The Telling & the Cultural Revolution

 

The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin hits all the high notes that her great, and very good novels reach. This is a richly imagined world, a planet in the midst of social, political and religious transformation – and Sutty, the observer from Terra, is our compassionate witness and guide.

This novel has shades of the Chinese Cultural Revolution – and Chinese religion and philosophy – rendered to great effect.  Le Guin takes elements of China and mixes them with this world - but this is also pure creation, and wholly not derivative.  This novel stands on its down two feet.   

A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg by Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper

 

A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg by Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper charts the course of the Satmar Hasidim in their corner of Brooklyn.  Satmar wants us to think that their form of Judaism is the only game in town, and that they have not changed since their relocation to America after the Second World War.

The authors show us that quite the contrary, Satmar has adapted well to New York City, and are intimately involved in its politics, social action initiatives, and especially, with the coming of gentrification, the real estate market.  You will read a great deal about Brooklyn real estate in this book.

My take away is that there is no fundamental in fundamentalists groups; they change with the circumstances, adjust, and do what they believe is necessary for their own self-interest. They are always adjusting and new.

Our American Nightmare

 

Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, by Spencer Ackerman, outlines what we all know by now – or should.  The incredible trauma of 9-11 produced a hit of adrenaline to the sense of American exceptionalism.  Rather than learn what it was about our foreign policy that contributed to the attacks, we sought revenge on our enemies and boosted security.  This was a struggle that was black and white - with no shades of gray.

This boost in security led to what Ackerman calls the “Security State.”  Like many nations in history who have been attacked, the tools we used to protect ourselves eventually became part of our national fabric, threatening our forms of government.  "Security" was transformed to tools of oppression.

Ackerman’s book explores this, and the underlying racism in the War on Terror.  White domestic terrorists are not thrown in Gitmo.  Muslims of color are; this simmering racism, always present in America, emerged in broad daylight during the Trump presidency.  No longer does American racism need to hide decorously (if it ever did).  It can be expressed in public and violently, against all minorities, but particularly communities of color and non-Christian religious groups.  Not even the American government is exempt. 

How do we come back from this precipice?  COVID has only advanced our divisions and weaknesses.  Perhaps the American hegemon is dead.  Perhaps our cure for insecurity has killed the American experiment.

Not So Non-Binary

 

In The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin does some interesting work, but her central conceit falls short.  

This is a world where people are not sexually binary until they reach a monthly time period where they can either procreate as a male or female.  Whether a person develops male or female features appears to be random.  Unfortunately, the whole tone of the book is very masculine.  Le Guin, so amazingly inventive in many areas of this work, simply does not give these people the necessary range to be believably non-binary.

So, unless the characters are talking or thinking about their unique form of sexuality, the tone is masculine.  In this sense, the book falls far short.  Perhaps Le Guin developed this premise far too early; today, she might have the chops to pull it off.  In other areas, particularly politics and ecology, Le Guin succeeds in creating a fully realized world, rendered in perfect prose.

The Belzec Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance

 

The Belzec Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance by Chris Webb is the most recently written book about one of the least known of the three major camps constructed for Operation Reinhardt, the mass murder of the Jews of Poland.  

The camp was “primitive” by the standards of what came later; in many ways, it was an experiment in stationary mass murder.  Before this time, more than a million Soviet Jews had been murdered by mobile SS execution units.  The Reinhardt camps, Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka, were meant to use the least resources possible to murder the most Jews, while exposing only a small number of Germans to a personal connection with murder.

Despite its prototype nature, Webb explains how Belzec was employed with brutal efficient.  In about ten months of operation, more than half a million or more Jews were killed, along with Roma and Sini peoples.  This comes out to about ten percent of all victims of the Shoah – all these killings, burials, cremations, sorting of goods, was done on a piece of land of about than sixteen acres.  Only one-hundred Ukrainian guards supervised by a little more than twenty German staff murdered half a million people on a small plot of land.  Webb explains that the camp was designed to kill and only kill.  We know of only seven survivors of Belzec.

Webb also shows us how Belzec’s ultimate fate was what the Nazis wished for all the murdered Jews of Europe. Bodies were cremated, bones crushed, ashes buried,  buildings dismantled, the Jewish workers killed, and trees were planted.  A “farm” was built on the site; Belzec was designed to kill Jews and then to be forgotten.  Ultimately, had the war turned out differently, this would have been the fate of all the camps - and of Europe's Jews.

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English

 

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English, by John McWhorter, chronicles the history (of the changes) to the English language.  McWhorter takes on the on the perennial mystery of why Anglo-Saxon (Old English) so seemingly Germanic, evolved into Middle English (Chaucer) the earliest form of our modern language.  For us, the latter is incomprehensible, while the former, although a challenge, is modern English.

McWhorter has many theories, some of which cancel each other out.  All involve the influence of other languages and their speakers on Anglo-Saxon.  Old Norse, Celtic, and the usual suspect Norman French, with its wealth of Greek and Latin loan words, contributed.  But for McWhorter, the Old Norse and Celtic influence did the most to “simplify” English.

But really, McWhorter finally tells us, the “simplicity” of modern English’s foundation was laid long ago in Proto-Germanic, the penultimate language before Proto-Indo European.  Our paucity of cases, neutered nouns, and lack of key inflections, is a seed within the bud of German itself.

Probably it is best to think of this book not as a Grand Theory of the evolution of English, but a series of chatty theories.

Women and Judaism

 

Women and Judaism, edited by Frederick E. Greensphan, is the fifth volume of the Jewish Studies in the 21st century series.  This book examines one of the major developments in contemporary Judaism – the entry of women as fully equal partners with men in Jewish communal, religious, and academic life.  Judaism, as a patriarchal religion, has traditionally confined women to narrow roles – silencing fifty percent of Jews.  This book deftly explores the revolutionary impact of women on all areas of Jewish existence. 

America's Longest War

 

Afghanistan was not America’s longest war, it was the United States' ongoing battles with Native American’s, particularly after the Civil War.  The US government’s war with the western tribes, from the end of the Civil War until the 1890s, was the time and place of our most protracted armed struggles.

The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West by Peter Cozzen does a generally useful job explaining the conflicts.  Both the tribes and the government are painted in shades of gray. I can’t help but think the suffering of the Indians are not highlighted nearly enough here – after all they were on the losing end of a multigenerational genocidal campaign.  Still, to paint them as passive victims would be wrong as well.  They were (and are) human beings with complex motivations.  

A Masterpiece

 

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin is as flawless a novel as they come, and has been correctly heralded as her masterpiece.  Le Guin is not fixated on the gadgets of science fiction - but uses the genre to explore what it is the be a human being – and the social structures we create to exist.  This novel also features Shevek, a theoretical physicists who is one of the most fully realized characters in fiction.  He is the perfect embodiment to explore Le Guin’s world.  This novel was a privilege to read. 

Like an Outline

 

I find it hard to believe that anyone could find anything redeeming about The Red Magician by Lisa Goldstein.  Yes, this is a novel for children, but that makes it all the more shameful that this book is out there as an example of Holocaust literature.  

There are inconsistent messages here; the community is warned to leave, but most do not.  There is a sense of blame for their naivete.  But really, where did they have to go?  The struggle between the Red Magician and the Rabbi also fails to make sense.  The Rabbi wants to blame the Red Magician for the death of his daughter, when really, the blame rests with the German murders and their collaborators. 

This is story that is confused about its own fundamentals.  At times, it reads like the outline for some more fully imagined work that does not exist.

The Second Holy Tongue

 

An Introduction to Aramaic, Second Edition (Resources for Biblical Study) 2nd Edition, by Frederick E. Greenspahn is a lean and informative book about (mostly) Biblical Aramaic.  You will be reading the book of Daniel for about three fourths of this work.  Toward the end Greenspahn turns to some other interesting examples of Aramaic use outside the bible: the Jewish community/garrison on the island of Elephantine in Egypt, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and letters and texts from the Cairo Geniza.

I have never read such a clear exposition of Aramaic before.  This book is an excellent place to start learning to read the language, or brushing up on skills you already possess.  You will need an excellent comprehension of Biblical Hebrew to understand this work.

A Joy Ride

 

Hisbodidus Alone Time by Nachman Breslov (Author), Nussun Breslov (Editor), Simcha Nanach (Translator) is one of those mad productions of the Breslov Chasidim.  If this was an actual book (I read the kindle version) I imagine one of those poorly produced religious books, with varying fonts and random, poor quality pages.

I say this not to disparage the book, but to praise it; for this book is written and compiled by Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me'uman Breslovers – widely anti-intellectual, radically emotionally, not afraid of paradox or simplicity.  

This book is a joy ride through their world.

The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History

 

The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History by Thomas Harding, is a story that can be told thousands of times by thousand of families.  Harding grew up hearing stories of his family’s small a cottage just outside Berlin.  As Jews, they fled Germany in the 1930s and the cottage and all of their property was seized by the Nazis.

Harding traces the history of Germany through the fate of the house.  The house and the property are first stolen by the Nazis, then under Russian control, followed by East German jurisdiction; when the Berlin wall is constructed, the house is in the security zone, and the wall prevents the residents from using the lake.  When the wall comes down the house starts a long decline.  When the author is on the scene, it is derelict, inhabited by squatters and drug users.

The book ends with Harding exploring the possibility of renovating the house and making it a kind common property.  In the years since the book’s publication, he and others have done this; the house is restored to the way it looked in the 1930s.  The Alexander House website explains that the house is “a Centre for Education and Reconciliation.”

Most importantly, exhibits in the house and on its property do not turn a blind eye to the fact that it originally was stolen Jewish property, even, or despite the fact that the house is placed within the wider context of modern German history.

The Great American Atrocities

 

My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness (Pivotal Moments in American History) 1st Edition, by Howard Jones tells the tragic story of the American massacre of over five-hundred South Vietnamese civilians in 1968.  This is a tale of poor leadership, confusing orders, and the lack of clear guidance of strategic goals up and down the chain of command.  My Lai is a moral stain.

But we do our history a great disservice if we think of this massacre as somehow isolated.  The conditions to murder unarmed civilians in war is ever present.  America is not immune from this.  For example, we do not think of the wars we engaged in with Native Americans as war.  In fact they were, and in many cases, old men, women and children were killed in hundreds of battles.  

We should disabuse ourselves of the notion that we are an immaculate people.  We have just finished our “longest war” in Afghanistan.  But the Indian Wars lasted from the arrival of Europeans in America until the turn of the 20th century.  The Indian Wars in the United States did not end until the subjugation of the Apaches in the 1890s.  That was our longest war, and a tragic and costly one for Native American civilians

As a country we need to wake up to our own history.  We have to understand how we use selective definitions to eliminate our need to take responsibility for atrocities of all sorts.  

The War on Terror & American Carnage

 

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer, revisits the unfortunate Bush years.  She lays out in exacting detail how the policies and wars of Bush/Cheney ushered in the Age of Trump.  The War on Terror eroded democratic principles and structures, paving the way for rabid populism.  Mayer lays out this case in this well written and persuasive book.  

Live a Large Jewish Life (but be prepared)

 

This is a very difficult book to review.  Dara Horn gets right at the heart of the conundrums, fears, and anxieties of Jews in America in the age of Trump and post-Trump.  And why not?  The rise of anti-Antisemitism and the violence it has spawned is deeply concerning.  American Jews sense looming danger.  

As a Jew, it is nearly impossible to read Horn’s book, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present, without the baggage we haul along as the topics she explores hit right at an existential Jewish dichotomy: we are not in existential danger, the place we live is safe or we are in existential danger (or soon will be) and the place we live is dangerous.

Shaul Magid has written, as of this moment, one of the few largely negative reviews of this book.  He thinks that seeing Jewish history as a series of catastrophes warps our sense of Jewish history.  As a Jew influenced by Bratslav, I understand his concerns; the Jewish life we live should be approached b’simcha, with joy.  Otherwise, Judaism becomes a nihilistic entity, enshrining victim-hood, and instilling a dangerous sense of entitlement to our own sufferings (after all, many other peoples have suffered catastrophes).  Why can't we Jews just deal if it?

I think we fail to because Horn’s sense of Jewish history, across a certain spectrum, is just as correct as Magid’s.  It is prudent, even wise, to enjoy our lives as Jews to the hilt, while at the same time realizing that our history has given us ample reason to be afraid of certain trends, and plan to protect ourselves.  

There is nothing inherently contradictory in holding these two views at once.  This is not an all or nothing proposition.  After all, this is how we approach life.  Every day we wake up, and we know, at least in the back of our mind, that something terrible might happen today. This may be our last day in a job, a marriage, or as living beings. But we get out of our beds and we move on and live with as much joy as possible.  We live the most we can in the face of existential uncertainty; but we also plan for the worst.

Deep Shade

 

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson is supposed to be the supreme example of literary horror.  Overall I found the stories lacking.  There are some standouts.  One is Pillar of Salt, which comes close to being suspenseful, and is certainly a surreal narrative. But the accomplished stories in this collection can be counted on one hand.  This is especially the case with the title story.  At this point the literary realm has stories of this nature that put The Lottery into deep shade.

“rediscovered”

In Arthur Green’s book Judaism for the World he discusses Rebbe Nachman’s grave, the site of one of the most famous Chasidic pilgrimages in the world.  During World War Two, the Ukrainian city of Uman was  destroyed, along with the Rebbe’s tomb.  He tells us:

…the old cemetery was plowed over by the Nazis, and the site was built into apartment blocks by the Soviets. Now the place of R. Naḥman’s burial has been “rediscovered”…

I find the quotations interesting.  It suggests a that the two tomb in Uman may not be Rebbe Nachman's at all. What grounds exist for such a claim?

This brought me to Against All Odds by Gedaliah Flier.  This is a fascinating book about the efforts of the author in the 1960s to reach the Rebbe’s grave behind the Iron Curtain.  He tells an interesting account on page 31 about the Rebbe’s tomb following the Second World War.  A certain Reb Zanvil searched in vain for the foundations of the small stone structure that had previously covered that grave.  He failed to find it.  Reb Zanvil pleads with God to help him find the grave.

That night, the Rebbe comes to him in a dream. Reb Zanvil implores the Rebbe, saying, don’t leave us!  The Rebbe’s says; I am not leaving... I am remaining with you.  The next morning Reb Zanvil unearths the foundation of the stone structure that once covered the Rebbe’s tomb.  These are the circumstances that Arthur Green alludes to by the rediscovered in quotes.  Although not specifically spelled out, we are led to believe that the dream gave Reb Zanvil vital information to find the tomb.

In his book, Green takes a tour of famous Rebbe’s graves. A rationalist by nature, he is more interested in the Torah they been left behind than appealing to them at their tombs.  Rabbi Green is a historian and rationalist. He probably finds the supernatural rediscovery of Rebbe Nachman’s tomb questionable.

In the end it doesn’t matter. Flier’s efforts to get behind the Iron Curtain to pray at the Rebbe’s grave are ennobling.  Without the tomb, and the Rosh Hashanah kibutz at Uman, Breslov would not be the same.  I believe Rabbi Green understands this and therefore does not explore this topic fully. 

Meaning is often found in the effort and devotion.  In the end that is all that counts.

some other plan for the way the world should be

 

Tuck Everlasting explores the theme of death, and why it is essential to life.  There are few surprises here.  The rules of existence revolve around two poles: life and death are two sides of our world.  Without death life has no meaning, and eternal life is a nightmare.  Without change and transformation, and the end which caps our individual life, existence is unnatural.

I enjoyed how softly the author provides an explanation for the ability of the characters to never die.  The fountain of water the characters drink, we are told, is “something left over… from some other plan for the way the world should be.”

999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz

999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz by Heather Dune Macadan is a holocaust story like no other.  It strikes at the heart of a community's future: its girls.  This book is a chronicle of Slovakian Jewish girls sent on the first transport to construction parts of Auschwitz-Birkenau.  The Slovakian Jewish community had no way of knowing the ultimate fate of their children.  The fact that they wore sent to camps early, when Germany's plans were still largely secret, adds to the tragedy and pathos of this story.  This is an excellent book and shows that not only shows the broad scope of the holocaust, but the heavy price paid of real people, giving them a name.

NOI: Revised

 

Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State by Garrett Felber is a revisionist history in its strict sense.  For years, scholars have viewed the Nation of Islam as apolitical.  The NOI wanted a separate state, and therefore refused to participate in political or social action.  

Felber seeks to show that this is not true; the NOI was involved in prison reform almost from its inception.  Felber has a narrow goal, the NOI and its relationship with the "carceral" state.  He steers clear of defining the NOI religiously, which is my area of interest.  Felber allows the NOI to self-define as Muslim. He explains that denying the NOI's affiliation to global Islam was long a a part of the “carceral” state’s attempt to rob it of religious legitimacy.  Under this rubric, prisons were able to deny NOI inmates religious rights.

This fascinating book shows the NOI in a less Malcom X-centric light.  The NOI stands on its own.  It is an interesting angle.

Through Fire and Water: The Life of Reb Noson of Breslov by Chaim Kramer

Through Fire and Water: The Life of Reb Noson of Breslov by Chaim Kramer is definitely the book for you if you want to know about Reb Noson, the man who led the Breslov Hasidim after the death of their founder, Rebbe Nachman.

As Rebbe Nachman died at the age of thirty-eight, Reb Noson became his spiritual executor.  This book explains how he was the de facto leader of (most) Breslov Hasidim, although he never wanted the title of Rebbe.  This in itself was odd: in an age where Hasidic groups were led by dynastic heads or charismatic leaders, early on Breslov never replaced their founder .  

But this became the Breslov way and ultimately part of their appeal.  Other groups derided them for this – but since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage to the Rebbe’s grave has become a major event on the Jewish calendar.  This book makes a great case that this legacy exists because of the work of Reb Noson.  He was Plato to the Rebbe's Socrates.

When We Get Out of the Way

 

Cal Flyn’s Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape is a fascinating study of the places where humans once lived, left, and are now seeing, as the sub-title informs us, a rebounding natural world.  

Flyn masterfully threads a fine line between acknowledging the extraordinary damage our species has done to our planet while at the same moment highlighting the very real and incredible ability of the earth to heal.  This is seldom discussed in environmental debates.

When people leave an area, whether it be the Red Zone in Verdun, the area around Chernobyl, or the expanses of blighted Detroit, nature does what it does best – break down the remains of human structures, and through the actions of water, wind, and encroaching plants and animals – conquer.  There is something satisfying about the earth conquering us for a change - once we get the hell out of the way.

The Boy... but not really

 

As others have said about The Boy: A Holocaust Story by Dan Porat, the boy is not really featured in this book at all.  

In this, one of the most famous Holocaust photographs, we do not and probably will never know the identity of the boy.  The same goes for the Jewish people who surround him.  These people were murdered: they might have been dead by the end of that day.

The only definitive identification in the shot is Josef Blosche, behind the boy to the right, who participated in the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto.  The photo is part of fifty phots added to Jurgen Stroop’s report of his suppression of the Ghetto Uprising.  Both Blosche and Stroop, may their names be blotted out, were executed for their crimes. 

The book lacks focus.  We learn about other Jewish people who lived in the ghetto at the same time, but they are not related to the boy or the group who surround him.  This causes confusion. This is less a book about the boy and more about the maelstrom of the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. 

The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China: A History

 

The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China: A History by David J. Silbey is a brisk account of the uprising by Chinese troops and the mystical/quasi-military movement of the Boxers in 1900. 

Silbey provides us with an overview of the conflict, mainly from the western perspective.  What amazes me is how colonial powers at odds with each other could combine in their military efforts to defeat this Chinese rebellion.  Japan, England, the United States, Britain, Germany and Russia would fight each other in various combinations for the rest of the twentieth century.  Defeating China however was a common cause.

The sheer brutality of the allied armies also is a shock.  The Chinese remember this conflict, while it is convenient for us to forget.

Mexican Genre

 

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia certainly has a great deal going for it, and is widely read and commented upon.  This book is a well told story that weaves in issues of class, gender, colonialism, among other topics.

As a writer, the science/fantasy element fascinates me.  Does it work?  When the novel is taken over by ‘genre’ in the last fourth of the book there is that strange compression of events one often finds in such locations.  Things need to be tied up, and swiftly.  Does it work?  I have mixed feelings. There is a bit of strain in making things work out, but that strain is crazy and wild, so even if this novel's dismount is, so to speak, a bit wobbly, all can be forgiven given the scope of this novel.  This is a fantastic effort to do a great deal in a relatively small space.

In Our Time

 

How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life, by Massimo Pigliucci, is one of the many recent adaptations of Stoic philosophy for our particular time.  When I was young I read the big three, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius.  Reading their work was enriching, but I found it difficult to tease out from their sprawling books the central tenants of Stoicism, and how it can help us in our time.

Pigliucci does this work for us, staying true to the original sources, but also shaping them to suit our modern experience.  Practicing Stoicism as a mental discipline is a perfect exercise for our time – when so little – or noting at all, is in our control.

Radicalized: Four Tales of Our Present Moment

 

Radicalized: Four Tales of Our Present Moment, lives up to the promise of the subtitle.  Although the stories are about our present moment, the here and now we live in, the world Cory Doctorow creates is just ahead of us; it is the outer reaches where our present moment touches the future.  The author does a great job on this count.

The stories, or novellas, are too long.  I get the sense that Doctorow could have done this work better with less.  Some of the stories end on a bizarre note of hope, which does not mesh well with the overall tone of the collection.  So, that comes as a disappointment, as so much else is done so well here.

Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Charles Marsh is a knee deep exploration of a pastor/theologian who would not lay down his principles before the Third Reich.  This is a long book, so the reader should be very dedicated to this topic.  Bonhoeffer’s life was intimately tied to Christian Protestant theology, so the reader should expect many page journeys in Christological topics.  This is part and parcel of Bonhoeffer’s life, and his murder, so you must read and absorb these pages to truly understand the man and his complex motivations.

Plunder: a legacy

 

Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure by Menachem Kaiser is a unique “descendent of a Holocaust survivor going to an Eastern European town for a journey of discovery” for unlike many books in this genre, this author does not veer away from the problems inherent in this venture.  

Kaiser examines the whole fraught enterprise.  The nature of human memory and forgetfulness, of collective and individual responses to trauma, of collective responsibly and justice, or collective revenge and anger (just to name a few), of bureaucracy and anti-Semitism.

Kaiser’s book shows that seventy-six years after the end of World War Two, both what the Holocaust wrought and its legacy continues.  Anyone who takes this trip into the blank spots of their family tree realizes this quickly enough.

Also, I think the epilogue is a piece of 'fiction.'  Golden eggs?

A Way Out of Madness

 

When I first read Marcus Aurelius in college in the late 1980s, I knew that if I followed his ideas, and lived by his example – that it was a way out of madness.  I was young and unable to do so.  But with age Stoicism has become less of an abstract promise to me, and more of a reality.  When one ages, and starts to lose things, a philosophy of how to frame the inevitability of loss is essential.

It is wonderful to see that a new interest in Stoicism has come about, propelled by the internet.  This collection of essays, Stoicism for Inner Peace, by Einzelgänger, are written adaptations from a YouTube channel dedicated to placing Stoicism in a contemporary setting.  That these originated as videos speaks volumes about our new age.  But at the heart of these teachings are core Stoic values, which were laid down centuries ago, and are here maintained.

I still believe that Stoic values, properly applied, is a way out of  madness.  And now it has become far easier to spread this message to broad audiences.

A Fresh Approach to an Old Subject

Early Judaism: New Insights and Scholarship (Jewish Studies in the Twenty-First Century Book 1) edited by Frederick E. Greenspahn, is part of a multi-book series that examines different aspects of the Jewish experience through a a distinctly contemporary lens. 

This book takes on the puzzle of how Judaism underwent the various mutations necessarily to transform from a tribal, temple, and finally a rabbinical ‘religion’.  We get very modern questions asked against the backdrop of a very disputed ancient history: were Jews a nation in the modern sense?  Is the land of Israel / Diaspora dichotomy applicable in the past?  What is and was the relationship of Judaism and the Temple?  Were ancient synagogues used in the same manner as their modern versions?  And more.

There is fantastic food for thought here.  Lots of questions asked and some even answered.  This is a fresh approach to an old subject.

Vietnam Up Close

 

Dispatches, by Michael Herr, is perhaps the best first-hand account of the Vietnam War that I have read.   As a reporter in the field, Herr was in Khe Sanh, Hue, the highlands, and many other places, mostly with Marines on the ground and in choppers.  His first hand experiences give these pieces a gritty realism.   Herr does not hold back on the horrors of war.  

He steps back to examine the meta-narrative of the war in Vietnam, the Sixties, and the post-war period.  He does not glorify war, except in the last essay, where he starts slinging around Sixties slang and post-adrenaline nostalgia for a war that killed millions. This is an unfortunate part of this otherwise excellent book.

The Ravine

 

We have mostly become immune to harrowing photos of mass murder.  With repetition, the horror is rendered somehow mundane. Wendy Lower in The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed, sets out to contextualize a photograph of Jewish woman being killed by German border police and Ukrainian militia.  The photo catches the moment the woman is shot; her head is haloed by smoke, her two children, one not completely visible, the other holding her hand.

Lower sets out to put the photo in the context of the war, the Ukraine, the Jewish community where this mass murder occurred, and even the people in the photo.  She finds the identity of some of the shooters.  She valiantly attempts to identify the victims and perhaps she does.  This humanizes mass-murder by treating the photo as an piece of evidence of a crime – and trying to piece together the circumstances of this murder from every available source.

I hope Lower and others set out do this with other holocaust photos – both well-known and lesser known examples.  This is a fruitful area of study.

The Language of Thieves: My Family's Obsession with a Secret Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate

 

The Language of Thieves: My Family's Obsession with a Secret Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate, by Martin Puchner, is a fascinating book about one family and their ambiguous relationship to the German language and Nazism.

Pucher explores Rotwelsch, a so-called language of thieves, or better yet a language of a marginal group (or groups) of people who were homeless or otherwise unsettled.  The language has as long history.  It was noted by Martin Luther and remained well into the twentieth century.  It contains many Hebrew words through a Yiddish lens, some Romani expressions - but is basically German in structure and vocabulary.

I expected some big reveal from Pucher about the fixation of certain members of his family toward Rotwelsch.  Where they once part of this sub-world?  Secret Jews or Roma?  No.  They were just caught up in complexity of German identity in the twentieth century and this is their story.  And a fine story it is.

My Dark Genre

 

As a writer, I have a certain respect for James Ellroy’s My Dark Places.  This account of his mother’s unsolved murder reads like an object lesson in uncompromising engagement with the writer’s deep self.  There is a less appealing part of this work as well; as he is a mystery/detective writer, this book goes places I never would, uses language that is not suited to our time, and in the process, no doubt, is insulting to many people.  Yet I am drawn to the brutal honesty, as I am repulsed by many of the characterizations.

Lost in the Indo-European Weeds

 

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David W. Anthony, is a long book, and not for the beginner to the subject, or someone not completely dedicated to the topic.  

The first part of the book handles the reconstructed language of Indo-European based on its descendant languages.  After that, Anthony provides a detailed overview of many, many, far too many, archaeological Bronze Age sites.  At this point, the urge is to skim is great, the sections are so similar. 

For me, this book went into the weeds.  The author got caught up in detail and lost forward momentum and fatigued me.

The Age of Reevaluation

 

Toward the end of The Ground Breaking: The Tulsa Race Massacre and an American City's Search for Justice, author Scott Ellsworth correctly says that we live in the Age of Reevaluation.  This is an apt term for our times.  This book explores the myriad ways white Tulsans tried to forget or otherwise cover up the sacking of the black Greenwood neighborhood and the murder of hundreds of its residents.  The recent drive to find mass graves in Tulsa is part of a wider trend: a revaluation of the crimes and sins of the past by white citizens of this nation against people of color.  This is long overdue.    

Really Far Gone

 

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell is one of those novels that is evocative of another time, yet has a “modernist” structure.  A “broken” narrative, where subjectivity and faulty memory create a Citizen Kane landscape.  Truth is written with a little t.  Despite this the novel is old-fashioned.  The world whose passing it laments is so far gone it is hard to feel bad about its fate.  Everything passes: why get so upset about it.

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War

 

Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War by John W. Dower sheds detailed light on a part of American history that few remember, the American occupation of Japan following the Second World War.  Beginning in 1945 and formally ending six years later, General MacArthur and his staff had an almost unlimited ability to steer the course of post-war Japan.

Dower’s book is detailed, and lengthy.  A few stand out moments: he claims Japanese culture never inculcated its citizens with a sense of civic duty.  That is why so many homeless children wandered around post-war Japan, hungry and desperate.  The United States, at first, did not have a policy to either feed the Japanese people, or help re-establish their economy.  This seems criminally negligent, as most Japanese suffered from years of food deprivation, and thousands died of malnutrition after the surrender.   He also explores the rise of the Japanese sense of victimization that developed in the years following the war, which lives on, despite Japan’s horrible crimes in Asia and elsewhere. 

Most of all, this book shows the promise and pitfalls of regime change – which we recently tried to enact, with poor results, in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Japan changed because we forced change upon them at a micro level – and we are still there, acting on behalf of Japan’s geo-political interests.

Ending a Story Too Quickly

 

Based on some conversations with a fellow writer, I was told reading Raymond Carver was not worth my time.  He ends stories too quickly, I was told.  This collection of stories, Short Cuts, bears this out, but not in every tale.

“So Much Water So Close to Home" is perhaps the strongest work here.  The plot is strange with both what is said and unsaid.  The lingering sense of violence against women is both horrifying and befuddling.  

This story, and those like it, are Carver at his best (is this an early story?)  Other stories in the  collection end abruptly, as my friend observed, and seem like unfinished sketches.   

The Future of the Earth

 

Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Future of the Earth by Craig Childs is very much about the end of the world as we know it, but the subtitle shows the real thrust of the book.  Every time our planet has faced wide-spread extinctions, some nearly wiping out life entirely – some form of life has always survived.  

In his quest Childs takes us to locations around the globe where climate change and the human manipulation of nature are the most extreme.  In his other books Childs is a splendid writer and insider guide to places most of us will never visit.  This book is no different.  Few write about nature and the human impact upon it as deftly as him.

Reuven's Vow: Published in Windmill, The Haunting of Writers' Past, October 2017

 

        Safed is called the town of a thousand mystics. Thrust a rod out, the saying goes, and hit a Cabbalist. But it is also said that Safed is a town where Jews scream out their prayers, and mumble their heresies.

In a town where everyone’s nose is between the pages of The Zohar, it is said that men often fall over even tiny stones in the road. When a man’s head contemplates the ten divine sephirot, he often fails to see a mound of manure in his path. This was the case with Reuven ben Sosa and his terrible vow. 

Reuven ben Sosa, at seventeen, was already a noted Cabbalist. He knew vast tracts of The Zohar by heart and  he wrote amulets which could cure all manner of ills, from a tooth ache to a tumor. If someone was possessed by a dybbuk or demon, no one thought of calling anyone else but Reuven ben Sosa. He would walk right up to the possessed person, and speak to the demon in a strange language. He would cajole, threaten, scold or even praise it to leave the unfortunate body it had stolen, for he, at such a tender age, spoke the language of demons. He came from an old family who had lived in the land of Israel as long as anyone could recollect. In Safed, Reuven ben Sosa’s family were leading citizens.

If Reuven ben Sosa had one fault it was frivolity. He enjoyed practical jokes and humorous tales. His father frowned upon it, but what could he do? The boy had great gifts from the Almighty. People said “A diamond has some flaw.” Safed needed Reuven ben Sosa even with his little pranks.

As Reuven approached his eighteenth birthday, the date of his wedding was set. On the day before his wedding, Reuven and two young companions took a stroll through the hills around Safed. It was early spring, and in the evening it had snowed. Safed was muffled in a blanket of white, but the sun was warm, and the southern slopes of the hills quickly melted, revealing spring’s first swaying flowers. The ground thawed, and the mud was churned. The young men walked to the banks of a stream and sat on a large stone. One produced a bottle of sweet red wine and the young men all drank to Reuven’s marriage. They teased him about the great beauty of his betrothed and the prospect of joy on the wedding night. One of the young men rose to relieve himself. Near an exposed embankment, he saw a strange thing thrusting out from the ground. He called over Reuven and his other companion.

    “What is it, Yitzhak, did you find King Solomon’s treasure?” Reuven asked.

“I don’t know, Reuven,” the young man answered. “It looks like a finger stuck in the ground.”

Reuven bent down. It did indeed look like a human finger thrusting out of the earth. The three young men began to joke. One dared Reuven to place the ring destined for his betrothed, and engraved with his initials, onto the finger. Reuven, never shy about a humorous dare, placed the ring on the brown, chalky finger. He then recited the benediction. “Harai at m’kudeshet li,” you are betrothed to me, three times. Nothing happened. One of Reuven’s friends chuckled. They all listened, but all they could hear was the rushing of the stream. 

Suddenly, the stream stopped roaring. The birds, who had been chirping in the trees above them, fell silent. It was as if a great veil had been thrown over the land. A cloud moved across the sky and the spring sun and the hills were smothered in cold. A great roar then peeled, like a wailing cry. Reuven bent over to remove the ring from the finger and the finger twitched. The moan was now was clearly coming from the finger. The hole grew in depth and width until an arm, shoulder and then quickly, a torso and legs emerged. The figure was clad in a tattered funeral shroud. Shredded and caked with mud that covered her head; only the blank orbit of her eyes were visible. The corpse howled and moaned.

They all bolted back to Safed, and all the while the horrible moaning and wailing trailed behind them until they reached the village. 

Reuven’s companions begged him to tell his father about the corpse,  but he refused. He told them the dead do not have long memories like the living. The corpse would grow confused in the hills and stagger away from Safed. Reuven found another ring in his young sister’s room, and readied for the wedding. He was confident that yesterday’s experience was a trick. He had been exorcising dybbuks and demons for years, and now, on the eve of his wedding, one was trying to play a joke on him. 

Reuven stood under the chuppah next to the rabbi. All of Safed turned out for the wedding. The veiled bridegroom was escorted to the canopy, and the rabbi was about to begin the service when a wind suddenly kicked up. Men’s hats flew off their heads and women’s dresses flared. The day was warm, but there was the unmistakable smell of snow and ice held aloft. Then, the wind turned into a shrill, sustained hiss like a scream. People at the back of the crowd began to wail, and the crowd fainted or scurried away in a quickly disappearing mass. The corpse with the shroud was making its way to the chuppah. Reuven’s bride fainted. The corpse screamed, and then found her voice. Her shroud moved as if breath was issuing from her mouth. She lifted her arms as she spoke and the shroud rustled like a curtain flying off its rod.

“Why do you marry, Reuven ben Sosa, when you are betrothed to me?” she said, her voice was high and reedy, as if a breath of air was squeezed through a narrow crag in a rock. On hearing this, the people standing near the chuppah wailed.  Reuven, never at a loss for words, could not find his tongue. All eyes went from him to the corpse and back again. It was the rabbi who spoke.

“Dead woman,” he asked with a quiver in his voice, “why do you rise from your grave to aggrieve the living?”

“This man is my betrothed,” the corpse answered without hesitation.

“How can this be?” the rabbi stated, his tone firm. “A corpse cannot marry the living.”

“He gave me his ring,” the corpse answered, holding aloft its bony left hand. The rabbi took a reluctant step toward the hand. The ring clearly bore Reuven’s initials. People continued to screamed and shouted. To the Jews of Safed, it was as if the sun had stood still in the sky.

Reuven’s father smacked his son’s cheek. He stood silently in front of his father, the shame dripping off him like lather from an overworked mule.

“Fool,” his father hissed. “This is what you get from joking. This is what you get from pranks.”

The rabbi met with Reuven’s father and the elders of Safed. No one knew what to do. The corpse stood in the town square, next to the chuppah, stock still. No one dared approach it. Life in Safed ground to a halt. The elders poured over the responsa to find a precedent for the case , but they could not find one. They would need to convene a rabbinical court to decide the case. 

All seventy prominent rabbis from the four sacred cities in the land of Israel, Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberas, quickly gathered in Safed.  Not since the days of the Great Sanhedrin had such an august body been assembled. The court did not meet in the synagogue, for there was not enough room to accommodate the judges and the great crowds of spectators. The large hall in the old crusader castle was employed. 

The rabbis first called Reuven’s two companions. Meekly, they told the story of what happened on that terrible day: their merriment and drinking; the finger jutting out of the ground; the dare that Reuven ben Sosa should place his wedding ring upon it and his compliance; and finally, the horrifying flight from the mad, pursuing corpse. Most of the rabbis on the court, aged men who had heard many strange cases, shook their hoary heads in amazement. Reuven was then testified. He confirmed the details of the story. Several members of the court scolded him for his frivolity and arrogance. He hung his head low.

Finally, the court called in the corpse, and in a few moments, the body entered through the door. Her shroud trailed behind her like a flitting shadow. The people closed their eyes with their hands, and moaned and wailed as the corpse entered. Several people fainted, and had to be carried out. Only with great effort was the order of the crowd restored. The great Rabbi Simcha of Jerusalem addressed the corpse first.

“Is it true that Reuben ben Sosa placed a ring on your finger?”

“It is true,” the corpse hissed, shifting her weight, and rattling her bones like loose stones in a sack.

“Were there two witnesses in attendance?” Rabbi Gershom of Hebron asked, waving a yellow finger aloft.

“Yes, and he recited the vow in accordance with Holy Law,” the corpse answered, and on hearing this, the people cried. Rabbi Menachen of Tiberias held up his hand to restore order.

“You must relinquish your claim!” he yelled sternly at the corpse. “You are dead, and the defendant is living!”

“I died before I could marry, esteemed rabbi,” the corpse moaned. “I died before I had my hour of joy. I demand it now, even in my cerements. I demand that the vow be fulfilled and the marriage be consummated!”

A great uproar arose. Some of the oldest rabbis in the court fainted. People tried to revive them with smelling salts. Men and women tore at their hair. That such a thing could happen, they cried, must be birth pangs of the coming of the Messiah!

Later, the court met behind closed doors and debated.

“The case is clear,” Rabbi Gershom of Hebron stated. “The dead have no claims on the living, especially in matters of marriage. The vow is null!”

“But,” the rabbi from Safed explained. “A vow is a vow. Even if made in jest, and even to a corpse, it must be fulfilled, and it abrogates previous vows.” The assertion had strong precedent. The rabbis erupted and everyone began to speak at once. Eventually, Rabbi Menachen of Tiberas was able to make his voice heard above the rest.

“Good Jews, if we allow this corpse its claim, bodies will rise from the hollowed ground to redeem all manner of things, from marriage rights to property claims, and there will be no end to this madness. This court will never adjourn. The earth will shake to its very foundations and God, blessed be his name, will damn our generation. A way must be found to annul the vow!”

There was heated discussion. It seemed the case could not be resolved in Reuven’s favor. He would have to marry the corpse and, God forbid, consummate the marriage. A rabbi from Be’er Sheva burst into the chambers with an old book of rabbinical responsa, crumbling in its bindings. 

“Holy men,” he proclaimed, “I have found a way out!”

The court reconvened. The whole town was crowded into the crusader castle to hear the verdict. Reuven was brought in, followed by the corpse. When it appeared again, there was a fresh round of fainting. It was no less terrifying from repeated exposure.  Rabbi Simcha of Jerusalem spoke for the court:

“A vow is sacred,” he started, “and should not be entered into frivolously. Japheth vowed to sacrifice a human being and was forced to slay his own daughter! Reuven ben Sosa has committed a grave sin and vowed a binding vow in jest…” and here the crowd gasped, thinking Reuven would have to marry the corpse.

“In such a case,” Rabbi Simcha continued, “the conclusion is forgone. The most recent vow is the binding one… it abrogates all previous vows, whether it was made in seriousness or in jest, or to the living or the dead…” There were many screams. Reuvan’s mother collapsed, imaging a corpse for a daughter-in-law. When the turmoil ceased, Rabbi Simcha continued.

“However, this is a special case. The bride and groom were betrothed before each of them was born. The vow was made not by the bride and groom, but by their parents even before they were born. There is a precedent: Rabbi Meir bar Pinchas, the great sage of Babylon, wrote that such a vow can’t be rescinded unless one of the party dies before the day of the wedding. Such a vow is ordained in the chambers of heaven, since the souls of the bride and groom were still dwelling in Our Father’s Mansion. Therefore, this court annuls the vow of Reuven Ben Sosa to this corpse, and commands this poor body to return to the earth!”

The corpse let out a wail in one moment and in the next fell to the floor in a jumbled heap of bones and shroud. Half the Jews in the hall fled in terror while the other half wailed and cowered. When things calmed, the Burial Society was summoned to claim the remains.  They carefully removed Reuven’s ring from its finger.

The next day, Reuven was summoned before the court. They ordered Reuven to do penance. He was to pay a certain sum to charity. He was to lay on the threshold of the synagogue until each congregant touched him with their shoe, a symbol of his disgrace. All his charms and books of magic were to be collected and burned. Rabbi Simcha of Jerusalem scolded Reuven, and by implication, the Jews of Safed, for their mystical excursions. Such activities, he explained, make a man perform heresy with his body and speak blasphemy with his lips. The court, before they disbanded, ordered that the corpses’ remains be buried according to Jewish law. They commanded the keeper of the graves to sit near the tomb every night for two years and recite psalms, lest the corpse emerge again to make claims on the living.

And Reuven Ben Sosa? He married his betrothed. He no longer made amulets, recited spells, or studied the Cabbala. Considering his experience, this was not surprising,  but his penance went even further. He banished all frivolity from his life. For the rest of his days he never smiled, laughed, or told a joke. What can you expect from a man who betrothed a corpse in a moment of jest, and then got off on a mere technicality? For Reuven Ben Sosa the earth became but a dark ante-chamber to the world to come. To him, this was no joke.

Slavery's Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons

 

Slavery's Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons by Sylviane A. Diouf explores the little know phenomenon of “maroonage” in what is or would become the United States.  

In Jamaica and South American countries, escaped slaves (maroons) formed large settlements that were more or less self-sufficient.  In the period of Diouf’s study, the early British colonies and early United States, escaped slaves formed smaller communities, and did not live in such total isolation from the white world.  

Diouf provides us in numerous examples of maroon existence.  In the end, we realize how resourceful and robust escaped slaves were in order to maintain their freedom, often at a cost none of us can imagine.

Walking the High Wire

I find it difficult to criticize The Happiness Prayer: Ancient Jewish Wisdom for the Best Way to Live Today by Rabbi Evan Moffic.  It is sweet book.  But I will do so anyway. 

Rabbi Moffic takes a portion of the morning Jewish liturgy and makes these statements into a stand-alone prayer and declaration of existence that will guide us toward happier lives.  

The problem is that this section of the Jewish liturgy, Eilu D'varim, has a deeply Jewish content.  Rabbi Moffic more or less dismantles this.  Take the last statement in Eilu D’varim.  In the English translation of the siddur it reads “and Torah study is equivalent to them all” or in Hebrew talmud torah keneged kullam. Rabbi Moffic renders this: look inside and commit.  

When we combine these kinds of midrashic moves and many statements about faith, generally not a major Jewish preoccupation, this book lacks a strong Jewish sense.  The book favors a Christian audience.  I am in favor of taking our Jewish texts and promoting the universal elements found within in them, and connections with other religious traditions.  But this book goes too far off the cliff.  

Rabbi Arthur Green does a far better job balancing Jewish vs Universalism.  Just read his recent book Judaism for the World.  He balances the particularly Jewish with the widely Universal as if he was walking on a high wire.