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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
