INFORMATION RELEASE             
For Immediate Release

Media Contact:
Heather O'Connell
(239) 461-2924 or hoconnell@leegov.com


Interreligious expert/author leads Jewish Literature discussion series at Lakes Regional Library

FORT MYERS, Fla., October 8, 2007 – Interreligious expert, author and syndicated columnist Rabbi James Rudin will lead a discussion series on Jewish Literature starting tomorrow (Tuesday, October 9) at the Lakes Regional Library in South Fort Myers.

Rudin serves as the American Jewish Committee's Senior Interreligious Advisor. He is past Chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations. He participated in meetings with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, in World Council of Churches conferences in Geneva, and is founder of the National Interreligious Task Force on Black-Jewish relations.

Rudin is a prolific writer of both books and articles. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, and the rabbi is a featured columnist for Religion News Service/Newhouse Syndicate. He has lectured throughout the world, and has been a frequent guest on radio and television programs including ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, NBC, NPR and PBS.

The discussion series is a unique opportunity to go beyond the initial impact of a first reading of these works and view them with a greater understanding of interreligious issues around the world.

The series is free and registration is requested, but not required. Discussions will be held on alternating Tuesdays at 2p.m.

October 9
Thomas Keneally’s Schindler's List
Reissued to coincide with the release of Steven Spielberg's film of the same name from Universal Pictures, this Booker Prize-winning novel tells the true story of one remarkable man who outwitted the Nazis to save more Jews during WWII than any single person. "A masterful account of the growth of the human soul". --LA Times Book Review.

October 23
Rebecca Goldstein’s Betraying Spinoza
"In 1656, Amsterdam's Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza, and, at the age of twenty-three, he became the most famous heretic in Judaism. He was already germinating a secularist challenge to religion that would be as radical as it was original. He went on to produce one of the most ambitious systems in the history of Western philosophy, so ahead of its time that scientists today, from string theorists to neurobiologists, count themselves among Spinoza's progeny. In Betraying Spinoza, Rebecca Goldstein sets out to rediscover the flesh-and-blood man often hidden beneath the veneer of rigorous rationality, and to crack the mystery of the breach between the philosopher and his Jewish past. Goldstein argues that the trauma of the Inquisition's persecution of its forced Jewish converts plays itself out in Spinoza's philosophy. The excommunicated Spinoza, no less than his excommunicators, was responding to Europe's first experiment with racial anti-Semitism."--BOOK JACKET.

November 6
Chaim Potok’s The Chosen
“In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a Modern Orthodox Jew with an intellectual, Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together they negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered when Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S., loss, love, and the journey to adulthood. The intellectual and spiritual clashes between fathers, between each son and his own father, and between the two young men, provide a unique backdrop for this exploration of fathers, sons, faith, loyalty, and, ultimately, the power of love.” –Amazon.com

Lakes Regional Library has a large number of copies of the titles featured in the series. Many are available in large text or Book on CD. All titles can be reserved online on the library’s website or by calling 479-INFO. A Lee County Library System library card is required. Betraying Spinoza is also available online as an e-book.

For more information, or to register, please call the library at 533-4000 or visit the library’s website at www.lee-county.com/library

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