Find a video of this pro­gram here.

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Hear authors Esther Safran Foer and Kei­th Gessen in a con­ver­sa­tion with Stephanie But­nick, Tablet Magazine

Tick­ets: Free; Advance RSVP Required 

Reg­is­ter here!

In the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, it’s become eas­i­er than ever to explore one’s fam­i­ly his­to­ry — but even with an increased abil­i­ty to trav­el, ana­lyze DNA, and explore archival mate­r­i­al, how close can we real­ly get to under­stand­ing our ori­gins, and why they mat­ter? Authors Esther Safran Foer (I Want You to Know We’re Still Here) and Kei­th Gessen (A Ter­ri­ble Coun­try) recount jour­neys to their ances­tral homes of Ukraine and Rus­sia, respec­tive­ly, as they grap­ple with how the past informs our under­stand­ing of self and home. Join us as we explore a cen­tu­ry of per­son­al Jew­ish his­to­ry in a con­ver­sa­tion mod­er­at­ed by Tablet Mag­a­zine​’s Stephanie Butnick.

Sup­port the authors and please con­sid­er pur­chas­ing the books via JBC’s Book­shop page here. 

*Signed copies of Esther Safran Foer’s I Want You To Know We’re Still Here are avail­able from Pol­i­tics & Prose here.*

Esther Safran Foer was the CEO of Sixth & I, a cen­ter for arts, ideas, and reli­gion. She lives in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., with her hus­band, Bert. They are the par­ents of Franklin, Jonathan, and Joshua, and the grand­par­ents of six.

Kei­th Gessen is the author of the nov­els A Ter­ri­ble Coun­try and All the Sad Young Lit­er­ary Men and a found­ing edi­tor of n+1. He is the edi­tor of three non­fic­tion books and the trans­la­tor or co-tran­s­la­­tor, from Russ­ian, of a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries, a book of poems, and a work of oral his­to­ry, Nobel Prize-win­n­er Svet­lana Alex­ievich’s Voic­es from Cher­nobyl. A con­trib­u­tor to The New York­er and The Lon­don Review of Books, Gessen teach­es jour­nal­ism at Colum­bia and lives in New York with his wife and son.

Stephanie But­nick is deputy edi­tor of Tablet Mag­a­zine and a host of the Unortho­dox pod­cast. She is the author, along with her co-hosts, of The Newish Jew­ish Ency­clo­pe­dia: From Abra­ham to Zabar’s and Every­thing in Between. She has writ­ten for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Cop­re­sent­ed by Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, The Jew­ish Muse­um, and Tablet Mag­a­zine

And have a drink along with the con­ver­sa­tion! One of Esther’s favorites is a Caipir­in­ha, a Brazil­ian cock­tail, all you need is: 

2oz of Cachaça 

1/2 lime

2 tea­spoon sugar