Whole Person Care Reading Group
Join McGill Programs in Whole Person Care staff and friends in discussing the book "A Tale of Love and Darkness" by Amos Oz.
Both provocative and poignant, this memoir of a childhood in
Jerusalem will amuse, perplex, and sadden.
In a rough, dusty, lower-middle-class suburb of Jerusalem, both of
Oz's parents found mainly disappointment: his father, a scholar,
failed to attain the academic distinction of his uncle, the noted
historian Joseph Klausner. Oz's beautiful, tender mother, after a
long depression, committed suicide when Oz (born in 1939) was 12.
By the age of 14, Oz was ready to flee his book-crammed, dreary,
claustrophobic flat for the freedom and outdoor life of Kibbutz
Hulda.
Oz's personal trajectory is set against the background of an
embattled Palestine during WWII, the jubilation after the U.N. vote
to partition Palestine and create a Jewish state, the violence and
deprivations of Israel's war of independence and the months-long
Arab siege of Jerusalem. This is a powerful, nimbly constructed
saga of a man, a family and a nation forged in the crucible of a
difficult, painful history.
The session will be led by Prof. Ira Roth. Prof. Ira Roth has been teaching Mathematics at McGill University and Dawson College for over thirty years. Since retirement few years ago she is interested in writing and has spoken extensively on mathematics, literature and contemporary Judaism.
McGill Bookstore will have copies of the book available at a 10% discount.