June 5, 2026 | By Jeremy Richter (A28)

If you’ve ever visited the library at St. John’s Santa Fe during Summer Classics, then you might have seen program veteran David Feldstein examining a rare facsimile of the Haggadah, a foundational Jewish text read aloud during the Passover Seder.

Feldstein, an amateur bookbinder, repeats this ritual daily during Summer Classics. “I think it’s one of the most beautiful books of the twentieth century,” he says of the Meem Library’s Haggadah, which was created in the 1980s by famed Jewish artist and calligrapher David Moss (SF68). After more than a decade, library staff entrusted Feldstein with a key to the glass display box, allowing him to turn the pages of the ornate book himself.

This year will mark Feldstein’s 18th time attending Summer Classics. Since 2007, he has rarely missed a year of his seasonal pilgrimage to Santa Fe, and he has no shortage of stories to tell about the books he has read and the friendships he has made along the way.

A former social worker, Feldstein moved to San Francisco as a boy and earned a BA in Social Welfare from the University of California, Berkeley. He went on to run a mental health clinic in New York and to teach as an adjunct at the Hunter College School of Social Work. At Hunter College, Feldstein ran a social policy workshop for adults earning their social work licenses. Often, these pupils already had years of experience in their field. "It became a class about how to be a student again," he says.

After retiring and moving back to California in 2000, Feldstein met his bookbinding mentor, Tom Conroy (SF76), an instructor at the San Francisco Center for the Book. From Conroy, he learned all about St. John’s College, and in 2007, Feldstein attended Summer Classics for the first time, taking a class on the Qur’an with Santa Fe tutor Kenneth Wolfe (SF94).

"I felt ready, like I could answer anything," Feldstein remembers thinking before the seminar. "So, I’m sitting there waiting and [Wolfe] asks, 'What is faith?' I was hooked, and I’ve been coming ever since." Since then, Feldstein has read and discussed numerous other works at Summer Classics, including fictional titles such as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

During Feldstein’s first year at Summer Classics in 2007, he met Frank DeRango, a retired medical doctor who shared Feldstein's longtime interest in art. Feldstein told DeRango that, while he had never seen it in person in France, his favorite artwork was Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim altarpiece, the Northern Renaissance masterpiece depicting the suffering and crucifixion of Christ. 

 "[Frank] said he had seen it, and that it was worth the trip,” Feldstein says. “After I came home, about two weeks later, a package arrived from him. It contained two very high-quality Xerox copies of Grünewald's work. So, Frank and I became friendly over the next 10 years." 

"All of that conspired to bring me back, and to bring us together," Feldstein adds. "These are smart people [at Summer Classics], but they are always willing to share." 

Feldstein also bonded with fellow Summer Classics participants Chip Drumwright and Mike McKetta, with whom he lived as roommates. "They both have a distinction in Summer Classics," Feldstein jokes. "They take two courses per day, for all three weeks [of the program], which is an enormous compression of everything that's going on." 

Drumwright is a recreational mountain climber who worked in international dental programs before retiring. His son went to St. John’s College, and Drumwright has attended Summer Classics since the early 1990s; he also leads a virtual monthly reading group, which Feldstein and McKetta have both joined. Drumwright loves a challenge, which once led him to sign up for a Summer Classics seminar on James Joyce’s legendarily difficult Finnegans Wake. “As Chip says, ‘We almost got to Chapter Two,’” Feldstein jokes. “In five days. It’s just impenetrable.”

McKetta, meanwhile, is a retired lawyer with a gift for mentally cataloguing information. “He has appeared many times before the Texas Supreme Court,” Feldstein says. “He won the case there that outlawed discrimination at the University of Texas.” At Summer Classics, McKetta’s note-taking abilities have proven to be indispensable for conversations at hand. “He has this enormous ability, which I’ve admired greatly over the years: If you ask him, ‘Where did this character say something in a book we’ve read?’ he’ll look it up. He knows where everything is,” Feldstein says.

Feldstein, Drumwright, and McKetta have continually sought each other out at Summer Classics throughout the years, becoming close friends in the process. “They are definitely more intellectual, and maybe that's what attracted us to each other. The conversations are always wonderful,” Feldstein says, referring to his two peers as “the most dedicated students I know.”

Both literally and figuratively, Summer 2026 promises to be one for the books: Feldstein, McKetta, and Drumwright have been roommates, but the trio has never taken a class together. "We’re going to have a class with all three of us this year," Feldstein says. "Two of us have been in many classes together, but never all three. This is very exciting." Once their time in Santa Fe is over, he will head to Drumwright’s home in Colorado on vacation.

Feldstein—who, in retrospect, says he “would have liked to have been a Johnnie”—treasures not only the relationships he’s made through Summer Classics but the texts over which they were forged: “When I look at a great ‘classics list,’ people who publish the 100 best books you must read, I now have read many of them. There is something extraordinarily fascinating about both reading the book and understanding it,” he says. “I’m finally reading all the books that I’ve wanted to read and was afraid to read on my own.”

There is one more reason this summer in Santa Fe will be different for Feldstein: “At 91, my memory has begun to slip, and I’m not sure if this is my last or my next to last [Summer Classics],” he says. Still, he will arrive in July like he always does: wearing his St. John’s College cap, heading for the Meem Library, and conversing with McKetta and Drumwright over a book. After 18 years, he may not have a diploma, but he does have his key to the glass box.

Learn more about Summer Classics and other lifelong learning programs at St. John's College.