Between Two Worlds Returns: Argenta Selected for the Yiddish Book Center's Public Libraries Program

A Second Year of Yiddish Literature, Conversation, and Community at Argenta

In 2026, NLRPLS invited you to navigate between the many worlds in which we exist. That invitation stands open again.

Argenta Public Library has been selected for another year of the Yiddish Book Center's Public Libraries Program, which means another year of Yiddish literature finding its way onto our shelves, into our reading groups, and into the conversations we have with one another.

Argenta is one of 40 libraries nationwide chosen to participate in the program on the theme "Between Two Worlds: Exploring Jewish Culture and Religion through Yiddish Literature." Through this selective program, the Yiddish Book Center provides grants, resources, and training to public libraries across the country to host reading groups and related programming.

The aim is a simple and ambitious one: to explore how Yiddish literature can serve as a springboard for powerful conversations about religion, assimilation, identity, and immigration. These are not small subjects, and they are not abstract ones either. They are the subjects of ordinary life, told through stories that have traveled a long way to reach us.

This November, Colby Sansom, Community Educator at Argenta Public Library, will travel to Amherst, Massachusetts for a three-day workshop onsite at the Yiddish Book Center campus. Readers who followed along last year will remember Colby's first trip to what he called Yiddishland, a sanctuary of Yiddish education and literature whose halls became a temporary home for his cohort.

Following the training, Colby will organize a reading group here at home to discuss three books of Yiddish literature in translation, along with one contemporary companion.

The Yiddish titles in the book discussion group are:

• Motl, the Cantor's Son by Sholem Aleichem, translated by Hillel Halkin
• A House with Seven Windows: Short Stories by Kadya Molodowsky, translated by Leah Schoolnik
• Emil and Karl: A Novel by Yankev Glatshteyn, translated by Jeffrey Shandler

The group will also read Odessa by Gabrielle Sher, a choice Colby made with last year's readers in mind. Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott was one of our most popular selections of the past year, a title that leans heavily on Jewish and Yiddish folklore and spirituality alongside the supernatural components of Judaism. Interest ran high, and it seemed worth building on. Set beside the three translations, Odessa offers a contemporary companion: another perspective, another story, another way into the same body of literature.

Bekah Hedges, who manages Argenta Public Library, put it this way:

It's been an absolute joy to watch folks engage with the Between Two Worlds programs of 2026 and I can't wait to see what they bring to our new selection in 2027. As a public library, we are uniquely positioned as common ground for all members of our community, and what better way to celebrate that than by offering programs that open us up new worlds and connect us across cultures? I hope you'll find time in the new year to stop in for one of Colby's Between Two Worlds events!

That is the heart of it. A library is one of the few places left where a whole community can meet on even ground, and a shared book is one of the oldest reasons to gather there.

We will share reading group dates and program details as they are set. In the meantime, you can find more about this initiative and other Argenta Library events at our event calendar or by calling Argenta Public Library at (501) 687-1061.