Joy Ungerleider Jewish Book Month Program - A History

Jewish Book Month, celebrated mid-November – mid-December, is a time when public and school libraries nationwide highlight their Jewish book collections. Here at Temple Israel, this is a time when we showcase our library, the Dr. Arnold L. Segel Library Center, and the authors in our community. One of the celebration’s key events, the Joy Ungerleider Jewish Book Month Program, brings authors and artists to our congregation to help us connect with each other and create community through learning and literature.

Joy Ungerleider was a museum curator, philanthropist, visionary, and much, much more. She served as curator (1967-69) and director (1972-1980) of the Jewish Museum in New York, bringing important religious and secular exhibits to the museum and raising substantial funds to make the museum more successful than it had been in decades. She established the Dorot Foundation in 1972 and, through the foundation, she contributed to Jewish Studies in the United States and in Israel. The broad scope of her philanthropy -- from giving aid to the Dead Sea Scroll project to programs that allowed Arabs and Israeli Jews to study together -- left a permanent mark on Jewish education throughout the world. After she died in 1994, the Joy Ungerleider Jewish Book Month Program was established by her family as an endowed lecture series, under the supervision of the Library Committee.

We are pleased to be celebrating the fourteenth year of the Joy Ungerleider Jewish Book Month Program!

FIFTEEN YEARS OF SPEAKERS.

1995. Neil Asher Silbermann, author of The Hidden Scrolls: Christianity, Judaism and the War for the Dead Sea Scrolls

1996. Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust

1997. Melissa Fay Greene, author of The Temple Bombing

1998. Bezalel Narkiss, founder and professor of the Center for Jewish Art at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, spoke about “The Lost Sephardi Ark”

1999. Everett Fox, author of a new translation of The Five Books of Moses

2000. Amy Dockser Marcus, author of The View from Nebo: How
Archaeology is Rewriting the Bible and Reshaping the Middle East.

2001. Mark Novak, Renee Brachfeld. "This ain’t your bubbe’s Yiddish theatre." A storytelling program by a cantor-storyteller duo.

2002. Craig Taubman, singer/songwriter, performed as part of a jointly-sponsored program with the annual Karol Music Service

2003. Emily Sper, children’s book author and illustrator, in a program for children in our Education Program about how she creates books

2004. Twenty-one authors, all Temple Israel members, on how their Jewish identity affects their writing, as part of the temple’s sesquicentennial celebration.

2005. Lisa Fagin Davis, Meaghan Dwyer, Susan L. Porter, authors of
Becoming American Jews: Temple Israel of Boston, 1854-2004 (forthcoming in 2009) on the process of writing this new history of Temple Israel.

2006. Ken Gordon, Editor of JBooks.com, on “Jewish Literacy and the Internet”

2007. Jerome Groopman, M.D., author of How Doctors Think

2008. Edie Aronowitz Mueller and Ellen Steinbaum, temple members and poets, authors of The Fat Girl and Other Poems, and Container Gardening, respectively

2009. Robin Abrahams, temple member and author of Miss Conduct’s Mind over Manners: Master the Slippery Rules of Modern Ethics and Etiquette and columnist for the Boston Globe.

Historical note: In 1993, before this series was officially called the Joy Ungerleider Jewish Book Month Program, temple members and poets, Doris Panoff, z”l, and Edie Aronowitz Mueller read their poems as part of the first Jewish Book Month Program; then, in 1994, author Leslea Newman talked about the controversy around her book, Heather Has Two Mommies.

This Year's Joy Ungerleider Jewish Book Month Program - Friday, December 4, 2009

Click on the picture above for an enlarged image of the poster.

This year's Joy Ungerleider Jewish Book Month Program will feature author and Temple Israel member Robin Abrahams, the Boston Globe's Miss Conduct and author of Miss Conduct's Mind Over Manners.

MISS CONDUCT’S MIND OVER MANNERS: Master the Slippery Rules of Modern Ethics and Etiquette, by Robin Abrahams

• Should you say “Bless you” to a sneezing atheist?
• Should you pronounce a foreigner’s name in their native r-trilling accent?
• What do you serve guests for dinner if one is a fruitarian, another keeps kosher, and yet another is intolerant of gluten?

Robin Abrahams helps us navigate today’s dizzying social complexities in her clever and witty compendium of advice, MISS CONDUCT’S MIND OVER MANNERS (Times Books/May 26, 2009). Throughout history, new technologies (from the printing press to the iPhone) and new ideas (from Manifest Destiny to multiculturalism) have changed the accepted rules of social behavior. But unlike a school of fish suddenly veering away from a shark, we human beings don’t all react to change in a coordinated fashion. The multitude of cultural shifts within the past few decades has left us in etiquette limbo.

Are men still expected to pick up the dinner tab? Is it possible to request a “doggie bag” with dignity? How do you tell colleages about your recent bout with the stomach flu without going over the line? Following the “rules” isn’t enough anymore. We have to think. A uniform code of conduct may have worked in the days when everyone agreed on the same set of priorities: that decent people never talk about money or sex, that children are seen and not heard, and that observant Jews and Muslims should simply accept that Christmas is as American as pizza and chow mein. But in today’s diverse offices, health clubs, dog parks, and soccer fields, manners aren’t enough—we need to use our minds.

Much more than a plain guide to protocol à la Emily Post or Miss Manners, MISS CONDUCT’S MIND OVER MANNERS covers food, finance, religion, sex and relationships, children, health, pets and other passions, and everyday conversational kick-starters. Abrahams examines how values, priorities, and experiences differ in contemporary America; explores the psychological and evolutionary reasons these differences are so challenging; and offers fun and concrete advice on how to cope.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robin Abrahams is the “Miss Conduct” columnist for The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine and writes the “Socially Scientific” column for Annals of Improbable Research. A research associate at Harvard Business School and a former stand-up comedian, she holds a doctorate in psychology. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.