Day by Day: Reflections on the Themes of the Torah from Literature, Philosophy, and Religious Thought, Rabbi Chaim Stern (Beacon Press)

Reviewed by Rabbi Goldstein.

Rabbi Chaim Stern is a poetic and prolific writer. Readers may recognize his name as the editor of two Reform prayerbooks, both Gates of Prayer (Shabbat and weekdays) and Gates of Repentance (High Holidays). He is also the author of On the Doorposts of Your House, a how-to home prayerbook. So there is no doubt that Rabbi Stern knows how to present inspirational material to a wide audience.

Day by Day offers readers a compendium of thoughts on each week’s Torah portion, arranged thematically. So, for example, Bereshit is the theme of "Creation", Tzav is "Offerings" and V’zot Habracha is "Humility." First Stern explains the connection between the parsha and the theme, and then gives a week’s worth of stories, sayings, and proverbs from hundreds of sources. The sources range from Chasidic tales to ancient historians to modern poets, both Jewish and from other traditions.

The book is beautifully written and easy to use. I found a number of wonderful connections which deepened my feeling for the portion of the week. All the sources are "popular" as opposed to "scholarly" and so the book is not intended for study purposes but rather to be used as an inspirational "companion" to a weekly reading of Torah. As it says in the section on Emor, from the Proverbs, "Pleasant words are a honeycomb." This book is sweet and well worth tasting.

Danny Siegel's Bar and Bat Mitzvah Mitzvah Book by Danny Siegel
CMS Distributing
Reviewed by Allan Gould

One of the most powerful, moving, exquisitely-written and insightful books I have read in the past decade is Woman: An Intimate Geography, by the Pulitzer-prize-winning, former New York Times' science reporter Natalie Angier. I found it so important, I actually read aloud its 400 pages to my wife, every night for a month, after I had previously discovered and devoured it, a few weeks earlier.

I begin this book review in this fashion, because I am not a woman, but a middle-aged man, who has a vested interest-- as a man, as a husband, as a father of a daughter as well as a son--in knowing more about The Other Half. I have similar feelings about a remarkable little paperback by Jewish educator, poet, lecturer and author DANNY SIEGEL, called, rather immodestly (but justifiably so; he just may be the world's greatest expert on Jewish "micro-philanthropy" and "saving the world in little steps"), Danny Siegel's Bar and Bat Mitzvah Mitzvah Book. It costs only $18 Canadian ($12 U.S.), and it's published by the small Town House Press in North Carolina, so you may well have to track it down at your local Jewish bookstore, or by contacting CMS Distributing, or Naomike@aol.com, but you really should; like my non-female obsession with Angier's WOMAN, you do NOT have to have a son or daughter approaching Bar/Bat Mitzvah age, in order to be profoundly influenced by this masterpiece of Doing Good.

Siegel has written other books over the past dozen years, which touch upon the same concerns, both of them published by the more established KAR-BEN Copies: Tell me a Mitzvah (1993) and Mitzvah Magic: What Kids Can Do to Change the World (2002). But this one is truly the must-have text--and one, I feel, that should be given to every Jewish child in every day school or cheder in the world, well before he or she starts to learn their Haftarah; maybe years earlier.

In his opening chapter, Siegel lays out "What This Book Is All About":

. . .I want this to be a practical guide for introducing Mitzvahs into any and every aspect of the events that comprise the Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebration. Sections of the book will deal with everything from the speeches to incredibly colorful kippot/yarmulkes made by Mayan women in Guatemala, to the content and format of the invitation, centerpieces and whom to honor and how best to honor them. Mitzvah opportunities are to be found everywhere and at any moment. This book provides very concrete suggestions and techniques that will help families decide how to connect Mitzvahs to the celebration. It is at that time that the Bar/Bat Mitzvah will then truly become a Mitzvah experience. . . . The simple fact is that hundreds of thousands of lives have been touched because of Bar and Bat Mitzvah projects and Tzedakah money.

And that is what this book does--and so very much more: it clearly and passionately lays out a simple fact: that the often-vulgar, "more BAR [as in free-flowing booze] than Mitzvah" celebrations of thousands of pubescent Jewish boys and girls every year can truly help change the world. Indeed, they can change the lives and life-purpose of those youngsters, their parents, their relatives, and a good percentage of those invited to the celebration.

We have all been to too-many meaningless celebrations of family and friends: lavish birthday parties, anniversaries, weddings, and more. I've attended Bar Mitzvahs where the father actually "roasted" his son in a Rat Pack fashion, which was vulgar enough; what was even more tragic was the utter lack of meaning to this religious event-- beyond the cheques, the video games, the CD players and cell phones.

Which is where Danny Siegel's Bar and Bat Mitzvah Mitzvah Book comes in. It helps all of us, in this often crudely capitalistic culture of ours, to recognize that this important Life Passage (after all, it DOES mean that a Jewish child now has obligations in prayer, Jewish society and more that he/she did not have, before turning 13 or 12, and reading that Torah or Haftarah portion) can be life-changing and even world-changing. What a responsibility! And what an opportunity!

Our son and daughter are now 31 and 26, respectively, but Siegel--whose "mitzvah work" I've known about for decades--inspired my wife Merle and me to have Judah linked with a Soviet refusenik lad at his own celebration, and to have Elisheva volunteer for several months with the elderly (reading to them, singing Hebrew and Yiddish songs to them, giving them manicures) at our local Jewish Home for Aged. And more: when I took each child on a special "Bar Mitzvah Trip With Abba" to New York City (since we lacked the cash to visit Israel each time), both of them took hundreds of U.S. quarters to give to every beggar and homeless person they saw on the streets of Manhattan--which helped continue the Tikkun Olam (healing the world) aspect of their Jewish coming-of-age for a long period after their parties were long forgotten. Indeed, both of our children asked for donations to Siegel's remarkable charitable fund, ZIV (www.ziv.org), "in lieu of gifts," which, even in retrospect, decades later, stuns me with their agreed-to generosity. Of course, most people gave our children gifts as well--but what a lesson for everyone involved!

Siegel's latest book is so "right-on," it thrilled me: He explains the meaning of Tikkun Olam, of Tzedakah (which is very unlike the Christian term "charity," which comes from the word for "love," but rather, from TZEDEK-- the obligation each of us has to be a righteous person; it's an important distinction). He asks the Important Questions-- literally asks: One chapter is called "24 Questions Parents May Wish to Ask Themselves," and includes such toughies as "Have I ever asked myself, 'Is my child gifted in Tikkun Olam-type Mitzvahs?'," and "What do I mean when I say, 'I want my child to be successful'," and "What is the relationship between my child's Jewish education and what kind of person he or she is and will possibly become?" and "Who are my child's heroes?" and--here's a killer: "How seriously do I take my own commitment to Judaism and things Jewish?"

Siegel has created in his life, work, and teaching, a marvelous concept: the Mitzvah Hero. No, there's nothing wrong with having "heroes" in athletics or having obsessions or crushes with movie or TV stars. But when we read of the Jewish woman who, on a vacation, saw Guatemalans struggling to survive on pennies a day, by selling home-made knitted objects, and decided to get dozens of them to create stunning kippot/yarmulkes which sell for $10, and are now given away at Bar Mitzvahs and weddings across North America (the proceeds of which has sent many of their once-starving children to universities, and brought electricity into once-dark homes), our eyes should not only fill with tears, but our hearts should be filled with admiration and desire to emulate such creativity, such goodness, such, yes, such Heroism. (Why should Paris Hilton be a hero to anyone?)

As Siegel movingly quotes the brilliant educator and author John Holt, "Charismatic leaders make us think, 'Oh, if only I could do that, be like that.' True leaders make us think, 'If they can do that, then. . .I can too.'" Which is the real point of this extraordinarily important, even life-changing (and possibly world-changing) book: that every Bar/Bat Mitzvah child--indeed, every one of us--"is always capable of great acts of Tikkun Olam, greater than he or she ever thought possible." I've seen Danny Siegel enthrall auditoriums filled with adults, by challenging them: "What do you do?" "I'm an accountant," someone shouts out. "No, you're a potential mitzvah-doer, who can help a poor person to handle their money better," he tells them. "I'm a dentist," another states proudly. "And think of what Good Deeds a dentist can do for an impoverished person with rotted teeth," he replies. Not all need such a reminder--but don't most of us?

Much of this book is filled with practical--amazingly practical, and surprisingly obvious, yet so rarely recognized by most of us--chances to Make The World a Better Place, through Bar/Bat Mitzvah-mitzvahs. So, we are told how an invitation can invite people to support various charities (as well as merely give the usual information about the location of the synagogue, the date of the party); how a centerpiece can read "IN LIEU OF FLOWERS, A DONATION WAS MADE IN HONOR OF THIS TABLE TO [THIS OR THAT CHARITY]...."; how the food that is left over--always, inevitably, left over--can be taken to a battered women's shelter or an Old Folks' Home; how the New Jewish "Man or Woman" can inspire others to good deeds in his/her speech, buy warm dinners for Israeli soldiers freezing on the Golan Heights, purchase, give out, and then discuss the impact of those Guatemalan-made yarmulkes on those non-Jewish others who share this planet with us.

I always smile when I read an investment article which plugs a certain stock or mutual fund, and often contains a "full disclosure" declaration at the end of the piece: "this journalist owns shares of this financial vehicle."Well, here is my own "full disclosure": Danny Siegel and I have been best friends since we met on a youth pilgrimage to Israel, over forty years ago; he has sat at many of our family's Pesach seders; he has inspired my own teaching. Heck, he and I even wrote a book together, back in the 1980s.

But even if I had never heard of Danny Siegel, or heard him speak (as I have, literally dozens of times), I would beg every reader of this review to buy a copy-- many copies-- of this meaningful, life-enhancing book; to read it; to give copies to friends with children who are, say, ten and older. There is a relatively well-known quotation from the gifted (Jewish) novelist Franz Kafka about the power (or duty) of great literature: that "a novel should be an ax for the frozen seas around us" (sometimes translated as "the frozen sea WITHIN us.") Well, I'm not so cynical as to believe that we are all "frozen" inside. But why do some of us look at the tons of food which remains uneaten at a celebration and think "what a waste!" while others ask themselves, eagerly, "how can I get this to the nearest shelter for the homeless?" Why do some smile when they buy a few hand-made trinkets on a vacation, thinking "I'm helping the local economy!" while a certain Jewish woman looked at impoverished craftswomen in Guatemala and made a vow to herself: "I could change their lives!"

This book Danny Siegel's Bar and Bat Mitzvah Mitzvah Book can change millions of lives, and not just those of a few thousand Jewish pre-adolescents, their parents, other relatives and business associates who happen to show up at The Party. It can change the world, and start melting those frozen seas, whether they are around us or in us. I've had it with heroes on the baseball diamond and basketball court. My new heroes are those who help others, and try to heal this very damaged world of ours, and I proudly join them, as often as I possibly can. Siegel's latest book will move you to join them as well.

Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: One Man’s Journey to Rediscover a Jewish Spiritual Tradition,
by Alan Morinis, Broadway Books, New York 2002


Reviewed by Rabbi Michael Skobac

It is no secret that the spiritual paths of the East have been attracting a steady stream of Jewish seekers. Sylvia Boorstein explores the nature of this magnetism in her book That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist. She shares an insight from Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man that “Jews are interested in Buddhism because it is a complete, mature, sophisticated spiritual path.” I remember feeling rather depressed after reading those words. They ignited the Borsht-Belt of my consciousness, “What are we, chopped liver?!”

Ironically, many of the spiritual treasures of the East are also found within Judaism. Unfortunately, they are usually buried treasures, all too often entombed in rabbinic tomes. After constantly being pointed to ancient texts during his searching, Avram Davis wrote in the introduction to his Way of Flame that, “I did not need more books. I was looking for the living power of the tradition. I needed not the description of the embrace of God, but the actual ongoing embrace itself.”

After some painful personal setbacks, Alan Morinis was ready for the embrace himself. Having tasted the sweet spiritual nectar of India in his younger years, he was now hoping to find his nourishment within the Jewish tradition. Morinis began his search expecting to be drawn to the mysticism of Kaballah and Chassidut. However, it was only the writings of the obscure 19th century Musar movement that truly resonated with his soul.

In the words of cooking wizard Emeril, Musar strives to take Jews and “kick them up a notch,” to transform “religious” people into truly spiritual ones. With penetrating insight into our psyches, Musar teachings refine our aspirations, our sensitivity and our sincerity. Morinis consumed all the Musar classics he could find, but realized the need to find a seasoned guide. He was able to connect with Rabbi Yechiel Perr, an heir to the Novarodock School of Mussar, and traveled several times from Vancouver to New York to learn up-close with his mentor.

Climbing Jacob’s Ladder is an engaging introduction to the world of Musar as seen through the lens of Morinis’ personal search. The encounters with Rabbi Perr are organized into chapters dealing with essential Musar themes, including an understanding of the soul, the idea of holiness, our relationship with G-d and interpersonal relationships. One of the distinct features of the Musar tradition is the employment of personalized practices to help internalize the teachings, and Morinis includes simple exercises for each chapter.

It is truly tragic that so many of the masters of Musar perished during the Holocaust. With them, the tremendously powerful teachings and practices of this vital movement have virtually disappeared from the world. This is especially unfortunate in our generation that is so much in need of spiritual revival. Hopefully, Climbing Jacob’s Ladder will go beyond being one person’s journey to rediscover a Jewish spiritual tradition and help transmit its wonderful treasure to many other thirsty souls.

The Hasidic Masters' Guide to Management by Moshe Kranc
Devora Publishing (August, 2004)272 pages

Reviewed by Allan Gould

You know what a "franchise" is, don't you? In the world of retailing, it usually refers to a McDonald's store, a Tim Horton's, a KFC, or-to be kosher about it-a Yogen Fruz. In professional sports, the "franchise" is the player who really carries the team; the one around whom the team is truly built. So, people would say that "Roger Clemens is now the franchise of the Houston Astros," or "Michael Jordan was the franchise player of the Chicago Bulls."

In the world of books-which is the world of this regular column for Kolel.org-a franchise is a book series which is truly, often wildly successful, such as the Chicken Soup for the _______Soul, or the ________ for Dummies, or even Harlequin Romances.

Business books themselves often border on franchises, even if they are not from the same publishing house. For instance, there are many texts about How to Run Your Company Better which have titles on the line of Jesus in the Boardroom or Lao Tse on Management or Machiavelli on Business; you've all seen works of this type, and they're all rather similar in purpose or theme: you can learn a lot about how to run a better company if you learn from this or that religious or political leader.

Jews (alas) are not immune to wanting to play this game, and one of the first examples I've seen of this is The Hasidic Masters' Guide to Management by Moshe Kranc, an Orthodox Jewish hi-tech genius who is actually a descendant of Jacob Ben Wolf Kranc, the famous "Magid of Dubno," who was an esteemed 18th century preacher and storyteller in Vilna.

Nothing wrong with this; as a full-time author myself, I would love to create a comic/satiric franchise myself, based on a book like Toronto's Irshad Manji's internationally best-selling THE TROUBLE WITH ISLAM. My idea-which I'm still unsuccessfully pushing with a few publishers-is to call my parody THE TROUBLE WITH JUDAISM, except mine would be filled with petty complaints, such as "sometimes I'm placed too close to the very loud band at a Bar Mitzvah party" and "those shivas can go on forever, and who wants to see those family members of mine from Pittsburgh?" Nothing wrong with a franchise!

In the case of Mr. Kranc's Jewish guide to management, there's plenty wrong. Not that this very successful entrepreneur and inventor doesn't understand the genius of Hasidism. After explaining its "powerful means of stories, parables, and anecdotes to transmit wisdom," he then stretches his point a bit:

There are striking parallels between the circumstances that catalyzed the Hasidic revolution and the world of business today. In modern business, the inherent tension between the 'letter of the law' and the "spirit of the law' expresses itself in choosing between maximum shareholder profits, even if only temporarily and on paper, and ethical behavior; Hasidism looks for a balance that respects both. Today's employess are all too often frustrated by their inability to act on their personal values and beliefs in the workplace.

Fair enough. Who can argue such a truism? But then, this kindly, intelligent man chooses dozens upon dozens of (sometimes) classic Hasidic tales, and somehow cheapens them by hooking them with clichéd or obvious statements from famous business writers of the recent past, usually in such pat and even irritating ways that the power of the original Jewish tales are horribly vulgarized.

A good example of this comes early in the book. Kranc describes the famous Rabbi Israel Salanter, who listens to a group of rabbis complaining "of struggles with their rebellious and unruly flocks." The great rebbi proudly declares that he has "no such problem; I have full confidence that my congregation will follow any command I give." How can he possibly have such confidence? His inferiors challenge him. "It is simple. I never give my congregation any command I do not think they will follow."

Sweet. Even profound. But guess what the author follows this lovely story with: a paragraph from one of the giants of modern business thought, Peter F. Drucker: "a manager motivates and communicates. He makes a team out of the people that are responsible for various jobs. He does that through the practices with which he manages. He does it in his own relation to the men he manages." As many a great Jewish scholar has noted in earlier centures, about far better thoughts and segues: feh.

This entire 262-page paperback (published by Devora Publishing of Jerusalem and New York, with unprofessional editing and ugly drawings on the covers) is much like the above: tell a story-often unpleasantly lengthy and usually NOT Hasidic in any classic fashion (a la the Tales of the Hasidim, collected and translated by Martin Buber, and several other anthologies over the past century), but merely Jewish parables from any time in history which the author CLAIMS are Hasidic in origin.

So, we get a touching (or is it sentimental and even silly?) tale of "Little Shlomo" who was born deaf and mute. After no results from "the finest doctors," the desperate parents go to a rabbi, who somehow gets the child to hear and talk. "When I grow up, I would be an informer, selling information about my fellow Jews to the authorities," the child blurts out, after being challenged by the (Hasidic?) rabbi's question, "If you could talk, what would you say when you grew up?" The punchline of this awesomely offensive, even antisemitic story-which one senses Mr. Kranc invented himself? "I could cure your son," the rabbi tells the child's parents, "but I do not wish to do so. It is better for him to remain silent." That's for sure.

Last line of this hideous "tale": "Shlomo resumed his silence, and never spoke another word for the rest of his days."

To quote the Beverly Hills Rebbi, Gag me with a spoon. And what is worse is the author's "insight," which the author crudely draws from this repulsive story. "Shlomo's parents, understandably, would do anything in their power to enable their son to hear and speak. Rabbi Moshe Zvi shows them that, though the status quo may seem tragic, it is, in fact, the preferable alternative for Shlomo, his parents and his fellow man. At a strategic juncture where you must determine whether to make a change or maintain the status quo, it is your job as a manager to extrapolate the consequences of the available alternatives." The Business Lesson from this vile little tale? "The Current Situation, With All Its Flaws, May Be The Best Available Alternative." Ahh, if only Martha Stewart had listened to the Hasidic rabbis, before she blabbed about that fabulous Stock Tip she got. She could have learned so much from the deaf and mute Shlomo: it would have been A Good Thing if she shut her mouth.

When I read a book on business, and I've read and reviewed many dozens for magazines and websites, I expect to find real gems of profundity, wit or thought. This book is almost condescending in its eternal finger-wagging. And even worse, there are far too many "Jewish tales" in this publication which are not Hasidic at all, but merely famous (or obscure) (or made up?) descriptions of boring rabbis or congregants who do this or that, which the author then stretches into a Jewish and/or Hasidic framework, and then forces his business "point" to score with the reader.

Not this reader. And I wanted to like it, too. So, when you see a "blurb" on the back of a book, such as Martin Rutte's (co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work-part of one of those grand franchises of publishing, noted above), which declares "Its stories of time-true values along with real world, modern examples, makes it a valuable contribution to anyone who manages. Buy this book, you'll be glad you did," I for one wasn't.

Don't get me wrong, dear Internet reader and Kolel supporter: Hasidic Tales aren't "holy," merely because their original tellers or their descendants died in the Holocaust, or because every single one of them illuminates. These thousands of stories, gathered over three centuries, are often uneven and some are ill-advised. And Mr. Kranc's decision to try and link "great" Hasidic stories with modern business practices could have been a good one, had the tales been better chosen, and the "hooks" to the business world more precise; more inspired. I just Googled "Hasidic tales" and I came up with that marvelous collection by Yaffa Eliach of several years ago, "Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust." And "Wrapped in a Holy Flame: Teachings on Tales of the Hasidic Masters" by Schachter-Shalomi. And the magnificent Hasidic stories of the brilliant Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, who may well have been the father of the modern short story-as much as Poe or Chekhov.

So, as the saying goes, "Tzay Ul-mud"-go and study. There are superior collections of extraordinary, moving, meaningful Hasidic tales out there in the marketplace; in libraries; in bookstores. Just don't try to force them into business frameworks; it doesn't appear to work, and it only cheapens the originals.

Bringing Home the Light
E. M. Broner, Council Oak Books (San Francisco) 1999

For some, participating in rituals such as Tashlich (casting of our sins symbolically in the water on Rosh Hashana), Sukkah, and the Seder is exhilarating, educational, transformative and meaningful. But for others, these rituals can feel rote, stifling, boring, full of agenda and exclusivity that makes us feel like bystanders to our own tradition. Very often, women feel like the "outsiders" in these ceremonies. In our day, groups of Jewish women have begun not only to rewrite and infuse inclusivity into traditional rituals, but also have begun to "invent" new rituals.

Esther Broner's new book attempts to address traditional ritual from a feminist viewpoint, while presenting new invented rituals. When dealing with the "why" of her feminist rituals, she introduces each section with a good overview of that ritual, its rationale and history, and then invites the reader to share in the step-by-step "how." Some of the rituals feel familar, almost homey, like her Tashlich ceremony for women and her Chanukah ceremony. Her new rituals for aging, for loss, and for menopause are welcome additions to a tradition sorely silent at these times. Her rituals for women at the Wall in Jerusalem are powerful, and she has some beautifully crafted "political" rituals for healing between Black and Jewish women and between Arab and Israeli women.

I would have liked a longer introduction, however, about the thrill–and danger–of writing, performing, and then teaching, transmitting and sharing newly minted ceremonies. The very nature of modern, invented rituals prevents them from being universally applicable. When a certain women's group, for example, or a certain group of friends or even a certain synagogue or chavurah does a new and creative ritual, it is inexorably tied to the chemistry and history of that particular group. I have rarely found these rituals to be "clone-able" to other groups, and thus I have had similar reservations about other such volumes of women's rituals. So this book, like other collections of step-by-step instructions for rituals which go so far as to include all the creative readings, garb to be worn, music to be sung and steps to be danced by each participant, will by necessity fall short when it presents Broner's New York ceremonies as a "paint-by-numbers" for other groups of women. They just feel too personal, too idiosyncratic to her particular circle, to be transplanted as they are to other communities and other circles of women.

That does not mean they cannot be used as a blueprint, as inspiration or a jumping-off point, for surely our rich tradition must make room for these new kinds of rites that speak to women's experiences and come not only from the heart but also from within the very Jewish tradition we are trying to stretch.

Born to Kvetch

Michael Wex, Harpercollins, Paperback - 336 pages (ISBN: 0061132179) (Also available on audio cassette)

Reviewed by Allan Gould

Several years ago, I came across a marvelous quotation from a prominent American theatre critic between the wars, who once wrote, "I am always depressed when I go to a comedy on Broadway, because I know it won't be the Marx Brothers, tonight." (His point being, those geniuses had already moved to Hollywood, and nothing could ever match their inspired antics that once ruled the New York stages in the late 1920s). The same goes for me: I often go depressed to new musicals, knowing that they won't be by Stephen Sondheim; I am always depressed when I go to see a new drama: it will never be King Lear.

But one must always remain open to a potentially highly-pleasing new writer. And I was most pleased to read Devil in the Details (sub-titled "scenes from an obsessive girlhood") by a young American journalist, Jennifer Traig. It's an uproarious little paperback from 2004 (recommended by my rebbe, Elyse Goldstein). See sidebar. And, even more so, by Born to Kvetch (sub-titled "Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods," by a most gifted, entertaining and scholarly Yiddishist—and Torontonian—named Michael Wex.

I want to praise this book to the hilt, and beg you to buy and read it to your aging parents or grandparents (and lover/spouse). From the hilarious cover photo-- a little Chassidic boy with endless sidelocks/payos, wearing an old-man's hat, frowning into the camera-- one might think Born to Kvetch, by Michael Wex is a kitchy book on Yiddish humour. But this book is actually a marvel, and not merely because it keeps saying the same things about Jewish humour, wit, and the power of Yiddish that I've been saying for years, when I lecture on those subjects; Wex is a real expert on Jewish history, the growth and changes in Yiddish over the past millennium, and more. Best of all, he is profoundly insightful: he knows that there is wonderful joy—and pain—in the language of the much-abused Jewish people of Central and Eastern Europe, and he is often-shockingly honest in what rage and anger exists in so much of this great, now-murdered tongue. (As the great Isaac Bashevis Singer declared in his Nobel Prize speech for Literature, "I write for ghosts." If Hitler did not put an end to this grand, unique tongue, he certainly hammered 95% of the nails in its coffin.)

What I love most about Born to Kvetch is Wex's profound understanding of comedy and its discontents. When he gives us the English translation of the Yiddish expression, "Six Feet Under, Baking Bagels," he has the comic sensibility to explain the great wit in that line, which answers the question, "how is business?" or "how is your health?" The saying means, "not only is my business/health in the grave, but it's also baking bagels—so it's even hotter than hell, and there's no one alive in hell to sell the bagels that I'm baking, to."

The chapter titles are enough to send you into uncontrollable laughter: "Kvetch Que C'est?" "You Should Grow Like an Onion: The Yiddish Curse." (the end of that curse goes, "with your head in the ground and your feet in the air"; it's one of my favourite of the thousands of glorious Yiddish curses—and who has more reason to curse the world, our condescending, even murderous neighbours, each other, than the Jews?) "Too Good for the Goyim: Sex in Yiddish." "It Should Happen to You: Death in Yiddish." And so on.

This is a very special book. A classic of its kind. Not merely a collection of Yiddish words, with cute little jokes to explain each one (as we got in Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish, a huge best-seller of decades ago), this is a dangerously wise, bitter, angry, profound, scholarly book—kind of like the Yiddish language and the Jewish people who spoke it for centuries. You will bless me for urging you to read it. Wex told me recently that "it earned back its advance-against royalties in the first week." With good reason. What a book!

Biocany
Chava Rosenfarb
Hardcover: 352 pages, Publisher: Syracuse University Press; 1st ed edition (June 1999). ISBN: 0815605765

Reviewed by Allan Gould

One of the greatest tragedies of the Holocaust, the savage, wholesale slaughter of 85% of European Jewry, has been its focus on the murderers and murdered, rather than on What Was Lost. Six million, yes; 1.5-million innocent children, yes (as if the adults were guilty!). But what were their daily lives like, the explosion of Yiddish and Hebrew that was occurring in the preceding decades, the rise of Zionism and Socialism and, yes, Communism, the endless social ferment: what was the culture of Central and Eastern Europe that was obliterated by the Nazis and their cohorts?

For that, we must usually turn to literature. And while most literate Jews and Gentiles are aware of the often inspired short stories and novels of Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, far, far fewer Jews (and probably close to zero Gentiles) are aware of the extraordinary gifts of Canada's own Chava Rosenfarb. Born in Lodz, Poland over 80 years ago, she is a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, the sister of a long-time teacher of Yiddish at Bialik Hebrew Day School (Henia Reinhartz), and the mother of a Professor of Literature in Alberta and a prominent medical doctor in Montreal which hints at the quality of a future generation that was destroyed in the Shoah.

Rosenfarb has been recognized for her literary genius, but only in the dwindling Yiddish community. (She won the Manger Prize in 1979- it is the Nobel Prize of that language for her astonishing 1,000-plus page trilogy, The Tree of Life, which I loved; it truly brings that Manchester of Poland, Lodz, to life). She was finally published in her Chosen Land recently, with a solid short story collection called Survivors, but here I wish to describe two of her latest novels, published in English (in her own translation) over the last dozen years, by Syracuse University Press (of all places).

The first of the two linked works is called Bociany (it's the name of a shtetl in Poland, and means stork in that language, since those remarkable creatures would return every year to nest in the village), and it is a masterpiece. (The second of the pair, Of Lodz and Love, follows many of the same characters to the giant nearby city, into the First World War, and, in a heartbreaking, brief yet awe-inspiring Epilogue, through the Holocaust and out of Poland (and clearly on to Canada, although that is left unspoken).

I want to briefly discuss Bociany, since it captures my point: the religious, spiritual, yet transitional world of shtetl Jewry between 1880 until the eve of World War I, which was so extraordinary, and of which we are all less aware than, say, Zyklon B or Wallenberg or Goering. A learned woman speaks to a lady's group of the days of the Messiah, when heaven and earth will become one, and the Garden of Eden will stretch from one end of God's earth to the other. People will have no need to speak to each other because they will be so finely attuned that they will hear each other's thoughts. A pogrom occurs nearby, and a young rabbi pleads, Yes, the waters have come up to our necks. But don't I know that your faith-our faith-is as deep as the mysteries in which His doings are shrouded? That is the meaning of being a Jew. The trouble is that we sometimes forget to trust ourselves or our faith. . . . Of course, such millennia-old religiosity is being challenged, as we see in several intellectual gatherings: One character speaks of The Zionist congress in Basel. . . When they heard this, some of the young men shook their heads vigorously, and disrespectfully attacked their hosts with words such as Karl Marx, Bund,' or socialismus'. . . .

A book review on the internet necessarily must be short, although I would love to write many pages more about the marvelous characterizations, the passionate (but asexual, of course) love that grows between a young Talmudic scholar named Yacov and Binele, our heroine, the amazing Jewish families and marriages and early deaths and poverty and conflicts, the agonizing relations with their Christian neighbours, and more. I.B. Singer has often been attacked for sexing-up the Jews of Eastern Europe, while Sholom Aleichem has been accused of sentimentalizing the shtetls, partly due to Fiddler on the Roof. I hope and pray that Chava Rosenfarb's powerful and truthful books are available in more and more libraries across North America (I ordered these later novels over the internet), and that many readers of this review will seek out her quality work.

We pray each day that G-d raises the dead. Novelist Rosenfarb does the same in her writing: she makes us aware of what kind of vibrant, enthralling, dynamic Jewish life was obliterated by murderous antisemitism. She is more than a Kaddish for the millions of dead, though; she is an exceptionally fine writer, of Tolstoyan scope and excellence.

Beginning Anew: A Woman's Companion to the High Holidays, ed. Gail Twersky Reimer and Judith Kates (Simon and Schuster)

Reviewed by Allan Gould

I have two minor complaints about this book, and several more significant compliments. My first minor complaint is that the title doesn't do the book justice; it is not only a woman's companion to Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, but, as this male can attest, a book for anyone willing to revisit the themes of the holiday Torah readings and liturgies. The bulk of the book consists of essays- all written by women, and not only that, but women who span the Jewish spectrum of perspectives- examining the Torah and haftorah (Prophetic) readings. This is a book that seems like such a natural idea, given that so many of the characters and themes of the High Holiday readings cry out for women's interpretive voices: the yearning for a child, rivalry and jealousy, the sexual laws of Leviticus, laughter, tears, and repentance.

Not all of the essays moved me equally- a few with more overtly political themes seemed a bit forced to me, but that may be a personal bias. However, several of the essays were masterful reinterpretations of familiar texts, and brought out connections to the High Holiday challenge of teshuvah and reconnection that I had never seen before. Marsha Pravder Mirkin's rethinking of the Abraham-Sarah-Hagar triangle, entitled "Hearken To Her Voice: Empathy as Teshuvah," is alone worth the price of the book, and has already informed my thinking and teaching. Other essays I found especially worthwhile were Aviva Zornberg's reflections upon midrashim concerning the death of Sarah, and Tamar Frankiel's exploration of the psyche of Rachel, given the provocative title "Our Mother of Sorrows."

My only other minor complaint about this book is that I wish a few more essays reflecting on the holiday liturgies had been included; I'd like to hear what some of these insightful and sensitive women have to say about our communal confessions, the role of God the King, the blowing of the shofar, and so forth. Yet the essay that closes the book, Arlene Agus's "Afterword: Meeting God's Gaze," which does deal with liturgical and theological themes, moved me profoundly, and was, to me, the finest part of the book, and an example of contemporary liberal religious thinking at its finest. Agus lays bare her soul-journey to God, and we are privileged to follow, challenged and humbled.

The Battle for God

The Battle for God
Karen Armstrong, Ballantine Books, 442 pp., $23 paperback

Reviewed by Allan Gould


What a glorious pleasure it is to come across a scholarly, yet entertainingly-written study of a topic which should interest all of us—and probably DOES interest us all, after last September 11th: the rise of fundamentalism. What's good and just is, Karen Armstrong's magnificent The Battle for God covers not just Islamic fundamentalism, but also similar (if usually less violent) movements in Judaism and Christianity.

Karen Armstrong, for those of you who have not had the joy of reading her other dozen books (including A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths, and others just as good), is a former nun who now calls herself "a freelance monotheist" whose "main source of spirituality is study." If so, she is a very spiritual woman, because she is one heck of a quality popularizer: one senses that she has read and digested hundreds of books on the three sister faiths, and chosen only their sharpest insights. And then added countless ones of her own.

To give this superb book its due would almost demand a reprinting of hundreds of its pages. What makes The Battle for God so superb is the way Ms. Armstrong waxes poetic and profound where most scholars would merely give numbers and generalities. So, when she looks at the impact of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain on its victims, she declares, "Exile is a spiritual as well as a physical dislocation. The world of exile is wholly unfamiliar, and, therefore, without meaning. A violent uprooting, which takes away all normal props, breaks up our world, snatches us forever from places that are saturated in memories crucial to our identity, and plunges us permanently in an alien environment, can make us feel that our very existence has been jeopardized. When exile is also associated with human cruelty, it raises urgent questions about the problem of evil in a world supposedly created by a just and benevolent God." Bravo.

The author also shows her gifts when she jumps from the rise of Jewish fundamentalism between 1492 and 1700, to Muslim conservatism between 1492 to 1799, and then Christian concerns from 1492 to 1870, and then on to the present. With each religion, she shows how religious fanaticism, super-nationalism, and fear of The Other all rise from extreme situations. In the case of Islam, for example, Armstrong describes how modern institutions in the Middle East were "simply imposed. . .on old agrarian structures," leading to the kind of horrors which would eventually lead to the stagnation and rage we see across so much of the Muslim world today. Writing of the 1920s, she states that "as in Egypt, two nations were developing in Iran, who were, increasingly, unable to understand each other." Uh-oh.

Many Jewish readers who are rightfully obsessed with Christian Jew-hatred will find Armstrong's studies of various types of modern Christian fundamentalism to be satisfying, but they may be far less pleased to read her highly critical views of right-wing religious Israelis today: "But where the Hasidim found joy and a new lightness [in bringing "the whole of life…under the canopy of the sacred"). . .the ecstasy of the Gush was often imbused with rage and resentment. . . . Gush activists overcame their personal alienation in the secular State of Israel by attempting to wrest the land from the alien Arabs." Hard-hitting, and, to many religious friends of mine in the "liberated territories," almost racist.

It is clear that Ms. Armstrong has a deep respect for all three of the great monotheistic faiths, to the point where she is almost defensive of each, in the face of outrageous acts by their most fundamentalist followers. So, after describing the slaughter of 58 foreign tourists in Egypt in 1997, she writes, "Desperation and helplessness have continued to inspire a minority of Sunni Muslims in Egypt to turn Islam into an ideology that, in its justification of murder, is a total distortion of religion."

The Battle for God is a "must" read, and should be in every thoughtful Jewish—and Christian, and Muslim—library. By putting fundamentalist movements of the three major faiths into historical context, Karen Armstrong helps answer that question we have been hearing endlessly since those planes flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon: why do they hate us so much? And, as Jews who weep over the anger and alienation and violence across the Middle East, as well as the clearly antisemitic motives behind the ugly murder of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, we have our own questions to be answered. This book will go far in answering many of them.