By letting us not only understand but inhabit its characters, does a novel reveal the commonality of human experience or demonstrate our differences? Both, of course, but Jonathan Safran Foer is particularly sympathetic to the former. In the first of a two-part episode recorded at JCC Manhattan, we discuss the joys of intimacy and the necessity of distance. With music from The Bunkhouse Boys. Photo courtesy Koon & JCC Manhattan.

•  PERSON: Yehuda Amichai
•  PLACE: a classroom
•  RANDY’S PERSON: Carol Shields