Monthly gathering featuring lunch and interesting guest speakers for congregants and guests 65 (or getting there) and older.

Richard Schwartz author of The Man Who Lit Lady Liberty: The Extraordinary Rise and Fall of Actor M.B. Curtis

As the Statue of Liberty stood unlit in 1886, its savior-to-be was creating a theatrical sensation at New York’s Fourteenth Street Theatre. Bohemian Jewish immigrant actor M. B. Curtis had achieved overnight success in Sam’l of Posen, a play about a peddler that transcended the stereotypes of Jewish characters at the time. He was the first actor who was allowed to portray a Jewish male on stage in America. When Congress dodged funding the statue, Curtis became the only private citizen ever to pay for lighting the Statue of Liberty’s torch. He later developed real estate in Berkeley, but a murder indictment ruined his reputation and finances, though he was found innocent. The biography, which explores attitudes towards immigrants, is the story of incredible talent, creativity, fame, suffering, perseverance, and dreaming.

Richard Schwartz is the author of five historical books, including Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley; Earthquake Exodus, 1906; Berkeley 1900; and The Circle of Stones. Based in Berkeley, he works as a building contractor and documents early Native American sites in the Bay Area.