Category Archives: Book Recommendations

“What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank” – By Nathan Englander – Book Review

24 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Book Recommendations, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories, Uncategorized

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What I appreciate most about Nathan Englander’s new collection of short stories, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank” (publ. Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), is not only his gifts as a writer, story teller and psychologically sophisticated observer of people, but that he actually knows something about Judaism, Jewish history, modern Orthodoxy, Ultra-Orthodoxy, the secular Jewish world, the state of Israel, and the place of the Holocaust in the psyche of the Jewish people.

Mr. Englander was born in 1960 in New York, raised on Long Island and educated in Orthodox schools through high school. In his mid-thirties, he moved to Israel where he lived for five years, but returned to the states and moves between Brooklyn, New York and Madison, Wisconsin where he teaches fiction and creative writing.

His Jewish/Israeli/secular background plays itself out in all his stories. He is at once an insider and outsider, sympathetic to the Jew as victim and vanquisher, and he knows Jewish tradition, though I suspect he  is no longer Orthodox himself. I sense, as well, that despite the darkness that undergird his stories, he sees the world through a comic and ironic eye as some of his stories are at once absurd and hysterical.

Englander’s eight stories, mostly involving Jewish characters and 20th century Jewish experience, touch upon many themes; the limits of love using the Holocaust as a backdrop in the title story (“What we Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank”); the very different fates and destinies that befall two Israeli sisters who move into the West Bank after the 1967 Six Day War with their husbands and children to establish a settlement that eventually grows into a city (“Two Sisters”) – one sister loses her husband and all her children in war and a freak accident and the other survives with 9 children; the revenge-filled encounter with an anti-Semitic bully in America that is reminiscent of Bernard Malamud (“How We Avenged the Blums”); a dream sexual fantasy of a married protagonist who has lost his faith but is still plagued by Orthodox Judaism’s moral strictures (“Peep Show”); the influence of a person’s family history, familial bonds and memory on his heart, mind and soul long after everyone has died (“Everything I know About My Family On My Mother’s Side”); the ease towards paranoia among Holocaust survivors who, in an unlikely setting of an American seniors summer camp, accuse another survivor of being a former Nazi (“Camp Sundown”); the pain and loneliness of a once famous writer whose fan base is now old, dying but ever-demanding (“The Reader”); and the legacy of the death camps on a boy survivor who returned after the liberation as the only one left in his family to his boyhood home to discover his “governess” plotting to murder him in order that her family will keep his family’s farm (“Free Fruit for Young Widows”).

Every story is provocative, imaginative, engaging, entertaining, moving, and memorable. As a whole, they challenge the modern Jew to think about the nature of one’s Jewish identity in modernity, the role of religion, God, faith, culture, and history in forming who we are, and our capacity for evil and revenge. These stories are complex and operate on multiple levels from the real to imaginary to allegorical. They will leave you impressed by Englander’s skills,  moved and wondering – who am I?

Two Narratives – Two Truths

22 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Book Recommendations, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Stories, Uncategorized

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Much will be said in the coming days and weeks about what negotiations mean, what Israel and the Palestinians are willing to do and give up, whether the gap is just too wide, and whether a two-state solution is possible given current thinking on both sides.

I have just begun reading an important new book published last year called Side By Side – Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine edited by Sami Adwan, Dan Bar-on (zal), and Eyal Naveh of the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME). Developed over the last 15 years by Palestinian and Israeli scholars and educators, this work represents a wholly new way of teaching the Middle East to Israeli and Palestinian High School students. Regardless of one’s identity, both sides likely will be surprised that, more often than not, each holds a one-dimensional view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that will obstruct peace-making.

The two narratives and interpretations of the meaning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are set side by side in 400 pages. Clearly, we live in two worlds and our understanding of the same historical events are very different.

Each side’s better understanding of the “narrative” of the other will hopefully result in a softening and opening of the heart to the other’s identity and experience.

No one in the Middle East wants to be a fry-ar (Israeli slang; “sucker”). Negotiations will be very difficult.

We here should be giving Secretary Kerry every benefit of the doubt in his efforts to facilitate negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians towards a two-state solution and a peaceful resolution of this conflict. Criticism of Kerry should be silenced. Mocking him, especially by Jewish media pundits should be quelled. What is important now is to support this renewal of negotiations. The alternative to a two states for two peoples resolution is more war, more suffering and a darkening of the landscape to death and the destruction of dreams.

“The Dead Sea Scrolls – A Biography” – Book Review and Recommendation

10 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Book Recommendations, Israel and Palestine, Jewish History, Jewish-Christian Relations, Uncategorized

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If you have ever wondered what is so significant about the Dead Sea Scrolls, arguably the most significant archeological discovery of the 20th century, and would like a handbook to explain it all, this book by Dr. John J Collins, Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale University, is for you.

The author has studied the more than 900 scrolls (some of them little more than fragments) for more than three decades. He tells the fascinating story of the discovery of the scrolls in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd looking for his lost goat, reviews all the theories about the small community at Qumran near the Dead Sea whose nearby caves kept the scrolls preserved for 2000 years, and describes the bitter battles swirling among Christian and western scholars since the scrolls were first discovered.

These scrolls are among the most famous archeological finds ever, and Dr. Collins explains why:

“The reason why the Scrolls…caught the imagination of the public is due to the fact that they come from a time and place of exceptional importance in the history of the Western world. As primary documents from Judea in the time of Jesus, they offer a window on the context in which Christianity was born, if not directly on the movement itself. More directly, they give us an unprecedented view of what Judaism was like before the destruction of Jerusalem and the rise of the rabbinic movement…before the church and synagogue constructed their official genealogies. The stakes, then, for both Judaism and Christianity are considerable, since the new discoveries potentially place official accounts in question and undercut the authority of religious authorities.” (p. 236-7)

A central figure that appears in many of the scrolls who was called “The Teacher of Righteousness” has inspired many Christians to believe that this was another name for Jesus, but there were a number of people at the time who were regarded as Messiah figures and there is no credible evidence that clearly identifies this figure as the Christian Savior. The question is, was this community Jewish or proto-Christian? Dr. Collins, a practicing Catholic, is categorical:

“As scholars have increasingly recognized in the last quarter century, the Scrolls are documents of ancient Judaism. Despite sensationalist claims, they are not Christian, and do not witness directly to Jesus of Nazareth and his followers. Nonetheless, they illuminate the context in which Jesus lived, and in which earliest Christianity took shape.” (p. 240)

The scrolls include portions of every Biblical book, except the book of Esther, along with many other manuscripts that have been found nowhere else. They are primarily sectarian documents (though some are apocalyptic) and delineate rules governing the behavior of those who lived in the Qumran community. Dr. Collins notes that the Essene sect, as they are known, came into being because of disagreements with other Jews on the exact interpretation of the Torah, the proper cult calendar and the state of the Temple cult in Jerusalem. It did not come into being because it believed in the coming of the messiah or the final battle between the sons of Light and the sons of Darkness.

Though not mentioned explicitly in Hebrew or Aramaic sources (nor, for that matter in the New Testament), the Essenes are known in Greek and Latin sources including Philo, Josephus and Pliny. Collectively, these ancient authors described virtuous cult members who refrained from animal sacrifices and spurned city life, who spent their time praying and copying texts, who shared common meals, eschewed ownership of property, held no weapons of war, rejected slavery, and were concerned about ethics. It is debatable about the degree of monasticism in the community, as suggested by the female skeletal remains in the Qumran cemetery, though some may have been married with children while others were celibate and misogynist.

As is the case today, there was great diversity in the Judaism of the era:

“Rival sects and parties hated each other with a perfect hatred. Nonetheless, there were also unifying factors— the belief in a single God, shared scriptures, widespread concerns about purity and correct observance,…shared ethnic identity. The people were arguably extremists who disagreed with the ruling priests in Jerusalem in particular around the setting of the Jewish calendar.“ (p. 179)

The Essenes vanished from history after 200 years and had little discernible influence on later Jewish tradition. The movement separated itself from the priestly traditions in Jerusalem and from the emerging Pharisaic rabbinic tradition that focused on interpreting the fine points of the Oral and Written Laws. In the end, the Essene cult was a small sectarian movement outside mainline Judaism and too extreme to have enduring appeal.

This very readable volume explains it all, and I recommend it both to students of the Temple period, early rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity, and anyone else who wants to understand what the Dead Sea Scrolls are really all about.

“Born on a Blue Day” – by Daniel Tammet – Book Recommendation

21 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by in Beauty in Nature, Book Recommendations, Health and Well-Being, Stories

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“Born on a Blue Day” (publ. 2007) is an extraordinary memoir written by a young British autistic savant, Daniel Tammet. His mental capacities are so remarkable that he was able to recite Pi to the 22,514th digit and holds the British and European record.

The author writes about his unique way of thinking called “synesthesia,” in which he sees numbers, letters and musical notes as colors and shapes. One of about 100 people in the world with his abilities, scientists believe that they are a consequence of hyperactivity in his brain’s left pre-frontal cortex.

Tammet is able to multiply vast numbers without having to write anything down. He is a gifted linguist and is fluent in 10 languages – English, Finnish, French, German, Lithuanian, Esperanto, Spanish, Romanian, Welsh, and Icelandic (which he learned to speak in one week!).

As a child his father introduced him to chess by taking him to the local chess club. Daniel was instructed by one of the older members and after familiarizing himself with the moves of the different pieces and then visualizing them moving in mathematical configurations, he beat his teacher in his first game. He went on to win many matches.

This engaging memoir tells the often painful story of Daniel growing up, isolated because of autism, Asperger’s and an early epileptic episode that almost killed him. As a child he was so unusual that he had no friends, which he did not miss because he was happy spending time alone in his room thinking.

Daniel only learned to become empathic (a problem for those with autism and Asperger’s) by associating his feelings about numbers and colors to feelings others experience in their lives. He wrote:

“Emotions can be hard for me to understand or know how to react to, so I often use numbers to help me. If a friend says they feel sad or depressed, I picture myself sitting in the dark hollowness of number 6 to help me experience the same sort of feeling and understand it. If I read in an article that a person felt intimidated by something, I imagine myself standing next to the number 9. Whenever someone describes visiting a beautiful place, I recall my numerical landscapes and how happy they make me feel inside. By doing this, numbers actually help me get closer to understanding other people.”

Daniel describes his obsessive and compulsive need for order and routine in life, explaining:

“I eat exactly 45 grams of porridge for breakfast each morning; I weigh the bowl with an electronic scale to make sure. Then I count the number of items of clothing I’m wearing before I leave my house. I get anxious if I can’t drink my cups of tea at the same time each day. Whenever I become too stressed and I can’t breathe properly, I close my eyes and count. Thinking of numbers helps me to become calm again. Numbers are my friends, and they are always around me. Each one is unique and has its own personality… No matter what I’m doing, numbers are never very far from my thoughts.”

Tammet is often poetic, especially when describing his love of numbers and words through color and texture:

“There are moments, as I’m falling into sleep at night that my mind fills suddenly with bright light and all I can see are numbers — hundreds, thousands of them — swimming rapidly over my eyes. The experience is beautiful and soothing to me. Some nights, when I’m having difficulty falling asleep, I imagine myself walking around my numerical landscapes. Then I feel safe and happy. I never feel lost, because the prime number shapes act as signposts.”

Despite his Asperger’s and autism, Daniel lives independently. When he was in his early 20s he told his parents that he was gay, soon fell in love, and moved in with his lover/partner.

Daniel Tammet is a wonderful story teller, and to read his words is to enter a unique world. He is a descriptive, honest and often touchingly vulnerable writer.

People have often asked him how he feels about being a human “guinea pig” to scientific researchers of the human brain. He does not mind because he knows that what is learned will expand knowledge of how the brain works. He is also interested in understanding himself better and says he wrote this book so that his family will understand him better.

This memoir is not only a fascinating read, but is important in understanding a true savant and the condition of autism and Asperger’s.

You can read an excerpt from “Born on a Blue Day” here:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/story?id=2794451&page=1#.UcJHOdjm9I0

 
 

“A German Life – Against All Odds, Change is Possible” by Bernd Wollschlaeger – Book Recommendation

14 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Book Recommendations, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Stories

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Bernd Wollschlaeger, born in 1958 in the small German town of Bamberg, is the son of a former Nazi tank commander and member of one of the elite units of the Wehrmacht, the Germany army, for which he was awarded the Knight’s Cross personally by Hitler.

Bernd loved his parents and admired his father, but growing up he needed to know all about what his father refused to discuss with him, what the Nazis did to Europe, Germany and the Jews, and what was his role.

When Palestinian terrorists murdered Israel’s Olympic athletes in 1972, the German press noted that again Jews had been killed in Germany. The fourteen year-old Bernd wanted to know what that meant. However, he could not get a straight answer from his parents. What he learned about the Third Reich at school horrified him. When he asked his father about German crimes his father told him that Bernd’s “teachers were all communists and liars and that a Holocaust never actually existed.”

Curious too about Judaism and Jewish faith, Bernd sought out a small orthodox Jewish community in his home town where he met and befriended a Holocaust survivor who began to teach him Judaism. Increasingly rejected by his own family, these mostly elderly Jews became Bernd’s new family.

One day he read about a peace conference being held in a nearby German town for Israeli Jewish and Arab youth organized by Neve Shalom. He decided to attend and from that point on his life would never be the same again. He now wanted to visit Israel.

In 1978 Bernd sailed to the Holy Land. He was reunited with his Israeli and Palestinian friends, fell in love with Vered, one of the young Israeli women, visited his Palestinian friend Chalil, and prayed at the Kotel. There, before the ancient stone wall he felt a spiritual stirring he had never known before. A kindly Orthodox man, watching him in his reverie, approached and encouraged him to seek out and reclaim his n’shamah, his Godly soul.

Bernd returned to Germany, completed his medical degree, converted to Judaism, and made aliyah. These acts severed whatever bond was left with his father and family.

In Israel, Bernd joined the Israeli Defense Forces as a medical officer, served for two years in the West Bank during the first Intifada, married and had a son.

The First Gulf War frightened his American-born wife, and so with a heavy heart he agreed for her sake to move to Florida. They divorced three years later. Bernd remarried and had two more Jewish children. Today he is a practicing family physician and an addiction specialist.

Bernd wrote of his remarkable journey, love of Judaism and Israel, and self-search:

“Initially, I came to seek answers about the Shoah, the crimes committed by Germans against [the Jewish] people, and of course the role my father played during that part of German history. Now I feel that there are other issues I need to explore. Why am I so attracted to this country? Why do I feel at home here? Why does Jewish faith and prayer seem to touch something deep inside me? Now I am searching for who I am. Since we’ve been here in Jerusalem, I’ve felt so close to finding it, but I still don’t know….

Many stories have been told by survivors, but this memoir (publ. by Emor Publishing, 2007) is the first I have read written by a child of a perpetrator.

When his own children asked about his family past, Bernd vowed not to do as his parents had done:

“I decided to break the wall of silence and tell them the truth about me. I needed to express what compelled me to dramatically change my life. I finally had to explore the relationship with my father and how it was overshadowed by the Holocaust. Our unresolved conflict and his denial motivated me to search for answers, and I found them within me and my acquired faith: Against all odds, change is possible…”

Dr. Wollschlaeger spoke to my synagogue community during this year’s Yom Hashoah Commemoration. We came to know of him from our member, Claudia Ehrlich Sobral, a child of survivors and a documentary film maker who produced “Ghosts of the Third Reich” which highlights Bernd and several other descendents of high ranking Nazis confronting the legacy that each carries.

Bernd’s courage to confront the truth and the transformation he underwent in order  to create a new life despite his family’s past amazes and inspires. His memoir will move you and I recommend it.

Hag Shavuot Sameach!

“Sacred Housekeeping – a spiritual memoir” by Harriet Rossetto – Book Recommendation

03 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Book Recommendations, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Life Cycle, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories, Uncategorized

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Harriet Rossetto was a bright Jewish kid with success written all over her. Like other young women growing up in the early 1960s, she went to college, got married, had a child, and hoped to live happily ever after. It didn’t turn out quite that way, but today she is more fulfilled than she ever expected to be.

Harriet is the CEO and Founder of Los Angeles’ renowned non-profit drug and alcohol treatment organization called Beit T’shuvah (House of Return), the only institution of its kind for Jews in the US. She earned an MSW and then, as she describes her life at 45, she became unemployed and homeless, hitting rock bottom. From that place one day she picked up an LA Times classified ad for a job as a Social Worker at the county jail. The ad specified the need for “a person of Jewish background and culture to help incarcerated Jewish offenders. MSW required.”

That turned out to be a fateful day. The job, working with Jewish addicts and cons, led Harriet to found Beit T’shuvah and meet her husband and partner, himself an addict and con, who would eventually be ordained Rabbi Mark Borovitz.

Harriet is brutally honest and self-revealing about herself, her struggles, her life and addictions. She also speaks movingly of the central role her return to Judaism played in her journey, offering the essence of what she discovered this way:

“Judaism began to rest on a few core beliefs that helped me redefine my perception of myself, of others and of the purpose of life.

I matter. You matter. I have a holy soul. I am imperfect by design. My value is a birthright. Change is possible and mandatory. Right action is the bridge to wholeness of self.”

Harriet recognizes that her formerly negative view of life, that “nothing matters and who cared anyway, had been shifting: Everything [now] mattered, I realized. Everything. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: something sacred is at stake in every event.”

Hers and Mark’s quest turned out to be the classical Jewish mystical quest, to confront both the darkness and light in the individual soul, and to struggle towards the light.

It is an irony that this child of middle class Jewish parents found her most natural home among addicts. She identified with them, struggled along with them, hit bottom like them, and became their teacher and guide:

“My qualification to be your life teacher is I have been where you are. I’ve seen it all. I know your torment, your war against yourself. I have battle-hardened experience and I still struggle every day. And I have learned how to live an integrated life. You will too. You are sure that whatever you’re addicted to is the only thing that will relieve the misery of your emptiness, the hole that aches. Without (fill in your own blanks) drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, food, money, power and prestige… there is no reason to get up in the morning….you will want to use again, and you might. But if you don’t, one day you will start to feel better. Alive again, in fact.”

Harriet teaches that, similar to other 12 step programs, “faith in a Power greater than oneself was necessary in order to stay sober. The addict has to learn how to live from within and stop seeking external solutions to internal discomfort.”

Unlike other 12 step programs, hers is based in Torah and Judaism:

“Torah is the Big book of Jewish recovery from human broken-ness. We believe if you can see yourself in every Parsha it is the Path to Shalem (wholeness) and Shalom (Peace of Mind.)”

Those accepted into Beit T’shuvah for treatment are required to live according to strict rules of the house. Prayer, meditation and learning Torah are essential components of daily life, alongside productive work, therapy and mutual support.

Beit T’shuvah is funded solely by voluntary contributions. No one is turned away because of inability to pay. Grateful parents and grandparents, foundations and friends support it because it works.

Harriet’s spiritual memoir is a moving tale of ongoing recovery; hers, Rabbi Mark’s, and all those who pass through. Her story, though unique and extraordinary, in truth is everyone’s story because each of us can locate ourselves somewhere along that continuum of addiction to non-addiction. We’re all broken somehow. All of us yearn for healing and liberation from our personal Mitzrayim (“Egypt” – lit. “the narrow constricted places” that enslave us and bow our heads).

Harriet’s book is one more thing – It is a moving testimony to the capacity of each one of us to lift ourselves up, turn our lives around, one step at a time, one day at a time, one moment at a time.

Yasher kochachechem, Harriet and Mark!

“How To Be A Friend To A Friend Who’s Sick” – Book Recommendation

27 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Book Recommendations, Health and Well-Being, Life Cycle, Stories, Uncategorized

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Letty Cottin Pogrebin has written an indispensable guide when a member of one’s family or a dear friend becomes ill or suffers a tragic death. In great detail she offers counsel on what to do, say and not say, how to respond and be the friend the stricken most needs.

Letty is a founding editor of Ms Magazine, an award winning journalist, a non-fiction and fiction writer (this is her 10th book), a political and peace activist, and a loving wife, mother, grandmother, and friend.

As a rabbi who confronts every kind of illness, trauma, disability, and loss, I have not seen a more complete and exhaustive guide than this book on how we can all help each other when we are in need of a friend.

Letty is insightful, intuitive, generous, kind, empathetic, warm hearted, and loving. She is refreshingly self-revealing in this book and so the book is also an autobiographical chronicle, which gives the reader permission to be vulnerable and to share with our own loved ones our vulnerabilities and needs.

She was moved to write this volume after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009. During and after treatment Letty was struck by how her family and friends reacted to her, how awkward some were and how others understood what she needed and how to help, support and nurture her.

In her research she spoke with more than 80 fellow patients, family and friends who had had cancer, heart disease, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s, Crohn’s Disease, diabetes, MS, Parkinson’s Disease, mental illness, dementia, catastrophic financial ruin, and the death of children. She interviewed doctors, nurses, and hospital workers, clergy of various faith traditions, and complete strangers. She learned the Do’s and Don’ts of interacting with the ill and their families, that there is no one template on how to behave, that everyone has different needs, and that sensitive friends will thoughtfully think through what makes sense for the individuals they love and what are their unique needs, and then behave accordingly.

“The stories I collected from others,” she wrote, “helped me understand my own reactions and fueled my determination to be a better friend to my ailing friends. Among other lessons, I learned that it’s not enough to be a good hearted person if you’re oblivious to the pain in someone’s eyes; that friendship can nourish, help, and heal but also disappoint and suffocate. With every interview I marveled at how thin and permeable is the membrane between good intentions and bad behavior, how human it is to be both strong and vulnerable, and how people process the sickness, stress, and sorrow of their friends in many different ways.”

Letty considers every conceivable aspect of how to refine the art of friendship when a dear one becomes ill or suffers loss. She reviews “Goofs, Gaffes, Platitudes, Faux Pas, Blunders, Blitherings – and Finding the Right Words at the Right Time.” She reflects on what to ask of a patient and what to avoid saying. She offers a list of “Ten Commandments for Conversing with a Sick Friend” and enumerates who should visit and what constitutes a “good visit.” Her list of “Twenty Rules for Good Behavior While Visiting the Sick, Suffering, Injured, or Disabled” is a common sense guide that even those with plenty of sechel are well-advised to review.

Letty considers as well the differences between men and women in their coping with illness, about the importance of being sensitive to a person’s shame and/or need for privacy, and the necessity that friends always “show up.”

She writes: “Entering other people’s truth, I learned that illness is friendship’s proving ground, the uncharted territory where one’s actions may be the least sure-footed but also the most indelible; that illness tests old friendships, gives rise to new ones, changes the dynamics of a relationship, causes a shift in the power balance, a reversal of roles, and assorted weird behaviors; that in the presence of a sick friend, fragile folks can get unhinged and Type A personalities turn manic in order to compensate for their impotence; and that hale fellows can become insufferably paternalistic, and shy people suddenly wax sanctimonious.”

Letty not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. When I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in early 2009 requiring surgery and radiation (I am fine now) just before Letty’s own diagnosis, she was an attentive friend from across the country. Supportive, nurturing and kind I felt seen and cared about that inspires my gratitude still.

What she learned subsequent to her own diagnosis deepened her capacity and understanding not only of what she needed, but what others need. Now she has written a book that offers the reader the benefits of her experience, wisdom and love.

I recommend this volume without reservation.

“Open Heart” by Elie Wiesel – Book Review

03 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by in Book Recommendations, Health and Well-Being, Jewish History, Life Cycle, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Uncategorized

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This little volume reminds me of a conversation once between Picasso and an art critique who asked the Master how long it took him to draw a piece that had only a few lines evoking the image of a man. Picasso said, “A life-time.”

So too is Elie Wiesel’s new book in which he reflects on the meaning of his life following emergency open heart surgery on June 16, 2011.

The volume is vintage Elie Wiesel. The writing is simple, the scope sweeping.

Upon awakening from the anesthetic he remembers thinking “…I am not dead yet. What does being resuscitated mean if not rediscovering one’s future?”

The book is a positive, optimistic expression of a grateful man. Eighty two years have not nearly been enough. He admits to having more words to write and teach, more to learn, and more love to share.

For me, Elie’s most moving passage is his description of what happened when his five year old grandson, Elijah, came to pay him a visit during his recovery: “I hug him and tell him, ‘Every time I see you, my life becomes a gift.’”

“President Obama’s must-read primer on clearing ‘Pathways to Peace’” – Haaretz Review

07 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Book Recommendations, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

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Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Egypt Dan Kurtzer is convinced that Middle East peacemaking is ‘in Obama’s guts.’ His new book aims to show the president how to move forward in “Pathways to Peace – America and the Arab-Israeli Conflict”. (Reviewed by Chemi Shalev in Haaretz – http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/president-obama-s-must-read-primer-on-clearing-pathways-to-peace.premium-1.482675)

If you read only one book on the Middle East this year, let this one be it. It has been sent to the Obama Administration and members of Congress.

The only reasonable conclusion to draw after reading this book is that the time is now to enter into final status negotiations between Israel and Palestine and that only strong American pressure will bring this about.

Essays are written by American, Israeli and Palestinian experts. All of them are compelling and enlightening. For me, as part of the pro-Israel pro-peace progressive Zionist community, the essays written by Palestinians are among the most enlightening because the Palestinian narrative is quite different from the Israel narrative.

The book argues effectively that the past cannot be prologue to the future. What is important now is what happens going forward. Playing the blame game for past failures at peace negotiations will doom future talks and a successful two-state solution, which is in the best interests of Israel, the Palestinians, the United States, Europe, and all moderate Arab countries. The alternative to a two-state solution is endless war, bloodshed and despair. What will be lost as well will be the Zionist dream of creating a Jewish democratic state in our national home after 2000 years of exile.

Ambassador Daniel Kurzter has done a significant service in the cause of  peace. Kol hakavod to him!

“The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian’s Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker” by Sami Al Jundi and Jen Marlow

26 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by in Book Recommendations, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Social Justice

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Sami Al Jundi’s story is the most remarkable memoir I have read coming out of the Palestinian experience. For those who care about ending the violence, enmity, occupation, and repression that characterize the Israeli-Palestinian context, I recommend this book highly.

The book is not, however, for the faint of heart. There are passages difficult to stomach including a detailed description of Sami’s torture by both Israeli security officials and Palestinian Authority police (yes – he was abused by both). Indeed, Sami spares no one, Israelis, Palestinians and “do-good” Americans who he believed did not fully understand the depth of enmity between the peoples and what is necessary to transform the relationship if peace is to be realized.

Sami was born into a loving family in the old city of Jerusalem in 1961. As a child, like many Palestinian children living under occupation, he became radicalized and participated in rock throwing against Israeli soldiers. When he was 17, he was arrested after a bomb he and two friends were making and planning to detonate in an Israeli vegetable market blew up in their faces. One friend was killed and Sami was wounded. He was arrested at the hospital, interrogated and tortured by Israeli security police, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to 10 years in an Israeli prison.

Once in prison he discovered that his fellow Palestinian political prisoners (as opposed to common criminals) had created a democratic system that included a highly sophisticated and intensive educational program. Sami read 300 pages a day for 10 years in world history, philosophy, psychology, French and Arabic literature, and poetry, as well as the Torah, New Testament and Qur’an. As a result he began to rethink relations between individuals and peoples.

Despite his violent past, Sami was drawn to the non-violent thought of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King. Upon release from prison, Sami was committed to non-violence and became involved with the “Palestinian Center for Non-Violence in Jerusalem.” The Center’s purpose was:

“Throw flowers, not stones, at soldiers at demonstrations. Force them to see our humanity…be stronger than your opponent – do not respond to their violence with your own….the occupation must end and there must be equal rights for both peoples living in this land. The message will be stronger if it is delivered using nonviolent methods.”

Noting the influence of two Persian dualist philosophers, Mani (3rd century CE) and Mazdak (6th century CE), Sami wrote:

“Everyone … has light and darkness inside them. Even the darkest heart always has some small point of light. We have to help them find their light also. And then it will grow. This is the essence of nonviolence. Not to fight the person, but to fight the darkness in his heart. The only way to do this is through growing his light… The only way to change their behavior is if we’re willing to talk to each other, to build respect for each other as human beings.” (p. 210)

Sami was disgusted by violence of all kinds, be it perpetrated by Palestinian suicide bombers, Israeli settlers, the Israeli Defense Forces, and the Palestinian Authority police.

Soon after its founding in 1993 by the American journalist John Wallach (who was my congregant when I served at the Washington Hebrew Congregation in DC), Sami became the supervisor of the “Seeds of Peace Center for Coexistence in East Jerusalem.” The program was founded upon the idea that when young people from enemy communities have an opportunity to meet each other on neutral ground as equals, talk, argue, listen, and spend time together, they develop empathy for the other and consequently become friends, which Seeds of Peace affirms is the basis for the peaceful resolution of conflict between individuals and peoples.

It was at the Center that Sami met the American author/documentary filmmaker/playwright Jen Marlowe, who was on staff, with whom he co-authored this book.

Though Sami eventually would leave Seeds of Peace, the reasons for which he describes in detail, the Seeds program has expanded over the 20 years of its existence to include 5000 alumni from 27 nations. (See http://www.seedsofpeace.org/about)

The resolution to the memoir is as unfinished as is the lack of a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Though I do not know Sami or Jen personally, I would imagine that they would both affirm that now, especially in the wake of the violence in Gaza, is not the time to desist from efforts for Israelis and the Palestinians to make peace.

As they have stated, our two peoples are destined to live together side by side on the land we each claim as our national home. Programs such as Seeds of Peace and the Palestinian Center for Non-Violence represent among the few shining lights remaining in the darkness of the human heart within the Israeli-Palestinian context and thus are our greatest hope.