Surviving Progress

This is one of the better documentaries I have seen on the nature of our planet's problems, which connects with our economic models, our theories of human motivations, our history as a species, our cognitive abilities and inabilities, or strengths and weaknesses as a species.

Hunting Evil

Despite the unfortunate, salacious title, cover art and design, Guy Walters’ book “Hunting Evil: The Nazi war criminals who escaped and the hunt to bring them to justice,” is a sober and well-written account which debunks much of the mythology and legend that surrounds this subject.

Walters spends much time deconstructing the Odessa myth, the organized "rat lines" which helped Nazis escape to South America following the war.  As we now know, the escape routes were far more ad hoc, the organizers not wealthy Fourth Reich functionaries, but more like an old boy network, men helping their former colleagues out of a bind.

Walters spends a great deal of time deflating Simon Wiesenthal and his efforts to bring Nazi’s to justice.  This was done in Tom Segev’s biography of Wiesenthal; but Walters draws no quarter, seeing Wiesenthal as little more than a liar and charlatan who hurt the cause of Nazi hunting. 

While deflating both sides of the Nazi catching game, Walters also shows something that is all too depressing (and found in other sources): how few genocidal Nazis were actually caught, prosecuted, and served real time in jail.   

The Cold War years took the Nazi hunting zeal out of the US intelligence community.   The communist threat took front and center, and American intelligence would even used mass murderers, like Klaus Barbie, as agents.

Theosophy of Habad Hasidism

Rachel Elior’s The Paradoxical Ascent to God: The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad Hasidism, is a scholarly treatment of early Habad thought on the nature of God, and its expression in religious practice.

The title reveals much of thesis.  Merging with God, devekut, is strongly stressed in Habad, often in linear language.  One ascends to God, moves up to God; but in reality, God is everywhere in Habad theology, so there is no up, no down.   

The struggle between God as transcendent and imminent, as separate from the world and as permeating the world, guides Elior’s study.  She explores how early Habad struggled with its own unique conception of a God as both present and absent from the world.

On the negative side, Elior repeats herself a great deal.  This book would have made an excellent long paper, but in book form, it often covers the same or similar ground.  She also tends to treat the material a-historically, not giving enough context for when and where the text she is studying was produced and read.  

At times this gives the book the feel of a high end manual on Habad practice and thought, and not an historical study.

The Language of Truth

Rabbi Arthur Green took on a monumental task of culling, translating, and interpreting selections from Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter's Sefet Emet, or the Language of Truth. This original work by the Hasidic master covers several volumes; Green distills it to 407 pages, with the Hebrew original at the back of the book.

It is easy to see why Rabbi Green decided to take the Sefet Emet and translate it for a wider audience. It fits with Rabbi Green's conception of Jewish Renewal and Neo-Hasidism. In the selections Green has picked, the Sefet Emet is uncannily post-modern.

The book is concerned with the internal life of people, with universal themes of commonality, does not, generally, posit a vertical conception of God, but a panentheistic one. The Sefer Emet does what every true Torah book should do: it takes tradition as the jumping off point to greater explorations of the theme of Judaism in its own time. It adds novel twists to old traditions.

And Green is an excellent guide. He realizes our Jewish sensibilities are atrophied; his commentaries on the commentaries are vital to understanding this book.

Israeli Stories: The Best Israeli Stories Today (not really)

Israeli Stories: The Best Israeli Stories Today, is presented as a recent collection, but it actually dates from 1962, giving it a dated flavor. Some of the major figures we associate with Israeli fiction are not in this collection (Oz and Yehushua, to name two). So, this book is not really about today, but yesterday.

Yet there are great stories in here, worth reading. Most reflect the world of British Mandate Palestine and the very early years of the state. As such, we are seeing conflicts enacted which show struggles that happened a hundred years ago, in some cases.

Genocide in the Twentieth Century: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts

Genocide in the Twentieth Century: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts is a fitting title for this collection, since genocide is one of the salient, dominating features of the twentieth century. Certainly, there were attempts be one group of people to eradicate the existence of another, but in the last century industrialization and mobilization allowed this to occur on a vast, unprecedented scale.

This book grapples with the term genocide, trying to find a firm meaning for the act, and settling on a pretty wide view. It covers the genocide of the Hereros people in Africa under the Germans at the turn of the twentieth century, the Armenian Genocide, the Soviet man made genocide in the Ukraine in the years between the wars, the Genocide of the Jews, Gypsies, and disabled people during the Second World War.

After the war years, it turns to other areas: The Indonesian Massacres in the 1960s, the Genocide in East Timor, Bangladesh in the early 1970s, Burundi, Cambodia, and of indigenous people the world over. The book was published in 1995, so the genocide of Bosnian Muslims is not a part of this collection.

Each section is an academic, historical investigation of an incident of Genocide, followed by eyewitness testimony. The book, in keeping with its stated mission, explores some of the motivations for genocide, and what can be done to prevent them.

The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

Famed historian Martin Gilbert sets out to document gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust in World War II in The Righteous.

Gilbert realizes this book is fraught with difficulties. By documenting the deeds of the brave few, we may forget that most of the world was indifferent, or in many cases, actively lent a hand in the extermination of Europe's Jews.

Yet Gilbert is compelled to tell the story of these non-Jewish rescuers. Correctly, I believe, Gilbert does not want acts of decency to become the unusual impulse when we examine the Holocaust. For then, behind our own backs, we excuse the butchery of the murders, considering their deeds to be "normal."

Gilbert does sacrifice detail for breadth in this work. He often spends just a paragraph or two on a particular rescue. This gives the book a flat feel, as if he is reading off a list. Only in very few instances does he get involved in the background of the rescuer and the rescued, giving the book a fuller feel.

Despite this, the book is an excellent survey on those who were brave enough to risk life to save fellow human beings during a time when most everyone else turned away.