1 comments about An Orphan in History: Retrieving a Jewish Legacy.

1. Cowan was raised as the most upper-class of Jews; he even attended an elite, priveleged high school out East where he was required to go to Episcopalian services. This is the story of how he slowly left that world and discovered his Jewish roots. Cowan writes from the heart, expressing all his emotions about his journey, including his fears. I am from an extremely traditional Jewish background, and was very impressed at his openness to first learning about something that he really knew little about, and then gradually beginning to practice it. (One of my favorite parts of the book is when he puts on tefillin, a morning ritual for Orthodox Jewish men). In addition, this is also a story about his wife. Raised as a Protestant, she comes to share his love for his new-found faith. A unique book. It is a shame that Cowan passed away so young; a sequel would have been great.

1 comments about Chazon Ish the Life and Ideals of Rabbi Avraham Yeshayah Karelitz: The Life and Ideals of Rabbi Avraham Yeshayah Karelitz (The Artscroll History Series).

1. The Chazon Ish was a literal man (Ish) of miracles. His blessings often brought cures to illnesses. Prayers at his grave have often been effective. Rabbi Shimon Fickelman begins the book with the 13 year old Avraham Yeshayah Karelitz's commitment to study Torah for its own sake. That is for the sake of the Name (G-d). He made this decision at his Bar Mitzvah. Many of the benefits that ones derives from this are listed by Rabbi Meir at the beginning of the sixth chapter of Ethics of the Fathers. Rabbi Finkelman shows that he did acquire these and as Rabbi Meir said "and More." He had the 48 traits listed in The Ethics of the Fathers by which one acquires Torah. He suffered thru The First World War, as many Jews did. He loved his writing and regarded his books "Chazon Ish" as if they were his children. He and his wife moved to pre-state Israel in 1933. He believed that because he lived in the Land of Israel that his writings took on a special quality. He played an important role in getting Rabbi Isaac Herzog the position of the Chief Rabbi Of Israel after the death of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in 1935. He was very active in encouraging religious settlements to observe that Sabbatical year. He viewed the state of Israel as the last stage of exile for the Jews, rather than the beginning of the redemption. He helped thousands of troubled people. He fought against the drafting of women into the Israeli army. As a result of this, orthodox women are not drafted into the Israeli army-to this day(although non-orthodox women are.) When The Chazon Ish was challenged to cite the Paragraph in Shulchan Aruch which prohibits" the drafting of women, he answered:

   "It is found in the fifth section of Shulchan Aruch, one which is not written and is the province of only true Talmidei Chachamim."

   Rabbi Finkelman reports when the Brisker Rav was asked the same question with regard to the Torah he said, "In the Ten Commandments."

5 comments about Stalking Elijah: Adventures with Today's Jewish Mystical Master.

1. The author writes well and I certainly appreciated that. However, his spiritual journey seems primarily to emphasize his lack of focus and his ability to see Judaism and Buddhism as "one-size-fits-all" spiritual companions. I felt that his analogies between the two religious philosophies were stretched rather thin and I was never entirely certain why he felt so strongly that the two must be related or joined together. I also felt that in several instances, he misrepresented Jewish theological ideas in order to make them fit more neatly into a Buddhist mold. For example, he tries to relate the Buddhist notions of reincarnation with those of Jewish Kabbalistic mystics. While there are similarities, he never makes note of the fact that reincarnation is not a particularly strong thread within any of the major denominations of Judaism. All in all, after reading this book, the phrase, "self-indulgent" keeps coming to mind. I'm sure it was important for him to write it -- I'm just not convinced that it's important for others to read.



2. This book comes as a natural sequel to its predecessor "The Jew in the Lotus." The later describes the author's encounter with Buddhist mysticism and how this event eventually led to rediscovering of his Jewish roots. "Stalking Elijah" describes his encounters and dialogues with mystical teachers inspired on Kabbalah, representatives of the Jewish Renewal Movement in America (Rabbi Zalmon Schachter-Shalomi, Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb).

   It is a very personal view, self-centered, a mystical journey that leaves many open questions and speculates on several issues. Although Kamenetz writings may act as a source of inspiration for Jews (and why not for other denominations as well), his exhausting elaboration on certain issues might be viewed as tedious by some readers. His striving quest for religious identification and willingness to share his adventure with his readers underlies a sad paradox: the mystical journey, as much as the experience of God, is such a personal, instrospective, and subjective experience that it becomes impossible to share it with other people by means of all known conventional methods of communication.

   Probably the most important conclusion he reaches is that when a Jew is faced with the dilemma between mystical experience and practical religious life, complex procedures are not required. A single blessing from the heart may very well do the trick!




3. This book is a sequel to Kammenetz's "The Jew in the Lotus" which recounts a visit of Jewish thinkers of various backgrounds and persuasions to Dharmsala, India, the home of the Tibetan Government in exile, to discuss the secret of Jewish survival in the diaspora with the Dali Lama and other Tibetan leaders. The book, and the discussions, went far beyond that topic, however, and centered upon an inter-faith dialogue between the Jewish leaders and the Tibetans on the nature of their religious beliefs and practices.

   In "Stalking Elijah", Kammenetz tries to find his way back to a Jewish observance using the insights he had gleaned from his meeting with the Tibetans. In other words, he undertakes a journey from Dhramasala to Judaism. The book recounts Kammenetz's meetings with Jewish spiritual leaders, most of whom practice a form of "mystical" or contemplative Judaism in Kammenetz's attempt to recover something of Judaism for himself.

   I was frustrated by the book and found it hard to write about it.
   It strikes me as self-indulgent and as unduly polemical. Also, Kammenetz's discussions of his meetings with his teachers are superficial. We don't really see enough of the teachers to get a good feeling for what they have to say.

   The most valuable theme of the book, for me, is given in the title of this review. This is advice given by one of the Rabbi's to whom Kammenetz turns for spiritual advice, an ex-Lubavicher Rabbi who, like Kammenetz, visited the Dali Lama. In the context of the book, the Rabbi advises the author to begin where he is in life in his search for spiritual enlightenment. Thus, Kammenetz finds he his to work within the scope of his Jewish background and learning, and follow a Jewish path to define and to realize his religious goals. The advice to "start from where you are" is wise, I think, beyond the use to which it is placed here. In every walk of life at every stage, the beginning of wisdom is to "start from where you are" rather than to try to be someone else or to be discontented with one's life. Good rabinnical advice, and good Buddhist advice too.

   In addition to this component of the book, I found the final chapter describing a Passover seder in Dharamasala attended by Jews and Tibetan Buddhists well written. It can stand alone as an essay.

   The book is of mixed merit but its goal and message are valuable.




4. The spiritual quest of Rodger Kamenetz through meeting with a series of non- conventional Jewish religious teachers is at the heart of this book. Kamenetz seeks the wisdom of teachers like Zalman Shlomi -Schacter, Jonathan Omer- Man, Art Green. He relates the stories of his encounters with these people.
   Kamenetz also tells in the work the story of Paul Wolff whose religious quest was intensified when he and his wife suffered the terrible loss of their young daughter. Kamenetz and his wife had also lost an infant, and he shows understanding for Woolf.
   While respecting Kamenetz for his effort to learn and understand I was slightly puzzled by the whole enterprise. Perhaps I see things too simplistically. And perhaps I have the advantage of living in Jerusalem where praying in a minyan is such a regular and ordinary experience. But I somehow do not understand why a Jewish spiritual quest does not have as central component communal prayer in a traditional way.
   I believe Kamenetz's quest would have been easier and in a way more successful had he simply focused on the idea that by doing mitzvot by doing the will of God one raises oneself up spiritually closer to God.
   I may be foolish but I do not understand why in religious terms it is necessary for a Jew to borrow from other faiths.
   Nonetheless Kamenetz's sincerity and his desire to learn are strong virtues which help make this work interesting and authentic.



5. Rodger wrote "The Jew In The Lotus", an account of both his renewed interest in Judaism, and the tale of a Jewish delegation's visit to the Dalai Lama. In my review of that book, I concentrated on Rodger's renewed interest in the Jewish Renewal movement's version of Judaism.
   
   "Stalking Elijah" is more a sequel to TJITL's Jewish story than its narrative about the meetings with the Dalai Lama. In this book, Rodger describes his visits to and discussions with the folks he considers to be Jewish Renewal's and the Reconstructionist movement's mystics. All of those folks lack a traditional Jewish practice, the key to Jewish mysticism.
   
   I found it a bit odd that he considered only those Jewish Renewal and Reconstructionist folks discussed in the book to be "Today's Jewish Mystical Masters." In doing so, he left out most of the true masters, including the teachers of the people he interviewed. Those folks live in the Orthodox Jewish world almost exclusively: modern, yeshivish and chassidic.
   
   And so this book is more about popular perspectives on Jewish mysticism (i.e., Jewish Mysticism "Lite") than the real thing.
   
   In the end, it's an easy-to-read introduction to Jewish mystical concepts, so if you want to dip your toe in those waters but not jump in feet-first, perhaps you'll enjoy this pleasant book.

3 comments about Speak You Also: A Survivor's Reckoning.

1. I just finished reading this great first-hand account of living through the Holocaust in Nazi death camps, by Paul Steinberg. What separates this text is that it seems less caught up with providing the reader with every single detail of daily life and more focused with the author's personal struggle, the friendships gained and forgotten, the death camp's social hieracrchies, and of course, his incredible task of survival. Paul Steinberg admits that he was an atypical Jew, uninvolved with Jewish ways and traditions, and he wonders why he survived and others perished; Jews that were more religious, possessed more wisdom, strength, etc. Truly, Steinberg's ordeal is almost unbelievable. He was able to do what he had to in order to survive. This book is great if you want to gain a good understanding of these historical events, a different time period in life, and the human struggle, all through the eyes of this remarkable man. He is honest and sincere, and holds nothing back.



2. I haven't heard of Paul Steinberg before I read this book. The book is a gem and recollects the life of a camp inmate trying to survive the war. Steinberg was one of those people who helped
   the inmate leadership run the killing camps. He was a chemist in one of the IB Farben complexes. His short but powerful story shows how stronger people were consumed, while a flexible youngster survived the camps by doing what he had to do to stay alive.
   This should be required reading for those people who deny that the Holocaust happened. It is also a reminder that the general population should always remember these events. Steinberg found this book hard to write, but it was easy to read and conveyed a powerful perspective.



3. To my mind, this is one of the great books of the latter half of the twentieth century. Page after page of flawless writing filled with shattering observations and insight, all tuned to a visionary pitch whose serenity belies its hellish setting and themes. The final sections in particular are stunning. I'm confident that once you've tuned the final page, you'll be recommending Speak You Also to everyone you care about for years to come.

2 comments about The Patron: A Life of Salman Schocken, 1877-1959.

1. This is a professionally-written biography of the late German-Jewish philanthroper Zalman Schocken. I learned many things from this biography that I hadn't known about his life: that he was actually from Prussian-controlled Poland and thus, was not a "blue blood" German Jew, about his innovations in commerce which lead to the massive successes of his department store chain, and his relationship with other German-Jewish figures in the Zionist movement such as Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt, and S.Y. Agnon. I learned that Agnon kept his right-wing and very anti-Arab attitudes out of his books because his 40-year patron, Zalman Schocken, told him to do it. I learned that Schocken Books published a whole line of Jewish-subject-related books in Germany after the Nazis came to power, even exploiting their sepearation laws to be a "Jewish publisher."
   
   Up until the Nazis come to power, Schocken appears to be a man of talent and relevancy, both in the realm of business and also in the realm of Jewish cultural revival. The last 25 years of his life are portrayed as those of a man who has had the cultural and business orientation ripped away from him by Adolf Hiter and in relying on his previously-used models of success and meaning,falling into irrelevance.
   
   The author has worked hard to understand all of the angles of Schocken's life: as a businessman, as a successful autodidact and lover of literature and philosophy, as a philathroper, and even a bit about his personal life and his relationship with his family. The author has also mastered the intellectural and political background in which Schocken's life occurs, both in Germany and then in Jewish-Palestine, which eventually became Israel.
   
   Zalman Schocken was certainally a character and personality of an exceptional and excentric order and this books comprehensively explores all aspects of his life, his business endeavors, his social visions, his philonthropic endeavors, his ideas about culture, Judaism, and his relationships with other people.



2. I have read a number of reviews of this book all of which praise Anthony David for his detailed study of the life of Zalman Schocken.
   David paints the portrait of a remarkable Renaissance figure, an innovative empire- building businessman , a great patron of the Arts, a humanist, Zionist builder of cultural life in the land of Israel.
   Schocken was born in Posen in Prussia, but built a business empire throughout Germany. His department- stores were forerunners of today's Malls. He combined in them a sense of the aesthetic ( Bauhaus architect Eric Mendlesohn was his designer) with a real understanding of the customers' needs.
   He also was an autodidact a lover of German and Jewish culture. The shock of his life came with the coming of the Nazis to power, and from then on he shifted most of his activities to Jewish cultural work. He also to a degree recreated a bit of the business empire he had in Germany, in then Palestine and the United States. 'Schocken Books' is one of his cultural monuments. He was the patron of Buber,Scholem, Elsa Lasker-Schuler, and most notably Agnon. Schoken had an eye for talent and an ability to support and sustain it.
   One of his major moves was his purchase of the newspaper 'Haaretz' as wedding gift for his son. This would become the Israeli equivalent of the NY Times.
   Schocken was also a great patron of the Hebrew University.
   Schocken contributed much to the building of Hebrew culture in the land of Israel, and Jewish culture throughout the world.
   A highly recommended work.

2 comments about Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz.

1. Although the length of this book is not great, the meaning behind each word is. Isabella Leitner, a Holocaust survivor, wrote this on her experiences in her life as a Jewish woman in Europe during WWII. Leitner was transported to a concentration camp. She writes many of her obstacles as if she were writing a journal. I liked this book, but is not the best I have ever read. What made me give it four stars was that it is true. The person who experienced this wrote it down. It makes me admire Leitner because she went back to this time and wrote about it on paper. I did not give it five stars because I felt I needed a deeper understanding of what I was reading. I would suggest that someone be about sixteen before they read it, unless they were very mature. I would not recommend this book to someone who likes things to be concise. This is best for a patient reader who searches for a deeper meaning. All together, Fragments of Isabella is a great book for the dedicated reader.



2. This book is slimmer than the volume which came out in 1994, combining and somewhat updating this and the sequel 'Saving the Fragments,' but in a way it has more of an emotional impact, even considering a lot of the powerful vignettes of Isabella and her by then two remaining sisters after the liberation are completely left out. Because it's so short, it has more room to leave a deeper emotional impact; it didn't really dawn on me until rather recently that this, the most powerful book I've ever read, offers up relatively little details about daily life in the camps or seemingly important events and rituals the then-four remaining sisters would have gone through, like mealtime, beatings, the superiors in their barracks, the type of "work" they were forced to do, and their boarding of and ride in the icy halftrack from Auschwitz to Birnbaumel in November 1944. We get some events that took place in both camps, but not, as in other Shoah memoirs, long detailed passages and chapters accounting for every day, week, or even month spent there. What has made this book so powerful to me over the years aren't the details but rather the truly touching and genuine bond between Isabella and her sisters, how they stayed alive and together for one another, because of one another, even when it would have been easier, particularly for the youngest remaining sister Regina (called "Rachel" in this book because she wouldn't let Isabella use her real name in print at the time), to go the way of the smoke. We don't even know the ages of the four sisters, which makes it harder to picture the full dynamics of this relationship (the oldest sister, the one who was caught during their eventual escape and never reunited with them, dying shortly after Bergen-Belsen was liberated, was actually almost 30 years old, I've since discovered). These are fragments in the truest sense of the word, which Isabella wrote on scraps of paper, in her native Hungarian, shortly after she'd arrived in the States in May of 1945, whenever the images and memories forced themselves to the forefront of her mind and she needed to get them out of her system, however temporarily. Although in the updated volume, this account is told in the present tense, which makes it seem even more gripping than when told in the past tense in this original book.
   
   There are also some passages in this original volume that were left out in the updated one, like how Isabella's mother, whose death she never stops mourning or thinking about, had taught her the very important lesson of listening to her heart and the small inner voice within her dictating what was right, as well as describing how her only brother, Philip, temporarily hid as his family, friends, and neighbors were being herded to the cattlecars, but reappeared a moment later, unwilling to desert his family and not share in their fate too. (Interestingly, I happened upon the ID cards the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's webpage has for Isabella, her mother, her baby sister, and her oldest sister, and discovered that Philip may have been the only surviving brother in a family of five sisters, but wasn't the only brother they ever had; after Potyo [whose real name was Helen] was born, there were apparently born twin boys who died at 8 months of age.) There's also an interesting switch in the passage talking about how Isabella would put down her shovel and stop digging whenever the Nazi guards looked away in Birnbaumel, since her mother had told her not to aide her enemy; in this book it says "I honored her and kept myself alive" as opposed to, in the updated version, "I honored her and tried to keep myself alive." Reading the original unchanged passages makes it more emotional. And though even years later this book haunts me so much that I feel as though I had lost my own sister, nothing compares to the experience of reading it the very first time and receiving the stunning blow that Cipi, the oldest of the four sisters left, was caught and did not survive, having assumed she was with them in America and had survived too, even that maybe they'd found her even decades later. One feels the same way Isabella does, that had she known she would have tugged at her sleeve or run holding her sister's hand or arm. This volume also contains the very powerful closing line that is completely left out of the updated volume, "Mama, I make this vow to you--I will teach my sons to love life, respect man, and hate only one thing--war."

No comments about Anne Frank: An Unauthorized Biography (Heinemann Profiles).

4 comments about Manners and Customs in the Bible: Revised Edition.

1. Mr. Matthews offers a good overview of the period between the beginning and finishing of the Scriptures, uncluding the Maccabean period. It is amazing how much better one can understand the Scriptures when you have read this book. The social customs and manners of burial, marriage, food preparation, farming, traveling, city-builing, etc. are all covered in this volume. It is very good for those just beginning to study the Scripture, or those that have studied for some time without a clear understanding of the customs of the peoples written about. Despite all this praiseworthy detail, however, Mr. Matthews shows his true colors as a Higher Critic of the Scriptures. This means he denies the infallibility, inspiration, and preservance of the Scriptures. New and old Christians be ware of this, for once these doctrines are denied you may as well throw the book of God's Word away (if that may be said reverently). With this warning in mind, I would highly recommend the purchase of this book for any Christian or otherwise.



2. I thought that this would be about daily living but it is mostly about the politics through the different eras.



3. While the Bible is a fascinating book to read and study, it is easy to forget that the Bible was written over a long period of time. Though historians differ about exact dates, Abraham probably lived anywhere between 1,250 and 1,500 years prior to the birth of Christ, David probably lived about 750 to 1,000 years before Christ's birth, and between 587 B.C. and the writing of the New Testament, life changed almost daily. This is why understanding the daily life of different periods in Biblical history, and knowing that there were often vast differences in customs and practices in the differing periods, is so essential to understanding scripture. Life in Biblical times changed quickly just as much as life in our own day changes rapidly.

   Biblical scholar Victor Matthews attempts to explain the life and customs in different Biblical periods in his book MANNERS AND CUSTOMS IN THE BIBLE. The book is divided into five major sections: The Patriarchal Period (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his sons), The Exile and Settlement (Moses, Joshua, and the Judges), The Monarchy, Exile and Return, and the Intertestamental and New Testament Era (The Persians, Greeks, and Romans). Nearly two thirds of the book covers the period prior to the writing of the New Testament, but this is actually a plus since there are many other resources that cover the New Testament. Readers get bits of information about warfare, government policies, family life, gender roles, marriage customs, business and trade, and a host of other small subjects that make the book interesting to browse through and a must have for scripture study.

   Though the book is set up in chronological order, it is not really a comprehensive history of the Bible, but a supplement that enriches a historical text. It has a scriptural index which will help people involved in preaching and in research.

   Certainly this book will be helpful for people who preach and conduct Bible studies, but it will also be of interest to anyone who wants to see how our day and age is both similar to, and differs from people of Biblical times.




4. I have read several of Matthews' books, including The Old Testament Parallels, The IVP Bible Background Commentary, and his volume of the New Cambridge Bible Commentary series, Judges & Ruth. This latest book is just as well written and accessible. Matthews attempts to find realistic dates for Biblical stories, not always assuming them to be historical, and explains the cultural nuances of particular verses in light of his sociocultural knowledge of various time periods and regions. This book is suitable for all interested laymen, seminary students, and pastors.

2 comments about Silent as a Stone: Mother Maria of Paris and the Trash Can Rescue.

1. Jim Forest has brought us many wonderful books about the spiritual life, looks at icons and praying with them, a recent exceptional vision of pilgrimage as a way of life: The Road to Emmaus, his fine biography of Thomas Merton, Living with wisdom, an examination of the Beatitudes. only to cite several. This children's book takes the reader into a terrible time, one in which whole families were swept up, put into horrendous conditions of imprisonment in concentration camps, the result for most being disease and death. In the midst of such darkness we encounter the light and hope and goodness of a woman honored after her own death as "Rigtheous among the Gentiles." This is the new saint, Mother Maria Skobtsova, a fascinating, unusual example of holiness in our time. Jim Forest weaves his lovely, spare text with Dasha Pacheshnaya's extraordinary photographs, most based on historical photos fo Mother Maria, Fr. Dmitri Klepinine, the hostel at Rue de Lourmel in the 15th arrondisment of Paris and the cycling stadium, Vel d'Hiver, where the French Jews were held. The story though turned into a narrative is based on first hand accounts of what Mother Maria was able to do in her visits to the stadium in th sweltering June days of 1942, as those rounded up awaited transport to the camps. Not only children but all of us need images of goodness in the face of great despair and evil. This wonderful story provide just that.



2. Jim Forest's re-telling of Mother Maria's ruse to save Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Paris is a welcome addition to our child's library, and Dasha Pancheshnaya's illustrations are a most welcome change from some of the children's illustrations that have come out of St Vladimir Seminary press over the years. Forest's re-telling is lucid and easy for a child to follow (I suspect), but over all, the story is dull in Forest's telling. For all you dads and moms who tell your children stories (true or ficticious), imagine the excitement of a child's being hauled around in a trash can to escape utter danger, hiding out in a pious Orthodox christian home while intensely missing one's parents, and then hopping a bakery truck to southern France!! This really is an exciting tale; AND IT'S A TRUE TALE.
   
   None of that excitement comes across in Forest's telling. The story (the miracle, actually) comes across as a mildly interesting incident in WWII Paris. Over all, the story is a welcomed addition to children's litterature (I'm glad Forest took this story on) and the illustrations are soft, lovely and lively. However, the story could have been better told, I think.

No comments about Theresienstadt: Hitler's Gift to the Jews.