Yom HaShoah Holocaust Remembrance Day Program 
With Author Elizabeth R. Hyman and 
Musician Jonathan Notar

Sunday, April 12 | 2pm
Temple Beth Jacob, Newburgh

We invite the community to join us for a meaningful
Yom HaShoah program honoring the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.  

Elizabeth R. Hyman, author of The “Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto”, will share the true story of five young Jewish women who resisted the Nazis and helped spark the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Jonathan Notar will offer musical selections to support reflection and remembrance.

 Free & Open to the Entire Community| Registration Required
Sponsorship Opportunities Available!

Part of the JBC Author Series in Collaboration with Temple Beth Jacob, Newburgh JCC, Kol Yisrael and the Zachor Antisemitism Initiative

Jonathan Notar | Music Producer, Mixer, Engineer -Learn more about Jonathan on his website: JonNotar.com 

"The Girl Ban­dits of the War­saw Ghet­to: The True Sto­ry of Five Coura­geous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising"
Eliz­a­beth R. Hyman
Review By Gila Wertheimer – October 6, 2025

To many, the name Mordechai Anielewicz is syn­ony­mous with the War­saw Ghet­to Upris­ing of 1943. Less well-known, among some 750 ghet­to fight­ers who held out for near­ly a month against the over­whelm­ing Nazi forces were many women who fought — and fell — along­side the men. Their names are scarce­ly invoked or remem­bered. Now, Eliz­a­beth R. Hyman has focused on five of these women to shed new light on the remark­able sto­ry of that resistance.
The women Hyman brings into the fore­ground are Zivia Lubetkin, Adi­na Bla­dy-Schweiger and Vlad­ka Meed, who all sur­vived the war; and Tosia Alt­man and Tema Schnei­der­man, who did not. Oth­er women also fig­ure promi­nent­ly in Hyman’s recount­ing of events.
As they await­ed the Ger­man attack on the ghet­to, Zivia — a leader and part of a group of thir­ty fight­ers — wrote, “A tremor of joy mixed with a shud­der of fear passed through all of us. But we sup­pressed our emo­tions and reached for our guns.” They knew, of course, that they were out­num­bered. Zivia, wrote one of the com­man­ders, Marek Edel­man, “sees her­self as a sim­ple sol­dier, but her author­i­ty among the fight­ing groups is very strong.” It was April 19, 1943, “a love­ly spring day,” observed Edel­man. It was also the start of Passover.
That ini­tial Ger­man attack on the ghet­to and the resis­tance to it had gone on for two hours, when, to the amaze­ment of the ghet­to fight­ers, the Ger­mans retreat­ed, leav­ing not a sin­gle Jew­ish casu­al­ty. “We were stunned and left breath­less by our vic­to­ry,” wrote Zivia. The Ger­mans, alas, would reen­ter the ghet­to — this time with tanks.
The women who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the upris­ing fought in the resis­tance, but they also served as couri­ers; pass­ing as Aryans, they had free­dom of move­ment. As such, not only did they relay infor­ma­tion in and out of the ghet­to, but they also acquired guns and explo­sives, and smug­gled them inside. Their male coun­ter­parts called the women “girls”; the Nazis referred to Jews as ban­diten. Thus does Hyman arrive at her title, fash­ion­ing epi­thets of inequal­i­ty and racism into an appel­la­tion of honor.
With exten­sive use of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary sources, Hyman has retold this famil­iar sto­ry of resis­tance and upris­ing with an infu­sion of detail and dra­ma. The courage, orga­ni­za­tion, ded­i­ca­tion, and inven­tive­ness of the fea­tured young women, who faced life-and-death sit­u­a­tions on a dai­ly basis, con­tin­ues to amaze.
While the uprising’s end­ing is known, The Girl Ban­dits of the War­saw Ghet­to tells a sto­ry of such hero­ism, and Hyman’s researched por­trait is so cap­ti­vat­ing, that this retold piece of Jew­ish his­to­ry is dif­fi­cult to put down and impos­si­ble to forget.

"How to Lose Your Moth­er: A Daugh­ter’s Memoir"
Mol­ly Jong-Fast
a JBC Author Event with Temple Beth Jacob
Sunday, May 31 | 2PM

Details Coming Soon!

"How to Lose Your Moth­er: A Daugh­ter’s Memoir"
Mol­ly Jong-Fast
From the Publisher
 From the polit­i­cal writer and pod­cast­er, a fero­cious­ly hon­est and dis­arm­ing­ly fun­ny mem­oir about her elu­sive mother’s encroach­ing demen­tia and a reck­on­ing with her com­pli­cat­ed child­hood.
Mol­ly Jong-Fast is the only child of a famous woman, writer Eri­ca Jong, whose sen­sa­tion­al book Fear of Fly­ing launched her into sec­ond-wave fem­i­nist star­dom. She grew up yearn­ing for a con­nec­tion with her dreamy, glam­orous, just out of reach moth­er, who always seemed to be head­ing some­where that wasn’t with Mol­ly. When, in 2023, Eri­ca was diag­nosed with demen­tia just as Molly’s hus­band dis­cov­ered he had a rare can­cer, Jong-Fast was cat­a­pult­ed into a trans­for­ma­tive year.
How to Lose Your Moth­er is a com­pul­sive­ly read­able mem­oir about an intense moth­er-daugh­ter rela­tion­ship, a some­times chaot­ic upbring­ing with a fame-hun­gry par­ent, and the upheavals that chal­lenge our hard-won adult­hood. A pitch-per­fect bal­ance of accep­tance and rage, humor and heart, How to Lose Your Moth­er tells a uni­ver­sal sto­ry of loss along­side a sin­gu­lar sto­ry of a lit­er­ary life. This is a mem­oir that will stand along­side the clas­sics of the genre.