Congregation Sha'are Shalom Gates of Peace
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January Book Club!
Thursday, January 19 at 7:00pm
Join us for friendly and engaging conversations on a variety of books. We read everything from fiction to memoir and everything in between. Everyone is welcome to join the conversation!
Rabbi Aft will lead our January discussion on The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon Wiesenthal.
A Holocaust survivor's surprising and thought-provoking study of forgiveness, justice, compassion, and human responsibility, featuring contributions from the Dalai Lama, Harry Wu, Cynthia Ozick, Primo Levi, and more.
While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, Simon Wiesenthal was taken one day from his work detail to the bedside of a dying member of the SS. Haunted by the crimes in which he had participated, the soldier wanted to confess to--and obtain absolution from--a Jew. Faced with the choice between compassion and justice, silence and truth, Wiesenthal said nothing. But even years after the war had ended, he wondered: Had he done the right thing?
In this important book, fifty-three distinguished men and women respond to Wiesenthal's questions. They are theologians, political leaders, writers, jurists, psychiatrists, human rights activists, Holocaust survivors, and victims of attempted genocides in Bosnia, Cambodia, China and Tibet. Their responses, as varied as their experiences of the world, remind us that Wiesenthal's questions are not limited to events of the past. Often surprising and always thought provoking, The Sunflower will challenge you to define your beliefs about justice, compassion, and human responsibility.
Rabbi Aft asks us, in preparation for the discussion, two questions to consider:
1. Would you have forgiven the Nazi?
2. Would you tell the Nazi's mother what he had done?