Book Review: Destined to Choose ****

Destined to Choose by Sheyna Galyan ****

Rabbi David Cohen is struggling to write a sermon for Tisha b'Av, a fast day commemorating the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the observance of which the leaders of his congregation feel is a waste of time. His obligations to his family and his job are in conflict, to the detriment of both. Finally, an elderly Holocaust survivor has turned to him for help in finding the man's eighteen-year-old granddaughter, who has left their home after a furious argument over a philosophy paper she wrote for college. This is the situation at the opening of Sheyna Galyan's Destined to Choose.

Rabbi Cohen's intensive counseling sessions with Avram and his granddaughter Anna, once she is located, are at the center of this promising first novel, and their discussions, as well as his interactions with other characters, range widely over several aspects of Jewish thought, practice and theology, while still remaining relatively accessible to the average reader. A helpful glossary of Jewish terms is also provided at the end of the book.

Are people basically good, or tainted from the start? If they are basically good, how do we explain Hitler and his followers? What are the reasons for the rabbi's refusal to perform a marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew, and how far should he go in attempting to portray Judaism as an attractive option to the non-Jewish partner? How does he reconcile the conflict between the needs of his family and the requirements of his job, and should he stand on principle when it puts his livelihood in jeopardy?

Not all of these questions are answered, but Ms. Galyan, who, according to her website, "identifies herself as Traditional Conservative, with occasional leanings toward both Reform and Feminist Orthodoxy - sometimes simultaneously," gives her readers plenty of food for thought in the course of the book.

Avram and Anna are rounded, sympathetic characters whose positions are occasionally diametrically opposed to what a more stereotyped viewpoint might suggest. The rabbi's loving relationship with his family, as well as his supportive friendship with his colleagues and the secretary at the temple are also well portrayed.

Since this is a first novel, it has some weaknesses. The president of the temple comes off as more of a caricature than a real person, and some might feel that the rabbi's many problems resolve themselves just a little too neatly at the end. However, the story and and the thoughtful way in which the author and her characters wrestle with some serious issues more than compensate for these minor flaws and make Destined to Choose a worthwhile and enjoyable read.

On a lighter note....

I've been thinking of compiling a list of my pet peeves, but one of them is that I've been trying to do it in my head and so the list never gets very long because I keep forgetting them. Anyway, here are some of my least favorite things in books, things on which, while I may have liked or enjoyed or not been bothered by them at one time, I now feel it is time to put a moratorium.

1) Vampires, at least until someone can do something original with them. The whole S&M-tinged, "vampire as great lover" thing has been done to death. BO-ring.

2) Dragons, except as bit players as in Harry Potter.

3) Women with charming but selfish, usually alcoholic fathers whom they adore no matter how badly the fathers treat them, their siblings and their mothers.

4) Women with irresponsible hippie-type (if not actual hippie) mothers whom they must parent, and for whom they feel a mixture of love and exasperation.

(Note: Neither of these types of parents ever appear to have sons, or at least sons who appear as main characters in novels or memoirs.)

5) Bad puns in the titles of mysteries.

6) Whole mystery series built around crosswords, scrapbooking, gardening, etc., etc.

7) Books written in the present tense - something I have hated since the first one I read.

Well, that's all for now - I'm sure I'll think of more

We have made history

... and now we move forward. I do not envy President-Elect Obama the task that lies before him, but for now hope has won out over fear and unity over division. And John McCain, in an evident return to sanity, has urged Americans to unite behind the man whom he has called every name in the book except the Antichrist - and some of his supporters have done that (called Obama the Antichrist, that is).

I am proud of us, America. God bless us all, v'al kol yoshvey tevel (and all the rest of the world).

VOTE!

As if your life and the future of your country depended on it.

A couple more reasons not to vote for McCain

Just in case you needed any more.

1) The alleged "Joe" the "Plumber" - I never want to hear another word about him (or from him) for the rest of my life, and McCain is threatening to take him to Washington. (Incidentally, I'm a regular working person, and I can't afford to take the time off to travel around with a political campaign.) If Obama wins, "Joe" will, please God, sink back into the well-deserved obscurity from which he came.

2) If McCain wins, it will mean that slander and smears work, and elections for the foreseeable future will turn into ever more vicious mudslinging contests.

Maybe someone can tell me....

I'm going to try again (yes, again) to do some real postings rather than just my "brilliant" comments on the Huffington Post, although at least that's been something. I haven't really written much about the election lately, but there's something I have been wondering over these past couple of weeks especially. Namely, what is John McCain thinking?

Let's assume that he manages to stir up enough hatred and fear to win, tearing the country apart in the process. How on earth does he imagine that he's going to govern? Is he really delusional enough to imagine that all will be forgiven and forgotten with an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, after he's used every smear imaginable against both them and their candidate? Of course, I do believe (and the thought isn't original with me) that he still sees himself as an honorable man; ergo, anything he does is justified, however despicable it may be in the eyes of others. A lot of people have the same blind spot regarding the US - since we are "good," nothing that we do, including torture and invading sovereign nations without justification, can be wrong. However, the fact remains that he has thrown every last shred of honor and dignity he ever had to the winds. A similar madness seemed to possess Bob Dole in 1996 - is it something to do with obviously losing and knowing that it's your last chance?

Of course, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Whatever Sen. McCain's flaws, he did serve his country and, I believe, had some admirable traits. That's why it's a tragedy to see his disintegration into just another do-and-say-anything-to-win politician, in the way that it isn't with a George W. Bush, for example.

Colin Powell Endorses Obama

If Jesus endorsed Obama, the right wing would probably say that it's because Jesus and Obama are both scary Middle Easterners. Incidentally, if it's true that the Iscariot in Judas' name is related to "sicarii," nationalist assassins who stabbed people they saw as collaborators with the occupying Romans in crowds, then guess what! Jesus "palled around with" terrorists. Oh, no!!!!!
About Colin Powell
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

A Yom Kippur Letter to Joe Lieberman's Rabbis: Joe Is McCain's Best Jewish Friend. Please Ask Him To Beg McCain to Stop Encouraging Hate

A commentary from the Reconstructionist prayerbook Kol Haneshemah (unfortunately, the farthest left branch so something that Lieberman wouldn't be caught dead reading), on the Al Het (public confessional) for Yom Kippur:



"Consider how many of the sins we confess on Yom Kippur are sins of speech. 'Al het shehatanu lefaneha (for the wrong we have done before you':



'by the utterance of our lips'

'by speech'

'by false protests'

'by impure lips'

'by foolish speech'

'BY SLANDER AND INNUENDO'

'by gossip'

'by idle chatter'

'by false promises.'



"When Esau approaches his aged and blind father Isaac in order to receive the birthright blessing, he finds that he has been supplanted by his brother Jacob. isaac can only reply that 'I blessed him; now he must remain blessed' Words cannot be revoked, because words count. As the midrash (rabbinic commentary) teaches: once the arrow has been shot from the bow, it cannot be brought back."
About Joe Lieberman
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Despicable.

This person should not be allowed anywhere near the corridors of power.

Sarah Palin: Perfect Choice For Hillary Supporters....NOT!

Speaking of Rove, the Democrats need to make this into a commercial:



http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/08/29/vp-picks-karl-rove-swings-and-misses-big-time/



On August 10, Karl Rove went on "Face The Nation" to argue that Senator Obama would make an "intensely political choice" for Vice President without regard for the "responsibilities of president." At the time, Rove believed Obama would choose Tim Kaine, and argued against him by saying this:



"With all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he"s been a governor for three years, he"s been able but undistinguished. I don"t think people could really name a big, important thing that he"s done. He was mayor of the 105th largest city in America. And again, with all due respect to Richmond, Virginia, it"s smaller than Chula Vista, California; Aurora, Colorado; Mesa or Gilbert, Arizona; north Las Vegas or Henderson, Nevada. It"s not a big town. So if he were to pick Governor Kaine, it would be an intensely political choice where he said, `You know what? I"m really not, first and foremost, concerned with, is this person capable of being president of the United States?"
About Sarah Palin
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Scott McClellan To Obama: Don't Investigate Us

And that's what will happen. It'll all be, oh, we've got to move forward, this will cause bad feelings, and the criminals will get away with their crimes. It's a kind of "gentlemen's agreement" - Bill Clinton did it too, and Lord knows he had a lot less to investigate. As someone said, THAT'S why Congress should have done it. And what they SHOULD do next year is take it out of the President's hands and appoint a commission, complete with broad subpoena powers, and please don't put someone like Condi's buddy Zelikow in charge of the information flow like w/ the 9/11 commission.
About Scott McClellan
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Shroud Of Turin Stirs A New Controversy

Well, they considered starting a "Science" section and consulted the people over at scienceblogs, who, from their posts, appeared to be quite literally ROTFL(Their)AO. Not only did they point out the presence of a lot of pseudoscientific garbage on this site (fine that it's here, but not if goes into a section labeled "Science"), but also the fact that this is not a free and open forum, which is one reason I have to put my posts up on my blog, to make sure they don't "disappear."

On the story itself, I suppose Satan must have been behind the "skewing" of the dating by the fire that charred it. (Has anyone ever shown, by the way, that carbon-14 dating is ever skewed by putting the object involved through a fire? Somehow, it was "miraculously" skewed, not by 500 years or 1700, but by 1300, which just "happens" to date it to exactly the century during which it first appeared in the historical record. Amazing.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Dear Mr. President

Amen, Becky. His supporters and surrogates, if not Obama himself, took almost EVERY word that came out of Bill and Hillary's mouth and tried to give it a racial twist. Many of the commenters on this site actually CALLED them racists. And as far as I'm concerned saying, "they're not racists but they're willing to get down in the gutter and use race to win" is even MORE of an insult. Someone who knows better and does something anyway is worse than someone who's just ignorant, in my book.

I particularly remember his mentioning Jesse Jackson after SC - no one seemed to consider that a wonk like Bill who's got all the numbers at his fingertips might have mentioned Jackson because in '88 he got the EXACT same percentage that Obama got, and that since he doesn't SEE color, it might never have entered his mind that he would be accused of trying to Obama the "black" candidate. IMHO, the people who said or implied that Obama can ONLY be compared to white people are showing a certain degree of racism.
About Bill Clinton
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama's Celeb Ad Adopts McCain Line Of Attack

I don't know - I have mixed feelings, but a lot of things about it are good. It has the advantage over McCain's ad of being, what was that word? Oh yeah. TRUE. The best thing is that it keeps showing McCain and Bush together, which is something we want to hammer home to people. It also shows him doing real "celebrity" type things, like showing up on Leno - doesn't just juxtapose him with two bimbos he's never met or any any connection with. And there's a solid message stuck there in the middle, about the McCain/lobbyist/Big Oil axis. Finally, you can't look at it in isolation - have to see it in the context of the Britney/Paris ad. It shows McCain as a hypocrite, and people tend to despise hypocrites even more than out-and-out wrongdoers.



I guess we'll have to see how it plays and what the effect is.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

A couple of very interesting blogs...

...on the anthrax case. I hope that his family takes this blogger's advice and sues. And this one is by a woman who studies this stuff for a living.

(I figured I'd better add an image or this would get lost in the HuffPo comments.)

Edwards Furious With ABC Over Handling Of Interview

They do have a hobby, Gasparilla - cooking up crackpot conspiracy theories connecting Bill and Hillary Clinton to everything from the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby to this. Oh - and you thought the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD was Nero's doing? Wrong - Bill (or Hillary) Clinton traveled back in time to set it personally.

I don't belong to PUMA - I think they're deluded and a bit pathetic, and I would vote for a potted plant over John McCain - but every drop of vitriol that the Obama supporters throw Hillary's way makes me think less of him and his "new kind of politics." If his supporters are an example of it, then God save us from it. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a "sore winner."
About John Edwards
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
______

Putting this in context - the previous poster(s) was suggesting that Bill and/or Hillary Clinton has sicced the Enquirer on Edwards, seeing as how they're such nice people over there and need someone to send them out after a scurrilous story.

Leaked Clinton Camp Memos

Funny that people about whom a lot of posters on this site are absolutely gaga (Biden, Hagel) voted exactly the same, as well as John Edwards, who made a very politically calculated (if you ask me) apology and Chris Dodd. But with them, it's NEVER mentioned again. Only with Hillary is it pounded on day after day, week, after week, month after month, year after year. After Obama's FISA vote (made with the exact same rationalizations that were used in 2002, only now knowing that "taking the issue off the table before the election" DOESN'T work), maybe you guys should just shut up about the Iraq vote.
About Hillary Clinton
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
_____

One problem with this Huffington Post "post to Blogger" feature is that if you're answering another poster's comment, yours is out of context and anyone who looks at it here is sitting there scratching his or her head and going "Huh?" The comment I was answering here was one of the usual suspects bashing Hillary for her Iraq vote.

Justice Department Subpoenas Its Former Lawyers In Civil Rights Probe

Yeah, I'll say it again even though my previous comment was censored, possibly because I DARED to point out what Harvey is saying. Their names "sound" Jewish to you, and of course that explains (to you) why they're sleazeballs.

I'll post this to Blogger since people can say pretty obviously anti-Semitic things on this site and get away with it but if you point it out your post is deleted.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
______

The following is not on the Huffington Post site. I really enjoy reading the posts and participating in the discussions, but now that they tell on your profile how many of your comments have been deleted (about 6 in the past few days for me or about 1/4 to 1/3), I'm really starting to consider abandoning it altogether, because I know that the things I've said have been relatively innocuous. Especially when I remember one (not mine, needless to say) that suggested doing to Hillary Clinton what was done to Mussolini, which was evidently just fine with the moderators, unless they were just too ignorant to realize that the person making the comment was advocating lynching - one of the things that is expressly not allowed, according to their comments policy. Ergo, they're censoring things that either the powers that be or the moderators don't like, or they're just arbitrarily not allowing certain comments. (Interestingly enough, it appears to have been deleted again.)

Incidentally, if the comment I responded to here was not implying that the people named were Jewish, I would love to know that it was implying. Here it is:

"Schlozman, Hans Von Spakovsky, and Torchinsky. Is it me or is there something that seems to be jumping off the page here?"

UPDATE (Sat. 9:24 am): Evidently it's easier to censor something than it is to allow a response and discussion on it. Just out of annoyance and for the hell of it (not because I actually thought it should be deleted), I flagged the comment above as abusive, and now I see that it's gone. I would rather they had left it there and allowed me to respond to it.

In the Wilderness

Looking at my description at the top of the page and my last few postings in particular, I sense a disconnect. It's not that I don't still care about those things I mentioned, but life seems a little "stale, flat and unprofitable" these days. So I thought that I would post my "confirmation" speech from 2004, the ending of which specifically talks about why we shouldn't allow ourselves to stop caring deeply and feeling strongly. I don't know, though - the life of "quiet desperation" may sometimes be harder to rise above than the kind of shattering experience I talked about in that speech.
_________

B’Midbar – in the wilderness – is the name of the fourth book of the Torah, as well as of this week’s portion. This book covers most of the forty years that the children of Israel wandered between the Exodus and the entry into the Promised Land, with their ups and many, many downs, during which they are transformed from a motley crowd of former slaves into a people worthy of a homeland.

It is no coincidence that so many of the world's spiritual and philosophical traditions place such an emphasis on the retreat or wilderness experience, although Judaism, as is its wont, is unusual if not unique in focusing on the experience of an entire community. In addition to the children of Israel, from Elijah to the Buddha, from John the Baptist and Jesus to Thoreau, eliminating distractions and confronting the bare bones of life has been seen by many as essential to spiritual growth.

Like Egypt, however, the wilderness is not only or even usually a physical location. Many of us have gone through traumatic events or devastating periods of our lives in which our psychological and emotional defenses are stripped away and even God seems to have abandoned us. Eventually we have emerged on the other side, stronger if nowhere near being tzaddikim. “What does not destroy me makes me stronger,” wrote Nietzsche, who confronted enormous physical and emotional suffering and was, in the end, destroyed by it. We will never know how many others are destroyed, spiritually, mentally or physically, without leaving the testament that he and others have left.

I cannot claim to have come through anything like what so many others have endured, although to each of us at the time, our “wilderness” seems endless and unspeakably dark. However, at the end of 1997, six months after I celebrated my bat mitzvah, I lost my dearest friend after a short, unexpected illness. Since he was not a close relative, I did not even have the healing rituals of Jewish mourning to ease the transition, except for the Kaddish.

The next four months of what was probably clinical depression and then my own life-threatening physical illness constituted the darkest part of my personal wilderness. On the first night, for one of the only times in my life, I could not even imagine the presence of God. Many of us never find God in that “dark night of the soul”; we are alone, facing only ourselves, with all of our flaws and failures – and emptiness. For us, a sense of the Divine only appears upon our emergence, after we have “bottomed out.”

In my case, it was only near the end of a week-long nightmare of delusion and delirium, caused by medication, illness, emotional distress, or a combination of all three, that I felt an overwhelming sense of love in the cosmos. This was not a generalized, diffuse love, but a deeply personal one, mediated through my close relationship with Carl and what I was starting to perceive as a “benign conspiracy,” as opposed to the malevolent ones that I had been imagining before. It seemed that all those who cared about me were going through an elaborate masquerade designed to help me break out of the place where I felt trapped. The elements of this benign conspiracy, of course, were also part of the delusion, but the fact of it was not. The initial feeling did not last, of course, but I feel that it was transformative.

I do not know if those of us who enter this “wilderness,” which may include most or all of the human race, ever really leave it. Perhaps we only come to the edges and glimpse the Promised Land. Like the journey of the Israelites, our journey is fraught with backslidings, rebellions and returns; as Helen Keller wrote in speaking of conversion: “For a long time we resolve like angels, but drop back into the old matter-of-fact way of life, and do just as we did before, like mortals.”

Perhaps we should not leave the wilderness, even if we could. If we do, we should take part of it with us, as we do with slavery when we celebrate Pesach. To come through and survive is not enough if we end up shutting out feelings and relationships because we are afraid of going through the pain again. Pain is not only a warning symptom that something is wrong, but a necessary prerequisite to empathy. Some children are born with an inability to feel physical pain, and not only can they lose fingers and toes because cuts and scrapes that they cannot feel become infected; they can also have difficulty understanding the pain, physical and emotional, of others.

We must never allow this to happen to us. Of course we must have barriers; we could not bear the pain of the world without either going insane of becoming emotionally paralyzed. But the barriers must be porous. We can neither move on without looking back nor remain mired in the past, In a way we must live on both levels at once, and with its emphasis on remembrance and sensitivity to all suffering, as well as its concrete, this-worldly prescriptions for tikkun olam, repairing the world, Judaism can guide us on this difficult path.

May 22, 2004
Cross-posted on "Turn It and Turn It"

So many books, so little time! (cont'd)

Now for the ones I'm working on. (It remains to be seen whether my orgy of suspense/thrillers is over, since I still have a couple from the library.)

The Quiet American by Graham Greene. Carol and I saw the movie and the next day I was at the AAUW book sale and there was the book, so I thought I'd get it and compare. So far it seems like Michael Caine was a perfect choice for the reporter, but the title character (Pyle) seems much more naive and vulnerable in the book than Brendan Fraser made him in the movie.

Emma and Knightley by Rachel Billington. Obviously, a sequel to Emma. It seems to read pretty well so far, but I'm not too happy with the fact that the first thing she did was kill off Jane Fairfax. Evidently she doesn't know (or doesn't care) that according to Jane Austen, Jane F.'s marriage to Frank Churchill lasted ten years, not one.

The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf. Perfect reading for the 4th of July weekend, but extremely disturbing, as she outlines the ten steps by which democracies turn into dictatorships.

Dark Cosmos by Dan Hooper. To be fair, I've only read the introduction on this one, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to keep going. A point in its favor for immediate reading - it's not very long.

I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter (library book). I'm not very far into this one so it remains to be seen whether I'll finish it this go round, but what I've read so far is fascinating. It addresses the nature of identity and consciousness, a subject (along with evil) that I've always been a sucker for. (Sorry, Esther - "for which I've always been a sucker" just doesn't cut it.)

A Nation of Wimps by Hara Estroff Marano. Subtitled The High Cost of Invasive Parenting. Need we say more?

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff (library book). On the day that Willie (Wilhemina, I think) Upton returns to her hometown, pregnant by her dissertation adviser, the remains of the town's legendary monster surface in the nearby lake. Her hippie-turned-born again Baptist mother then informs her that Willie's own father isn't some random pickup from the West Coast, but a local man who is somehow related to them, and Willie sets off through the family history to discover who he is, something her mother refuses to tell her.