The TBI Book Nosh started off the new year with a far-ranging discussion of issues great and small. The books that launched our debates are listed below. But first, on behalf of all of us, let me thank Rabbi Kalev for graciously offering the use of his study for our meeting. The cozy confines of his office were a nice change of pace for our group.
BOOKS DISCUSSED LAST NIGHT:
To the End of the Land, by David Grossman, the well-known Israeli author and noted left-wing critic of Israeli policy toward Palestinians. This is a work of fiction, ostensibly about a love triangle, and about a long walk by two of the protagonists, up north to the Sea of Galilee, and then back south to the Negev. But the real meat of the novel is the running discussion by the two hikers about the emotional strains that family members of soldiers experience when their loved ones are deployed into combat. Grossman’s writing is informed by his own experiences as an IDF member, working in military intelligence during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and as a father who lost a son during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon Conflict. According to our reviewer, even though Grossman is a controversial writer, this book is an engrossing – and fast – read (despite weighing in at over 600 pages), which offers incisive insights on the long-term psychological effects of Israel’s many wars on the soldiers who actually fought in them, and on their families.
Recommended by our reviewer.
Also mentioned: Lion’s Honey: The Myth of Samson, by David Grossman. Look for a review during one of our future blogs.
People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks. Created in the 14th century, the Sarajevo Hagaddah is one of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illuminated with images. It has somehow survived through centuries of book burnings and anti-Semitic purges, and most recently survived the 1992-95 Bosnia-Herzegovina War. Geraldine Brooks was inspired by the story of the Hagaddah to write a fictional account of how it might have come to be.
In Brooks’s novel, a rare-book expert is asked to authenticate and restore the book in 1996, after the most recent war’s end. In the process of her work, the expert finds various clues about the book’s origin and travels: An insect wing; a white hair; a wine stain; a salt crystal; and so on. From each clue, the author unfolds vignettes about what happened to the book. She takes us to: 14th century Muslim-ruled Andalusia; Inquisition-era Venice; decadent 19th-century Vienna; and finally, Nazi-era Sarajevo. With each vignette, the author shows us a glimpse of the Jewish predicament at that time. However, her message is rather hopeful, as she illustrates how right-thinking people of many different faiths put themselves at risk to save the book. According to our reviewer, this book, which is part DaVinci Code mystery, part historical travelogue, is an entertaining and quick read.
Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor E. Frankl. When the Third Reich annexed Austria in 1938, the author was a prominent Viennese psychiatrist. In 1942, he, along with his wife, and his parents, was deported to the Theresienstadt. Thereafter, they were transported to Auschwitz, followed by several other concentration camps. Of his family, Frankl was the only one to survive. He was liberated by the United States Army on April 27, 1945.
After the war, Frankl returned to Vienna, and became the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of Existential Analysis, also known as the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy. The first part of the book, which was first published (under a different title) in 1946, chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate. The second part of the books describes the psychotherapeutic method that Frankl developed as a result of his experiences, called “logotherapy.” Frankl, unlike Freud (who founded the first Viennese school of psychotherapy), did not believe that sexual instincts and urges were the driving force of life; rather, he believed that a person's deepest desire was to search for meaning and purpose.
Our reviewer highly recommends this deeply felt, personal, and inspirational volume.
Also mentioned: Born Jewish: A Childhood in Occupied Europe, by Marcel Liebman. The author was a young child in Nazi-occupied Belgium. He survived the Holocaust, thanks in part to the help of Catholic nuns. His older brother was not as lucky, and perished in Auschwitz.
After the war, Liebman became a well-known Marxist-Leninist and a historian of, and apologist for, the Soviet Union. This slender volume deals with his personal experiences during the war, including descriptions of class conflict and class differences among Jewish populations in occupied of Belgium, and accounts of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis.Our reviewer mentioned this book only in passing, without necessarily endorsing the author's views.
Also mentioned: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, by Paul Krugman. As soon as our reviewer mentioned the name of the author of this book, a lively debate ensued about a wide range of topics. As far as we can remember, the substance of the book was never discussed, but many other aspects of the current political climate, the economic problems in Europe and here, the contrasts between today’s leaders and the Founding Fathers who managed to agree upon a Constitution right here in Philadelphia, and many other topics were discussed.
Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds, by Joel L. Kraemer. Unlike every other book ever reviewed during Book Nosh, our reviewer did not actually recommend this book. However, the book did serve as an excuse for a discussion of one of the great Jewish thinkers (is that redundant?) of all time, of his life experiences, his achievements as a Jewish theologian, as a physician, as a leader of the Egyptian Jewish community, and as a rationalist thinker in a world then governed by superstition and ignorance (as opposed to now, of course). The subject of the book was interesting; the author not as much.
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This was a fun meeting, with lots of heated but informative and good-natured discussion. Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, November 1, at 7:45 pm. To those of you whom I have not seen in person in the last couple of days, G'mar Chatimah Tovah.
