November report, part 2 |

Please read my Part 1 report here. I read 13+ books last month!

I did two more small diamond paintings. We had Thanksgiving. I got new glasses with progressive lenses. We made cards for hospitalized kids and toiletry baskets for a place locally for family support services. We attended a Zoom Bat Mitzvah. We got a dog. Just kidding… seeing of you’re paying attention!

When you read this, I’ll be taking my final exam for Hebrew. Wish me luck!

We decided that for Chanukah this year, each of us is responsible for providing the other two family members a gift each night. The best is that Sweet Girl is personally making hers! She’s gotten very creative with the Cricket and making fun coupon books, recipe books, artwork, etc. When you have to manufacture 16 presents, you get off your phone and get busy! It was all her idea, so don’t feel too bad for her. We will also do our usual thing where we collect mail soliciting donations and rank them to distribute our giving amount.

I liked this article on BookRiot about strengthening your reading habits. I use Goodreads to keep track of what I’ve read and have also gotten into audiobooks.

There’s a new reading magazine in town from the independent bookstore collab Bookshop.org! It’s called Oh Reader and I just got the first issue. The magazine is about why we read, how people interact with books, the power of words, and the emotions that reading brings forth, etc. Click HERE for $10 off the price. Here’s the opening page and a couple of inside spreads:

On to the reviews…

Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho

This was named one of Amazon’s best books of November 2020 and was #3 on the NYT bestseller list.

“… we are living in an America that necessitated the Black Lives Matter movement, a country in which the simple declaration that people who look like me are worth saving has become controversial. Enough. I want to be a catalyst for change, to help cure the systemic injustices that have lead to the tragic deaths of too many of my brothers and sisters… inequalities in healthcare and education, the forced facts of who gets to live where, the ingrained ignorance of Americans who can’t see beyond skin color.

“I believe an important part of the cure, maybe the most crucial part of it, is to talk to each other… a two-way dialogue based on trust and respect, full of information exchanged and perspectives shared. The goal here is to build relationships, and ultimately, to help us recognize each other’s humanity.”

This is a real but compassionate look at the divide between Black and White Americans and some ideas for how to engage with each other better. Acho’s own background and education gives him a unique insight into both communities, and he answers questions many of us have but may be afraid to ask. He covers racism in 3 basic categories of racism: Individual (stereotyping and actions), Systemic, and Internalized.

I like that he has sections in each chapter called “Talk it, Walk it,” “Let’s Practice,” and “Let’s Get Uncomfortable.” This is a very practical book with lessons and strategies to use today. For example, in response to the BLM movement, saying that “all lives matter” is specifically denying the 400-year head start that some of us got and glosses over the entire history and presence of inequality.” Of course all lives matter, but that’s not what all the fuss is about!

“Fighting [racism] demands vigilance against its many changing forms… Though it’s been with us for more than 400 years… the fact that it was man-made gives me faith that we can still yet undo it. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but it’s important not to let that discourage you, but rather encourage you to stay in this long, noble fight.”

Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything by Viktor E. Frankl

For my Gratz class, we were asked to compare Lamentations to a modern text, and I intended to use Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, but searched my bookshelves and could not locate it. Instead, I decided to read this newly published (in English, at least) collection of his speeches that he began giving in Vienna in March of 1946, entitled Yes to Life In Spite of Everything. In it, we see Frankl’s life-affirming beliefs and his hopeful outlook despite his three years in four different concentration camps and the loss of his pregnant wife and family. (I read it in a couple of hours… I highly recommend it!)

Nothing was certain anymore in the post-war Europe where Frankl was speaking, “not life, not health, not happiness.” He describes the loss of money, power, fame until all that is left is “his essential self.” Existence “is nothing other than a decision.”

Daniel Goleman writes in the introduction that Frankl believed that “our unique strengths and weaknesses make each of us uniquely irreplaceable.” Each person’s point of view could help them survive, whether in concentration camps or anywhere, in any situation in the world. The inner ability to remain free in your own mind is what matters. “People are prepared to starve if starvation has a purpose or meaning.” Our perspective on life matters as much or more than what actually happens to us. Fate is what happens beyond our control, but we are responsible for how we relate to the events.

Frankl ends the small collection of his talks with an extremely optimistic tone, “people can still – despite hardship and death, despite suffering from physical or mental illness or under the fate of the concentration camp – say yes to life in spite of everything.” (p. 107)

He thinks we should turn around the question of “What can I expect from life?” to be “What does life expect from me?” “It is not we who are permitted to ask about the meaning of life – it is life that asks the questions.” (p.33) He equates living with being questioned. “Our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to – of being responsible toward – life. With this mental standpoint nothing can scare us anymore, no future, no apparent lack of a future.” (p. 33)

The Fire Within: The living heritage of the Musar Movement by Rabbi Hillel Goldberg

This is specifically for a Mussar student, so kind of a narrow audience I guess, but I loved reading about the revival of the Mussar movement in Lithuania in the 1800s and the generations of leadership following. The rabbis were such models of kindness and humility! Rabbi Goldberg will be speaking to our group of Mussar students this coming Sunday.

The Unexpected Road: Storied Jewish Lives Around the World by Rabbi Hillel Goldberg

This is a quick read, full of insightful and modern, real-life Mussar role models and how they impacted those around them. It was inspiring. Many of the profiles are people he knows personally and so he shares his memories and impressions. Very short chapters but full descriptions.

Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr

Turns out we grow spiritually when we stumble! Rohr has been a Franciscan priest for 40 years and has learned much from his own journey and those of his congregations. Generally, he posits that the first half of life consists of building your platform or container on a positive foundation, focusing on self-image, role, title, acquiring security. You form an identity and your values, develop an inner discipline, learn to respect authority, to trust, and to be part of something larger. This is a “false self.”

While the first half is ego-drawn, the second is soul-driven. This consists of a loosening grasp on order and self and a more open sense of acceptance and giving back, living your true purpose. Rather than distinguishing yourself, you look for harmony between groups. Less doing; more being. You have to go through suffering and leave home in order to come back home to yourself.

This is a very Mussar-like thought: “If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness! So that only the humble and the earnest will find it.”

“We are created with an inner drive and necessity that sends all of us looking for our true self, whether we know it or not. This journey is a spiral and never a straight line. We are created with an inner restlessness and call that urges us on to the risks and promises of a second half to our life.”

My favorite: “The truth that sets you free will first make you miserable.” Lol.

Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, may his memory be for a blessing.

This was just published in September, so it’s the last book of this international philosopher and teacher. I listened to him read it as an audio book… it’s 11 hours, some of which was tough to get through, but I did it!

Perhaps the greatest single threat to democracy in America is individualism, a situation in which people living apart become “strangers to the fate of all the rest.” “In such a situation, there is nothing standing between the individual and the state, and the result is that everything becomes politics, therefore a struggle for power, therefore divisive and abrasive. Hence the loss of civility.

“What has happened in the past half-century, despite the strength of the institutions such as religion, community, family, and the sense of the nation as a moral community, is that the “I” prevails over the “We.” We have the market and the state, the two arenas of competition, one for wealth, the other for power, but nothing else, no arena of cooperation that would bridge the difference between the wealthy and powerful and the poor and powerless.

“No social animal lives like this. No society has ever survived like this for very long, not even the greatest: not ancient Greece, not the Rome of antiquity, not Renaissance Italy. In each of these three cases, the release from traditional moral restraints for a while unleashed a burst of energy and creativity, but was too quickly followed by decline and fall. A society of individualists is unsustainable. We are built for cooperation, not just competition. In the end, with the market and the state but no substantive society to link us to our fellow citizens in bonds of collective responsibility, trust and truth erode, economics becomes inequitable, and politics becomes unbearable.”

But there’s hope!

There is nothing inevitable about the division, fragmentation, extremism, isolation, economics of inequality, or politics of anger that have been the mood of Britain and America in recent years.

“A contract is a transaction. A covenant is a relationship. A contract is about interests. A covenant is about identity. That is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform. A covenant creates a moral community.“

Here’s what we could reach for…

“We can no longer build national identity on religion or ethnicity or culture. But we can build it on covenant. A covenantal politics would speak of how, as a polity, an economy, and a culture, our fates are bound together. We benefit from each other. And because this is so, we should feel bound to benefit one another. It would speak about the best of our traditions, and how they are a heritage we are charged with honoring and handing on to future generations. It would be warmly inclusive. A nation is enlarged by its new arrivals who carry with them gifts from other places and other traditions. It would acknowledge that, yes, we have differences of opinion and interest, and sometimes that means favoring one side over another. But we will never do so without giving every side a voice and a respectful hearing. The politics of covenant does not demean or ridicule opponents.

“A covenantal politics would emphasize our responsibilities to one another. Depressed areas need to be supported and local communities strengthened. Every individual has to be able to feel that he or she has a chance to fulfill their potential. Ways have to be found to encourage the successful to play their part in developing opportunities for those whom the modern economy has passed by. Covenant does not, in and of itself, suggest a larger or smaller state. It is not on the right or left of politics. It is, rather, a way of thinking about what politics actually represents.

“Today’s politics, which has seen a rise in populism, is often about division and confrontation. It is about dividing a nation into “Us” and “Them.” It is about resentment and fear and allocation of blame. It is about anger and a sense of betrayal. It is oppositional. It proposes handing power to the strong leader who assures his or her followers that, in return for their loyalty, he or she will fight their battles for them. Covenantal politics, by contrast, is about “We, the people,” bound by a sense of shared belonging and collective responsibility; about strong local communities, active citizens, and the devolution of responsibility. It is about reminding those who have more than they need of their responsibilities to those who have less than they need. It is about ensuring that everyone has a fair chance to make the most of their capacities and their lives.

“One of the great historical lessons is that societies become strong when they care for the weak. They become rich when they care for the poor. They become invulnerable when they care for the vulnerable. That is the beating heart of the politics of covenant. My firm belief is that the concept of covenant has the power to transform the world. It sees relationships in terms not of interests but of moral commitment. It changes everything it touches, from marriage to friendship to economics and politics, by turning self-interested individuals into a community in pursuit of the common good. There is nothing inevitable about the division, fragmentation, extremism, isolation, economics of inequality, or politics of anger that have been the mood of Britain and America in recent years.“

Gratitude by Oliver Sacks. I’d read these four essays before but read through it again for a Mussar class I facilitated. He discusses what it feels like for him to grow older, his terminal cancer diagnosis, and his view of life as a blink of an eye.

I have read three of Sacks other books and thoroughly enjoyed learning about the mind and various neurological disorders. We even got to hear him give a talk in New York in 2004. This book is more personal.

“It is the fate of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.”

Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time by Kristin Swenson

This one was recommended by my Gratz professor as a good background on how and when the pieces of the bible came together, the various translations, and how it’s been interpreted by different communities over time. It’s scholarly, but very humorous, with references to pop-culture thrown in for fun.

For next month…