The New Clubbers: Book Clubs Have Become the Hottest Night Out in Town
Recently, book clubs have been flourishing across Israel: more and more initiatives include traditional book clubs hosted in private homes, literary salons, groups that gather to read one central work together as a kind of reading challenge, and many virtual reading communities on social media. On the one hand, people talk about the number of fiction readers declining, but on the other hand, those who do read are becoming more proactive. In the private groups that meet in homes, there is a social, communal dimension, and in many cases also an element of women’s empowerment.
Idit Tamir, a coach and emotional therapist, decided to open a community of female readers, one of whose goals is to teach women to love themselves. “We finish the therapeutic process, and they want to stay in touch,” Tamir says. “So I opened a community, we meet at my home once a month, bring content, and they get back a recharge of self-love. I called it ‘A Pink Dot in the Diary.’ It is based on the assumption that bad things come on their own, and good things require taking responsibility and bringing them into our lives.” The “A Pink Dot in the Diary” community meets in Tamir’s living room in Ramat Aviv for a “book love,” playing on the words book club. In north Tel Aviv, too, on Yehuda HaMaccabi Street, there is an enthusiastic reading community initiated by neighborhood resident Anat Holosh. It is led by writer Liat Lev Ran, who is responsible together with Gal Liber for the literary salon “HaIvriot,” a kind of podcast recorded live that hosts writers. “The Yehuda HaMaccabi neighborhood book club is the most fun thing out of all the projects I do,” Lev Ran says. “Most of the time we talk about a book without the author, we choose it in advance, sometimes we do a group purchase, each person brings her own world and her own reading experience. Food, wine, good atmosphere. We have hosted the writers Yael Tabet Klegsbald, Anat Lev Adler, Yonatan Fain and Daphne Lustig. We recommend books, literary events, and gossip a little about the book. We started with ‘Shiurim bePituach Kol’ by Dorit Rabinyan. One of the more heated meetings was about ‘KKK Yesodoteha shel Isha Moderna.’”
1 View gallery Meeting of the Book Love group at Idit Tamir’s home (Photo: Idit Tamir)
Why do you think book clubs are coming back now, דווקא at a time when people are talking about a decline in reading?
“People want to be together around something unifying that creates dialogue and social conversation. When you take a topic and frame it, it gives legitimacy to talking about things related to us through the characters and the story. After October 7 and what we have gone through in recent years, people are looking for community, a place to express emotions, there is a greater need for culture.”
Why are there no men in the group?
“In the ‘HaIvriot’ meetings there is a little bit of everything, but the club has a different vibe. When it is in someone’s home and not commercial, women come and open their hearts. Some cry and we contain them, it is a group of female strength. With men around, no woman would dare express herself with such intensity. There is something warm and embracing about it.”
As mentioned, the virtual world is also full of literary community activity. Writer and editor Avigail Kantorovich has for several years been running niche reading clubs that meet in person, doctors who read, psychologists, and social workers who read. About two months ago, during the war with Iran, she opened a Zoom club for the general public. “It exploded in a way I could never have imagined, there are more than 600 people registered to two dedicated WhatsApp groups, of them 100 in the English-language group. More than 300 people, mostly women, signed up, paid, and participated in the Zoom meetings in the first month. It is a crazy, surprising and joyful event. There are large WhatsApp groups where participation is free and there I post content, anecdotes about books, we vote on what we will read this month, and I also post questions for thought and reading guidance so it will be more meaningful. Then I open Zoom groups for those who registered, where it is limited to 30 participants per meeting. Beyond the fact that people will read, the goal is that they come away smiling, that it will be fun and interesting, and that even the shyest person in the room will feel they were heard.”
Ayelet Karp, writer, editor and translator, runs in-person book clubs in Kfar Vradim, Nahalal and at the Chess Library in Tel Aviv, as well as the readers’ community on Facebook, “Lo Sofrim,” of Haaretz. But one of her more interesting projects is “The Story Club at Lunchtime,” held on Zoom on Sundays, where a group of people meets virtually to read a short story and discuss it. “It started during the second COVID lockdown,” Karp says. “People were sitting at home and had nothing to do. Raissa Gandelman and I decided to hold three meetings a week of a lunchtime story, with minimal preparation. We took a story, read it together and a discussion developed. In its big days, the club had more than 250 people from all over the world, but naturally things changed and people returned to their affairs. The club became weekly, dozens of people meet there, and we also host the authors. Recently Shahera Blau was a guest with the first story she wrote, ‘Shrimps.’” Despite the success of her virtual club, Karp thinks that “the virtual clubs are somewhat pushing aside the old and good club. By the way, my club in Kfar Vradim met in a shelter a great deal over the past two years. People came through fire and water, and I drove there even during sirens.”
Writer Avigail Kantorovich on the club she opened on Zoom: one of the goals is that even the shyest person in the room will feel they were heard.
Book clubs have also spilled into institutional spaces, bookstores, cultural centers and public libraries. It has even reached the Mifal HaPais Council for Culture and the Arts, which wants to mark 25 years of the Sapir Prize and commemorate the name of Mifal HaPais chairman Avigdor Yitzhaki, who died, through “Avigdor’s Book Club” , 20 book clubs across the country that meet in private homes and receive budgetary support and professional guidance.
“We are dealing with the question of how to encourage people to read books,” says Dolin Melnik, head of the Mifal HaPais Council for Culture and the Arts and head of the culture division of Mifal HaPais. “We decided to return to book clubs, an old and good project, but in a different version. Most institutional book clubs operate within libraries and cultural institutions, this time the attempt is to meet in people’s homes. People read books and want to talk about them in a friendly, homey, pleasant and intimate atmosphere in not very large groups. Our contribution is that we bring the professional facilitators, and give the group members two books as a gift from Sapir Prize winners. We published a call for proposals and received close to 200 requests, and we prioritized private individuals and new clubs, because we wanted to expand and not only support what already exists. The club meets once a month for six sessions, and the Center for Literature and Libraries helps us with production.”
This year, new book clubs opened in Kfar Gaza, Kibbutz Gat, a library in the Central Arava, Ein HaBesor, Ruhama, Ein Tzurim, Gedera, Jerusalem, Haifa, Alonei Abba, Harish, Moshav Sharona, Lod, Nir Tzvi, Nirit, Ra’anana, two in Ramat Gan and two in Tel Aviv. They are reading, for example, “Neshamot” by Roy Chen, “B’derech leEin Harod” by Amos Kenan, and “Masa Daniel” by Yitzhak Oferbukh Orpaz. Perhaps there really is a future for literature.
