Detours

Each year I release a reading list to my congregation of books I plan to read over the summer. I generally read the books that make the list, but I also add one or two unexpected titles. These are my reading ‘detours.’ I discover them in local book shops or in the NY Times book review. They catch my interest for one reason or another and before I know it the official list books are on the back burner and I am deeply immersed in some new narrative.

This year two detour books have appeared. One is the 2013 Mann Booker prize winner The Luminaries, by Eleanor Cattan, and the other the new David Grossman novel To the End of the Land. I finally finished the Catton book a few days ago. A monster of a read at 850 pages.  It is beautifully written, but I had the feeling I was watching a magician’s trick – it was enthralling but at the end it didn’t ring true.  I have high hopes for the Grossman novel but want to finish Hillbiilly Elegy before I get to it.

Some summers it is the detour read that ends up the best of the batch. This summer the jury is still out, but I have a feeling nothing will beat Lincoln in the Bardo which I loved, a book that truly moved me.

In the meantime I will keep my eyes open for further detour opportunities. After all, isn’t that part of what summer is about? Finding the hidden roads, the never before tasted treat, the unexpected delights and pleasures of being away?

What is it that Bobby Weir sings in Lost Sailor?

Drifting, you’re drifting; drifting and dreaming; ’cause there is a place you’ve never been; maybe a place you’ve never seen; you can hear them calling on the wind…

Make America Gilead Again

A wonderful turn of phrase I discovered in this morning’s NY Times.  It appeared in James Poniewozik’s review of the new Hulu series adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.  Reviews of the series have been exceptional across the board, citing the quality of the acting, production, directing, etc, etc – evidently, it is top notch all the way through.  But what all the reviews make special note of is how ‘chillingly’ relevant the story line is to today’s world.  In Atwood’s dystopian near future women are treated like objects, fundamentalist religion reigns supreme, and the government has been overrun in a military coup.  It all reads (or views) a little too close for comfort.

Which is precisely what Poniewozik’s phrase so perfectly captures.  Gilead is the name of Atwood’s twisted future ‘republic.’  And as I suspect you remember, ‘make America great again’ was the current president’s campaign slogan.  How ironic that the end of Trump’s first 100 days comes in the very same week when The Handmaid’s Tale adaptation airs its initial episodes.  As ever, great art enables us to raise a mirror to our current reality, a mirror in which we see things as they are, but with a deeper sense of meaning, understanding, and context.  As the old saying goes, when you read the newspaper you find out what happened yesterday.  When you read great literature you find out what always happens.

Atwood begins her novel with a quote from Genesis 30, describing Rachel’s infertility and her decision to use Bilhah, a ‘handmaid,’ to conceive in her stead.  The reference fits with the narrative’s understanding of religion as a dangerous and destructive force, one that by nature subjugates women.  And it is true, if you pick and choose the right verses you can read the Bible that way.  And perhaps that is the way some fundamentalists would read the text, and certain politicians as well.

But the Bible is a long book, and there are many ways to read it, and many ideals and values expressed in it.  Some of them are radically progressive, even for our day and age.  The great Hebrew prophets of old, Isaiah the greatest of them all, stood on the streets of Jerusalem and proclaimed the word of God.  Their message was one of tolerance and dignity, of hope and faith, of God’s ultimate goodness and the responsibility of the people to create a just society.  They cried out at injustice directed against the poor and the marginalized.  They spoke in God’s voice for those who had no voice of their own.

Word on the street is that the new Handmaid’s Tale TV series will  take the story beyond the end of Atwood’s novel.  Perhaps in a future episode there will be an Isaiah like character, dressed in robes, eyes flashing, speaking with unmatched eloquence about a world gone wrong.  No question the Republic of Gilead needs that prophetic message.  What we are coming to understand is that we need it too, in our world, in our republic, in our own time.

“No, this is the fast I desire:  to unlock the fetters of wickedness, and untie the core of the yoke;  to let the oppressed go free, to break off every yoke.  It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into your home;  when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to ignore your own kin.”  (Isaiah 58: 6-7)

Summer Reading List 2017

Enjoy the books!

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?  Roz Chast – Chast, a cartoonist at the New Yorker for years, published this graphic novel in 2014.  It is a poignant and brutally honest confrontation with what it means to age, and what it means to care for aging parents.  And it is definitely presented through a Jewish lens.  228 pages, and the first time a graphic novel has made the list.

The Handmaid’s Tale  Margaret Atwood – This chilling novel from 1986 describes a world where women have been subjected to a secondary role in society, where fundamentalist religion rules, and where the elected United States government has been forcibly removed via a military coup.  To read it today is to understand how great fiction both unpacks the past and warns about the future. 300 pages (give or take!)

American War Omar El Akkad – The second dystopian novel on this year’s list.  El Akkad’s debut work of fiction explores a near future where a second American civil war between blue and red states takes place.  If our partisan political divisions grow even greater, if terrorism becomes a regular occurrence on American soil, if climate change continues to escalate, what will our world look like?  El Akkad has created a stunning vision of one possible answer to that question.  333 pages

Hillbilly Elegy J.D. Vance – Part memoir, part sociological analysis, Vance writes movingly about the world he grew up in, the culture that defined it, and the experience of watching that world slowly but surely fade away.  This book explores the dynamics of the poor, white, working class world in rural America at a time when its culture is in crisis.  260 pages

All Creatures Great and Small James Herriot – This beloved book from 1972 takes you back to a simpler time.  The author chronicles his ‘adventures’ as a veterinarian in the remote Yorkshire Dales, tending to the various animals (and sometimes humans) who need his help.  It is a powerful page by page reminder of the great beauty that exists in God’s world that we all too often fail to see. 425 pages

Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders – In this debut novel a grief stricken Abraham Lincoln visits the grave of his recently deceased 11 year old son Willie.  While in the cemetery he encounters the ghosts of others who are buried there, and listens to their life stories told from beyond the grave.  The novel is a meditation on national loss and an acknowledgment of the pain and heartbreak that are inevitable components of living a human life.  343 pages

Measure for Measure William Shakespeare – This late comedy explores themes of justice, mortality, and mercy, as well as the fine line that sometimes exists between corruption and purity.  The line “some rise by sin, some by virtue fall” (Act ii scene 1) reads as fresh and contemporary commentary given today’s political climate.

Ice Cream & Football

Yom Kippur 5777

At this time of year, with the changing of seasons and the arrival of our holidays, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the passage of time.  Hard as it is for me to believe, this is the 19th occasion we’ve celebrated the High Holy Days together here at Beth El, and for our Cantor, it’s his 20th year with you!  I’ve had the distinct pleasure over the last year to officiate at a number of weddings for young people whose b’nai mitzvah I participated in when they were 13, right here in the Berman Rubin Sanctuary.  Needless to say, my wife Becky is ageless. But our children, Talia, Josh, and Merav, are now 22, 20, and 17.  And next week we will mark Rabbi Mark Loeb’s 7th yahrzeit. I realized just the other day, that at 52 I am now older than Rabbi Loeb was, when I came here to serve as his assistant.

 

And I would guess it is at least in part because of the nostalgic mood of the holidays that on Rosh Hashanah we look back to the very first Jews and read the biblical stories of Abraham and Sarah and Isaac.  But we also read about them on RH because with their family struggles, their flaws and foibles, they are the perfect models for us in terms of understanding our own lives, our own needs and hopes and dreams – very much what the High Holy Days are about.  So it is always a bit challenging – at least for me – to turn from the richness of those stories and characters to the dry 16th chapter of Leviticus that we read on Yom Kippur, with its rote description of the ancient sacrifices.  But the truth is YK also has a biblical hero, just a little bit less obvious.  Anyone want to take a guess as to who it is?   To give you a hint, we’ve been reading the most intimate part of his story every Shabbat, during these last weeks of our liturgical year. Yes! Moses.

In the rabbinic mind, Moses and YK were synonymous.  The Talmud teaches that it was on YK day that Moses convinced God to forgive the Israelites for the sin of the golden calf, and God granted the second set of tablets.  If there is a refrain in the liturgy of YK, it is the 13 attributes, the Adonai, Adonai,  El rachum v’chanun phrase from the Torah that we chant again and again, and that is God’s response in Exodus 34 when Moses asks for forgiveness.  Tradition understands that phrase as a promise, still in effect today, that God will deal with us mercifully – with ‘rachmanis!’  -on Yom Kippur.  And that promise is extracted from God by Moses.  Moses and YK go together like gefilte fish and horse radish, if you’ll excuse the reference on a fast day!

But I’ve always suspected there is another reason why Moses is the central figure of Yom Kippur.  Do a bit of math with me – if it is YK today, when is Simhat Torah?  In two weeks.  And that means in our weekly Torah cycle we are reading the very last chapters of Deuteronomy.  Those chapters are all about Moses summing up the meaning of his life and what he hoped for in the future. They are a record of Moses’ last days, of the thoughts that he has as he looks back on his years.  He remembers successes and failures, he realizes that some of his goals will remain unfulfilled, he revisits regrets, and ultimately he emerges from the process with head held high, with his dignity and moral strength intact.

Now in any book, the last chapters can be the most important.  They make sense of the narrative’s previous events, they tie up the loose ends, solve the mysteries;  sometimes they come to terms with the simple fact that not everything in life is resolved to our satisfaction.  But when they are well done, when the writing is fluid and the language clear, the last chapters create a sense of wholeness and completion.  You know that feeling when you’ve reached the end of a great book.  Your eyes linger on the page, you read the last words reluctantly, you close the cover slowly and carefully, you feel sad, but you also feel whole.  And so it is, as we read these last pages of Moses’ five books.

But what about our own last chapters?  What about the last chapters of those we love?  Are we prepared to write them, or help write them, the way we would want to?  We often talk about being the authors of our own stories – it is a common metaphor today – and in the prime of life we may know exactly what it is we want and need.  We set goals and pursue them, focusing on careers, supporting families and maintaining a quality of living.  But when we arrive at old age, when we are challenged by illness or the passing of the years, it is more difficult to put pen to paper.  What are our goals?  What should our priorities be?  If time is limited, what do we want to focus on?  When we need clarity, where can we find it?  Those last chapters are difficult ones to write, but they are perhaps the most important in our entire story.

I had the opportunity over the summer to read a beautiful and poignant book entitled Being Mortal, written by the physician and author Atul Gawande.  Part memoir, part sociological survey, part exploration of medical ethics, the book traces Gawande’s struggle with the following dilemma – in a world where medical technology can often extend life, but in doing so may actually diminish its quality – how do we make wise and sound decisions about health care as we age?  How do we face the frailties and fears that will inevitably arise in our lives?  How do we help our parents and grandparents as they transition to supported living, or struggle with losing their independence?  What does dignity mean, and who defines that?  When choices need to be made, choices about health care or supported living, about terminal illness, who should make those choices, and how should they be made?

The book is beautifully written, and it is powerful.  If you or someone you love is facing a significant health challenge, if you are caring for an elderly parent or grandparent, if you are growing older – and we all are – you should read this book.  It does not necessarily give answers, because these questions don’t have right or wrong answers.  But with depth and feeling it will help you wrestle with whatever challenge you may be facing.  And we will all – every single one of us in this room – face these challenges in the course of our lives.

At its core, Gewande’s book is about one fundamental question:  what makes a good life?  When push comes to shove, when you realize time is limited, when you have to choose two or three things that are absolutely most important, that define your being, what are they?  And his thesis is if you can figure out how to ask that question, of yourself, if you can have that conversation with someone you love, then you will be able to write the last chapters, or to help someone else write them, with some sense of control, and even more importantly, with dignity and with humanity.

The book is filled with anecdotes from Gewande’s work as a surgeon and physician, and there is just one I would like to share with you this morning, and I hope you’ll again excuse me because it does reference food.  This is the story of a professor of psychology, in his mid-seventies, who discovers that he has a mass growing in the spinal chord region in his neck.  His prognosis is grim, but there is a surgical procedure that may help him extend his life with quality.  But it is a risky procedure, coming with a %20 chance of his becoming paraplegic.

While trying to decide what to do, the professor’s daughter asks him two questions:  “What are you willing to go through to have a shot at being alive, and what level of being alive is tolerable to you?”  And in responding, he surprised his daughter, and perhaps even himself:  “If I’m able to eat chocolate ice cream and watch football, I want to give it a shot.”

Now I suppose if we asked everyone in this room the questions the man’s daughter asked him, we would get a different answer from each person.  For some the answer might be time with family and friends.  Others may say they want to visit a special place one last time, or finish a project they’ve spent years working on, or repair a relationship they’ve regretted for many years.  The point is this –   everyone has their ice cream and football.  And the High Holy Days are supposed to help us remember what those things are in our own lives.

These sacred days and the words of our Mahzor come to remind all of us, no matter how old we are, of the passage of time, of our fragility and mortality, and of our significance and worth in God’s sight at every age of life. They remind us of the value of each day of our lives, young or old, each day to be treasured and purpose oriented, and so should be the arc of our years. As we age our priorities may slowly shift, as we begin to sense our time is limited, as we begin to think about mortality, our focus on family, on friends, on the things we love the most, on discovering the meaning of what has been – those things become more and more important to us. And this, our YK fast day, and the prayers and reflections with which we spend the day, are intended to focus our minds on those very same aspects of our experience.

In the last verses of Scripture we are told that at the end of Moses’ life, after 120 years of struggle with God and with his people, לא כהתה עינו ולא נס לחו, “his vision was undimmed, his vigor unabated.”  Isn’t that what every one of us wishes for, every single day of our lives? We want our work to be meaningful, to engage our minds and our hearts. We want our loves to be true, enduring, and mutual. We want to be respected and loved even when we are imperfect and incomplete – even when we are infirm or grow old.  Like Moses, we may never enter a promised land where all of our dreams are fulfilled, but we hope that we are able to see it from a distance, to have that perspective on our lives. So that when we each reach a certain age, we can look to the generations after ourselves, knowing that they live by values we cherish, continuing our ancient path in new ways and in new times. That we and they together may find comfort, hope, promise and peace in God’s sheltering embrace in all the new years yet to come.

Tevya and Tisha B’Av

this a text version of my sermon from Shabbat services on 8/13

I would like to ask you to think with me for a moment about one of the most beloved scenes in the history of musicals, in the most beloved Jewish musical of all time.  The musical itself?  It must be Fiddler on the Roof.  And the scene?  So many great ones, but arguably the greatest of the great is the conversation that Tevya the milk man has with God just before he begins to sing ‘If I Were a Rich Man.”  In that dialogue an exhausted and almost defeated Tevya walks his horse back to the family home at the end of what we would call in today’s parlance a ‘bad day.’  The horse has gone lame, and Tevya begins to talk to God.  He complains a bit – kvetching would be the technical term.  “Dear God – was that necessary?  It is enough you pick on me.  What have you got against my horse?   Sometimes I think when things are too quiet up there, you say to yourself lets see, what kind of mischief can I play on my friend Tevya?  I am not really complaining – with your help, God, I am starving to death.  So what would have been so terrible if I had a small fortune.  If I were a rich man”…and you know the rest.

Of course Tevya in this scene, and perhaps throughout the entire musical, is at least on one level a metaphor for the Jewish people.  Downtrodden, exhausted, in dire straights, facing a series of seemingly unending challenges, persecuted by the Cossacks – that is Tevya’s story – and that is also the story of the Jews.  And Tevya has other qualities that also represent the Jewish people –  he has a Jewish sense of humor, a strength of will and determination, a dedication to family, and despite Tevya’s ongoing misgivings about God, he has a kind of unbreakable faith in God’s goodness and God’s presence.  In a sense God is Tevya’s constant companion in Fiddler.  Despite his hardships, his troubles and tzuris – Tevya remains a believer.

You may remember that last summer there was a a new book by Harper Lee published.  It was hard to miss it – it was covered by every major news agency, talked about on TV and radio, blogged about on the internet.  Anyone remember the name of the book?  Go Set a Watchman.  There was so much fanfare about it because Lee had published only one other book in her life – which is?  To Kill a Mockingbird.  In the end it turned out that Go Set a Watchman wasn’t actually a new book.  Instead it was a first draft of what would later become the masterpiece that we are all know so well.  What really caught people’s attention about the new book was that it told an alternate story.  Scout – the young protagonist in Mockingbird – is an adult in Go Set a Watchman.  She lives in New York, not in a small southern town.  But most significantly, the beloved character Atticus Finch, so memorably played in the movie version by Gregory Peck, who in To Kill a Mockingbird is a courageous champion of civil rights, is portrayed in the new book as a bitter racist.

This made people crazy.  You were taking a beloved story, beloved characters, and changing them – and not for the better.  And probably even more difficult for people, you were taking a symbol – Atticus Finch, a character who stood for wisdom, goodness, fairness, and equality – and you were destroying it.  The character was beloved.  People felt they knew that character, felt a certain ownership of him.  And the new book had in a way taken Atticus away from them.

I don’t want to take away your Tevya.  And there is no new version of Fiddler that will begin playing on Broadway soon.  But I would like to take a moment or two this morning to imagine an alternate version of the story.  On the surface this Anatevka looks the same as the original.  Poor Jews living in the shetyl, struggling to get by and to maintain their dignity and their way of life.  But under the surface things are different.  Because in our version of Fiddler the beloved character of Tevya has slowly, over the years, lost his faith in God.  The hardships of life have worn him down.  He realizes as hard has he has worked he has very little to show for it.  He is disappointed in his children, and he can’t understand why God hasn’t rewarded him for living his life as a faithful Jew.  So he decides to leave that life behind.  He violates the Sabbath without a second thought.  He doesn’t go to shul, doesn’t even worry about keeping kosher, doesn’t wear his tzitzit.  Perhaps he shaves his beard, and does his best to blend in with the gentiles in the village.

He would have every right to do it, to leave behind his faith.  After all, as we see in that famous dialogue with God I referred to a few minutes ago, God hasn’t done Tevya any favors.  And Tevya knows it.  He acknowledges it, he talks to God about it, reminds God of it.  But God never responds.  The truth is, it isn’t a dialogue with God that Tevya has.  It is a monologue.  He speaks, and whether God hears or doesn’t hear we don’t know.  But we do know that God doesn’t answer.

But in the end the real Tevya – the one we know and love – doesn’t seem to care.  His faith remains unwavering, despite the difficulties of his life, and it is precisely that sense of resilience and enduring faith that marks Tevya, that makes him who he is.  That is why we love him, that is why the character has been one of the most enduring characters in all of theater.  If you took that away from Tevya, if you changed his character, we wouldn’t go to see the show, we wouldn’t have his songs humming around in the backs of our minds, we wouldn’t all know his name.

In a sense it is the same way of the Jewish people.  Tonight begins Tisha B’Av, the saddest and most difficult day of the Jewish year.  It is a commemoration of the great tragedies of  Jewish history, most prominently remembering the destruction of the two great Temples in ancient Jerusalem.  On this day 1,946 years ago the second Temple was burned to the ground.  The Jews that were still alive were exiled, sent to Babylonia, their lives torn apart, families destroyed, homes and livelihoods lost.  They felt abandoned by God, they wondered whether the ancient covenant that existed between God and Israel, established so long ago by Moses, was still valid.  If there was any point in Jewish history when the Jews might have turned their backs on God, might have walked away, might have permanently lost their faith, that was the moment.  They would have had every right to leave their faith behind.

But they did not.  Instead, they turned their eyes to the heavens and they called out to God.  In a way that wonderful scene in Fiddler when Tevya turns his eyes to the sky and says ‘dear God, was that necessary?’ is a continuation of that moment.  It is a rhetorical question, of course.  It was not necessary.  But it is also a statement – God, I don’t understand, but still I look for You, still I call out to You, still I wait for You.  Despite what has happened I will not turn my back on You.  Instead, as it says in the psalms, אשא עיני אל ההרים מאין יבוא עזרי – I will lift my eyes to the mountains, from where will my help come?  And the next line of the psalm – עזרי מעם ה׳ עשה שמים וארץ – my help comes from God, who has made the heavens and the earth.

Tisha B’Av is about that moment.  Yes, it is a commemoration of the destruction of the Temples.  But even more so it is a celebration – a celebration of Jewish faith and resilience, of the strength of the Jewish spirit and the unending Jewish search for God.  I hope you’ll all join us tonight for Tisha B’Av services as we continue that search together.

Peeking Into Days of Future Past

Working my way through my summer reading list I’ve taken a detour.  It happens every summer, some previously unexpected, off the radar novel comes to my attention, grabs my interest, I track it down, and the reading begins (or continues).  This summer that book seems to be three books, a trilogy, written by Ben H. Winters, entitled The Last Policeman.   Classic dystopian literature.  A dark and disturbing world, intimately familiar, exists under the threat of extinction.  People go about their normal lives, work, converse, eat, fall in and out of love.  Everything is the same, but everything is different.  When you know the world is about to end, who can blame you for acting a bit strangely?

The genre of dystopian fiction is more popular than it has ever been.  We all remember Orwell’s 1984, having read it in high school.  The protagonist Winston Smith is on a fool’s errand, a quest for independence and freedom, thinking his own thoughts, straying from the prescribed program, leaving the party, and with it Big Brother, behind.  It is a quest that can only end badly.  Deception, capture, and torture; the inexorable power of the State bending Smith’s will and twisting his psyche, robbing him of every free thought and feeling.  1984  paints the portrait of a world that on the surface functions at least semi-normally, but where just under the surface – just – everything is wrong.

Something draws us to these stories.  Think of the success of the Hunger Games series, or Lois Lowry’s The Giver, required reading in virtually every middle school today.  But the list goes on and on.  Surely Huxley paved the way with Brave New World.  Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 explored the darkness of a world without books.  More recently Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake have delved into a near future where the average man or woman is boxed into a life totally controlled by invisible, shadowy forces.  These narratives are marked by a sense of ominous presence, of someone or something always watching, of inevitable violence and decay and the destruction of the human spirit.

Can there be anything better to read in this summer of our discontent?  With bizarre political processes playing out before our very eyes, with violence in the streets, citizens and police being shot, guns everywhere.  With the menace of terrorist attacks, where every bag can hold a bomb and every truck can suddenly become a terrible weapon of destruction and death.  As distrust and division grows deeper, what can be done?

Perhaps the first step is simply naming it all, looking unflinchingly at what is happening and acknowledging how troubled these times truly are, and how far we have to go, how much work there is to be done to change this tide.  That is precisely where art comes in, where music and literature and painting can help us step outside of our world for a time so that when we return, when we walk back through the door, we have context, a deeper understanding of what we see and feel, of what our world is and should be.

 

Summer Reading List 2016

My annual list – these books will keep you company on rainy days and sunny beaches (provided the sun ever comes out!).  As always, a ‘caveat emptor’ – some of these books might already be in the bag (I’ve read them), some might not get read at all, while I might read a book or two not on the list (if so, I’ll post additions on Twitter).  Enjoy the books!

Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehesi Coates  This powerful book, part memoir and part political treatise, is a stunning depiction of the emotional impact of growing up black in America.  In a time when racial and ethnic differences are front and center in the national conversation this is a must read.  152 pages

SPQR – A History of Ancient Rome – Mary Beard  The classicist from Cambridge University has written a compelling account of ancient Rome’s rise and fall.  Like the best written history, this book teaches us about the past while giving us a chance to reflect on the present.  575 pages

Doomed to Succeed – Dennis Ross  The historian, diplomat, and Middle East expert has written an insightful review of the history of American-Israeli relations, focusing on the presidents and their administrations and how they have either supported (mostly) or not supported (rarely) the Middle East’s only democracy.  474 pages

Everybody’s Fool – Richard Russo  The author paints a vivid picture of small town life in upstate New York, incorporating a bit of ‘who done it’ along the way.  They say you can’t go home again, but every once in a while you can visit.  500 pages

Purity – Jonathan Franzen  Arguably America’s greatest contemporary novelist, Franzen turns the structure of Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’ into a twisted tale that reminds us of how deeply inter-connected we all are, while at the same time confronting us with the knowledge of how challenging it can be to maintain our closest relationships and to fully open up to another person. 500 pages

This summer’s Shakespeare play is Macbeth.  Can there be any better play of the Bard’s to read during this deeply unsettling election season?  What does power mean and how much is it worth?  And remember, be careful what you wish for!  Who can forget the striking couplet from the end of the Witches speech in Act IV, scene 1 – “Double, double, toil and trouble – fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”