The Cost of Memory and Abuse

 

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi is a novel whose particulars I would rather not get into too deeply, for if I do so it will ruin major plot points of the book.  This is certainly a worthy book to read, for as you read it, you realize that something is going on here that is not quite as it seems.  This novel is about how we tell stories, how we suppress painful memories, how we make excuses for men in power and their behavior toward women in those stories.  After reading this book, a good review of it might help answer some of the questions about its structure that Choi leaves unanswered.

If a dead body is found on the ground

 

Typically, I would not read a book like The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia by Emma Copley Eisenberg.  Titles of books with ‘girls’ (when really, they are women) are going to venture into the exploitation of women under the guise of true crime titillation.

But Eisenberg has subverted and complicated the genre in her work.  This is a far more nuanced view of crimes against women.  Eisenberg examines her own time in rural West Virginia against the backdrop of the Rainbow murders and comes out the other side with complicated observations and experiences.  

Some of her most intense relationships are with the men of the region, and they are often loving and tender.  They are also shades of menace. There is real ambiguity in her experiences with the men of West Virginia.  

But there is more. Eisenberg shows that violent crime exacts a price on everyone.  The biblical writers knew this centuries ago: in Deuteronomy 21 we can read of a rite to be enacted when a body is found in a field.  We all feel something is needed when a murder is left unsolved.  We should sacrifice a heifer by a creek. We should atone for the murder we cannot solve.

Being Elijah

 

Daniel C. Matt is one of the most knowledgeable, intelligent, and versatile scholars of Jewish history, so I had no doubt that his Becoming Elijah: Prophet of Transformation would be a worthy read.  Matt traces the history of one of Judaism’s most enigmatic figures, from his sudden appearance in the Book of Kings to the semi-divine hero of Jewish folklore and mysticism.

Matt is uniquely qualified to take us on this journey, and he does so entertainingly and with great skill.

Static Categories are Dead

 

Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global by Alanna E. Cooper is a fascinating dive into a Jewish community that is not widely known.  And that is part of what her whole thesis is about:  what is the “dynamic” of Jewish communities and this thing called world Jewry?  What can we say about the Burkharan community of Jews in an informed way?

Cooper, along with many other scholars studying Jewish communities and topics, no longer postulates an entity like Jewish Culture, or normative Judaism.  Really, we have an interplay between different varieties of Judaism that are in constant conversation with each other; elements of communal Judaism across the globe are evolving through time, shifting, and changing. The time of static historical categories is over.

Avoiding Justice American Style

 

Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen is an eye opening read.  I was always aware that the United States recruited Nazi scientists following the Second World War, but I never knew the extent.  It is far more than Werner von Braun, his rockets and slave labor, and he was bad enough.

Our government actively recruited known war criminals for the sake of what we now call national security.  It was more important to produce weapons grade sarin gas ahead of the Soviets than prosecute criminals.  

This was morally abhorrent then, and looking back, it is even worse.  So many of these programs were unnecessary.  The Nixon administration, at great cost, dismantled our biological and chemical weapons.  Jacobsen’s book shows how under the guise of national security our government essentially helped Nazis  avoid justice.  And we are no safer.