I find it difficult to believe that June is already over! Sweet Girl finished 7th grade and went to summer camp, only to return home after 2 weeks having contracted Covid. After a few days of misery and fever, she is now all better.
I spent those days while she was away catching up with Mr. B, taking some classes, and enjoying the quiet and space. I felt good that I finally organized all the little packets of leftover diamond painting beads into a binder.
The bead organizer and the little gal who kept getting in the way
Recently completed
I have a few tasks I hope to complete in July: reorganizing my bookshelves, creating a scrapbook of SG’s bat mitzvah, going through emails, among others. We’ll see if that happens!
This is a quick read and an engaging story about people who come together for various reasons in a small town library and help each other heal from various life events.
“Listen Kit, Dr. Bondhi said to her, what you’ve got to understand is that you didn’t lose your life. You lost the life you thought you were living and those are two different things. You are alive. It may not feel like it, but you are and part of being alive means experiencing loss. We lose things everyday. I’m not talking about eyeglasses (yes we lose those too). I mean things like eyesight. Eyesight diminishes over time. Hair falls out. That’s natural. It’s so natural that we chalk it up to inevitability, but that’s loss. Loss is inevitable. It comes in many sizes. Yours is huge, don’t think I’m discounting it, but the smaller everyday losses help us deal with the big ones. It’s muscle memory and the fact that you are in so much pain is actually a good sign. I’d be worried if you were numb. It tells me that you are alive.”
Horn finds that her value of Judaism if far different from how non-Jews think of it. “What Jewish identity meant to those people, it turned out, was simply a state of non-being: not being Christian or Muslim or whatever else other people apparently were (in Britain, for instance, more people identify as Jedis than as Jews), being alienated, being marginalized, or best of all, being dead.” She says that she “had mistaken the enormous public interest in past Jewish suffering for a sign of respect for living Jews. I was very wrong.”
So she goes on to unravel and “articulate the endless unspoken ways in which the popular obsession with dead Jews, even in its most apparently benign and civic-minded forms, is a profound affront to human dignity.”
“Jewish Heritage Sites” is a much better name than “Property Seized from Dead or Expelled Jews.” Horn tells about the fascination with Anne Frank, why people believe Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island and what happened instead, the history of Harbin, China, and much more. We even get to listen in on her discussion with her 10-year-old son about Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.
“The lethal attacks on American Jews in recent years have been so shocking and disorienting not merely because of their sheer violent horror, but because they contradict the story American Jews have told themselves for generations, which is that America has never been a place where antisemitism affected anyone’s life. We don’t simply prefer this founding legend. We need it. The story is more important than the history, because the story is the device that makes meaning.”
“Since ancient times, in every place they have ever lived, Jews have represented the frightening prospect of freedom. As long as Jews existed in any society, there was evidence that it in fact wasn’t necessary to believe what everyone else believed, that those who disagreed with their neighbors could survive and even flourish against all odds. The Jews’ continued distinctiveness, despite overwhelming pressure to become like everyone else, demonstrated their enormous effort to cultivate that freedom: devotion to law and story, deep literacy, and an absolute obsessiveness about consciously transmitting those values between generations. The existence of Jews in any society is a reminder that freedom is possible, but only with responsibility—and that freedom without responsibility is no freedom at all.”
“But these questions fall short by assuming that the perpetrators were irrelevant. As long as we are questioning the choices that were made, shouldn’t we be considering the possibility of the Holocaust not happening at all? If someone was in a position to choose whether to save person A or person B, shouldn’t whole societies have been in the position to reject the notion of genocide altogether? Why didn’t everyone become Denmark?”
“The Holocaust didn’t happen because of a lack of love. It happened because entire societies abdicated responsibility for their own problems, and instead blamed them on the people who represented—have always represented, since they first introduced the idea of commandedness to the world—the thing they were most afraid of: responsibility.”
“Frank could not play music. He could not read a score. He had no practical knowledge whatsoever, but when he sat in front of a customer and truly listened, he heard a kind of song. He wasn’t talking a full-blown symphony. It would have been a few notes at the most, a strain. It didn’t happen all the time. Only when he let go of being Frank and inhabited a space that was more in the middle.”
Frank connects people with the song they most need to hear. This is a love story about a woman who comes into his shop and ultimately (like over decades!) helps him heal from very old wounds. It’s a lovely, if quirky, quick read with many enjoyable characters.
“Jazz was about the spaces between notes. It was about what happened when you listened to the thing inside you, the gaps and the cracks, because that was where life really happened, if you were brave enough to free fall.”
Tens of thousands of Jews around the world learn daf yomi, and they are all literally on the same page. This is because daf yomi is not just about learning a page of Talmud a day. It’s about learning a specific page, the same page that everyone else is learning, following a schedule that was fixed in 1923 when Rabbi Meir Shapiro of the Lublin Yeshiva first conceived of the program. Kurshan writes about her life in the context of her regular Talmud study.
Try to stay with me here… this is ultimately a book review of Ilana Kurshan’s beautiful memoir, If All the Seas Were Ink. In her book, Kurshan follows the order of the Talmud as she describes how it relates to her personal life, revealing stories about her relationships, work life, and feelings about life in Jerusalem.
On January 5, 2020, I joined tens of thousands of others around the world embarking on a 7.5 year cycle of reading a double-sided page of Talmud each day. The Talmud is the textual record of generations of rabbinic debate about law, philosophy, and biblical interpretation, compiled between the 3rd and 8th centuries and structured as commentary on the Mishnah with stories interwoven. There are two versions: the more commonly studied Babylonian Talmud was compiled in present-day Iraq and the Jerusalem Talmud in Israel.
The 2711 pages of the Babylonian Talmud is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law and theology. It is a record of rabbinic legal conversations with many unresolved questions, traditionally passed down orally until it was recorded in writing. This is a good background teaching about it. It consists of multigenerational conversations among the rabbis of the first few centuries, like what to do if your camel knocks over a candle and sets a store on fire to proper behavior in all aspects of life.
In 1923, a rabbi in Poland, Meir Shapiro, proposed a universal system of the study of all 37 major tractates as a way to unify the Jewish people and literally be on the same page everyone else is learning. “Daf Yomi” literally means “daily page.“
The trick, I’m finding, to keeping up with the study is to find a way that works for you of incorporating it into your daily routine. I get an email every morning describing the texts and the most important aspects of the page in a rather humorous way, which I read while having my coffee. I also listen to a 5-minute podcast about the page, usually in the car. If I miss a day, I catch up the next day by reading both.
There are 6 “orders,” and we just finished the second (holidays) and began the third one (family law) about four months ago (120 days ago, to be precise).
Here’s a casual Q&A about the Daf Yomi process, written by Ilana Kurshan. As she writes there, “every page connects to conversations on other pages, and so once you have started learning, it’s almost impossible to stop.” Some days are rather dull, and others connect in surprising ways to something I’m learning about now or a current event in the news.
All this is background so I can tell you about Kurshan’s beautiful and touching 2017 memoir!
With personal stories about finding her place in marriage and her professional and spiritual life, Kurshan follows the orders of the Talmud tractates and connects what she learned to what her life was like then. She starts at age 27, newly divorced and living in Israel. She basically describes several years of learning and growth, mourning and discovery, romance and children.
I admire the way she draws parallels from the text into her life, drawing from her experiences of sadness, fear, and joy.
More important, I am in two classes right now, learning about both the life of Maimonides and his philosophy of engaging with the Torah, as well as a Mussar text describing how each person engages distinctly with it, creating their own internalization of what is learned. This memoir is a living example of this idea. “It is a text for those who are living the questions rather than those who have found the answers.”
“Looking back now, I see that these journal entries unfolded as a record not just of my learning but also of my life, drawing from deep wells of sadness and fear and, with time, from overflowing fountains of joy. I began learning as a divorced woman living alone in Jerusalem, with no idea of what the future might hold. It took me a while—quite a few tractates—before I found my stride. (And yes, like T. S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, who measured out his life in coffee spoons, I have come to measure out mine in tractates, referring to periods in my life by what I was up to in the Talmud.)”
“Although Omri and I learned much Torah together, we were not learning the same Torah. It is impossible for any two people to learn the exact same Torah, because the moment someone internalizes what he or she has learned, that learning begins to assume his or her shape. In this sense, the vessel and the contents are inherently interrelated.“
There are several ways to study Torah, but for the most impact, you need to be vulnerable and allow the words to resonate within yourself, and also allow yourself to illuminate the text.
As Kurstan begins life with her new husband, she is reading about the Temple and the sacred spaces within, yet she likens it to how they learn to share space in their new marraige “—how to make room for another person, and how to let another person into your space.” Or the division of labor in the Temple can be a springboard for Kurstan to tell us about negotiating the same within her life.
When she learned she was pregnant, she was studying a passage in Niddah that teaches that “all is in the hands of heaven except the fear of heaven.” There is nothing like pregnancy to remind us how little is in our control. And when studying Berachot (Blessings), Kurstan reflects that writing about prayer is much easier for her than actually praying. It’s difficult to make space for regular prayer with a newborn.
“Whereas Torah study is about taking the unfamiliar—the next page of Talmud, a new midrash, a new interpretation—and internalizing it until it becomes familiar, prayer is about taking the familiar—the same words we say day after day—and saying them with such concentration and fervor that it is as if we are renewing each day the miracle of their creation… Prayer is about standing still and looking inward.”
Kurstan was also an English major and now works in publishing and translating, so interspersed throughout her book are literary references that had me swooning in pleasure. She memorizes poetry on her daily walks; she sets aside time daily to read; her writing flows with metaphor.
She ends her memoir with this: “Scholars of Talmud consider how the text is informed and often even changed by its contexts; the same is true, perhaps, of the personal contexts in which I have encountered these passages. The text seems to change with each encounter because it resonates in new ways, and I, in turn, am transformed by each encounter.”
“Every point of entry is also a point of exit, and every end is also a beginning. This is why graduation ceremonies are called “commencement,” and this is why as soon as one finishes reading the Torah or studying the Talmud, it is traditional to begin immediately again.“
What I love about Daf Yomi and even in reading about someone else studying Talmud is that there is always more to know. These rabbis’ discussions that take place over many hundreds of years is a sacred dialogue. I can imagine coming back to each page again and again and finding something new inside. The text is not different, but I am different each time.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” — Rumi
It has been five days since we took our Sweet Girl to summer camp, and most of those days I have been tied to my computer in a virtual learning retreat – wonderful and engaging and thought-provoking, but also heavy and intense. The topic? Who Is God and Why It Matters. No small subject.
For months, I have felt like I’m going through my days with experiences and thoughts piling up, waiting for more time so that I could unpack them, find the nuggets of inspiration or ideas and then act on those. I have been thinking of these three weeks as my opportunity to slow down and to do this unpacking of memories.
I want to recall the feeling of certain moments, the energy in the air, and what I was feeling and experiencing during the rush of time. I want to unwrap these moments and truly savor them.
Life goes quickly. When I don’t allow myself time for reflection every day, I risk losing the moments I hope to return to. Most of my moments and my days are filled with goodness, learning, and positive emotion. There is so much input though… classes and reading and podcasts and world news… that I need to allow myself time to take it all in and let it settle there. I almost always feel like I’m in catch-up mode. (Like today – the classes are finished but I’m going through an email inbox of over 100 small tasks.)
One such experience: My daughter and I were laying in the dark in a hotel room last weekend, the night before camp began. She talked to me about her favorite memories from previous years at camp and what she was most excited about for this year. There were small worries interspersed in there, quickly covered up by more excitement. “What if I miss you?” “What if I need you?” I reassured her that we are always linked together and that she could talk to me in her head and imagine what I’d say.
Coming back to this moment, it strikes me that she could probably do this for a lot of things. When we parents feel a strong need to start lecturing our kids about the moral thing to do, the proper way to act, or a wrongness in behavior, our kids already know what we’re going to say. That is why they immediately roll their eyes and tune us out. They know. They are watching us and learning from us, even when we are not consciously modeling what we hope they will learn.
I always think that there is so much remaining for us to teach her, but maybe our job is to give her abundant love and support and space to grow and learn for herself. And maybe many small talks are far better than a few longer ones. I know that when SG comes to me with a question, that is when I have her attention, and that is when she is most receptive to learning an important lesson. And I always couch my answers in understanding, curiosity, and love.
I have been quite preoccupied lately with worries and fears for SG’s future. How can I get her to read more? Does she understand what is truly important and what is merely superficial? When will she start caring about making a difference in other people’s lives? Does she understand how to work hard for something she wants? What do I do about limiting all this technology she is immersed in?
Mr. B is great at discovering SG’s interests and making them his own. She is interested in football and hockey, so they now watch all the games together and talk about sports often. The same with technology and music. He encourages her interests and makes them something they can do together. I don’t think I’ve been as good at aligning my own interests with hers, mainly because her interests lately are on makeup, shopping, and expensive athleisure clothes. But I’ll keep my eye out for other interests of hers.
That conversation in the dark was definitely a time to treasure, and one good thing is that I recognized it in the moment. Mainly I listened, but I also reassured and encouraged. So I think I’m on the right track. Now I will focus on enjoying the grand adventure of parenting a teenage girl and try to have fun with it where I can.
Women praying at the Kotel, Jerusalem – March 2020
The Palestinian conflict is one of the most complicated in the world. I have so much to say about it that I’ve decided not to say much at all. My personal love for Israel is historical and mystical. It has little to do with the State of Israel today. To me, the idea of Israel brings forth an aspiration of Oneness for the world. It is sanctified space for the Jewish People; it is where we have come from and it’s a vision of where we are headed; it radiates with pure potential for coming closer to G-d, of uniting heaven and earth and transcending struggle. The land, Eretz Yisrael, is part of the collective Jewish Soul.
And yet, 75 years ago (and for hundreds of years), people were living in parts of this land successfully and happily. I have to believe that the hundreds of thousands of refugees who settled there truly believed it was “a land without a people for a people without a land” and they would not have immigrated to Israel in such numbers, would not have literally displaced so many families from their beautiful homes, had they known this. (I realize there are competing narratives about this fact.)
I have much more to learn and understand, but I started with these two books. Each of them tells both sides of the history of the founding of the State and events that unfolded afterwards. I wanted to learn more than stereotypes.
Just to be transparent, and I know this is controversial, I believe that both Israelis and Arabs have equal rights as well as equal responsibility for the ongoing conflict. I think some of Israel’s policies and past decisions are unjust, and I’m only now learning about more of those human rights violations from its history. And yet, people who toss around words like “apartheid” or “colonialism” are using this current situation as yet another excuse to practice antisemitism. People are free to disagree with government practices and decisions, as I do often, but to call for the end of existence of Israel at this point is unethical.
Is anyone saying that China shouldn’t exist? I am concerned about abuses happening right now in the Xinjiang region of China, but I haven’t heard anyone say that China doesn’t have the right to exist. Same for Iran, or Saudi Arabia. Amnesty International reports that in 2021, new and unresolved conflicts erupted or persisted in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Libya, Myanmar and Yemen, with warring parties violating international human rights and humanitarian law. Of all of these, I’ve only seen Israel in the news. (And yes, I think Israelis are wrongfully occupying Palestinian space, which further escalates the conflict.)
I see Israel as a country in its infancy still, trying to be a liberal democracy in a region where that is rare.
Sokatch believes the conflict is a struggle between two victimized peoples with legitimate claims to the land. “It is a conflict about land, but also about memory and legitimacy, about the right to exist, and also about the right to self-determination. It is about survival and about justice. It is about competing narratives understood by their adherents to be singularly true.”
This is a very thorough yet casually-worded overview of history and how to understand today’s issues. I truly felt as if I were meeting a friend for coffee who could tell me all about what’s going on, starting with the Zionist concept in the 1860s, World War I and the British Mandate, the events of 1947-49, and the many conflicts and peace attempts since. Part II of Sokatch’s book is about the settlements, how a map can be a political tool, the American Jewish community and it’s disillusionment with Israel’s current right-wing policies, and some other current issues.
“At times, the sheer weight of the history there, the intensity of the conflict, and the adamancy of the attitudes can make a person pessimistic about the potential for a just and peaceful future for Israel and Palestine.”
He ends with stories of people who are trying to heal wounds, build bridges, and create a better future for everyone. This is an excellent and unbiased telling of the unfolding of events as experienced by both peoples.
Tolan’s book is nonfiction but reads as a novel would. I learned quite a bit of fact and context, but the single best aspect of this book is that it takes a gigantic issue and narrows it down to two individuals, telling their family stories in a personal and dignified way. These two families try to acknowledge one another’s pain and histories. I found this book remarkable and enlightening.
The book description from Amazon: “In 1967, Bashir Khairi, a twenty-five-year-old Palestinian, journeyed into Israel with the goal of seeing the beloved stone house with the lemon tree behind it that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Eshkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family left fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next half century in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, demonstrating that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and transformation.”
Today I celebrate my life and all the beautiful people in it. I’m 47 years on this earth and enjoying (mostly) every minute. I’d say my classes have been transformational and I am definitely being challenged to grow in parenting my daughter. Mr. B is an even better husband than before and I love that he is “my person.” I am grateful for the wonder and joy in the everyday.
Earlier this month, I finished two courses, one of which was very intense. The only reading I did in April was for these classes… in the carpool line, before bed at night, at my desk during the day, along with writing quite a few papers. I enjoyed picking up some new titles this month now that they are over.
I will not be taking summer courses besides my weekly Hebrew and Torah study classes. I have a VERY long list of books that were recommended by professors and fellow students and I am excited to get going on those! (A photo of some of them is at the end of this post.)
I got a super nice desktop computer but have been flummoxed as to how to organize my photos. My laptop had the ancient program Picasa, which I adore, but it stopped being updated years ago. Anyway, I’m researching and will probably use Photoshop Organizer and Editor in Elements. I’d like to make a scrapbook of SG’s Bat Mitzvah and I’ll need lots of folders for that.
I’m also back to diamond painting after taking a couple months off. I missed it very much!
On the race to the bottom that is our country and our world at the moment: I am disheartened and disappointed. As of 2020, the leading cause of death among children in America is guns. It was also the highest amount of guns sold in our history. On Monday of last week in a class on Trust in God, I offhandedly claimed that I thought I’d continue trusting that I’d be ok should (G-d forbid) something happen to SG. By that, I meant that maintaining a belief structure that helps to make sense of our existence and the reasons why things occur can help sustain us. Then, Tuesday’s murder of 21 people inside an elementary school happened. (And this was mere days after three other horrific and hate-motivated shootings.) Wednesday and Thursday were pretty much lost in a deep funk. Let me just say now that I don’t even want to think about any random harm to my precious daughter.
I don’t know why any average citizen would need to have access to a semiautomatic weapon. I don’t know why Congress needs the filibuster in most circumstances. I don’t understand why the abortion debate is back again. I personally wouldn’t end a life, but I would never dictate what someone else does. I also have not been in that situation, so how could I judge? Maybe it’s really become a religious issue or a class issue. I don’t know why a group who puts antisemitic fliers in our neighborhood mailboxes is protected by Free Speech. I don’t know when vaccines and science became something to doubt. And I don’t know why we are stuck in these situations where we are killing each other and all it seems that we can do is vote in November.
The social rot that’s come over America, the nihilism and hatred of each other, is part of the cause here. The dissolution of our social ties—and with them the accountability and responsibility that an actual community demands—has allowed insanity to fester unnoticed. Lockdowns accelerated the isolation, the purposelessness, the lack of meaning that was already overcoming us.
If we insist on viewing this shooting as part of some isolated issue or species of violence, then we miss the point. The point is the country is being consumed by what Philip Roth famously called “the indigenous American berserk.” It stretches back many decades, or longer, and for ages, it was possible to ignore or compartmentalize. Now the brokenness is everywhere we look and it is impossible to unsee it.
So much unnecessary pain is beyond disheartening. Our policies do not generally reflect what the majority of the country wants, and with gerrymandering and redlining and redistricting, representative democracy feels false. I personally think that our government is quickly losing its legitimacy and I’m not sure how this dismantling of democracy has become normalized. With so much distress, turbulence, anxiety, and injustice eating away at our foundation, I feel like all we can do is sit back and watch our race to the bottom.
I obviously want to be able to do some good in the world, but besides being positive and loving within my small circle, I’m not sure how I can help.
I like this quote from Ann Patchett’s book (reviewed below):
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lots of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Robert F. Kennedy
Other news: SG has been able to spend time with good friends, which we feel so grateful for. She is growing up and is much more confident. I do wish she cared more about school and less about shopping, but I know we are not alone in that.
She and I volunteered at an affordable housing space for the homeless to be able to recover from health issues or navigate the legal system. It was a wonderful opportunity to talk with people in a very different life situation than we are and to find that we can have things in common. I’m looking for more places like this that we can volunteer and open SG’s mind a little bit.
We also helped to host a mini family reunion of sorts. My 96-year-old grandpa’s “little” brother visited from New Jersey, which brought together family we hadn’t seen in ages. My grandparents will celebrate 75 years of marriage next month. Amazing.
In less than 2 weeks, SG will be off to camp again and Mr. B and I will enjoy time alone. I look forward to this every year because it feels like such a treat.
Lavin reports on “the ways in which social media enables networks of true believers to find and recruit one another; the humanity of those enmeshed in hate movements; and the way the small human choices they make do not absolve them of culpability in their hatred but continue to condemn them.” From the book description: “Talia Lavin is every skinhead’s worst nightmare: a loud and unapologetic Jewish woman, acerbic, smart, and profoundly antiracist, with the investigative chops to expose the tactics and ideologies of online hatemongers.” She infiltrates many online groups and reports on her experience. It’s fascinating!
If the past few years of radicalism and racially motivated terrorism have taught us anything, it’s that caution is still warranted—and it has become more important than ever to understand the human motivations behind extremism in this country. Around the United States and the world, an international white nationalism—the desire for white dominance in every country, whose toll will be paid in blood—still percolates with all its venom. The vehicles of misinformation hum along, radicalizing thousands as they go. And the price of hate for those who inflict it, endure it, and even study it is still too high.
and
Studying them as deeply as I have has made me realize no amount of such rhetoric is acceptable in the country’s discourse, just as there is no acceptable amount of poisonous gas to let seep into a room. To assert otherwise is an argument born of self-congratulation, the argument that being tolerant of violent racism is just another form of tolerance, and not a capitulation to the far right’s own view of their legitimacy.
Conspiracy theories give events that may seem inexplicable to some people an intentional explanation. If we were to provide these conspiracy theorists with evidence that proves the landing was indeed on the moon, they will a priori dismiss what we say and assume we are part of the conspiracy. To try to defeat an irrational supposition—especially when it is firmly held by its proponents—with a rational explanation is virtually impossible. Any information that does not correspond with the conspiracy theorists’ preferred social, political, or ethnic narrative is ipso facto false.
The American Jewish obsession with Israel has taken our eyes off not only the politics of our own country, the growing gulf between rich and poor, and the rising tide of nationalism but also our own grounding in faith. As one rabbi told me, Jewish life should grow out of belief, faith, and history, not today’s New York Times. We have grown reactive, responding to events or provocations rather than pursuing a spiritually driven mission to do as the Torah tells us: Welcome the stranger, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt.
Most Americans, including many American Jews, understand Judaism as a religion or as an ethnicity because these are the modern categories by which we understand much of the world. Christianity is a faith. Latino is an ethnicity. And so forth. But Judaism (and the force that opposes it, which today we call anti-Semitism) greatly predates and thus does not fit any of these far more recently constructed categories, despite how aggressively some try to shoehorn it into them. Judaism is not merely a religion, and it is not merely an ethnicity. Judaism is a people. More specifically, it is a people with a language, a culture, a literature, and a particular set of ideas, beliefs, texts, and legal practices. One word for that is a civilization. Another is a tribe.
I think I got this audiobook on Chirp because it was on sale, and I’m so glad I did. The way the stories capture everyday moments and interconnect with one another is remarkable.
Evangelicalism is an Americanized Christianity born in the context of white Christian slaveholders. It sanctified and justified segregation, violence, and racial proscription. Slavery and racism permeate evangelicalism, and as much as evangelicals like to protest that they are color-blind, their theologies, cultures, and beliefs are anything but.
So so good. This is a nonfiction account by a journalist who followed a family with 8 kids through their stressful journey in and out of shelters, rehab centers, and jail. She wanted to write about a child growing up in this life, with her exposure to violence, hunger, and adult responsibilities. It is insightful and reads like a novel.
Yet home ownership was key to accruing wealth. White American families would eventually amass a median net worth nearly ten times that of Black families. Put another way, the exclusion of African Americans from real estate—not to mention college, white-collar jobs, and the ability to vote—laid the foundations of a lasting poverty that Dasani would inherit.
I heard about this one on a podcast I listen to called Pod Save America. Here, two New York Times correspondents chronicle the 2020 election, the events of January 6, and the first year of the Biden presidency. It doesn’t sound optimistic, but I found it reassuring.
In less than a third of an average American lifetime, the country endured a contested presidential race in 2000; the terror attacks of September 11, 2001; the long and disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the financial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession; the election of Donald Trump in 2016; and the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. That is a catalog of failure and failure and failure.
This one appealed to my love of studying the interplay between language and meaning. From common groups like Peloton to extreme cults like Heaven’s Gate, and everything in between, Montell describes how the specific language used helps to create a sense of community, shared ideology, and even an us/them mindset.
I really can’t say enough good things about An Patchett or this book. She talks about family and friends health crises, living in Covid times, the writing process, and friendship.
“All you have to do,” he tells me, “is give a little bit of understanding to the possibility that life might not have been fair.” The trouble with good fortune is that we tend to equate it with personal goodness, so that if things are going well for us and less well for others, it’s assumed they must have done something to have brought that misfortune on themselves while we must have worked harder to avoid it. We speak of ourselves as being blessed, but what can that mean except that others are not blessed, and that God has picked out a few of us to love more? It is our responsibility to care for one another, to create fairness in the face of unfairness and find equality where none may have existed in the past. Despite his own experiences with unfairness, this is what Charlie has accomplished.
I read this on the day it came out and cried my way through it. It’s a little bit of a time-travel story, but really it’s about learning to live life to the fullest.
To be read pile: I’m most excited about my professor’s book about Houston during the Civil Rights Era (Changing Perspectives by Allison Schottenstein) and Rabbi Wolbe’s Upon a Ten-Stringed Harp.
This month was insane as far as school work goes. I can barely keep up with the readings and assignments! I just turned in a huge 31-page paper and feel a sense of relief that’s off my plate for now. My days have been enjoyably full and interesting.
My family went to Aspen for a long weekend over Spring Break and enjoyed the mountain views and being in the snow. After we came home I got a virus of some sort. It’s still hanging on in my head and making me feel woozy.
Not a huge month for book reading… three of these were for school. I have another packed month ahead and then things will slow down slightly starting in May, as I’m not taking any summer classes. I’ll be able to make scrapbooks, do my diamond painting, and catch up on reading.
Dinnerstein was the leading historian writing about antisemitism when this came out in the 90s, and this is one of very few surveys of prejudice against Jews in America. This was written from a rosy perspective, long before the severe increase in antisemitic incidents that began around 2015. Still interesting for the historical perspective. Did you know that the first Jews were almost not allowed off the boat into the colonies?
Excellent historical work that reads like a novel about the 1958 bombing of Atlanta’s Reform Temple and life in the South. The story of the life of Rabbi Jacob Rothschild and his moral voice is entertaining enough, but the investigation and trial with its cast of characters was like a movie.
“I am of a people, small in number and weak in power, whose only claim to greatness has been its willingness to be the conscience of mankind. Reviled and persecuted, decimated by pogrom and holocaust, we have still maintained our visibility and sought to obey the rabbinic dictum: ‘Separate not thyself from the community.’ I would urge upon the Negro a similar commitment.”
Lester’s great-grandfather was Jewish. He seemed to feel the occasional pull toward Judaism, but with his father a Minister and his work during the Civil Rights Movement, only in adulthood did he explore this more. It’s a beautifully-told story written by a beautiful soul.
“I have wondered often who I would be if I were not black. But I cannot imagine what it is to live without my life dangling in space, stretched and broken by the noose of race. I cannot imagine what it is to have choices.”
Excellent story. I loved how it unfolded and how the narrator was continually changing based on her reflections and surroundings. Highly recommend.
“Now, I can’t lose myself in errands and work assignments. I can’t disappear in a crowd. I’mforced to walk instead of run and as a result, I’ve seen things I would have speed past before. The fuss of a crab trading up for a new shell, the miracle of a sunrise, the garish burst of a cactus flower. Busy is just a euphemism for being so focused on what you don’t have that you never notice what you do. It’s a defense mechanism because if you stop hustling, if you pause, you start wondering why you ever thought you wanted all those things. I can no longer tell the sky from the sea but I can hear the waves. A loss of sight; a gain of insight.”
“I know why you love art, even if you don’t… Because art isn’t absolute. A photograph, that’s different. You’re seeing exactly what the photographer wanted you to see. A painting, though, is a partnership. The artist begins a dialogue and you finish it. And here’s the incredible part. That dialogue is different every time you view the art, not because anything changes on the canvas, but because of what changes in you.”
Welcome and thank you for visiting! I’m Naomi – a mother, writer, creative soul, and avid reader. I aim to share my thoughts and ideas to inspire positive change that will help you live an authentic and caring life.
Poetic Aperture is for me and for you. I often write just to process the swirling activity inside, but I also hope to inspire COMPASSION, COURAGE, and WONDER in you and support you on your journey of elevating the everyday.
I am a rabbinical student at the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York. I am fortunate to have an amazing 15-year-old daughter and a supportive husband of 22 years.
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… reading in bed, candles, diving into a new project, learning something new, crisp crunchy leaves underfoot, hearing my daughter laugh, starting a new book, finishing a book, organizing, floating on my back in the pool and staring at the sky, writing, craft supplies, photography, poetry, a good massage, knowing smiles, singing along to the radio, getting things done, comfy bedding, hot chocolate, paying attention to the details, libraries and bookstores, campfires, astronomy, finding beauty in the everyday, impromptu road trips, quiet, journaling, learning about myself, waking up and reading in bed (preferably with coffee), home, interesting flowers, affection, Sleepytime tea, capturing a moment in time with my camera, true laughter, soft rain.
“There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue those.” ~ Michael Nolan
