I was completely enthralled by Jacob Mikanowski’s interview on the podcast Conversations With Tyler, which I recommended some months back. So, of course, I bought his book! Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land is an expansive look at Eastern Europe from a person who has spent most of his adult life…
Exhalation by Michael Chiang
There are some books that I fall into, where the story draws me and I feel emotionally connected to the narrative. Exhalation, by Michael Chiang, was of a different sort. More than almost any other work of fiction I can remember, it was intellectually challenging, not in the sense of being hard to read, but…
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, Michael Lewis
I’m a long time fan of Michael Lewis, and so was eager to read his new book about Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon. Like many of Lewis’ books, being uninterested in the subject matter he addresses (baseball, finance, organizational psychology, crypto currency) is no impediment to reading…
Rachel Aviv – Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us
There is a common dichotomy presented in the world of mental illness. On one side (and I simplify), evolving from Freud’s early influence on psychology, is that mental illness emerges from deep human drives combined with early life experiences. Its solution lies in talk therapy and self awareness. On the other side,…
The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East, Abraham Rabinovich
I was recently gifted a copy of The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East, by Abraham Rabinovich, an exceptional and gripping book. I actually started it as a side-book, but it quickly became the center of my reading attention. Reading it soon after the events of October 7th was especially…
Reading With My Kids – December Wrap Up
With the winter break coming up and more time with your kids, I thought a wrap up of my recent reading with my children might be helpful (and hopefully fun as well!). Most of what I’ve read these last few months has been with my son Koby in Grade 3, because Simi and I (Grade…
Courage to Be Moral
It seems we are living at a moment where much of our society’s moral compass has been turned upside down, or at the very least, has ceased to operate. The moral equivalency between Hamas and Israel; the lack of response in the university world to the Hamas atrocities, when a micro-aggression in such institutions will…
Avigayil Rock – פרשני המקרא
Amongst my most recommended books of this past year is פרשני המקרא, by Avigayil Rock z’l, (it has been translated into English under the title Great Biblical Commentators). It is an extraordinary, encyclopedic panorama of biblical commentary starting with Onkelos’s Arameic translation, through the middle ages, and into modern times. Each of the 25 chapters…
James McBride – The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother
After reading The Heaven and Earth Grocery Story, by James McBride, a story about a small town and its Black and Jewish neighbors, I was intrigued to learn more about the author’s life. I’d passed his memoir, The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother, many times on the bookshelf in…
Rally in Washington – A Reflection
There are times when one plus one plus one (etc.) adds up to much more than the total sum being counted. Today on the Washington Mall I stood with tens, and likely hundreds of thousands of people (mostly Jews), for Israel, for the hostages, and against anti-semitism. It was empowering to feel surrounded by a…