Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity

 

In Writing on the Wall: Graffiti and the Forgotten Jews of Antiquity, author Karen Stern takes us on a journal of context.  We have many written records by elite Jews in the first decades of the common era, but we know very little if these accounts reflect the lives of Jews on the ground.

Stern examines graffiti in several locations in the eastern Mediterranean: from outside rock outcroppings along trade routes to the inside of synagogues, to marketplaces and sporting arenas.  She sees in these places the ubiquity of Jews in many contexts, even in a time of rising persecution from both pagans and Christians.

Stern’s careful analysis shows how well-integrated Jews were in their surroundings.  Jews had much in common with their Christian and Pagan neighbors, and their graffiti (and all three groups produced graffiti) if not for specific Jewish references, would be identical. 

This has been a refreshing trend in Jewish scholarship in recent years: instead of looking for factors whereby Jews are separated from their social environment, the areas of overlap are viewed as more salient, and a richer field of study.  This book certainly bears this out.  The graffiti examined in this important work was made by "ordinary" Jews, giving us a glimpse of their world outside the rabbinical lens.      

The Secret That Is Not a Secret: Ten Heretical Tales

 

Jay Michaelson is an incredibly talented and versatile writer.  Last year, he won a Jewish Book Award for his scholarly work on Jacob Frank.  Now, we have a collection of short fiction, The Secret That Is Not a Secret: Ten Heretical Tales.  All of Michaelson’s books share common features, but there are also dissimilarities.  He is that kind of writer, always pushing his subject matter both toward his concerns and away from them.

This collection of short fiction does not disappoint.  Here we have ten stories, modeled after the ten emanations of God as depicted in the Kabbalah.  The Kabbalah has always flirted with, if not indulged in, heresy, and Michaelson’s tales allow this flirtation and indulgence to become a full-fledged sexual romance. 

You can read this collection knowing close to nothing about Kabbalah.  Just revel in the mystery and richness of Michaelson’s prose.  If you know some, you will know more after reading.  If you are an accomplished Kabbalist, you will see old sources poured into new vessels to great effect in this extraordinary collection of stories. 

Dirshuni: Contemporary Women’s Midrash

 

Dirshuni: Contemporary Women’s Midrash by Tamar Biala (Editor) and Tamar Kadari is an interesting and often unexpected dive into Torah from the 50% of Jews largely excluded from study – women.  This collection is from Israeli women and no doubt the original Hebrew was an amazing excursion into Israeli Hebrew being used to cast and recast Hebrew stories of different ages and stages.  The translators give us a flavor of the word play involved – wordplay which is key to midrash in all its forms.  This is a wonderful, enriching collection of Torah works.

A Deep Dive

 

Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall is probably the go-to book for the Franco-Vietnam War.  It is certainly very thorough and at over 1000 pages, you should really be interested in this topic to take this book on… this is not casual reading but a deep dive into Vietnam before the American involvement.  This book is brilliant, but detailed.

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

 

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning shows how under the right circumstances, most men can become mass killers.  They do not even have to be heavily indoctrinated by ideology.  Peer pressure works just fine.  

These police units were given the task of killing Jewish men, women, and children, most of the time at point-blank range.  The task was considered difficult – not because of an inherent compassion for Jews, but because killing large numbers of people takes a psychological toll on shooters.

The men of Reserve Policy Battalion 101 did not have to participate in the mass killings.  They were given the options of other assignments.  Some did take them, and this made them outsiders to their comrades, forcing others to do the unpleasant work.  The mechanics of this are very simple and scary.  People can grow accustomed to bloodshed just like any other difficult job - just because they want to belong. 

And of course, when these men were prosecuted by West Germany, most were not convicted.  And due to German laws, their names can’t be released to the public.  Disgraceful.

Hasidism: A New History

 

Hasidism: A New History by David Biale, David Assaf, Benjamin Brown, and others, will probably be the definitive history of this Jewish movement for some time.  There is the scope of the work, from the very early day of Hasidism, when it really wasn’t even an organized movement, to its present-day forms, where Hasidic groups have been revitalized after their terrible losses in the Shoah.  There is also its detailed orientation: contemporary scholars have reassessed historical investigations of Hasidism, to ask new questions and reach new conclusions.

This in-depth work is for anyone interested in Hasidism who wants to go knee-deep. 

The Non-Dual Siddur, and More

 

Well of Living Insight: Comments on the Siddur by Arthur Green is a handy commentary on the siddur, written from Arthur Green’s distinctive angle on Jewish non-dualism.  This is the kind of book you want to read a bit at a time, soaking it in; it is also the musing of a man who has studied the siddur for years and comes at it from a variety of interesting, often unexpected angles.

The Stoic’s Guide to Emotional Mastery: Learn How to Stay Calm and Disciplined

 

The Stoic’s Guide to Emotional Mastery: Learn How to Stay Calm and Disciplined by Winston Meskill, is one of the many books about Stoicism to come out in the last few years.  I think we live in a quintessentially Stoic age: we are part of a dying empire, living many degrees away from feeling any power or control of our own lives.  Stoicism worked in the Greco-Roman age as it gave its adherents control over what they could control, and the tools to let go of what was not under their control.  We need these skills as well – and this book is an excellent guide.

Revisionist Reading

 

I haven’t read D.H. Lawrence in more than a decade.  After seeing a decent movie version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, I decided to read, once again, the novel.  Understand that Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, and The Rainbow deeply influenced me as a reader and writer when I was young.

Now, over a hundred years since it was written, Lady Chatterley has not aged well.  Few people would agree with Lawrence’s notions of the role of the sexes, both in and out of bed.  What was radical in 1928 is no longer so - and some of his words are harmful.  Lawrence’s fascist tendencies are also on display here, with the narrator’s sweeping and narrow generalizations about humanity. Returning to this book was a real exercise in revisionist reading.

Not For Me, Maybe For You

 

What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?: Discover a Life Filled with Purpose and Joy Through the Secrets of Jewish Wisdom by Michal Oshman is a fine book, and if you don’t have a wide Jewish background, this book is a great start.  

I have two issues that are a problem for me, but probably not others.  I don’t believe that we have something like a stable, unchanging soul.  The author does and it is key to her thesis.  I also do not believe that we have a singular destiny.  Maybe we have more than one?

I also have a prejudicial attitude about people who coach executives and work on corporate culture.  But that is my problem.  Additionally, I am not sure how "secret" this Jewish wisdom actually is...

A Nationalist Whitman

 

Walt Whitman’s Drum Taps may surprise people who read Leaves of Grass ages ago and have a foggy memory of its contents.  The title suggests that Whitman is a nature poet, enraptured by trees, the seasons, and the country.  While this is certainly true, it is not the whole story.  Leaves of Grass celebrate the bustle of city life, trade, commerce, and the capitalism of the day.

Drum Taps displays an often-nationalist, Whitman.  These (mostly) Civil War poems bring out the martial tendencies in Whitman, exhibiting a poet who saw the glory in war.  Yet this is not completely true: as a nurse in Union hospitals, Whitman also saw the horrible cost of battle, and many of these poems reflect this.

Like all of Whitman’s work, Drum Taps is complex.  The most famous of these poems is “O Captain! My Captain!” about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and featured in the movie Dead Poet’s Society. In context, it takes on other meanings.

A New Species and New Questions

 

Cave of Bones: A True Story of Discovery, Adventure, and Human Origins by Lee Berger and John Hawks tells the increasingly more tangled story of the genius homo.  The hominid they discovered, homo naledi, with its primitive features and small brain, should not have been alive when it was, 250,000 years ago, when Homo Sapiens were evolving in Africa.  But they were, and they also buried their dead in a deep inaccessible cave, and created figurative art on the walls.

The more we discover about the genus homo, the more notions we must jettison.  Is it a part of the genus homo’s makeup to bury the dead, and create figurative art?  Is it simply an outgrowth of our species?  A fascinating question.  With this discovery, I lean toward yes. 

Essential Reading

 

The Coming of Lilith: Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics, 1972-2003 by Judith Plaskow is a source text for the rise and continuation of modern feminism in Jewish thinking.  Plaskow is a rigorous thinker, and it is fascinating to watch her evolve and change as the landscape of Judaism and feminism changes.  This collection of essays are truly essential.

Agency & Power

 

Year of the Hangman: George Washington's Campaign Against the Iroquois, tells the story of the destruction of the Haudenosaunee people, principally the Cayuga and Seneca tribes of upstate New York in1779.  Unlike many versions of this story, this book shows how complex the situation between the Six Nations, the British, and the United States during the Revolutionary War.

This books also sharply draws the contours of the political position of that the Six Nations before and during the war, proving they were not helpless victims of European and American powers.  They exercised agency, and pursued their own interests as they saw them.  

Educated in the End Times

 

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover is essentially a book about child abuse.  Westover’s mother, since the publication of this book, has mounted a campaign against her daughter’s book.  But even if three fourths of what Westover says is true, her parents were extremely negligent and abusive. 

At the end, Westover tries to distance her account from Mormonism.  I don't buy this; for this is a story about fundamentalist Mormonism, and its outcomes.  If all Mormons are potential prophets, than who is to adjudicate what is prophecy and who is insane? Mainstream Mormonism is an apocalyptic religion, and members are supposed to keep a certain amount of supplies on hand in case the End Time begin.  This book features an extreme form of this.

The unique excesses here could only be produced by people with extreme Mormon ideas and practices.

Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders

 

Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders by Walter Pincus tells an all too familiar story of the American government entering into an agreement with indigenous people that it does not abide by, nor rectify adequately.  

The US government exploded 67 atomic and hydrogen bombs over the Marshall Islands. In the years that followed, a typical tragedy unfolded.  Marshall Islanders were lied to, displaced, exposed to radiation, studied without consent, became wards of the government that persecuted them.

And it continues. There is a story from 2016 about the amazing recovery of sea life at Bikini Atoll where many of the tests took place, including the deadly Castle Bravo shot.  After leaving the island alone for over forty years, nature was healing itself without our help.  But that has changed recently.  With the warming of the world’s ocean, the atoll has seen massive fish die-offs and coral bleaching.  

We are a sad, shortsighted, destructive species. 

Every Sabbath

 

In Directing the Heart: Weekly Mindfulness Teachings and Practices from the Torah, Rabbi Yael Levy provides a concise and profound journey into the inner heart of the Torah.  Through her creative translations and mindfulness exercises for the parashort, Levi gives us an in-depth alternative, or compliment to, weekly traditional synagogue content.

On the Use (and Abuse) of the Land

 

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a much-beloved book, and for very good reasons.  If people approached the world as the author does, many of our species-wide issues would disappear.  And Kimmerer is largely optimistic about our ability to change the damage we have done to our planet.  She is realistic about the hole we are in but also realizes that if we have the power to destroy nature, then we also have the power to restore it. 

But when I take a step back, I wonder about certain things.  Since she lives in Syracuse, she uses the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) for many of her examples of excellent stewardship of the natural world.  Yet everything I have ready about Haudenosaunee villages says that after two generations, the land would be depleted of natural resources and the village would be moved.  Such a site is near my house: it was a large Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ (Cayuga) village, inhabited in the late 1500s, abandoned, and then re-inhabited on a smaller scale in the 1600s. 

I wonder if this is true, or simply conventional academic wisdom about Haudenosaunee land use.  I do not know.  But it certainly runs against the grain of what this book tells us.

The Pitfalls of the Forbidden Love Genre

 

All the Rivers: A Novel, by Dorit Rabinyan, was banned in Israeli schools because of its subject matter.  A young female Israeli has a love affair with a young Palestinian man in New York City. This theme would seem to fall immediately into a formula, something we all expect.  The author largely avoids this, although there are pitfalls.  Expected things occur; it is difficult for this kind of subject matter not to roll into ruts in the road.  So, by the end, you want a conclusion.  The novel runs too long; the author could have cut 50 to 75 pages and the story would not have suffered.  When it ends, it is a relief.

Without Overreach

 

The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal (The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library) by Yonatan Adler has a distinct benefit from other books of this type in that it exercises restraint in its conclusions. 

In trying to find the origins of modern Jewish practices, like wearing tefillin and affixing mezuzah to the doorway, Adler wants to find the earliest available evidence of a practice, the terminus ante quem, before moving backward to other, less certain examples.

He uses a host of resources: Philo, Josephus, the Bible, archeology, and epigraphic evidence to find the earlies examples when, for instance, Judeans, affixed mezuzah to their doors.  

Adler comes to a sound historical (and common sense conclusion): there is no hard evidence that all Judeans followed the Torah earlier than the late 2nd Century BCE.  Before that time, there is evidence for a variety of practices that veer far away from what would become the rabbinical approach to halakha, and even in the case of the Jews at the garrison on Elephantine Island, a literal reading of the Hebrew Bible.

Adler shows us all how to craft a book about biblical history that does not overreach.  This is a refreshing approach.

Yekl Meets the Gradute

 

Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto by Abraham Cahan is such an expected piece of American literature of early twentieth-century immigrants, that there are few surprises here.  

The Yekl of the title comes to America, leaving behind, temporarily, his wife and young son.  As three years pass, he becomes Jake, abandons religious Judaism, and acts like a bachelor.  He is eager to Americanize.  His wife arrives, she is a greenhorn, and their relationship sours.  

Jake tries to get out of his marriage and begin a marriage with another, more worldly woman, but the results of this are uncertain.  The end of the novel has a The Graduate feel.  Jake has acted impulsively, and wonders if what will happen next will bring him happiness. 

Scriptorium: Poems by Melissa Range

 

Scriptorium: Poems by Melissa Range is an extraordinary collection.  In a small space, Range accomplishes very much.  She is able to craft poems that speak to her Appalachian upbringing, mixed with a range of English with an antiquated tone/sense, along with commentaries on the craft of the scribe in monasteries.  All these themes are seamlessly woven into one.  Range has provided poems that are similar yet expansive, and richly drawn. 

Judaisms

 

The study of Jewish history has always had to wrestle with the question of Jewish continuity across time and distance, and discontinuity and difference.  Cultures of the Jews: A New History edited by David Biale, takes more the former stance than the latter.  The scholars in this large volume, 1234 pages, generally see differences and disjuncture across Jewish time and space. But this is not uniformly held. Some Jewish communities had close ties to others at great distances and relied on each other on multiple levels.

But generally, the wide variety of "Judaisms" is explored here.  An overall, ideal form of “Judaism” does not float over these essays.  The plural of the title says it all.

Interesting... but Circular

 

The Original Torah: The Political Intent of the Bible's Writers (Reappraisals Jewish Social History) by S. David Sperling is a very good, interesting book, but like all books like this, who knows if it is true? I have no doubt that the writers of the bible often had a political intent behind the stories they told.  But what is our standard?  Sperling uses allegory to read political intent into certain stories, but for others, he uses those stories as sources for the allegorical stories.  This kind of reasoning is circular.

I really enjoy reading these types of books.  They help me understand the Tanakh in new and interesting ways.  But we won’t have any certainty about compositional issues of the bible until ancient versions of the documents, and the sources of the biblical text are discovered (an unlikely scenario),  Until then, books like this will be theoretical.  

Night in the American Village

 

Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa by Akemi Johnson shines a light on a part of American involvement in Asia that practically no Americans know about.  After the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, American forces remained on the island, and the bases have become a part of the island – both for good and ill.

Johnson presents a very balanced approach to Okinawa and the U.S. presence on the island.  She handles the horrific sexual assaults and murders of local women by American military personnel, but also shows how the American presence on the island is a boon to many local people; they are exposed to the wider world than most Japanese experience and benefit financially and socially from the Americans.

She also refuses to victimize the Okinawans.  She treats them as fully dimensional people, who are active in their own lives, and pursue their self-interests as they see them. 

The Rock Eaters: Stories

The Rock Eaters: Stories by Brenda Peynado is a fascinating, strange, and compelling set of stories. Even the average tales in this collection are unusual and provocative.  These strange tales ring true with today’s social issues and challenges. That said, these stories are inconsistent in quality. The very good ones are extremely accomplished, leaving the average ones looking very flat by comparison.  The uneven reading is a disappointment.

This is for Breslovers

 

Ozer Bergman has written a friendly and accessible book about hitbodedut, a Hebrew word usually translated as mediation and isolation and one of the primary spiritual tools used by Breslov Hasidim. Breslovers make it a daily practice to "talk" to God, alone in a room, or more desirably, in a forest or natural setting. This technique runs against the grain of Jewish communal values, but in the Breslov sitting, it fits well with their conception of God and the community of Israel.

This is not your typical New Age Jewish meditation book. Bergman writes in a homey and quaint fashion, but he is a practicing Bresolver, and would rather see us all follow Jewish law and practice so defined. He is kind, and wants us only to take on Jewish practices we are ready for, but it is obvious in this book that he would like more. Sex seems to be Bergman's particular fascination. He would like us to curb those impulses as much as possible. There are stark dualisms in his view of things. The body is subject to sin, corruption, or at least error, while the spirit is pure. For many, this view will be a turn off. This is not "holistic" or non-dual Judaism. There is an old-fashioned cosmology here.

A Big, Scattered Mess

 

Logan's Run by William F. Nolan George and Clayton Johnson is generally disappointing.  This is not just because it does not have some of the finer elements and plot points of the movie (and it does not… no domed city, no post-apocalyptic innocence of the characters) but because it gets tangled up in sci-fi tropes that really bring the reader no place at all.  The plot is held together by slender and irrelevant threads.  This is an overpopulation novel from the 1960s and for the most part, this genre has not aged well. The result is a mess.

The Nearly Impossible

 

It's All The Same To Me: A Torah Guide To Inner Peace and Love of Life by Moshe Gersht is an excellent modern take on the Hebrew concept/experience of Hishtavut, or Hishtavus, equanimity.  

The idea here is not to be guided by externals, but to realize that how we interpret things is really what we experience of reality. This is true, and this realization can help us a great deal to gather some peace in our lives.  The problem is, living this life is extremely hard,  and for some, nearly impossible.  Gersht admits this.

“Do you actually live this way all the time? Do you know anybody who does? No, and I don’t. Except for a very rare few, we have not yet arrived at a time when people can sustain this level of consciousness always and everywhere. However, we are at a growth point.”

So don’t feel guilty and bad about not achieving the lofty goals of this book.  We are not there yet.  We can't live this way all the time. Even some of time is a challenge. 

Bad Title

 

It’s a shame Kathy Marks book on the Pitcairn sexual assault trials is called Lost Paradise: From Mutiny on the Bounty to a Modern-Day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, the Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island Revealed as it gives a very serious topic a salacious label.  There is nothing titillating about child sexual abuse.  The fact is Pitcairn was never a paradise.  It was born in mutiny, misogyny, racism, slavery, and colonialism.  The fact that the Pitcairn Islanders abused their children for generations is tragic, but given their legacy and isolation, hardly surprising. 

That said, Marks writers about the abuse and its victims with great sensitivity.  The title is just way off the mark.

Where is the Proof?

 

The Book of Revolutions: The Battles of Priests, Prophets, and Kings That Birthed the Torah by Edward Feld is the kind of book I really enjoy.  We have known for a long time that the bible is composed of numerous sources, brought together by some unknown hand or hands at some unknown time.  Feld gives his theory here, and it is compelling.

But the problem with critical hypotheses is that it appears we will never have the documents that went to construct the bible.  We have the complete books, and a great deal of informed guessing – but we have never found the parts that constructed the whole.  We also tend to repeat without real proof that the book “discovered” in the Temple during its renovation in 2 Kings 22 is Deuteronomy.  Probably – but where is the proof?

Why I Wake Early

 

Mary Oliver’s poems, Why I Wake Early, is just like taking a walk in the woods, except you are not, Oliver is and is filtering nature and experience through her marvelous gaze.  There is wonder in the world in front of us, most often found among rocks, trees, and plants, and Oliver is a marvelous spokesman for that immediate experience we often miss. We need this vision.

In the Minority

 

After years of ignoring Tolkien’s books, mainly due to long-past associations with his readers in high school.  But after pitched a fresh recommendation, I read The Hobbit.  The book is creative and interesting; by far the dialogue sprints ahead of the plot, which is somewhat predictable.

On Repentance and Repair: Jewish Style

 

On Repentance And Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg draws on the ancient wisdom of Maimonides to form a “plan” to make right for the wrongs we have done in a firm and lasting way.  Ruttenberg draws directly from the Mishneh Torah, connecting this work’s moral scrupulousness while refashioning it for our time, its issues, and problems.

Ruttenberg’s work is also a not-so-subtle jab at facile Christian notions of radical forgiveness.  Turning the other cheek puts an unfair burden on the victim of a wrong while doing nothing to hold the wrongdoer accountable.  It is about time that someone took on the Christian notion of radical forgiveness which at face value is so appealing, but does little of lasting value - and in fact, does great harm.

The Cat from Hue: A Vietnam War Story by John Laurence

 

The Cat from Hue: A Vietnam War Story by John Laurence at over 800 pages details Laurence’s coverage of the Vietnam War for CBS news.  Through three tours: 1965, 1968, and 1970, Laurence gives us an intimate portrait of America’s most unpopular war.  What strikes the reader is the utter waste of such conflicts. Even in a so-called “good” war, fought for defense or noble values, people die without rhyme or reason. The chaos is palpable.  But Vietnam was a war that did not need to be fought, and that makes Laurence’s accounts so fraught.  We know this war will end badly; we know the waste and death is for no great cause.

Don't Call it a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM

 

Don't Call it a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM by Sarah Berman shows us the formula for creating a cult.  Sleep and food deprivation; complete surrender of personal possession and money; a cohesive atmosphere swaddled in a self-help and religious ethos; long group sessions involving confessions of flaws and traumas; forced detachment from friends and family. NXIVM did all this, and it is hardly surprising that toward the end Keith Raniere created a group of women he could personally emotionally, cognitively, and sexually manipulate.

Berman’s book is scary because of what happens, but also because of how it happens.  The indoctrination is gradual, and before the people in NXIVM know they are trapped it is too late.  It is amazing how our social impulses can be perverted by unscrupulous, immoral people.   

Nostalgia & Privilege

Alexandrian Summer, by Yitzhak Gormezano Goren, and translated from Hebrew by Yardenne Greenspan, has a common enough theme for any group of people who are about to leave their homeland for another country: nostalgia. 

Goren is nostalgic about his fictional Jewish family and their last summer in Egypt.  And why not?  The family in this novel is well-off, cosmopolitan, multi-lingual, and relatively wealthy.

Israel would, and will, hold little value for them.  They were part of an Egyptian milieu that worked for them until it did not. Then all that was left was aching memory of those better days.

The HaLevi We All Know

 

Yehuda HaLevi was one of the great Jewish poets and thinkers, but he was all but forgotten until 1838.  Hillel Halkin, the author of this HaLevi biography, tells us that most HaLevi’s poems were discovered in a bookshop in 1838.

Halkin takes us through the various stages of HaLevi’s life, even the considerable gaps.  HaLevi’s distance from the Jewish philosophers who would follow him shortly after his death is fascinating:

“In the whole of The Guide, Maimonides never once introduces the idea of a redemptive scheme for history…. Whereas The Kuzari is concerned with the historical need to revitalize the Jewish people, The Guide openly expresses its preference for the single individual over ‘a thousand ignoramuses.’” 

If you know a great deal about HaLevi, this book will sound familiar.  If you are just learning, this is an excellent introductory work.

The Cost of Memory and Abuse

 

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi is a novel whose particulars I would rather not get into too deeply, for if I do so it will ruin major plot points of the book.  This is certainly a worthy book to read, for as you read it, you realize that something is going on here that is not quite as it seems.  This novel is about how we tell stories, how we suppress painful memories, how we make excuses for men in power and their behavior toward women in those stories.  After reading this book, a good review of it might help answer some of the questions about its structure that Choi leaves unanswered.

If a dead body is found on the ground

 

Typically, I would not read a book like The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia by Emma Copley Eisenberg.  Titles of books with ‘girls’ (when really, they are women) are going to venture into the exploitation of women under the guise of true crime titillation.

But Eisenberg has subverted and complicated the genre in her work.  This is a far more nuanced view of crimes against women.  Eisenberg examines her own time in rural West Virginia against the backdrop of the Rainbow murders and comes out the other side with complicated observations and experiences.  

Some of her most intense relationships are with the men of the region, and they are often loving and tender.  They are also shades of menace. There is real ambiguity in her experiences with the men of West Virginia.  

But there is more. Eisenberg shows that violent crime exacts a price on everyone.  The biblical writers knew this centuries ago: in Deuteronomy 21 we can read of a rite to be enacted when a body is found in a field.  We all feel something is needed when a murder is left unsolved.  We should sacrifice a heifer by a creek. We should atone for the murder we cannot solve.

Being Elijah

 

Daniel C. Matt is one of the most knowledgeable, intelligent, and versatile scholars of Jewish history, so I had no doubt that his Becoming Elijah: Prophet of Transformation would be a worthy read.  Matt traces the history of one of Judaism’s most enigmatic figures, from his sudden appearance in the Book of Kings to the semi-divine hero of Jewish folklore and mysticism.

Matt is uniquely qualified to take us on this journey, and he does so entertainingly and with great skill.

Static Categories are Dead

 

Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global by Alanna E. Cooper is a fascinating dive into a Jewish community that is not widely known.  And that is part of what her whole thesis is about:  what is the “dynamic” of Jewish communities and this thing called world Jewry?  What can we say about the Burkharan community of Jews in an informed way?

Cooper, along with many other scholars studying Jewish communities and topics, no longer postulates an entity like Jewish Culture, or normative Judaism.  Really, we have an interplay between different varieties of Judaism that are in constant conversation with each other; elements of communal Judaism across the globe are evolving through time, shifting, and changing. The time of static historical categories is over.

Avoiding Justice American Style

 

Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen is an eye opening read.  I was always aware that the United States recruited Nazi scientists following the Second World War, but I never knew the extent.  It is far more than Werner von Braun, his rockets and slave labor, and he was bad enough.

Our government actively recruited known war criminals for the sake of what we now call national security.  It was more important to produce weapons grade sarin gas ahead of the Soviets than prosecute criminals.  

This was morally abhorrent then, and looking back, it is even worse.  So many of these programs were unnecessary.  The Nixon administration, at great cost, dismantled our biological and chemical weapons.  Jacobsen’s book shows how under the guise of national security our government essentially helped Nazis  avoid justice.  And we are no safer.

American Pogroms

 

I was always aware that the Chinese were appallingly mistreated in America, particularly in nineteenth and early twentieth-century California.  But nothing prepared me for Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans by Jean Pfaelzer.

What Pfaelzer catalogs is nothing short of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and pogroms, all under the banner of an ugly and uncompromising white supremacy.  

If you know a person who still thinks America gives all a fair shot regardless of ethnicity, religion, or class, disabuse them by giving them this book.

Are the Inverted Nuns Quotes?

 

I’m not sure how many secrets are revealed in Scribal Secrets: Extraordinary Texts in the Torah and Their Implications by James S. Diamond (of blessed memory). 

Indeed, the Torah has some textual abnormalities that are hard to explain, almost all dots above certain words.  Diamond gives various explanations for them: the scribes are noting these words because they are in the wrong place, but they don’t want to remove them.  Or we should pay close attention to this word because it has some importance.

Then there are large and small letters.  In the Shema, it appears, this was done to highlight letters that could be easily confused and render the meaning heretical.  Other small or large letters have no obvious meaning.

What fascinates me most are the inverted nuns in Numbers 10: 35-36.  The author thinks that the nuns may indicate that this is an insertion from another source outside the Torah, the so-called Song of the Ark.  We know that the Torah is a book built from various sources, but they were incorporated into the text without drawing attention to that fact.

If the inverted nuns truly act as quotes here, and they were once used more frequently in the Torah text for such interpolations, this is truly an amazing bit of Torah-lore. 

The Civil War Counter-Offensive

 

Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, by David Zucchino, chronicles what became a template for the violent overthrow of Republication governments and the popular vote in the years after the Civil War. The White Supremacist Democrats in Wilmington, North Carolina first used fear and violence against black voters and their white allies.  They stuffed ballot boxes and kept black voters away from the polls through violence and intimidate.

After they “won” the election they banished white Republican men from the town for life, and the black middle class. They then enacted laws that would enable to keep their power in future elections.  As the author explains, this coup, and others like it in other southern towns and cities, led to the formalization of Jim Crow laws in the south, and peeled back any gains made during and after Reconstruction.

We fought a Civil War, and then lost it in the decades after the war’s end, through what can only be called in insurgency.  Zucchino’s book makes this all too clear: this was not only a southern event, but an American event.  The compliancy of the North and the Federal government allowed this to go unchecked, and will still live with its consequences.   

Getting to that Place

 

Emily St. John Mandel novel Sea of Tranquility is certainly an accomplished work.  Obviously people are buying and enjoying this book (15K review on Amazon as of this writing). This is an unfair thing to write, as I should judge the work by the work, or by similar works, but this novel does not live up to such hype.  Certainly, it is a good novel, but like nearly of Emily St. John Mandel’s work (with the possible exception of Station Eleven) there is the sense that she is holding back.  Her writing could be deeper and more emotionally resonant, but something prevents her from getting to that place.

Waiting for Their Torah

 

I stopped reading books like Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood, by Leah Vincent, not because I think this type of book is in anyway a worthless endeavor, but because it pains me that the most of the extreme versions of Judaism bear little resemblance to the religion that shapes my entire life.  A religion that is the way for me, is a prison for others.  

I read this book because the author, now known as Jericho Z Vincent, advances some stunning ideas in articles and videos, and I look forward to a book of their Torah.  I wanted to get the requisite background of their world, their story, so I am prepared to read their Torah.