Drop-In Book Discussion: One Hundred Saturdays by Michael Frank, Facilitated by Jim Van Buskirk
Join us for an in-person discussion at the Jewish Community Library. The Library is located at 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco, with free garage parking on Pierce between Ellis and Eddy.
To register, click here. You may borrow a copy of One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World at no charge as a printed book, eBook, or audiobook by contacting us at info@jewishcommunitylibrary.org.
About the book:
With nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never before spoken in detail about her past. Then she met Michael Frank in a chance encounter conducted entirely in Italian. He followed up one Saturday afternoon, visiting her Greenwich Village apartment to ask Stella about the Juderia, the Rhodes neighborhood where she’d grown up in a thriving Sephardic community whose rituals contributed to its vibrant identity for half a millennium. It initiated a poignantly honest and evocative dialogue in which Levi recounts her spirited youth in the eastern Aegean, continuing through the Rhodes Jewish community’s unanticipated deportation to Auschwitz. Winner of two 2022 National Jewish Book Awards, the American Library Association’s 2022 Sophie Brody Award for best Jewish book of the year, and named one of the ten best books of 2022 by the Wall Street Journal.
About the facilitator:
Jim Van Buskirk is a retired librarian (San Francisco Public Library, Jewish Community Library) who currently works as a book group facilitator, writer, editor, public speaker, exhibit curator, and collections manager. He frequently writes articles and/or presents programs related to Jewish, literary, film, and/or queer history.