Yekl Meets the Gradute

 

Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto by Abraham Cahan is such an expected piece of American literature of early twentieth-century immigrants, that there are few surprises here.  

The Yekl of the title comes to America, leaving behind, temporarily, his wife and young son.  As three years pass, he becomes Jake, abandons religious Judaism, and acts like a bachelor.  He is eager to Americanize.  His wife arrives, she is a greenhorn, and their relationship sours.  

Jake tries to get out of his marriage and begin a marriage with another, more worldly woman, but the results of this are uncertain.  The end of the novel has a The Graduate feel.  Jake has acted impulsively, and wonders if what will happen next will bring him happiness. 

Scriptorium: Poems by Melissa Range

 

Scriptorium: Poems by Melissa Range is an extraordinary collection.  In a small space, Range accomplishes very much.  She is able to craft poems that speak to her Appalachian upbringing, mixed with a range of English with an antiquated tone/sense, along with commentaries on the craft of the scribe in monasteries.  All these themes are seamlessly woven into one.  Range has provided poems that are similar yet expansive, and richly drawn. 

Judaisms

 

The study of Jewish history has always had to wrestle with the question of Jewish continuity across time and distance, and discontinuity and difference.  Cultures of the Jews: A New History edited by David Biale, takes more the former stance than the latter.  The scholars in this large volume, 1234 pages, generally see differences and disjuncture across Jewish time and space. But this is not uniformly held. Some Jewish communities had close ties to others at great distances and relied on each other on multiple levels.

But generally, the wide variety of "Judaisms" is explored here.  An overall, ideal form of “Judaism” does not float over these essays.  The plural of the title says it all.

Interesting... but Circular

 

The Original Torah: The Political Intent of the Bible's Writers (Reappraisals Jewish Social History) by S. David Sperling is a very good, interesting book, but like all books like this, who knows if it is true? I have no doubt that the writers of the bible often had a political intent behind the stories they told.  But what is our standard?  Sperling uses allegory to read political intent into certain stories, but for others, he uses those stories as sources for the allegorical stories.  This kind of reasoning is circular.

I really enjoy reading these types of books.  They help me understand the Tanakh in new and interesting ways.  But we won’t have any certainty about compositional issues of the bible until ancient versions of the documents, and the sources of the biblical text are discovered (an unlikely scenario),  Until then, books like this will be theoretical.  

Night in the American Village

 

Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa by Akemi Johnson shines a light on a part of American involvement in Asia that practically no Americans know about.  After the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, American forces remained on the island, and the bases have become a part of the island – both for good and ill.

Johnson presents a very balanced approach to Okinawa and the U.S. presence on the island.  She handles the horrific sexual assaults and murders of local women by American military personnel, but also shows how the American presence on the island is a boon to many local people; they are exposed to the wider world than most Japanese experience and benefit financially and socially from the Americans.

She also refuses to victimize the Okinawans.  She treats them as fully dimensional people, who are active in their own lives, and pursue their self-interests as they see them. 

The Rock Eaters: Stories

The Rock Eaters: Stories by Brenda Peynado is a fascinating, strange, and compelling set of stories. Even the average tales in this collection are unusual and provocative.  These strange tales ring true with today’s social issues and challenges. That said, these stories are inconsistent in quality. The very good ones are extremely accomplished, leaving the average ones looking very flat by comparison.  The uneven reading is a disappointment.

This is for Breslovers

 

Ozer Bergman has written a friendly and accessible book about hitbodedut, a Hebrew word usually translated as mediation and isolation and one of the primary spiritual tools used by Breslov Hasidim. Breslovers make it a daily practice to "talk" to God, alone in a room, or more desirably, in a forest or natural setting. This technique runs against the grain of Jewish communal values, but in the Breslov sitting, it fits well with their conception of God and the community of Israel.

This is not your typical New Age Jewish meditation book. Bergman writes in a homey and quaint fashion, but he is a practicing Bresolver, and would rather see us all follow Jewish law and practice so defined. He is kind, and wants us only to take on Jewish practices we are ready for, but it is obvious in this book that he would like more. Sex seems to be Bergman's particular fascination. He would like us to curb those impulses as much as possible. There are stark dualisms in his view of things. The body is subject to sin, corruption, or at least error, while the spirit is pure. For many, this view will be a turn off. This is not "holistic" or non-dual Judaism. There is an old-fashioned cosmology here.