Too Much Company

 

The Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga by Sylvain Tesson, as the title suggests, documents the author’s six-month stay in a cabin in Siberia.  An interesting book.  Tesson is not a run-of-the-hill hermit.   He drinks a lot of vodka, he visits his distant neighbors.  He certainly feels the highs and lows of solitary living, but you could hardly say he spent six months alone in a cabin. He was still part of a real (although far-flung) community of fellow cabin dwellers.  So if you are looking for the musing of the religiously isolated individual, this is not the book for you.  Tesson writes well about topics you would expect in such a book, but he has too much company.

A Crushing Condemnation

 

I was certainly aware of the complicity of the Roman Catholic Church in the rise of fascism in Italy, and totalitarian (non-communist) states elsewhere before (and during) the Second World War, but until reading this book I never knew the extent.  The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer is eye-opening.  The Vatican worked closely with Mussolini for the benefits it could derive from the Fascist movement. This work is a crushing condemnation of the Church and its recent history of organized antisemitism.

The Multiplier Effect

1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed: Revised and Updated by Eric H. Cline documents what is probably the first collapse of what we now call a world order, the Bronze Age.  In the past, scholars looked for one reason for this collapse and usually hung the blame on the so-called Sea Peoples and their seemingly omnipresent invasions.  

Now history and historians are pivoting and realizing that it is usually a bundle of factors that produce societal collapse, as events like climate change, warfare, migrations, earthquakes, pandemics, and volcanic eruptions, interact to create multiplier and domino effects. 

This sounds a great deal like our world, does it not?  This appears to be Cline’s thesis. Is our world too “complex” to survive?  Have our multipliers gotten out of hand?   Are dominos starting to fall?  We really won’t know until we can’t read anymore, and new Homers are singing of a lost golden age.

The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth by Jay Michaelson

 

The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth by Jay Michaelson is quite a wild ride.  This is even more impressive as this is an academic book, unlike the bulk of Michaelson’s other work.  So there is the paraphernalia of academic productions, footnotes, and references to other scholars you have probably not read.  Usually, this slows down a text.

Despite this, Michaelson's book moves along and shines a lively and fascinating light on the “heresy” of Jacob Frank, which is little known to people or Jews at large.  What he reveals is unexpected.  Frank’s final teaching, written in Polish, is a compendium of bravado, materialist explications of the universe, odd folklore, and, most importantly, a decisive turn from both Judaism and the teaching of Sabbetai Zevi. In the end, what we get is something that is hard to explain but extremely fascinating.  Frank’s writing, according to Michaelson’s read, did not cause many modern trends in Judaism but anticipated them. 

Michaelson appears to be teaching us that (ultimately many) mainstream notions have heretical roots.  

What is This?

 

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is part prophecy, poem, prose, heresy, and a deep invocation of religious/spiritual life, with all its joys and pitfalls.  I am still absorbing what I read; this book needs to be read again and again.

After the Eclipse

 

It is hard not to come away from Sarah Perry’s After the Eclipse: A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search without feeling a complex set of emotions and thoughts.  The overwhelming feeling is of the gut punch of sorrow caused by the steep and terrible price of violence in human life – and in this case, in the lives of women.  

Perry titles her chapters before and after (her mother’s murder) signifying how that event was singular, worthy of a different reckoning of time.  This violent act is a marker of a new era.

Perry is an able writer, and she has organized this book so it rises above the genres it seems destined to fall into.  Yes, her memoir is about crime, violence, revenge, justice, and toxic masculinity… all we come to expect from such a book.  But the author transcends the expectations of the genre to create something far more complex, harrowing, and interesting.  

Off the Derech - And it is Fine

 

Enlightenment by Trial and Error: Ten Years on the Slippery Slopes of Jewish Spirituality, Postmodern Buddhism, and Other Mystical Heresies is fascinating and compelling.  The reader is struck by his ever-evolving evolution along the spiritual/religious/whatever path of the author.  Michaelson is relentless.  As I read, it became obvious that his quest (or non-quest) will go on and on. His derech is far from Orthodox – but for seekers or non-seeks or somehow both, this is an enriching and provocative work where no stone is left unturned.