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.