Join our book club!

Every other month, we gather virtually to discuss a new book, especially as it relates to women and children around the world who live in challenging circumstances.

We’d love for you to join us as we connect with like-minded people and learn and grow together. All are welcome!

Current Read: The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan

In his childhood home, in the lemon tree his father planted in the backyard, Bashir sees dispossession and occupation; Dalia, who arrived as an infant in 1948 with her family from Bulgaria, sees hope for a people devastated by the Holocaust. As both are swept up in the fates of their people, and Bashir is jailed for his alleged part in a supermarket bombing, the friends do not speak for years. They finally reconcile and convert the house in Ramle into a day-care centre for Arab children of Israel, and a center for dialogue between Arabs and Jews. Now the dialogue they started seems more threatened than ever; the lemon tree died in 1998, and Bashir was jailed again, without charge.

The story follows the homes and histories of the two families at its center through the present day. Their stories form a personal microcosm of the last 70 years of Israeli-Palestinian history.