A Cure for Sorrow (Sori HaYagon): A Rabbinic Guide to Suffering by Shem-Tov Falaquera is the closest Judaism will come to offering a consistent stoic philosophy. Unfortunately, the quality of this treatise is not very high. For instance, it certainly comes nowhere near the soaring heights of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. As far as I know not even the groundwork has been prepared for a stoic philosophical take on Judaism. We must all wait for one.
Our Immoral Soul: A Manifesto of Spiritual Disobedience by Rabbi Nilton Bonde is certainly interesting to read, if not confusing. Rabbi Bonde pulls a Nietzsche-type inversion in these writings: the soul impedes our progress, while the body breaks boundaries and moves us forward. That is an interesting premise, and worthy of exploration. But these essays certainly need to do more to advance this thesis. They are opaque and clumsily worded.
The subtitle of A Life Worth Living: Meditations on God, Death and Stoicism by William Ferraiolo is not very clear, it turns out. I thought this work would be exclusively about how to practice Stoic philosophy here and now; and certainly, some of it is. But by and large, the author moves to other topics, like a philosophical exploration of No Country for Old Men, and a valiant effort to revive some kind of concept of creation by design. And interesting book, but not quite what I thought it would be.
The Golden Thread: The Cold War and the Mysterious Death of Dag Hammarskjöld by Ravi Somaiya is a who-done-it that does not live up to its promise. We learn very little. Either Hammarskjöld's plane crashed due to pilot error or some technical malfunction, or it was shot down from the ground or the air (either accidentally or purposeful) but we do not know and never will know. And this book won’t give you a compelling reason to believe any scenario. Not a captivating read.
Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kohei Saito explores some ideas that are interesting but would never work. It does make a great deal of sense that to reverse the climate crisis, and other crises as well, we should all do with less and slow down our economies. For Saito, the answers are found in theories Marx jotted down at the end of his life. Now Marxists are picking apart their founder’s death bed marginalia for new articles of faith to rescue moribund Communism. Saito wants a type of grassroots commune/communism to spring up in various parts of the world. This seems like a fairy tale: for this to work, we would need to be different creatures.
The Land of Truth: Talmud Tales, Timeless Teachings by Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, is an exciting collection of stories drawn from the Talmud and given free-standing life. These are great stories indeed: one of the most timely in this volume is if a rabbinical court has the right to bring a king of Israel before them and force him to testify. The answer is equivocal, but in the end, it seems to be no; a king is too exalted to be forced before a rabbinical court. There is a conflict between power and justice that cannot be reconciled. This is a fascinating conclusion for a rabbinical source! This, and other stories like it, make this book well worth reading.
Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler is a somewhat interesting, if a bit overwrought account of drug use in the German military in WWII, and among Hitler and his close circle. But there are problems.
People (as of this writing July 2024) are constantly talking about how Germany invited meth; this isn’t true, Japanese scientists invited the drug. The German military certainly used it to give their soldiers extra pep - that case is clearly laid out in the book.
The problem with this book is that it makes drug use central to the disease that was National Socialism. It was Nazi ideology and actions that created a world war and genocide, not pills. Drug use was the least of Nazi Germany's sins.
The Quest for the Historical Israel: Archaeology and the History of Early Israel (Archaeology and Biblical Studies) by Israel Finkelstein charts a middle course between biblical maximalist and minimalist views, the two poles of reference for exploring the entity known as Israel in the bible.
Maximalists hold that most (or at least most of) the bible can be collaborated with external sources and archeology. Therefore, the Bible is of use as an historical document. For minimalists, what we can know of Israel in the bible is not historically verifiable – neither in external sources nor from archaeology.
Finkelstein sees the bible as having some merit as a document with some historical merit – if it is scrutinized. For example, he considers the Book of Judges as having some authenticity of the condition of Israel in its early phases – but only as filtered through other traditions and sources. He takes a middle course.
In the end, we will never know how Israel came about. Ancient Israel, who are so important now, simply did not merit much attention by anyone in the Iron Age. Finkelstein helps us navigate the important issues of Israel’s beginnings as best as we can with what we have at hand.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez for me is the quintessential 80s book. The book was given to me by a Cuban friend in 1990. The young woman who would become my wife also had a copy. In thirty years I have tried again and again to pick it up and finish it. I always failed. I finally read it to the end – mostly – I skimmed material near the middle – and now I know why I never carried this book over the end zone.
Structurally, I find and always found the book difficult to follow. It does not help that the characters are so indistinguishable from each other – it is difficult to plant one’s feet firmly in the flow of the story. I’ve read hundreds (really thousands) of books since I started reading seriously when I was sixteen. This is just one of those novels that never clicked – or was meant to click.
So, I am glad I put this to bed.
The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective by Steven Johnson is an engaging popular history of the rise and expansion of violent anarchism at the turn of the century. With the invention of dynamite, terrorism became economical, and one person with a bomb could cause a great deal of death and destruction.
Johnson takes us on a voyage that would be repeated many
times in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With the
rise of terror organizations, the state would increasingly exercise more
authority over its citizens. Terrorism
and the Surveillance State, Johnson shows us, were born at the same time.
