In my early 20s I chose to learn in a Haredi yeshiva. I was deeply attracted to the idealism of that world. Though over time I took some distance from that world and its hashkafot, though its idealism, and the desire for it, stays with me. On my recent visit to Israel that sense of…
Sea of Tranquility – Emily St. John Mandel
Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel, is a hard book to categorize, though it is certainly a book worth reading. The book takes place in four time periods – the early 19th century, the present day (approximately), two hundred years from now, and four hundred years from now. While each of the storylines…
A Torah Life is Inefficient
I recently heard a couple of provocative, and ancient ideas, in an interview with the entrepreneur Kunal Shah on the Farnam Street Podcast. He said two things that stuck with me deeply. He said that a, “spiritual life is inefficient,” and “standardizing is the enemy of soulfulness.” I want to think through each one here,…
Etgar Keret – Seven Good Years
After listening to Etgar Keret’s entrancing stories about his mother that he read on This American Life, I knew I needed to read more of his books. What arrived first from the library was The Seven Good Years: A Memoir. I must note that it’s the most unconventional memoir I’ve probably ever read. There is…
The Ring – Andre Alexis
I had to look up the word quincunx, a word I’d never come across before, when it described a series of novels by Andre Alexis. Google says that a quincunx is “an arrangement of five objects with four at the corners of a square or rectangle and the fifth at its center, used for the…
Not a Regular Book Review: My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner, by Chaim Grade
Normally book reflections go on the Netivot Monday Morning Reading email. This one, however, is only on my blog. The reflection is both too long, and the book too different from what I normally write about, that keeping it here seemed the more natural place for it to reside. Onward. Reading Chaim Grade is a…
Nickel and Dimed: Undercover in Low Wage America – Barbara Ehrenreich
In September I came across a byline in the newspaper that the writer Barbara Ehrenreich had passed away (here is fuller obituary from the New York Times). Though her name had crossed my desk many times, I’d never read any of her books, so I did what any person would do – I asked Google…
Five Little Indians – Michele Good
Growing up, a survivor meant one thing – a person who survived the Holocaust. For me this meant a person who somehow escaped murder by the Nazis, and then went on to live a life in Canada. It did not give any thought to what that life looked like upon their arrival, what memories haunted…
A Conversation with Chief Rabbi David Lau
Tonight I had the privilege of being part of an intimate conversation with the Chief Ashkenaki Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi David Lau (with gratitude to Mizrachi and the Pertman family for bringing this group together). I asked the Rav a question, and loved his answer, which I wanted to share. Some months ago, I told…
Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law – by Chaim Saiman
Yeshayahu Leibovitz makes a compelling claim that the core of Judaism is Halacha, Jewish law and practice, the common element in all Jewish communities throughout history. It is not, in contrast, because of any particular set Jewish ideas or philosophies. On the contrary, these ideas have differed from one end of the spectrum (rationalism and…