing Ben-Gurion: A Political Life by Shimon Peres. Israel’s current president gives us a dramatic and revelatory biography of Israel’s founding father and first prime minister. Shimon Peres was in his early twenties when he first met David Ben-Gurion. Although the state that Ben-Gurion would lead through war and peace had not yet declared its precarious independence, the “Old Man,” as he was called even then, was already a mythic figure. Peres, who came of age in the cabinets of Ben-Gurion, is uniquely placed to evoke this figure of stirring contradictions—a prophetic visionary and a canny pragmatist who early grasped the necessity of compromise for national survival. Ben-Gurion supported the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, though it meant surrendering a two-thousand-year-old dream of Jewish settlement in the entire land of Israel. He granted the Orthodox their first exemptions from military service despite his own deep secular commitments, and he reached out to Germany in the aftermath of the Holocaust, knowing that Israel would need as many strong alliances as possible within the European community.
A protégé of Ben-Gurion and himself a legendary figure on the international political stage, Shimon Peres brings to his account of Ben-Gurion’s life and towering achievements the profound insight of a statesman who shares Ben-Gurion’s dream of a modern, democratic Jewish nation-state that lives in peace and security alongside its Arab neighbors. In Ben-Gurion, Peres sees a neglected model of leadership that Israel and the world desperately need in the twenty-first century. Read the book and join us for a lively discussion. View the flyer.
June 20, 7:30 pm in the Beit Midrash - We will be discussing The Dybbuk from A Dybbuk and Other Tales of the Supernatural by Tony Kushner and Joachim Neugrochel. Dybbuks, troubled spirits who try to enact their ascent into the afterlife by borrowing someone else's life, played an important instructional role in Jewish mythology as messengers, judges, or scolds. This collection contains the novella-sized drama "A Dybbuk or Between Two Worlds," plus 13 shorter tales of the spirit world.
Read the book and join us for a lively discussion.
.