NY Jewish books: The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus

A language epidemic erupts among Jewish families; children’s speech makes their parents deathly ill. Soon it spreads to the rest of the population. This dark fantasy is the premise of Jewish New Yorker Ben Marcus‘s new novel, The Flame Alphabet published today by Knopf (read more on examiner.com ; also read my New York Journal of Books review:http://goo.gl/GrQGA ).

Arthur Green on Abraham Joshua Heschel and Hasidism

Rabbi Jeff Marker’s synopsis of Arthur Green’s talk on Abraham Joshua Heschel and Hasidism.

“For Heschel the most significant mitzvot are
Feeding the poor, ending war, marching with MLK.
These are spiritual acts, not just political.
These are the acts for which we were created.

 

“Heschel’s God was very personal, but we must do the work for God.”

 

Originally posted by at Arthur Green on Abraham Joshua Heschel and Hasidism

On Thursday evening I went to the Abraham Joshua Heschel School and heard a lecture by Arthur Green titled “What Heschel Learned From Hasidism.”  Green was a close student of Heschel when he was a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in the 1960s.  It was a brilliant talk, though I thought I would share what I managed to take down and remember.

First of all, Green said, Heschel would have hated the title of the talk.  He did not like divisions in Jewish life.  He bridged worlds and was critical of all of them.  He wrote about many of them.

 

Heschel was a living link to the lost world of Jewish Europe.  In his first real appearance on the public stage in Americal, at YIVO in 1944, he spoke about that lost world.  He later expanded this into his book “The Earth is the Lord’s.”  Around the same time, in 1943-44, he reclaimed his middle name.  Before that he was known, and wrote as, Abraham Heschel.  After this he was Abraham Joshua Heschel.  This was the name of his famous great great grandfather and reflected his Hassidic identity.  His family was from the Ukrainian school of hasidism which was a kind of peasant hasidism.  His father was an immigrant to Warsaw which was generally dominated by the Ger/Kutsk school, which was more rational and skeptical of miracle workers and similar stories.  There were no yeshivas reflecting his heritage, and his early education was under the influence of Ger.  Heschel later said he lived between these two worlds, Medzibush and Kutsk.

 

Heschel grew to see the Hasidic world as “small minded” and wanted a secular education.  It would have been a scandal for him, scion of a Hasidic dynasty, to go to a secular gymnasium in Warsaw.  His tutor arranged for him to attend a gymnasium in Vilna, a center of the anti-Hasidic misnagdim.  After a year he enrolled in university in Berlin.  He also wrote poetry.  In time he learned to speak in Biblical language which was accessible to both Jews and Chrisitians.

 

So, what did Heschel learn from Hasidism?  Green says five things, and he will especially expand on the fifth.

 

A sense of wonder -  “The whole world is full of God’s glory!”

 

There is nothing you can prove
Religious truth is about testifying, not proving.  His book “The Sabbath” is an expansion on ideas in
“Sfas Emes,” a book by an earlier Gerer rebbe.

 

He understood the need for charismatic religious figures, but saw corruption in the Hasidic world.
So he went back to the prophets as his authentic “rebbes.”
(Buber, the outsider, could romanticize Hasidic leaders, not Heschel)
His lecture “Did Maimonedes think he had attained prophesy?” actually applies to him also.
He did become a prophetic figure, and saw it in Martin Luther King Jr. which led him to accept it             also in himself.
There is a Hasidic expression “Zogt Torah” – to speak Torah (different from to learn or teach).
The word IS the Torah.

 

Chesed and Simcha – Loving Kindness and Joy
Even his criticism is through chesed.
His Judaism is of love and joy.  He rarely spoke about sin or repentance (unlike Solevetchik)
He focuses on action, to do good, not focus on sin and guilt.  There not much reference to                 Messianism.  He is more interested in We redeeming God, not God redeeming us.

 

“God in Search of Man” – God needs us!
The way we act is meaningful to God, it makes a difference, even in a cosmic sense.
(This is contrary to Mainmonedes who says God is perfect, has no needs)
This idea goes back to Ramban, Nachmanedes.  Mitzvot bring the Shechinah out of exile.

 

Heschel traced this debate back to Rabbis Akiba and Ishmael in the second century of the common era.
Ishmael – the Mishkan (Tabernacle) is only post Golden Calf.  The people need it.
Akiba – Mishkan is renewal of creation, full of secrets of creation.

 

Heschel derived this from Hasidism
For early hasidim, all mitzvot/acts have cosmic significance.
For later hasidim, the acts of the rebbes have this significance.

 

For Heschel the most significant mitzvot are
Feeding the poor, ending war, marching with MLK.
These are spiritual acts, not just political.
These are the acts for which we were created.

 

Heschel’s God was very personal, but we must do the work for God
(still balancing Metzibush and Kutsk)

 

These are my rough notes on a very polished talk, but I hope they give a sense of it.

The Economist: new research challenges Chomsky’s linguistics

 

The evolution of language

Babel or babble?

Languages all have their roots in the same part of the world. But they are not as similar to each other as was once thought

via economist.com

2011 Jewish fiction and poetry books

2011 Jewish fiction and poetry books   (a list of Jewish fiction and poetry books I reviewed in the past year).

 

 

Farewell Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011)

Video portrait by John Feldman of artist Helen Frankenthaler commissioned by Purchase College School of the Arts for the 2008 Nelson A. Rockerfeller awards.

LA Times obit

NY Times critic’s notebook: Two Artists Who Embraced Freedom

Robert Reich: My Political Prediction for 2012: It’s Obama-Clinton

robertreich:

My political prediction for 2012 (based on absolutely no inside information): Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden swap places. Biden becomes Secretary of State — a position he’s apparently coveted for years. And Hillary Clinton, Vice President.

So the Democratic ticket for 2012 is Obama-Clinton.

Why…

 

2 book reviews: “The Break” and “Underground Time” — New York Journal of Books

Thanks to a change in the publication date of one of the books I have two reviews published on the same day. Both are novels in translation, one from Italian and the other from French. 

“The Break is reminiscent of Italian neo-realist cinema of the late 1940s and is enthusiastically recommended to all readers. Kudos to Howard Curtis for a wonderful translation.” This paperback is printed on high quality paper with a handsome wrap-around cover.

“Because Underground Time’s prose largely lacks the delicious density of the best literary fiction in translation, it appears to target a middlebrow readership. But readers with highbrow tastes may want to make an exception to their usual literary fare on account of its social criticism.”

Read these and my other book reviews on New York Journal of Books.

A Meaning for Wife | New York Journal of Books

“Your wife is killed by a cashew (anaphylactic shock), but there isn’t time to grieve because your toddler son is always at your heels—wanting to be fed, to be played with, or to sleep next to you all night long. A change of pace seems necessary, so you decide to visit your parents in order to attend your twenty-year high school reunion. What begins as a weekend getaway quickly becomes a theater for dealing with the past—a past that you will have to re-imagine in order to have any hope of a future for you and your son.”–Mark Yakish, A Meaning for Wife

“Toward the end of the novel there is a gutsy shift in narrative tone that lends the ending a sense of closure. In recent years, women writers such as Joan Didion and Meghan O’Rourke have published nonfiction memoir accounts of grief. In his debut novel Mr. Yakich provides the male perspective. Recommended to anyone who has experienced loss.”

Read the rest of my review in New York Journal of Books

On otherness, ethnic and racial identity from a Jewish perspective

An interesting and engaging blog post from last March on otherness, ethnic and racial identity:

Passing for White: Other-ness and Judaism

 

Prospect Park Foliage

Prospect Park Foliage

via flickr.com

 

Fall foliage, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY.