Dr. Ruth Behar, a cultural anthropologist and author of An Island Called Home, related her family history as Jews in Cuba and her travels there since 1991, opened Jewish Book Month organized by the Kripke Jewish Federation Library last week at the Jewish Community Center. Nearly 80 people, including many of Omaha’s Latino Jews, were entranced by her stories of those Jews who left and those who stayed, those who have gotten out in recent years by making aliyah to Israel, and those -- like Behar’s late grandmother, who ask “What did you lose in Cuba that you need to keep going back?”

Book Month continues on Tuesday, Nov. 27, 7 p.m., when illustrator Allan Drummond and author Louise Borden talk about their new book, The Journey That Saved Curious George: the Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey, co-sponsored by the Institute of Holocaust Education. Authors Nathan Englander and Lisa Pearl Rosenbaum round out Jewish Book Month in December.