July 17 | 11am | RSVP Below
OJMCHE’s book club, led by museum friend and member Debra Vinikour, will meet every other month midday at the museum. The book selection for July is Hotel Cuba by Aaron Hamburger. This book is available in the Ron Tonkin Family Museum Shop.
To stay in the loop about book club activities, email akurson@ojmche.org and we will keep you updated.
About Book Selection for July
Immigrant stories hold perennial appeal for many American Jews. We know the familiar beats: dirty ships, Ellis Island name changes, crowded apartments, trains, the tug of the Old Country, and the allure of the new. For many of us, these are our histories — and as we read novels detailing such experiences, we connect not only with these fictional characters, but also with our own forebears. Aaron Hamburger’s Hotel Cuba sits comfortably within this genre while still being compulsively readable and fresh.
Sisters Pearl and Frieda are planning to flee to America from their Polish shtetl after World War I and the Russian Revolution. Pearl is in her mid-twenties and sees herself a frumpy, stalwart old maid — though she has an eye for fashion that suggests a deep-seated sophistication. She essentially raised Frieda, a pretty, hopeless romantic. When US immigration rules change, the sisters reroute to Cuba. It’s only ninety miles from America; how hard can it be, they think, to make it to the US from there?
What follows sheds light on the little-known Jewish diaspora community of Cuba. Hamburger’s depiction of 1920s Havana is sultry, vibrant, and brilliantly drawn. It’s a delight to watch Pearl blossom like a hibiscus flower there. Her skill with the sewing needle leads her and Frieda to an employment opportunity with an intriguing family. The fascinating mix of Jewish, American, and Cuban cultures pushes Pearl, sometimes reluctantly, to examine the values and familial expectations with which she’s grown up. As she sails across the Atlantic, Pearl muses about having freedom. In Havana, she encounters a version of it that is imperfect and raw, as all versions of freedom are.