by | September 27, 2020 · 9:55 am

High Holy Days in the Pines, 2020

On the morning of Erev Rosh HaShanah, I came out to Fire Island, where I have been leading services for the last 22 years. Even though our services are on-line this years, I still wanted to be in the place where the congregation is based. Being here in this physical place for the High Holy Days every year is part of my own personal introspection and reflection practice of the holy days. Without an in-person congregation to interact with, to my surprise and delight I found a congregation in the natural beauty of this unique landscape. One part of my personal practice for many years has been to write a High Holy Day poem, and here is this year’s. 

 High Holy Days in the Pines, 2020
 
A congregation of sea-oats rustle and sway,
bowing to the rising moon.
Amen, amen they whisper, a wafting of supplication. 
The wind roars across the sky and 
whitecaps scatter their greetings across the bay.
 
Like us, the birds have not yet 
departed this island for the winter
and in this twilight they sing, full-throttled and eager
to fill the empty spaces between us
in this strange year of distance,
comforting us with their eternal chant. 
 
The pine trees show off fresh growth,
their bright, exuberant boughs
stretching out with faded tips.
If only it was this easy for us to demarcate 
our old ways from the new.
 
The still-open gates stand ready to allow us entry.
This season beckons us to unscroll,
to shed the brittle membranes of last year’s self.
Come, let us slough off the unrealized and unfulfilled, 
the unloved and the unresolved. 
Let us become undone
in order to start anew. 

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by | July 29, 2019 · 9:41 pm

Some Good Books, Summer 2019 Edition

Here are my latest recommendations. This is particularly strong group of books. I hope you’ll find them worthwhile reads as well.

The Guest Book by Sarah Blake   @@

51jQtL80z4LThis is a story about a family, but also about a country, told over several generations. The Miltons are blueboods, the bedrock of America. They are the definition of privilege and noblesse oblige. Civility and honor are prized, along with knowing one’s place – the assumption being that a everyone should know their place and act accordingly. The family patriarch buys an island in Maine in the years preceding World War II, which is the backdrop to much drama and a deeply buried mystery which later gets unearthed by a granddaughter trying to make sense of the past. Blake does a magnificent job depicting the different generations, their relationships to each other, and their experiences of both the island and the family legacy. The island itself comes beautifully to life through the seasons and over the years, with incredibly gorgeous detail of the sea and local plant life and the items in the kitchen and in the bedrooms, the clothes that the characters wear and what each generation is drinking, so that the place itself a main character in this compelling tale. She expertly weaves together the threads of this story that are both highly personal to the Milton family, and also contain reverberations of American history and changing national mores. The personal is truly political here, even as individual family members try over the generations to cover up their complicity. But truth seeps out of the cracks of even carefully constructed lies and omissions, and is eventually uncovered.

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg  @@@

51o0nr39qaLA conceptual novel if ever there was one, for most of the time I was reading this I couldn’t decide if it was brilliant or  insane, or both.  Based on the life of historical characters from 18th century London, Jack Sheppard, a reknown thief and jailbreak, and Edgeworth Bess, a famous prostitute, this novel is a combination of different styles, narratives, and narrators. It is about as queer a novel as is possible, dealing with queer identity and also breaking down boundaries about writing and novels and fiction, and so much more. Ostensibly, this volume is a research project being undertaken by a professor, Dr. Voth, whose career is shaky at best and whose heart has recently been broken. The reader comes to understand that the professor is trans, and that there is much going on in the Dr. Voth’s life beyond this project. The book is divided into two parts. One is a  longlost autobiographical manuscript containing the story of Jack Sheppaard and Edgeworth Bess. The manuscript, which may or not be a hoax,  reveals heretofore unknown information  including that Sheppard had been born a girl, and other ways in which both were masters of gender-transformation and barrier-breakers. The other part of the book are Dr. Voth’s footnotes on the manuscript, which both comment on the manuscript, and within those margins also begin to shape a narrative about the professor’s own life and reality. If this sounds like a dizzying journey, it is. But it is well worth it. This boundary-pushing book is a delicious delight, at times quite funny and at other times heartbreaking. And, yes, it is absolutely brilliant.

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza   @@@

516M+tLi0vLMy first thought upon recalling the experience of reading this book is simply to take a deep breath. There is a reverence to this book, a deep respect for the tradition out of which this story comes. In many ways, this book belongs to a genre of stories of immigrants to the United States, with generational differences causing friction between parents and children and struggles over identity and belonging. Within that genre there is a sub-genre to which it belongs as well, the stories of immigrant families from India, with all the particulars of those stories. And while this particular book does belong to that genre and sub-genre, it is so much more. As the family gathers for a wedding, their love for each other comes to the surface along with secrets, anger, and hurts. As the narrative moves from the present to the past, and then into the future, betrayal after betrayal is revealed, and the scars become visible. Yet with all the drama, there is an understated stillness and quietude that threads through the complexity of this family story. Their Muslim faith is in the forefront of their behavior; their beliefs and theology is described in loving ways that allow for struggle and engagement rather than serving as a mere descriptive element. They want to be people of faith, and they are sustained by their faith, even as they worry about not living up to its highest aspirations. I found their struggle to be deeply moving, and the level of complexity with which they struggled to be quite compelling.

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli @@@
51d7s6xTONLRead this book. Now. Run, don’t walk. This Man Booker Longlisted novel is both urgently of the moment, and achingly timeless. A patched together family of unnamed members, a mother, a father, a daughter and a son, get in a car to drive across America. It is in some ways an epic American road novel of discovery, myth-making, and in this case also myth-breaking. The parents are both involved professionally in recording sounds for the purposes of creating stories and documentaries, though their particular interests are in different areas. The mother, spurred by her distress about lost children in the midst of the current refugee and immigration crisis,  is determined to tell a story about what is happening with children currently trying to enter this country. The father wants to tell the story of the Apache, to examine the reality versus the myth of what happened to the people who were the original inhabitants of this land and for whom we are the ones who came, uninvited and unwelcome. This is a story about the history and future of a particular family, and it is a story about a the history and future of this country. It is heartbreaking, and gorgeously written, with a kind of poetic repetitive beat that drives the narrative even at its most quotidian. But wait – there’s more. The story is told from several points of view, and includes lists, and so many names of books and writers, and a story within the story, and descriptions of photographs, and sounds, so many sounds and echoes of sounds that it feels like a multi-sensory experience as well as one of those never-to-be-forgotten interdisciplinary college classes that dizzyingly ties everything together in ways formerly unimaginable.  A wise friend recommended that I listen to the book rather than read it, something I almost never do with fiction, but I listened to her advice and now I understand why. So that’s my recommendation as well – this is a book to listen to. Try it and you’ll see why.

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver  @
41WSkqxA9DL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_I love Barbara Kingsolver’s writing but this should have been a better book. I don’t regret reading it. But it seemed as if, because Kingsolver is such a successful author, that it didn’t get the editing it should have gotten. The concept is great. There are two parallel stories occurring in the same place, a century apart, in Vineland, New Jersey. Kingsolver has great material to work with here – Vineland has an interesting history. But the story felt too forced and too much in service about making a point about the state of the world in which we’ve found ourselves today, and the dire consequences that we will facing shortly if we don’t change our ways. In both stories. a literal house and a way of life are falling apart. Can either be saved is the question asked in both stories, and the answer is not a good one in either. But the stories are filled with interesting characters and possibilities for transformation, moments of aching tenderness  and beautiful descriptions of nature. All of that made it possible to get through a book that desperately needed to be shorter and sharper.

 

Rating System

©©© – Amazing Book, dazzling, outstanding, blew me away

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying, loved it

© – Good Book, but I wanted it to be even better

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by | January 15, 2019 · 3:34 pm

Some Good Books – Winter, 2019 Edition

I’ve been busy and am quite behind on posting these book recs but here is the latest batch. There are a lot of wonderful books here, plenty of great stories and masterful writing to keep you warm this winter. Some are even extraordinarily good. Dig in and enjoy.

The Overstory, by Richard Powers    ©©©

61kUJty1grL._SX328_BO1,204,203,200_It is not an exaggeration to say that this book left me gasping. Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, it had my vote to win but did not. It is hauntingly gorgeous, poetic, despairing but somehow also hopeful. It’s a long read so get ready for the ride but it is completely worth it. Through a series of seemingly disparate stories, Powers weaves a web of interconnectedness between humans and trees. Trees are the real characters here – you’ll never read so much description of trees and be as entranced as you will be in the pages of this eco-novel. There is both metaphoric and literal terror and love shot through the pages of this ambitious, soaring novel. Powers has written a kind of prophetic warning about the long-term and irreparable damage the human race is doing to the earth through the experiences and struggles of a vast array of different human beings. The contrasts he makes between the low-level details of transitory human life and the grandness of the trees of the forest that stretch back in time are masterful and breathtaking. Waste no time – go read this book.

From a Low and Quiet Sea, by Donal Ryan    ©©

414+2llnLeL._SY346_Ryan writes about three different lonely men in Ireland, each one struggling with who he is, the choices he has made, and the impact of those choices on the people he loves. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this quietly powerful novel connects all three men in a surprising denouement that manages to not descend into sentimentality but rather provides a fitting conclusion to the three stories.  The three stories depict different kind of qualities, values, and personalities, not to mention generations, but together form a kind of disquisition on the performance of masculinity and the societal expectations that both afford men power but also limit who they can be. But all of that aside, the writing is taut and beautiful, and the characters, each one grounded in his own time and place and personal history, are memorable.

The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner    ©©

51+t+lCvurL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_It took a while to get into the groove of this complicated, tenacious novel, another Man Booker shortlist title, but I got there. Essentially the story of a woman on death row, the story unfolds through multiple charismatic narrators, each of whom has her or his own story to share. It is both deeply empathetic of each of the narrators, no matter what they did to get into the situation that brought them to prison, and unsparing in its detail about the reality of women prisoners.  Each one is a fully realized human, with needs and desires and a history. The main narrator, Romy, a single mom, former stripper, and in jail for murdering a stalker, is particularly sympathetic, an example of how misogyny often punishes women for men’s bad behavior.

The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar    ©©©

91PEOvjlH9LThis book, shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, is a cross between a satisfying slice of historical fiction and a delicious fairy tale confection. The details of proper mercantile life in late 18th century London contrast with the life of high class prostitutes seeking security and respectability, all of which is shot through with a golden thread of fantasy when a mermaid appears. The descriptions are rich and luscious, from the interior of homes to the array of mouth-watering sweets to the party decor. This novel deals with big themes like desire and sexuality, and our hunger for wonder and curiosity, but it also draws complex, believable characters who move the story along in sometimes tragic, sometimes heroic, and often unexpected ways. A delight from start to finish.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman    ©©

51xwbH9NxcL._SX330_BO1,204,203,200_I’ll admit it — this one took a while but it did eventually grow on me. At first I thought it was too affected and sort of facile, almost mean. But so many people recommended it to me so I kept going, and about halfway through I fell under its spell. Eleanor Oliphant is an unusual protagonist, a rather unlikable main character. But as the book gathered steam she became more sympathetic, and the story became funnier, albeit in a caustic, almost sarcastic way. The mystery of her origins is revealed slowly and surprisingly, and as it did she became more likable and more understandable until I realized, with surprise, that I was rooting for her. Her struggle to come to terms with her past and create an authentic life for herself is deeply moving, and I felt really bad about being so critical at first. This book is definitely worth a read, despite how long it took me to get into it.

Waking Lions, by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen ©©

51Fip-2-gHL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_Where to start with this book? This was a hard one — a deeply raw, painful story packed with so much that feels familiar, known, and hard to deal with. The landscape, both literally and figuratively, of this story is the desert, that vast liminal placed of wilderness. Specifically, it takes place in  southern Israel, in and around Beersheva. Driving home one late night from a shift at the hospital, a Jewish doctor hits and kills a man. He drives away, but his actions were witnessed by an African refugee woman. Soon he is under the control of this woman, living a secret life separate from that of his policewoman wife and their children. Though some elements of this story are specific to Israel and deals with its issues about identity, belonging, place, power, and the details of Israel’s African refugee issue, in many ways this is a universal novel of immigration, the having or not having of agency, and what it means to be “an illegal” anywhere. The translation feels uneven at times, but this is a powerful and important book.

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje    ©©

41hW+nDBJ7L._SX360_BO1,204,203,200_In this beguiling tale of memory, secrets, deception, and love, Ondaatje builds a story out of murky details and hidden identities. In post-war London, two teenagers are left more or less on their own when their parents take off, ostensibly because of their father’s job. Some shadowy adults are ostensibly left to care for them but they are mostly left to their own devices, or so they believe. They experience a different kind of life than they otherwise would have, one that includes an eccentric group of adults revolving through their living room, late night canal trips, smuggling greyhounds and perhaps other items as well, adventures in forests, and romantic interludes in empty houses.  The whereabouts of their parents is a mystery that slowly unravels as the book progresses and the main character, Nathaniel, grows up. Without giving anything away, he comes to learn who his mother really was, and what her role was both during the war and in its aftermath. The book advances quietly, revealing small pieces at a time and introducing a fascinating cast of characters as it conjures up Nathaniel and his sister Rachel’s experience both during the time their mother is away and then upon her return, as well as their mother’s secret life without them.

Rating System

©©© – Amazing Book, dazzling, outstanding, blew me away

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying, loved it

© – Good Book, but I wanted it to be even better

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by | May 27, 2018 · 2:04 pm

Some (More) Good Books, Late Spring 2018 Edition

With warm weather upon us, it’s time to stock up summer reading. Here is a batch of some really, really good books – not exactly light beach reads, but worth the effort. There’s some great writing here, good stories, and in some cases, timely topics. Enjoy!

Another Brooklyn, by Jacqueline Woodson ©©©

61Jj1UmUfxL._SX328_BO1,204,203,200_This finalist for the 2016 National Book Award is a luminous and haunting coming of age story set in the Brooklyn of the 1970’s. August and her friends are girls on the brink of adulthood, trying to figure it all out. They are tough and strong, and also painfully fragile.  In their Brooklyn universe they are beautiful and special, with glorious futures await just ahead. But Brooklyn, and the world at large, are dangerous places for ambitious, trusting young girls. As life lets loose on them, their friendships are tested and their futures become far less certain. As is true for so many girls, and even more so for black girls like August and her friends, growing up comes with a cost. Life is not always kind, parents are not always protective or available, and dreams don’t always come true. Beauty and tragedy vie for the upper hand throughout the pages of this powerful novel.

The Sparsholt Affair, by Alan Hollinghurst ©©©

51iHDUWQq7L This sweeping novel takes place over seven decades and multiple generations, with a group of British gay men at its core. The changing attitudes toward homosexuality and morality is what underlies these story of intergenerational friendship, but it also about families, about fathers and sons, about desire and sexuality and secrets, and about art. And it is also about aging, and what happens to secrets and desires and needs as the characters move through their lives, from young adulthood to death, and how people react as the world changes around them.Hollinghurst’s prose is both precise and beautifully equivocating. He uses an inordinate amount of commas and qualifiers within long sentences but the result is satisfyingly human rather than tiresome or vague. He spins a web of words that draws the reader in and deposits you right inside the scene, within the elaborately described rooms or conversations.

51r32jsg7lLElmet, by Fiona Mozley ©©

This finalist for the 2017 Man Booker Prize has an ephemeral feel to it, almost like a movie shot through gauze, or a fogged lens. It takes place in a forest setting, in which a father lives with his son and daughter. The fairy tale allusions are all there — an idyllic setting, a magical relationship to nature, the lack of a mother (all too common in fairy tales after all!), and the sense that danger lurks right at the edges of the light, out of view but there all the same. And so it’s disorienting to realize that the book takes place in the present, not in some faraway time. And the danger is there all right, but no spoilers here. Told after the fact by Daniel, the brother and son, mystery and tragedy are threaded through the telling that only beginning to make sense as more details become clear. Part mythical tale, part contemporary coming-of-age story, the writing in this first novel gains traction slowly, taking on more urgency as it builds.

An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones ©©©

61D-QSBXV+LIf anything could be called a novel for our times, this might be the one. Jones has written an explosively powerful book about a man, Roy, whose life is turned upside down in an instant one night. Roy and his new wife Celestial are staying at a motel when Roy is accused of a crime, and nothing is the same after that. This is a story of America, where the simple fact of breathing while black is dangerous, where a young man who has done everything he can to get ahead in life can suddenly have everything, including the woman he loves, stripped away from him, and where racism has a cascading effect on families and communities regardless of class and level of education. Jones’ writing is taut and careful. Anger simmers under the surface of the narrative but she keeps tight control of the language, even when the characters themselves reach a boiling point.

My Absolute Darling, by Gabriel Tallent ©©

61+iaFRwF-LThis heartbreaking, painful book had me literally covering my eyes at moments as I read it, as if I was watching a movie and couldn’t bear to see what was happening on the screen. Of course that makes no sense when reading a book, but I was so caught up in the story that it felt as if it was unfolding right in front me and I both couldn’t look, and couldn’t look away. Turtle Alveston is a young teenager as the story unfolds. She lives alone with her father, not far from a caring grandfather, in a house in the woods of Northern California that has fallen into disrepair since the death of her mother. Her father takes pride in teaching her how to be self-sufficient, how to use a gun, and how fend for herself. He teaches her to be mistrustful of other people, especially women, and abandons her for periods of time. He is effusive in his  love for her, but he is a mercurial and dangerous character who violently abuses even as he declares his devotion. When Turtle forms a friendship with a boy her own age, her father does all he can to put a stop to it. In the end, Turtle uses the skills she has learned under her father’s tutelage, as well as her own anger and desire to survive, to triumph over victimhood. The lush and lengthy descriptions of nature, the paragraphs upon paragraphs of local foliage and seascapes, is achingly gorgeous, especially when contrasted with the equally comprehensive details of violence and abuse.  This novel shares some things in common with the equally painful A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, in that both books deal with incredible abuse both physical and sexual, and the suffering of the young people upon whom this is cruelty is inflicted – if you had a hard time with that book you might want to think twice about this one. But still, despite all that, if you can manage it, this is well worth a read. And this book, unlike Yanagihara’s, offers up the possibly of redemption.

Rating System

©©© – Amazing Book, dazzling, blew me away

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying

© – Good Book, but I wanted it to be even better

 

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by | April 29, 2018 · 9:17 pm

Some Good Books, Spring 2018 Edition

Resistance takes many forms. Remember the whole “people from s**thole countries” moment in this low level of civil discourse we’ve been chafing against in this new American era? This edition of Some Good Books focuses on authors or descendants of people from some of those places. There’s been a lot said in the last year against immigrants. But the truth is, most of us are  descendants of immigrants, if not immigrants ourselves. Isn’t that the whole point of the United States? The fact is that immigration is what makes this country unique, and what continues to enrich and enliven American culture. This would be a good time to take a chance on an author with whom you might not be familiar. Some of the following authors are American born descendants of immigrants (ok, right, aren’t we all?), and some are immigrants themselves. Here are some suggestions.

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong  ©©©
51gEMy2iQwLHong’s quietly beautiful first novel centers around a young woman, Ruth, who has come back to her parents’s house. Newly out of a relationship and unsure what to do with her life, she comes home to help her mother care for her father, a college professor with dementia. There is tenderness here, shot through with both sweetness and pain. Ruth cares for her father with compassion and humor, first trying valiantly to protect him from his new self, and then trying to figure out how they, and Ruth’s mother, can live with the truth of what is happening to this once sharp and admired man. Her mother moves in and out of the frame as she too tries to navigate what is happening to their family, but the heart of this novel is the relationship between Ruth and her father. There is no fairy tale ending, but Hong manages to gently push Ruth into a place where she can take charge of her life again.

3198vWxWV6LChemistry, by Weike Wang  ©©

This quirky first novel by Wang draws on the author’s background in science to tell the story of a PhD student who finds herself unable to keep going forward. She has so far done all that her immigrant Chinese parents expected, and is on the way to becoming exactly the daughter they planned for. But her research in chemistry is leading nowhere, and when her scientist boyfriend proposes marriage, she realizes that she can’t keep living up to other people’s expectations. She steps out of her prescribed life, and into a world of questions as she begins to think about what it is she really wants, and who she wants to be. The writing feels both surgically precise and expertly indecisive, looping in and out of focus, beautifully capturing the tension within which the unnamed narrator is stuck as she tries to figure out how to become her own person. Though the style and voice are unique, there is much familiar ground here for anyone who has grappled with meeting the expectations of immigrant parents, or really, any parents.

What We Lose,  by Zinzi Clemmons ©©©

61Iad2oWn5LThis achingly gorgeous novel about losing one’s mother is Clemmons’s first. This novel is narrated by Thandi, the American-born daughter of a white American father and a black South African mother. She has spent her life feeling not quite this or that, not white but not black, not American but not foreign. With her mother’s illness and then death, the questions about her identity move into starker relief. This tale is a study in pain and grief, in which the writing itself stops and starts in bursts, sometimes just a single line, sometimes an outpouring of love and loss, punctuated with occasional graphs and images. We follow Thandi through the pain of her mother’s death and slowly into a new life of in which she will learn to love, trust herself, and become a mother as she  begins to connect the dots of her complex identity.

Home Fires, by Kamila Shamsie ©©

51XdRbTXoQLKamila Shamsie, from Karachi and now living in London, is not technically an immigrant to the United States. But she is an immigrant all the same, and since she went to both college (Hamilton College) and graduate school (UMass Amherst) in the US, I’m taking the liberty of including her in this round-up. Home Fires, long listed for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize), reads like a movie. It is fast-paced, full of filmic imagery, and centers around many of the complicated issues of our day. Having raised her younger twin siblings after the separate deaths of their parents, Isma is finally able to get on with her own life. Though scared about coming to America as a muslim woman whose father was a jihadist, she accepts an invitation to leave London and study in the United States. She reluctantly leaves her sister Aneeka alone in London while Aneeka’s twin brother Parvaiz secretly follows their father’s footsteps on an uncertain and dangerous path. At a cafe in Northampton, Isma meets Eamon, also a son of Pakistani immigrants to Britain, and the futures of all the siblings quickly get wrapped up together with Eamon and his family. Privilege, class, or the right papers cannot protect any of these children of immigrants from the inevitable disaster which early on is clearly bound to happen by the end of the book. This is very much a novel of the early 21st century, a story of mistrust of muslim immigrants, a clash of east versus west, and the ways in which surveillance and security not only provide safety but also feed into our worst fears and cause terrible, and irreversible, harm .

Everybody’s Son, by Thrity Umrigar  ©

51dlPO8zjtLAnton is the adopted son of a white family, a black boy and then a man growing up with all the trappings of white privilege. But what he believes to be the truth about his origins, and the mother who didn’t want him and couldn’t care for him, isn’t the whole story. His past and his future begin to unravel as he uncovers pieces of the story that have been hidden away, and has to rethink the foundations of his carefully constructed identity. This isn’t the strongest of Umrigar’s novels, but it is a challenging and timely story about class, privilege, the bonds of family, and about the crimes committed in the name of love.

And here are reviews of two additional and exceptionally good books that fit into this category, from older blogs.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Stay With Me, by Ayobami Adebay0

Rating System

©©© – Amazing Book, dazzling, blew me away

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying

© – Good Book, but I wanted it to be even better

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by | October 18, 2017 · 12:47 pm

Some Good Books, Fall 2017 Edition Part 1

The weather is getting cooler and the days are getting shorter, so it’s time to lay low and dig in to some good books. Here are some recommendations from my last batch of reading, with more coming in a separate post soon. I’ve been trying to make my way through the Man Booker shortlist, so the first three here are from that list, along with two others. (Full disclosure: I didn’t read the winning book – maybe more on that in a subsequent post.) Enjoy!

4 3 2 1  by Paul Auster 
41wb0c9MpVLThis magnificent book left me speechless by the end.  Shortlisted for the Man Booker, this novel is impressively muscular, bold, and massive in scale. It’s also very male (yes, there are female characters but they’re always assessed by how much the main character wants to sleep with them), not what I usually love. But love it I did. This is a huge novel, both in terms of page count but also ambition. Auster begins with a character, a sort of Jewish American everyman, born to two parents, grandson to grandparents, none of which is particularly remarkable. Their family history is recounted, including how their family name is arrived at, based on an old Jewish joke we’ve all heard. But from there it gets really interesting, if at moments somewhat confusing (keep plugging through – don’t give up!). Each subsequent chapter is divided into four, as in 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, and so on. Each of those four subchapters is a different trajectory of the life of the main character, four different possible routes through life he could have traveled, depending on circumstances, choices, and quirks of fate. There’s a pinch of Philip Roth, a little John Updike, even some Forest Gumpian travels through American history with the main character being in just the right place at the right moment. Though it may sound contrived, Auster is a master and in his hands this construct is heartbreaking, engaging, funny, and poignant. And by the conclusion, he has brought it all together so elegantly so that it suddenly all makes sense. Don’t be put off by the size – the effort is well worth it. ©©©

History of Wolves, by Emily Fridlund

51nKDlBJFKLA Man Booker shortlist title, this is one weird, fairytale-like novel. Written in an almost-but-never-quite-confusing elliptical style that wraps around itself in the telling, this is both  a coming of age story of Linda, a young teenager living a solitary, rural life at the edge of a lake in Northern Minnesota, and also a story about parenting, and how parents do, or don’t, take care of their children. Linda’s parents are former members of a failed commune who stayed on when everyone has left. She lives on a dirt road edged by sumac trees and spends a great deal of her time alone, in the woods or in a canoe. There are two tales of possible wrongdoing at the heart of the plot – a pedophile teacher on whom she develops a strange obsession, even a fondness, and a family of city people who come to stay at their country cabin across the lake with their four year old son Paul. There are hints right from the beginning that tragedy is going to strike, with mentions of a future trial in which Linda will play a role. As the story spins out, with glimpses along the way of Linda’s adult life, she tests out ideas about friendship, loyalty, love, and sexuality. This book is delicately beautiful, in a way that seems like it might crumble when touched, and yet there is a tough center at the heart of it that holds it all together. ©©

Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid 

5158SOMkg7LHaving read this long before the Man Booker list was published, I was thrilled to see it wind up on the shortlist (its also a finalist for the Kirkus Prize). This hauntingly gorgeous novel could not be more timely, which is quite a feat given how long it takes to write and publish a novel. This one too had a fairy tale quality to it – almost like a modern day refugee version of Hansel and Gretel. Nadia and Saeed are two young people who meet in a city in a middle eastern country. At first their lives are almost recognizably universal as they study, work, smoke pot, and become increasingly intimate. But things change quickly as the unrest of civil war dramatically changes the landscape of their city and their lives. Soon their lives have turned upside down as they deal with checkpoints, violence, scarcity, and fear. Like so many others in that situation, they decide they have to leave and get out to the West, and they discover a network of secret doors that lead to other countries. The technique of metaphoric made real employed by Hamid is similar to the model used in Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead in which he envisions an actual railroad running underneath the ground to take slaves to safety. There are no boats or planes or weeks of walking to get to the West, here there are actual doorways that open up onto new vistas and possibilities, though not always with expected outcomes. Nadia and Saeed make their way through several landings as they cope with the uncertainty of life as unwanted strangers. Each exit and entrance changes them, and they painfully figure out how become themselves in the process. ©©©

Anything is Possible, by Elizabeth Strout 

51aLxQqr2ILIt’s always a good day when there’s a new Elizabeth Strout book published, and this one is based on a particularly delicious construct. In her most recent book before this one, My Name is Lucy Barton, Strout wrote about a woman who had left a troubled family background to move to New York, where she marries, has children, and eventually winds up in the hospital. While in the hospital, her estranged mother comes to visit her and they talk about people they know from back home. This novel, Anything is Possible, is about those people whose names dot the pages of My Name is Lucy Barton, as does Lucy herself. This book is really a collection of loosely connected stories about all the different people spoken about by Lucy and her mother, including her sister and brother. And many of the stories recounted here connect in different ways to Lucy and the persona of Lucy, that is, someone who left their hometown to go to New York and write books, someone who “got out.”. There is even a reference to a character going into a local bookstore and seeing Lucy’s book, with the cover described exactly as the actual cover of My Name is Lucy Barton. Strout has created a complete ecosystem with these two books that ping off of each other. But even without the connection to My Name is Lucy Barton, these tales are beautiful, moving, and so intricately, precisely, heartbreakingly crafted. ©©©

Stay With Me, by Ayobami Adebay0

41AWMZPIADLSet in Nigeria, this energetic first novel tells the story of a marriage from the perspective of both the wife and the husband. Yejide and Akin meet as students and fall in love, despite familial and societal pressures that might keep them apart. And yet a simple romance this is not. There is a secret, or really a series of secrets, at the heart of this marriage that is revealed little by little as the story progresses, and it is only at the end that all becomes clear. It is above all a love story of two people trying to protect each other and themselves, a story of passion and shame and the falsehoods we tell in order to keep everything from crashing down around us. And as the narrative switches perspectives back and forth, it is also a tragic story of how much can go wrong between women and men when pride and customs and historic cultural norms and gender roles get in the way of trust and open communication. The writing is full of beautiful descriptions of longing and sensuality, the way people look at and see each other, and what happens over time as a result of deep anger, grief, and hurt. I look forward to seeing more from this author. ©©

Rating System

©©© – Amazing Book, dazzling, blew me away

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying

© – Good Book, but I wanted it to be even better

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by | September 24, 2017 · 11:50 am

We’re All In This Boat Together – Rosh HaShanah, 2017

This is my sermon from the Rosh HaShanah evening service at Congregation B’nai Olam in Fire Island Pines, NY. I’m posting it here by request, with thanks to my readers and editors, to those who provided inspiration, and to those who listened to it with open minds and hearts. 

IMG_1085It was finally time. Shlomo and his husband Shimi had been planning this trip for so long. And they both really needed a vacation. The day of the trip, they were so excited they could hardly wait to board the ship.

They got to the port easily and boarded. Everything was going well – the sun was shining, the water was a sparkly blue, the seats were comfortable, the view was spectacular.

Shlomo leaned back against Shimi and smiled. “This is so lovely,” he said. “Thanks for making this happen.”

And Shimi smiled back. “It will be so nice to relax for a while.”

They were far out at sea when Shlomo looked over at a man across from him. At first he thought he was seeing things, but then he realized, no, the man across from him indeed had a drill. And he was drilling a hole beneath his seat.

Shlomo leapt up and called out, “Hey, what are you doing?”

The man turned to Shlomo and said, “Don’t worry, I’m only drilling under my own seat, not yours.”

Shimi saw what was going on, and jumped up too. “Please, don’t do that!”

The man ignored them and kept at it.

“Stop that right now!” Shlomo yelled.

The man turned to Shlomo and Shimi. “What business is it of yours what I do to my seat?” he asked.

“Please stop,” Shlomo pleaded.

Again the man brushed him off. “I like to see the water underneath me when I travel. What do you care? I’m not touching your seats.”

Shlomo turned to Shimi. “What should I do?” he whispered. “I want us to have a nice vacation.”

“I know,” Shimi whispered back. “But we have to get him to stop.”

So again Shlomo tried to stop the man. “What you’re doing makes no sense. It’s dangerous.”

The man still went on drilling. “Stay out of my affairs!” he yelled at Shlomo and Shimi. “This is my seat, I paid for it, and I have the right to do what I want to it!”

Again, Shlomo and Shimi exchanged looks.

“Sir, you must stop right now!” Shlomo said.

The man looked up. “Go enjoy your vacation. Go find other seats. Go do whatever you want, but mind your own business. Why can’t you leave me alone?”

“But don’t you realize,” Shlomo asked, “That if you drill under your own seat, the water will rise up through the hole and flood the whole boat. What you’re doing endangers us all.”

(adapted from Midrash Rabbah, Lev 4:6)

This ancient Jewish story comes to us from the midrash – with a little modern spin of course. But I didn’t choose it just to share a sweet Jewish folktale – there’s something profound embedded in this story.

Jews have long understood that we’re all in this together. We understand that the hole under your seat in the boat will sink us all. Over and over, throughout the Torah, we are told to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and care for the orphans and widows. Thirty-six different times the Torah tell us to love the stranger, for we were strangers in the land of Egypt. In the context of the time it was written, the Torah teaches that everyone in a society is bound up together, that the fate of some is the fate of all, and that the powerful have a responsibility to help the powerless. Our sages understood that when one suffers, we all suffer.

Another story. It’s a Friday night at the synagogue. An angry mob marches by. The synagogue calls the police and asks for protection, but are turned down. The police have their hands full and protecting the synagogue doesn’t really seem like a big deal given what else is going on. But as this mob marches past the synagogue, they chant “the Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil.” They threaten to burn down the synagogue. That evening the synagogue goes on lock down until they can safely get everyone out the building. Thinking the worst is over, on Saturday morning the congregation gathers again for services – there’s a bar mitzvah. And meanwhile, armed militants carrying swastikas on flags march around the building yelling “Sieg Heil.” And more of the chants of the night before – “Jews will not replace us.” “Blood and soil.” And as the mob outside swells in numbers, the synagogue chooses to quietly, carefully, take the Torahs out the back door and drive them away to safety. Havdalah services are cancelled because they decide it is too risky for Jews to gather together. This story is not from Germany, circa 1937. This happened a few weeks ago, in Charlottesville, Virginia. This story happened in 2017, here, in this country, land of the free and home of the brave.[i]

I’m not an alarmist. In my almost 20 years as a rabbi I have never given a sermon about antisemitism. But things have changed so much since we were together here a year ago. I never in my life thought something like what happened in Charlottesville could ever happen again, and certainly not in this country. And yet what was unimaginable a year ago has happened.

Antisemitism is alive and well in an America in which racism and bigotry are becoming more and more mainstream and normalized. Along with the national rise in hate crimes, this past year has seen there has been a tremendous rise in antisemitic incidents in schools, playgrounds, cemeteries, and synagogues across America. Suddenly it’s become clear that we’re in the boat too, that this boat is surrounded by racists and misogynists and homophobes and transphobes and science-deniers and white supremacists and the KKK and antisemites, and that it’s taking on water. And we have a choice to make about how we’re going to respond.

It’s not that I didn’t know antisemitism existed. But I naively felt that, for the most part, at least in the United States, antisemitism was part of history. Unlike the world into which our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents were born, as Jews most of us experience tremendous privilege and great opportunities. I’m not saying that everything about our lives is good and easy – not at all – but it’s probably fair to say that for most of us, being Jewish has not been the thing that’s gotten in the way.

I didn’t raise my children to be afraid as Jews and I didn’t raise them to define their Jewish identities in relationship to anti-Semitism. That is, as a rabbi, as a Jew, as a mother, I’ve always felt strongly that Jewish identity should be based on pride in Jewish values and history and accomplishments, in the enjoyment of living a Jewish life of holidays and rituals and yes, good food, and not as a response to the ugly reality of anti-Semitism.

Jewish identity should be about joy, about love, about pride – about how the foundational values and customs of Judaism enhance our lives and give it meaning, not about how we’re hated, not about our suffering. “Because they hate us” is not a good enough reason to be Jewish. We should be proud to be Jewish for the positive reasons: because being Jewish brings us joy, because it brings meaning and purpose to our lives, because we love the music or the sacred texts or the food or the jokes or the culture of study and question-asking or the tradition of storytelling or the drive to make the world a better place.

I put it to you that in these precarious times, just to be proudly Jewish is a form of protest. In this new year, even as we work to keep the ship from sinking, fight antisemitism on a personal level by owning your Judaism, by taking pride in it, by being a Jew publicly. Even as we work to help others stay afloat, find a reason and a new way to claim your Jewish identity. Even as we reach out a hand to the drowning, use core Jewish values as a way to frame the choices you make in your life. For that too is a form of resistance.

But these steps are not the end of what it means to own our Jewish identity.

That day in Charlottesville tore the lid off the quiet contagion of anti-Semitism in America that had been festering in the dark. Anti-Semitism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Where’s the antisemitism, there’s white supremacy, racism, homophobia, and bigotry of all kinds.

When rights are taken away from anyone, they’re taken away from everyone.

When hate is allowed to flourish, it pollutes us all.

Intolerance and hate and the deliberate diminishing of equality under the law are infections that threaten the freedom of us all.

There can be no moral equivalency when it comes to hate and its accompanying violence – it is simply wrong and must be condemned. When a moral equivalence is made about groups whose mission is hate and intolerance and exclusion, and those who protest such groups, we are all harmed. There is no excuse and no context that makes that kind of comparison acceptable in a democracy founded on the principles of equal rights for all.

Even as we respond to antisemitism by living our Judaism out loud and without fear, we must also find common ground with others who find themselves on the receiving end of hate, racism, and suspicion, even if we don’t completely agree with their outlook or values. It is our responsibility to remember that there are people with fewer resources than we have, and less recourse than we do, who rights are threatened or being taken away. Our tradition is clear:

Im ain ani li, mi li? If I am not for myself, who will be for me? – We must speak up for ourselves.

And if I am only for myself, what am I? – But we can’t only be for ourselves. We have a responsibility to help others.

So in this new year, it is time for us to show up for others as we also commit to showing up and speaking up for ourselves. As we enter this annual period of reflection and self-examination, we must ask: How can I fight antisemitism by taking pride in being a Jew? Or, because I know we have many beloved participants here who aren’t Jewish, what role can you play in eradicating this disease of anti-Semitism? But it doesn’t stop there. Because we know what it is to be hated, to be feared, to be oppressed, to be a stranger, and because Judaism demands of us that we respond with compassion and justice, we must go on to ask: what more can I do to fight hate and intolerance against all people? What role can I play in speaking up for the powerless or voiceless? If not us, then who? And if not now, when?

[i] https://reformjudaism.org/blog/2017/08/24/you-think-it-couldnt-happen-your-synagogue-so-did-i

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by | April 12, 2017 · 11:15 am

Pussy Grabs Back Deviled Eggs for Passover

IMG_0773I don’t like vulgarity. I love words – written, read, spoken. My professional life as a rabbi and an editor is based on words and their import. Words and how they’re used matter, and are to be carefully considered.

When my kids were small, I was that principled mother who insisted on using the proper words for body parts, not euphemisms. And later I was that feminist mother of teenagers who insisted on not using words that demean women. It’s true that I often use a certain “inappropriate” swear word for emphasis. Admittedly, it’s not one of my better qualities, especially at work, and especially given my profession. I like to say that I use it because I’m from the mean streets of Brooklyn, before Brooklyn was cool, as if that gives me license.  Truthfully though, my fancy private school education belies any right I have to speak like that, despite my Brooklyn origins – I do indeed know better. But to me – rightly or wrongly – the use of that word always seemed different than using female-gendered words in demeaning ways. The words “pussy” or “cunt” (I can’t believe I even just typed those words!) has always greatly bothered me, in particular when used to disparage people of any gender. Somewhat prudishly, I had a hard time even saying those words.

And then suddenly “pussy” entered our national vocabulary. We had to hear a presidential candidate talk about pussy grabbing on an endless recorded loop that played for days. We thought, we hoped, that on Election Day we would grab back and show him a thing or two about the power of pussy – that pussy could grab back. We weren’t going to let him and those other misogynist predators out there own our agency or run our government.

My sister and niece at the March with the pussyhats I knit for them.

My sister and niece at the March with friends, in the pussyhats I knit for them.

And then Election Day came and as shock set in, resistance started to bubble up to the surface. Women’s marches were planned not only around the country but around the world, and someone came up with the idea for pussyhats (thank you Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman).  I started to knit, and I started to use the word pussy in every day conversation as we processed what was happening.

I’ve become much more comfortable using the word pussy now as a way to hold, rather than lose, power. And so for Passover, the holiday that is about counting our blessings, celebrating our agency as free people, and calling out injustice, and that is also a holiday about using food to tell our stories, I created a new dish: Pussy Grabs Back deviled eggs. They’re hard boiled eggs marinated in pickled beets so they turn pink, filled with a beet/yolk mixture with a kick of jalapeño and decorated with their own little pussyhats.


Pussy Grabs Back: Deviled Eggs with a Kick 

1 dozen eggs, hard boiled and peeled

1 cup apple cider vinegar

2 Tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

4 cooked and peeled beets

1/4 cup mayo

1/4 cup strong mustard

1 jalapeno pepper, cut up, or to taste (depending on how spicy you like it)

1. Boil 2 of the beets with the vinegar, sugar, salt. Once it reaches a boil, let it cool. The liquid should be bright pink.

2. When the liquid is cooled, place the peeled, hardboiled eggs into the liquid. Let the eggs sit in the liquid, refrigerated, for several hours or overnight.

3, Removed the eggs and discard the liquid. They eggs should now be tinted pink. Slice the eggs in half and placed yolks in a bowl.

4. Chop the remaining 2 beets. Reserve 1/2 a beet and add the rest to the yolks. Add in mayo, mustard, and jalapeño. Mix together well with hand mixer or in food processor.

5. Spoon or pipe the yolk/beet filling into the eggs.

6. Cut the remaining 1/2 a beet into small chunks, and then divide the chunks into triangles. Decorate each of the egg fillings with two triangles.

Refrigerate until you’re ready to serve.

 

 

 

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by | April 9, 2017 · 10:53 am

Nevertheless, She Persisted: A New Passover Dish

IMG_0724This year there will be an additional vegetable dish on my seder table, a colorful, savory roasted cauliflower pie called Nevertheless, She Persisted. It’s an homage to the too-often underestimated cauliflower, as well as a shout-out of gratitude to the women who persist every day, under all kinds of conditions, and often against those who underestimate their strength.

Passover only comes once a year but it is a defining piece of what home means to me. Over the years I have figured out how to cram the maximum number of people in my house for seder. It’s admittedly not the most comfortable seating, it’s crowded and noisy, but the guests keep coming back so it can’t be too terrible. When I was briefly thinking about moving last year, one of the main considerations of a new place to live was that it be large enough for seder. A crazy consideration given that it’s one night a year, but there it is.

I prepare for weeks, with everything spreadsheeted out, lists made and crossed off, multiple runs to different stores, the freezer at full capacity. I bow in humility to those who do it all in two or three days. Me, I can’t do it without major obsessive planning and preparation.

The menu stays more or less the same from year to year, with a few innovations here and there that get woven into the mix. It’s a meat meal, for which this vegetarian concedes to cook (meaning: buy, touch, and interact with) meat in act of love for the family and guests. I’ve never tasted my brisket, but they seem to like it and ask for more.

While the menu hasn’t changed much, what has changed dramatically in the last few years is the definition of family. In recent years, and in what felt like one fell swoop, I went from being part of a grouping of four, to one. As a result, I’ve begun to think about ways to keep the seder familiar, while also making it more “mine”.

So this year I decided to try something a little different. I’m still making all the standards that appear on the menu every year, but I’m adding something for myself.

I’ve been asked by many over the last few years if I was going to move, if I was going to sell my house, if I was going to stop doing seder. Isn’t it a lot to manage by myself, I’m asked. And the answer to all of those is – yes, it is a lot to manage, all of it by myself, but no, I’m not moving and I’m not giving up hosting seder. Maybe someday, but not yet. In the meantime, I’m learning, and I’m adapting. My skill set has grown dramatically, as has my toolbox, both literally and figuratively. My ability to graciously accept help when it’s offered has also increased, and I’m learning that paying for help is sometimes ok as well.

That brings me back to the cauliflower pie. Though it’s often overlooked and certainly often overcooked, cauliflower is quite a glorious, versatile, and nutritious vegetable. This new dish for my seder table is a bold, colorful, and fiery dish that draws on spices from different pockets of Jewish history and is deeply satisfying, while being fairly light and healthy (it’s also carb-free, and therefore gluten free). From my perspective, there’s no such thing as too much cauliflower, and it’s a good antidote to the usual heavy, meat-focused Passover dishes. And given the state of the United States at the moment, there’s also no such thing as paying too much attention to women’s roles, women’s voices, women’s rights, and our bold, colorful, fiery persistence against those would underestimate our strength.

Roasted Cauliflower Pie

2 heads of cauliflower

3 Tbsps sweet paprika

1 Tbsp cumin

4 shallots, chopped

4 garlic cloves, chopped

Olive oil

8 eggs

2 Tbsps chopped parsley

salt and pepper

  1. Cut cauliflower into florets. Place in Ziploc bag with 2 Tbsps paprika, cumin, salt, and olive oil, enough to coat the cauliflower. Close the bag and shake until all the florets are a nice reddish yellow.
  2. Oil a cookie sheet and toss the cauliflower onto the pan. Spray some oil on top of the florets as well. Roast at 425 until they’re starting to brown.
  3. While they’re roasting, sauté chopped shallots and garlic in oil until golden.
  4. In a bowl, beat eggs. Add in chopped parsley, shallot and garlic mixture, and remaining Tbsp of paprika. Add salt and pepper. Mix well.
  5. When cauliflower is roasted, placed into oiled baking dish. Pour egg mixture on top and make sure all the cauliflower is covered.
  6. Bake at 350 for an hour or until all the egg is cooked and browned at the edges.

 

 

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by | April 8, 2017 · 7:55 pm

Spring, Hope, and Passover Pistachio Lemon Cookies

IMG_0091Renewal. Rebirth. Green shoots breaking through the dirt. Known also as Chag HaAviv, “the Spring Holiday,” Passover is part religious ritual, part people-building exercise, and part springtime rite.

Whether it arrives in cold, rainy March, or flowerful April, Passover always manages to lift my heart. Its arrival reminds me to hold on to hope, no matter how dreary the winter has been, no matter how gloomy things look. Hope, Passover teaches, is right around the corner. The days will get longer, the flowers will bloom, things can get better.

After a very difficult personal year in which I didn’t know what the contours of my life were going to look like, I decided to plant bulbs in my garden. I didn’t even know at that time that I’d still be in that very house to see them come up months later in the spring, but it was a stubborn act of hope in the future. And by that next spring I got to see the flowers burst into glorious color right in time for Passover.

This Passover recipe is one of my favorites because of the bright green color, and the lemony flavor and smell. These cookies taste of spring, and hope. Pistachios are an ancient near eastern food, mentioned in the Bible, and feature prominently in Persian Jewish cooking. They speak of our historical past – where we’ve been and the resilience we’ve managed to harness to get from there to here, despite the obstacles. And the yellow lemons speak to the potential that the future holds – the possibility of brightness and light, the warm sunshine of the coming spring and summer.

Now it’s a year later and it’s been another difficult winter, but this time on a national and international level. Our national leadership has dramatically shifted and suddenly women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, climate justice, and much more are under attack. Ant-semitism is on the rise. We’re living in a world of alternative facts and cowardly leadership. And while refugees are being denied entry to this country and children are washing up on beaches, we’re bombing Syria for “moral reasons.” My bulbs are coming up again but the world is upside down.

Needless to say, these cookies are not going to solve the world’s problems. But they do provide balm for the soul and some hope for the future. And maybe that hope can give us strength to keep doing our part to heal this broken world.

Pistachio Lemon Passover CookiesIMG_0723

 6 c ground pistachios

6 egg whites

2 c sugar

Juice of one lemon

rind from 2 lemons

  1. In mixer, combine ground nuts, eggs whites, lemon juice and sugar.
  2. Grate rind from two washed lemons and fold into mixture.
  3. Use cookie scoop or spoon to place on pan lined with parchment paper.
  4. Bake at 325 until brown around the edges.

Makes about 5 dozen cookies. (And they’re gluten-free!)

 

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