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W W W . C L I N T O N T W P N E W S L E T T E R . C O M
Boris Fishman, acclaimed novelist and memoirist will be teaching
a four part course at Or Chadash in Flemington. The title of the class is:
Morality, Meaning, and the Occasional Mensch: What Jewish (and non-
Jewish) Literature and Film Tell Us About Living Honestly. All programs
at Or Chadash are open to the community.
Imagine a dynamic, entertaining, enlightening and
poignant conversation, like the best TED talk you've
heard – but this time, with your participation.
Boris Fishman will guide the class through four
conversations that explore how contemporary Jewish
(and non-Jewish) literature and film have answered
these questions: What does it mean to live a good
life? How do you honor elders who define honor
differently? Who's right, the parents or children?
Who's right when Jews disagree? How do you
make an impossible choice? Do you forgive or seek revenge? Is
all fraud unjust?
Course participants will read texts from a range of writers that
might include Molly Antopol, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Ivan Turgenev,
David Bezmozgis, Bernard Malamud, Leslie Epstein, William Styron, and
Boris Fishman himself, and watch films by the likes of the rising American-
Jewish director Rebecca Karpovsky, Hollywood luminaries Alan Pakula and
James Gray, and the very gifted Israeli filmmaker Joseph Cedar.
Boris Fishman was born in Minsk, Belarus, and immigrated to
the United States in 1988, at nine. He is the author of the novels A
Replacement Life (which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist
Award and the American Library Association's Sophie
Brody Medal), and Don't Let My Baby Do Rodeo, both New
York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Savage Feast, a
family memoir told through recipes, all from HarperCollins.
His journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, The New
York Times Magazine, and many other publications. (Please
see www.BorisFishman.com). He lives in New York and
teaches creative writing at Princeton University.
The class will meet on four Saturdays (9:30 am -
11:00 am): March 7, April 4, April 25 and May 30
at Or Chadash, 149 Foothill Road, Flemington, NJ 08822. The cost
for the class is $150 per person. The syllabus including the reading list will
be provided upon registration. For additional information, please call Or
Chadash: 908.806.2122 or register using this link: https://orchadash.
wufoo.com/forms/sn5gzq619sqoon/
M o r a l i t y , M e a n i n g , a n d t h e o c c a s i o n a l M e n s c h : W h a t j e W i s h ( a n d n o n - j e W i s h )
l i t e R a t U R e a n d F i l m t e l l U s a b o U t l i V i n G h o n e s t l y
"Love does not consist
in gazing at each other,
but in looking outward together
in the same direction."
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
