This month has been full of firsts:

• I started drum lessons!
• I began working with a personal trainer 2x/week (it is kicking my butt)
• I started attending a weekly Torah study class

Also in April, we hosted Passover seder, went to a charity gala with some friends, and our house got walls.

Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel’s Classroom by Ariel Burger

“I told you in class that you must tell your story. This is because, if even one person learns from it how to be more human, you will have made your memories into a blessing. We must turn our suffering into a bridge so that others might suffer less.”

Burger was a student, teaching assistant, and friend of Elie Wiesel for 20 years and gives us powerful insight into one of the greatest human beings in recent history. Wiesel taught at Boston University for 40 years and we get to see what that must have been like… his classroom lectures, his open dialogue with students, and the content of key conversations that changed Burger’s life. I especially appreciate how he used literature, Torah, and the Oral Tradition to awaken sensitivity in his students and to encourage them to act. There are so many passages in this book that I highlighted because of their profundity.

“When moral education works, students investigate and embrace new ways of thinking, learn new habits of questioning, and, ultimately, find a deeper sense of common humanity. Students who experience this become sensitized to suffering. They read the news differently. They are no longer able to pass a homeless person on the street without offering at least a smile. They speak up when they overhear a bigoted word or see a bully. Inaction is no longer an option.”

“In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner said that the only thing really worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself. There is a mirroring that happens between inner and outer hospitality. The more we are able to accept the many aspects of who we are, however contradictory those aspects are, the more easily we can accept others, with all their contradictions.”

Wiesel ignited something in Burger and in countless other students. He encouraged questions and experiential learning in a style rarely seen on a university campus, a “methodology of wonder” where ethics and morals were awakened in students.

“So often we are told not to be too passionate, not to feel too much, to go along with the world as it is. I reject that. I believe we are meant to feel strongly, to feel deeply, to awaken and cultivate our yearning for good. Only then can we have a chance of overcoming those who are passionate for the wrong things.”

Wiesel and Burger’s last encounter is told poignantly and beautifully. I can’t even imagine having such a mentor for 20 years. Now I want to read Wiesel’s 3 memoirs.

Remodelista: The Organized Home: Simple, Stylish Storage Ideas for All Over the House edited by Julie Carlson and Margot Guralnick

I’m a regular reader of the website Remodelista, which our architect mentioned one time as a good place to get ideas. Please see full review here.

A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts by Therese Anne Fowler

Alva Vanderbilt was headstrong and ahead of her time. She married into a family of great wealth, helped them gain societal notice, worked in architecture designing and building homes, was instrumental in the passage of the 19th amendment, and was one of the first women to divorce. I enjoyed the story very much until the last fifth or so, which I though was unnecessary. Alva was a well-developed character, but the others in the novel seemed to lack substance.

“Leaning back in his chair, he lit a pipe and said, ‘If we view topmost society as a piece of fabric, we can think of each member as a thread in that fabric. Part of what holds it together – weaves it into a thing of strength such that each of us is clothed, protected, by that fabric – is the concentration of assets and power in the hands of particularly accomplished men, hour husband being such a one. These men see to the care and well-being and material needs of their respective families, resulting in societal harmony – or let’s say a fine overcoat that covers everyone, keeps you safe and warm. If you persist in your suit, you divide Mr. Vanderbilt’s assets, thus weakening the fabric. Your example could plant in other ladies’ minds the notion that they, too, can take their offenses to the courts, resulting in further subdivision and thus further weakening. The coat is moth-eaten and worthless. What’s more, ladies have no capacity for managing assets…'”

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb

A psychotherapist and newly-single woman tells of her patients as well as her own experience seeking therapy. This is a refreshing take on a common experience and fascinating to see what happens in others’ sessions. It’s a smart and relatable book.

“An interesting paradox of the therapy process: In order to do their job, therapists try to see patients as they really are, which means noticing their vulnerabilities and entrenched patterns and struggles. Patients, of course, want to be helped, but they also want to be liked and admired. In other words, they want to hide their vulnerabilities and entrenched patterns and struggles. That’s not to say that therapists don’t look for a patient’s strengths and try to build on those. We do. But while we aim to discover what’s not working, patients try to keep the illusion going to avoid shame—to seem more together than they really are. Both parties have the well-being of the patient in mind but often work at cross-purposes in the service of a mutual goal.”

The House at the End of Hope Street: A Novel by Menna van Praag

A fantastical tale of inhabitants of a magical healing house. Each woman gets 99 days for healing and reinventing her life. My favorite aspect was that the pictures on the walls were literary characters who speak to the women and seem to know everything about their life, among them Daphne du Maurier, Vita Sackville West, and Dorothy Parker. The main characters were rather one-dimensional (except for the house itself, which was ever-changing and wise) but I enjoyed their stories for what they were. I don’t read magical realism but got absorbed in the story and read it in one evening.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: A Novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I was serious when I said I wanted to read more of Reid’s books! This is another of her fantastic novels that is so easy to get quickly absorbed into. Poor girl to Hollywood starlet is a self-made success and tells her memoirs solely to a young writer who I couldn’t help but identify with. Reid writes realistic characters with compelling stories. It’s kind of a historical fictional romance but it encompasses so many topics, the best of which is owning who you are.

“I told her every single day that her life had been the world’s greatest gift to me, that I believed I was put on earth not to make movies or wear emerald-green gowns and wave at crowds but to be her mother.”

Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist by Eli Saslow

This is an honest look at a young person’s transformation out of white nationalism. Derek Black was a quiet and studious boy who also happened to believe that the white “race” is endangered. He had worked tirelessly to organize conferences and work on the #1 racial hate website, Stormfront. His godfather was David Duke! It was not until he transferred to a small, liberal arts college of 800 that he began to question his political convictions. When true friends found out about his hidden life and were offended, they engaged him in respectful conversations. Ultimately, he came to see that the movement was dangerous and flawed.

I empathized with Derek because he was not an extremist. This story showed his close relationship with his family, how he grew up in this environment. Derek slowly but logically challenged his own beliefs and ultimately had to do a very hard thing, telling the people he loves most that they were wrong. The book shows that personal relationships are so much more important than theories in understanding other groups of people.

“Derek thought the white race was facing imminent decline and singular racial persecution… he believed people of color were more likely to struggle because of their own biological deficiencies… he found diversity so threatening that, at least theoretically, he wanted to separate people by skin color onto different continents, even if that meant disrupting millions of lives.”

I thought the book was needlessly long. The history of his father, the parts about his family, other pieces about the continued rise of the WN movement were interesting, but didn’t add too much to Derek’s story.

Devotion: A Memoir by Dani Shapiro

It turns out that I read this memoir in 2014. I didn’t remember any of it! Maybe it meant more to me now… I understand how a parent can feel afraid for their child’s health, or how anyone might struggle with faith and doubt. Dani Shapiro writes with clarity and honesty about her anxiety, mortality, her meditation practice, and her search for a spiritual home for her family.

“I felt it all, all at once – the way that time can slow to a near standstill simply by existing inside it.  By not pushing through it, or past it – by not wishing it away, nor trying to capture it.  It was a lesson I needed to learn over and over again: to stop and simply be. To recognize these moments and enter them – with reverence and an unprotected heart – as if walking into a cathedral.”

All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs by Elie Wiesel

I just had to read this after finishing Witness. It took me awhile to work through it, but I’m glad I learned more about Wiesel’s childhood and life after the war, his adventurous journalism career, and his nonfiction writing. He wrote 2 more memoirs and someday I will get to those too.