books

How to Start a Social Justice Book Club

Reform Jews across North America come together in their own communities to read, explore and discuss social justice-themed books. RAC Reads provides thought-provoking stories and tools to get your family, congregation, and community talking about racial justice.

Turbulent Souls, by Stephen J. Dubner

Rabbi Eric Bram
While Stephen Dubner's book is a fascinating memoir, the telling of a son's individuation and journey, it is also our story -- Turbulent Souls is, in many ways, the story of American Jewishness in the twentieth century.

The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South, by Eli Evans

Raphael McGregor
In The Provincials: a Personal History of Jews in the South, Eli Evans proves that American Southern Jews are not exempt from the complicated racial, religious, and political history of the region. Not surprisingly, their Jewish heritage often put them in a unique and unenviable position—somewhere between white and black, conservative and liberal, segregationist and abolitionist. Indeed, as Mr. Evans’ excellent work attests, the Jews of the South have as much glory and shame in their history as any other Southerner

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit, by Lucette Lagnado

Steven Steinbock
Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Lucette Lagnado chronicles the story of her family from the early decades of the twentieth century in Cairo, Egypt, to their traumatic emigration to New York in the early 1960s. Along the way, the family must contend with the death of a child, womanizing habits of the patriarch, illness, and a revolution.

The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi

Rabbi Hara Person
Primo Levi (1919-1987) was born into an assimilated middle-class family in Turin, Italy. His studies were interrupted by the realities of being Jewish in wartime Europe. He left the university where he was studying chemistry to join the Italian Resistance against the Mussolini's fascist government.