Work Pictures

PRIMARY CHILDREN'S MEDICAL CENTER

I Work on the 4th (top) Floor. It has a gorgeous view of the Salt Lake Valley!

At the Bedside......

MOVIES: Gaza Strip and Paradise Now

These movies were disturbing. It is hard to see people living in those horrible conditions. There is a lack of good jobs, decent housing, safe living conditions, and all those things that give one a sense of dignity. It is sad to see a lack of reasonable hope that things can change for the better. Desperation can drive people to do horrible things in order to bring change. It's just so terribly heart-wrenching.

GAZA STRIP (2002): The children in the movie troubled me the most. The adults would talk about wanting peace but their children are encouraged to fight Israeli soldiers. A few children talked about how their dad's tied them up in their bedrooms to try and keep them safe. They were quite proud of how they went to throw stones anyway. The kids also talked about their dead or injured friends.

It makes me ill to think of children being used as propaganda tools to demonstrate how terrible Israelis are. It is also sad to think that these angry and desperate children from 2002 are just about to turn into angry and desperate adults.

PARADISE NOW (2005): Also disturbing. It is inconceivable how anyone can possibly think that violence can solve the problem. It only adds more misery to a horrific situation.

BOOKS: Entering the High Holy Days by Reuven Hammer

Entering the High Holy Days: A Guide to Origins, Themes, and Prayers by Reuven Hammer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


 


I really enjoyed this book! The High Holy Days always seemed kind of boring and morbid to me. I didn't realize that there was such an emphasis on appreciating life. I liked the idea of using this time to contemplate the previous year and to evaluate ourselves and see what could be changed for the better. That makes sense and doesn't seem morbid at all!

Some quotes from pg. 36:

• "Indeed, life and death are the overriding concerns of these days. Rosh Hashanah emphasizes life and its renewal; Yom Kippur deals with death and renunciation, but only so that we may return to life purified and reinvigorated. Together, these two holy days help us realize that life is God's most precious gift and humankind's most precious possession........"

• "This festival of life resensitizes us and renews our commitment to life."
  

• "These Days of Awe teach us to appreciate the gift of life and to affirm the freedom and responsibility of each human being to conduct his or her life with morality and decency as God has taught us. They confirm for us that what we do or do not do matters, and they make us aware how easily we can stray and how possible it is to change, to improve and remake our lives."
  

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BOOKS: God in Search of Man by Abraham Joshua Heschel

God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism by Abraham Joshua Heschel

My rating: 3 of 5 stars




I had a TON of quotes marked in this book, but here are a few of my favorites:

pg. 423  "Why is our belonging to the Jewish people a sacred relation?.........For us Jews there can be no fellowship with God without the fellowship with the people Israel. Abandoning Israel, we desert God.
Jewish existence is not only the adherence to particular doctrines and observances, but primarily the living in the spiritual order of the Jewish people, the living in the Jews of the past, and with the Jews of the present..........Our share in holiness we acquire by living in the Jewish community. what we do as individuals is a trivial episode, what we attain as Israel causes us to grow into the infinite."

pg. 312  "No one is lonely when doing a mitsvah, for a mitsvah is where God and man meet. We do not meet Him in the way in which we meet things of space. To meet Him means to come upon an inner certainty of His realness, upon an awareness of His will. Such meeting, such presence, we experience in deeds."

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BOOKS: Man is Not Alone by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Man Is Not Alone : A Philosophy of Religion by Abraham Joshua Heschel

My rating: 3 of 5 stars




Some Quotes:

pg. 89  "The greatest obstacle to faith is the inclination to be content with half-truths and half-realities."

pg. 90  "It is not an attitude of detachment from reality, of passive absorption or of self-annihilation, but rather the ability to witness the holy within this world's affairs, and to entertain a feeling of shame and discontent with living without faith, without responsiveness to the holy."

pg. 90  "By foregoing beauty for goodness, power for love, grief for gratitude, by entreating the Lord for help to understand our hopes, for strength to resist our fears, we may receive a gentle sense of the holiness permeating the air like a strangeness that cannot be removed. Our crying out of pitfalls of self-indulgence for purity of devotion will prepare the dawn of faith."

pg. 91  "Responsiveness to God cannot be copied; it must be original with every soul."

pg. 92  "God is not an explanation of the world's enigmas or a guarantee for our salvation. He is an eternal challenge, an urgent demand. He is not a problem to be solved but a question addressed to us as individuals, as nations, as mankind."

pg. 98  "We are driven to know God in order to conform to His ways."

pg. 108  "God cannot be distilled to a well-defined idea. All concepts fade when applied to His essence."

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BOOKS: Jewish with Feeling by Rabbi Zalman Shacter-Shalomi

 Jewish With Feeling: A Guide to Meaningful Jewish Practice by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



 

This was a nice book. I was curious about the Renewal Movement and I'm glad I read this. My favorite parts?

1. WRESTLING WITH BIG QUESTION

pg. 33  "The Jewish path toward answers, as we know, lies in asking more questions. Not just any questions, but the big questions, the ones that are nearest our hearts............Asking important questions is far more important than answering them, and of course no one can ask your questions for you, far less answer them. For the searching soul any answer sooner or later begins to stale anyway. What I will try to do in this book is to suggest ways in which Judaism.....might help you wrestle with your questions---after all, we Jews have been wrestlers since our forefather Jacob took on the angel---and help you, too, to deepen your quest and fill it with joy."

I loved the part about Jacob wrestling with the angel and relating that to our wrestling with questions. That idea really clicked with me. It's kind of validating to know that it's ok to ask questions. It's even to better to think that the questions might be more important than the answers. This next quote is a good follow-up on the first.

pg. 192  "In our daily and democratic grappling with our sacred texts we were never content to leave divine revelation up to heaven; Torah, for us, belongs here on earth. Unlike Islam, which comes from the word for surrender, Jews surrender nothing to God. Our ancestor Jacob received the name Israel because he wrestled with God (Genesis 32:28): that is what yisra-el means."

2. THE SABBATH

pg. 36  ".....if you want to get more Judaism into your life, start with some form of Shabbos practice, maybe just twenty minutes or an hour at first, but ultimately building toward taking a day of rest each week to reconnect to more natural rhythms."

pg. 62  "Spiritual gains should not come at emotional expense. Trying any new activity can rock the family boat at first. Discuss these issues beforehand to prepare the ground, and start small. Go at a pace that everyone can handle. Developing re-ensoulment skills takes time."

I liked the idea in the chapter of slowly making the Sabbath more meaningful to us. I also like the emphasis on the family's well-being, not just an individual's.


3. WHY BE JEWISH?

pg. 196  "The answer we have offered to "Why be Jewish?" then, is that Judaism has many deep teachings to offer that we still need today:

• Judaism reminds us to recalibrate ourselves by nature's clock.
• Judaism teaches us conscious consumption.
• Judaism urges us to maintain a living dialogue with the texts that are the beating heart of our culture.
• Judaism demands here-on-earth spirituality.
• Judaism helps us maintain faith and a connection to God despite powerlessness and uncertainty.

These treasures are the birthright of each and every one of us. For all these reasons, we can be proud of our heritage and feel that it is still something that the world needs."

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CHECK IT OUT! Legally Blonde and Spiritually Buber

I just read a really cool review (by Elisa Albert)!

http://www.jewcy.com/feature/2007-05-17/legally_blonde_and_spiritually_buber


I loved this article. Why?

• I read Buber's I and Thou and was TOTALLY confused by it.
  
• I liked the Legally Blonde movies. Sure--they were unrealistic and a bit goofy--but they were still fun to watch.
  
• The review was interesting, original, funny, and quite insightful.
  

Some cool quotes:

• "Buber's concept of the I/Thou relationship "stresses mutual, holistic existence without qualification or objectification of the other." In simplist terms, this means being a really nice person, giving others the benefit of the doubt, and treating people like the complicated, meaningful beings they invariably are. It means being Elle-like."

• "Giving people what you think they want (based on your classifications of them) is to reduce them to "it". Being fully yourself and offering your full self to unclassifiable others: totally "thou"."

• "At Harvard, Elle faces the specter of yet more I/it. She's mocked and reviled at every turn........Her classmates preen and posture, fulfilling their own odious stereotypes.......But, our Elle guilelessly refuses to reduce her peers to their obvious categorizations (the "it" of them), and relate to them as such. She relates to them firmly in her own self, open to them all, wearing her signature pink..........resolutely unaware of the raging "it" to which she herself is constantly being reduced."

• "Elle Woods ultimately triumphs personally and professionally because she never stops looking at the world through her own eyes, with her own humanity intact, so that what's reflected back at her is yet more actual humanity."
  

CHECK IT OUT! 6 Strategies for Achieving Misery

This article, by Sol Herzig, was very funny and (sadly enough) very true.

http://www.aish.com/jewlariousFeatures/jewlariousFeaturesDefault/Six_Simple_Strategies_for_Achieving_Misery.asp

I think the opening line tells it all: "The sobering fact is that serenity and joy are natural states for us all. Fear not. Practiced regularly, these strategies vastly improve our odds of attaining despair."

POEM: Like the Inner Wall of a House by Yehuda Amichai

I read a poem: Like the Inner Wall of a House by Yehuda Amichai
The first stanza caught me:

"I found myself
Suddenly, and too early in life,
Like the inner wall of a house
Which has become an outside wall after wars and devastations.
I almost forget
How it is to be inside. No pain anymore,
No love. Near and far
Are both at the same distance from me
And equal."

That’s a very striking image that I can relate to. I think anyone who has been hurt badly as a child feels damaged, exposed, and numb. Very numb. And with so little remaining of what used to be.

This is so backwards from how I used to picture this. Before this poem, my own images personal images were different. One involved a pretty room with the window and door bricked over with heavy stone. Another image included a house with burned out, empty rooms but a normal, average-looking exterior. But, an exposed inner wall of a house? This is a new perspective. Yes, I definitely could explore this poem more!

QUOTE: From Shammai

"Say little and do much; and greet everyone cheerfully" by Shammai
(in What is a Jew? by Rabbi Morris Kertzer, pg. 19)

BOOKS: Power, Faith, and Fantasy by Michael Oren

Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present by Michael B. Oren

My rating: 5 of 5 stars






This was a fascinating book! Here are just a few thoughts I had about this incredible book:

1. I was appalled by the Armenian massacres. It was disturbing that the Turks were focused on genocide and their killing methods seemed to be a chilling precursor to the Jewish Holocaust. (such as Armenians packed into railroad boxcars and deported to execution sites). As an ally of Turkey during the First World War, Germany would have known of these things. They also would have witnessed the rest of the western world, while horrified by the brutality of the massacres, refusing to get involved in stopping the killings.

2. I was surprised at the huge amount of interest that Christian missionary thought had over American policies in the Middle East, especially in the State Department. It was also surprising to see how many important people were influenced more by One Thousand and One Arabian Nights than with reality when dealing with the Middle East. It's no wonder our government had so many difficulties in that region!



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My Scooter and Me

I had a lot of fun today learning how to drive my new scooter around the Albertson's parking lot. I was starting to make it up to 15 mph! LOL. We mostly worked on my cornering and braking. My husband has an awful lot of patience sometimes!

MOVIES: The Shoah

You rated this movie: 3

Average of 35,700 ratings:

3.9 stars

I've read a lot of books about the Holocaust since I was a kid. Each book seemed to contribute another small piece of horror to an already overwhelmingly horrible database of knowledge. This film, through the eyewitness accounts, has shown me some things that had really seemed inconceivable to me in the past.

There are two different interview that come to mind. The first involved some Polish farmers around either Chelmo or Treblinka (I've forgotten which one). The second involved some Polish townspeople near one of the extermination camps.

The interview with the Polish farmers was in Part 1. The part of the interview that really disturbed me (besides the horror of the killings that went on there) was the attitudes of a few of the men they interviewed. They talked about how horrible it was, etc. but their facial expressions and general attitudes were happy. They were saying the right things, but they were smiling and laughing with each other as they remembered the trains pulling up with people waiting to be killed. It doesn't seem possible that someone would be able to smile and joke around as they remembered this.


The second interview that disturbed me was one where some Polish townspeople near one of the extermination camps (maybe Chelmo?) where gathered around a survivor who had returned to the area. They were happy to see him and talked about his beautiful singing as a boy and how wonderful it was to see him. Then at the end of that part of the interview, as they are still standing around him, the interviewer asks them why they think the Holocaust happens. Then, as this survivor continues to smile uneasily, the townspeople start going on about how the Jews died in the Holocaust because they had killed Jesus. One man told a "true story" about how a group of Jews were gathered in the village square and while they were waiting for the Nazis to take them away, their rabbi announces that they deserved this because they had taken the blood of the innocent Christ on their heads. This man really believed this story was true. The people really believed the theory behind it was true. And, the whole time that they're talking about this, the survivor is standing and smiling uncomfortably in the middle of them. It is bad enough to read about this stuff and wonder how people can possibly believe some of the ridiculous, yet very dangerous, things about the Jews. It is another thing altogether to actually listen to people spouting off these things that they obviously believe deeply. And all this is after witnessing some of the most horrible things people can witness.

BOOKS: God in Our Relationships by Rabbi Dennis Ross

God in Our Relationships: Spirituality Between People from the Teachings of Martin Buber by Dennis S. Ross

My rating: 4 of 5 stars




I really enjoyed reading this book. I was totally confused by Martin Buber's I and Thou, but this book helped clear up some of the confusion. I really liked the stuff about relationships.

One of my favorite passages starts on pg. 92:
"Maintaining an I-Thou relationship is an ongoing effort, not a final destination." (That seems true for most of the Jewish ideas I've been reading about lately!) "It is a process, not a product; a risky way of living but the only honest life............The only security in I-Thou is in continually accepting the insecurity, making peace with the risk."

The idea that struck me most from reading this book was that I am much more comfortable with an I-It relationship than with an I-Thou one. Anyway, there were a lot of great ideas in this book about relationships and dealing with the Real World that just made a lot of sense. I'm going to have to give some of this stuff a lot more thought. 




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BOOKS: In the Image by Dara Horn

In the Image by Dara Horn

My rating: 3 of 5 stars





This was an intriguing book. The history and the emotional details were absorbing. I liked her theme of some people being tourists in their own lives and that we can stop being tourists by getting involved in relationships with other people. There is a really cool comment on the back flap of the book: "....people are not helplessly defined by their experiences, but ultimately shaped by how they react to them."



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INSIGHT: Life, Pain, and the Accident

The other day I was whining to myself about the pain from my left side. Then I realized something: IT'S BETTER THAN THE ALTERNATIVE! A few years ago, I was hit by a car while walking across a crosswalk. I was lucky. I could have easily died. Maybe I can't use my left side as well as I used to. Maybe the pain from my hip and shoulder is rather excruciating at times. But it's still better than being dead.

You know, just before that car struck me, I heard the engine rev up. In that brief second I was sure I was going to die. That experience changed me. I started to value Life. I had to reevaluate so many different things that I had taken for granted. I also started to value the little moments of time that can be wasted so easily. It's funny. This terrible accident that could have killed me actually made more alive. And while I certainly wish the accident had never happened, it really doesn't do any good to dwell on something that can't be changed. Anyway, in a really weird way, the constant pain is a constant reminder of the preciousness of life.

BOOKS: As A Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg

As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg

My rating: 1 of 5 stars




It was hard to write an adequate review.  I was even torn on how many stars to rate it.  On on hand, it was engrossing and hard to put down. The whole struggle to find a solid personal philosophical/spiritual foundation in the middle of conflicting cultures and beliefs was fascinating. However, the book's ending was profoundly disappointing to me. Elisha (the main character) and many of his friends and family all suffer tragically from his decision to explore Greek and Roman philosophy.

Were his explorations wrong? It's hard for me to think that. I read this book a few years ago and have been wrestling with this question ever since. Is it wrong to be driven to search out truth? And yet [New Thought!], maybe it could be. Maybe it is wrong if one is so focused on finding truth that he is blinded to the injustice and oppression going on around him.

Maybe that's the key to the book. Elisha originally turned away from Judaism because he witnessed an act of injustice. Then, after a lifetime of exploring pagan philosophies, he realized that many of the attractive things associated with those philosophies were worthless because they ignored key concepts of justice and mercy. The ideas and truths were more important and more beautiful to those cultures than people were. Maybe it isn't wrong to search out religious truths, but it is wrong to be so focused on the quest for ideas and truths that we ignore the social injustices going on around us.

That reminds me of something else. I read somewhere that we shouldn't search out unanswerable questions about God. Maybe that's because it uses up our precious, limited time that we could be using to study things that we can find answers to. Things that help us to "do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before our God".



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BOOKS: The Jew Store by Stella Suberman

The Jew Store by Stella Suberman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was a very interesting family memoir. I'm glad I read it. I liked her father's quote "Know when you're happy and the rest is easy". This book made me uneasy though, because the family was so unhappy about leaving an area and a lifestyle they loved in order to accomplish some of the mother's religious goals. One of the study questions was about whether or not they should have left Concordia for New York City. That's actually a very hard question. Is it right to make the rest of the family unhappy in order to accomplish one person's religious goals? Even if those goals are considered to be good ones? It's sad that either way, someone was asked to sacrifice something that was very dear to them. One of the hard things about true family histories is that, even in retrospect, it can be very hard to see what should have been done since the issues involved are too complex to justify a simple answer.




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BOOKS: I and Thou by Martin Buber

 I and Thou by Martin Buber

My rating: 4 of 5 stars







Talk about a humbling experience! This book was WAY beyond me. It's been a long time since I've finished a book and knew that I didn't have a clue what the author was trying to say (Probably because I don't know that much about this stuff!) . I really like some of the ideas other writers have pulled from this book, though. I guess I need to start looking for a good study guide! (Anyone know of a "Martin Buber for Kids" version?) Maybe something geared towards ages 3-5?


5/18: I've just ordered a book that looks promising. I'm still looking for a version for kids, though!





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INSIGHT: Living in Park City

It's funny. I LOVE the warm weather here, but I'm finally starting to see Park City as my home. I've spent so many years there longing to move back somewhere with warmer weather. However, the other day I was at the bus-stop talking to some of the other moms about the snow and I mentioned how much I missed living in a warm climate. Afterwards, I started thinking about that and realized that I've been getting used to those awful Park City winters and that I'd probably be miserable moving back to a warm, humid climate. (OK, so its only taken me 9-10 years to partially adjust........) Maybe I am finally starting to feel like Park City is my home instead of a transitory place of residence. Rich will probably be totally shocked by those particular thoughts! I know I am.

BOOKS: Arab and Jew by David Shipler

Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land by David K. Shipler

My rating: 3 of 5 stars





There were a few ideas I wanted to explore further after reading this book.

WHAT IS A JEW?
In the book, an Israeli Arab (I believe) mentions the difference he sees between an Israeli and a Jew. I've forgotten his definition of an Israeli but his definition of a Jew is interesting. He said that a Jew is someone who knows how to ask the right questions and is bothered by the right things.

So, what are the right questions and what are the things that should bother us? It seems like those would be those things that help us to engage in repairing the world.

VICTIMIZATION AND DENIAL
What is it with wanting to be the victim? And why is it so natural to downplay or deny the valid sufferings of other people in order to portray ourselves as the biggest victim? Maybe it gives a sense of moral superiority. But isn't there something twisted in wanting to be seen as a victim? I wonder, if at some level, seeing ourselves as victims makes it easier to excuse our failures. I ask this because I've done the same thing myself from time to time. I can't speak for the Israeli-Arab Situation. That issue is much too complex for me, especially with terrorism being involved in the problem.

However, on a personal level, this whole victim/denial thing is something I need to look at. It's a little hard to "repair the world" when I'm so wrapped up in my own pain that I can't even recognize that other people have suffered too. I'm not saying that people should ignore or deny traumatic events from their past-that's not healthy either. But there is a difference between acknowledging painful stuff and dwelling on it. And there is also a difference between sharing past events in which I've been victimized and in choosing to make "VICTIM" part of my basic identity.



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BOOKS: On Judaism by Martin Buber

On Judaism by Martin Buber

My rating: 2 of 5 stars







MY FAVORITE IDEAS:

1. We are most spiritual when we are involved with the real world. We meet God through our encounters with other people, not from seeking out private ecstatic experiences. This idea is awesome! It's so different from stuff I'd been taught in the past. One of the things I really love about Judaism is the emphasis on our relationships with other people.

2. (pg. 93) "[Spiritual] renewal comes from a religious inner shock." Buber is actually talking about Jewish renewal in this quote, but I applied it to a more generalized spiritual renewal. The wording struck me because it took huge religious shock for me to even begin questioning some of my former beliefs. But, since my former religious foundation was shattered beyond repair, it left me free to explore all sorts of different pathways to God. Anyway, even though it felt pretty traumatic at the time, it ended up being one of the best things that ever happened to me. It seems like severe spiritual inner shocks lead to either of two paths: renewal or destruction. I guess that's about the same as any severe traumatic event. A serious event changes you so much that you can't return to your previous state of normality. So, you're either destroyed by it or built up into something better.

SOMETHING I STRUGGLED TO UNDERSTAND

1. The I/Thou thing (pg. 210). I'm really confused on this part. I think the book was saying that in the Torah, God doesn't talk to us as individuals standing alone, but He talks to us as individuals who are part of a community. But, I have to admit, I'm a bit fuzzy on what that really means. There seems to be a really cool core idea here, but I'm not getting it.

SOMETHING NEW I LEARNED

1. (pg. 21) "What matters for the Jew is not his credo, nor his declared adherence to an idea or movement, but that he absorb his own truth, that he live it, that he purify himself from the dross of foreign rule, and that he find his way from division to unity." There is a lot of stuff in this little quote! 1. Actions over beliefs. 2. Searching out our truths. 3. going from division to unity.

2. (pg. 93) "Genuine religiosity, therefore, has nothing in common with the fancies of romantic hearts, or with the self-pleasure of aestheticizing souls, or with the clever mental exercises of a practiced intellectuality. Genuine religiosity is doing. That's so cool! Real spirituality is focused on doing stuff in the community, not on isolating oneself from humanity.




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BOOKS: To Life! A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking by Harold Kushner

To Life: A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking by Harold S. Kushner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars






The book was easy to read and I liked the enthusiasm behind the words. There were so many passages where I thought "Yes! Now THAT makes sense!".

FAVORITE PART: These were the ideas I liked the most:

• Judaism is about how to live-not just what to believe.
• Enjoy life in the present instead of waiting for happiness in the world-to-come.
• God cares more about how I treat other people than about my theology.
  

NEW THINGS LEARNED: Wow! Where do I even start? There were tons of ideas that were totally new to me and I could probably write several pages on each topic. Here are a few of the quotes that really struck me:

1. (pg. 38) The Torah is the effort of inspired human beings to say, "We have met God and, as a result, we have to live our lives differently."

2. (pg. 49) Everything we do can be transformed into a Sinai experience, an encounter with the sacred. The goal of Judaism is not to teach us how to escape from the profane world to the cleansing presence of God, but to teach us how to bring God into the world, how to take the ordinary and make it holy.

3. (pg. 113) .....because the goal of secular society is to be happy. But on Rosh HaShanah, we remind ourselves that our real goal is not to strive for happiness, but to strive for goodness. If we do that, happiness will follow.


4, (pg. 207) In Judaism, holiness, sanctification, always refers to the way people relate to each other, never to an act of withdrawing from a sinful world into a life of greater purity.

5. (pg, 210) Jewish prayer is not a matter of informing God as to what we believe and what we need, but of seeking His presence and being transformed by it.

6. (pg. 303) Hillel understood that the essence of Judaism was not just a matter of obeying God or pleasing God, as we may have thought (or been taught) when we were children. This is a child's understanding of being good. Nor is the essence of Judaism a matter of escaping this flawed, material world in search of a better, purer one. The essence of Judaism is creating holiness in the way we relate to this world and to the people in it. God cares more about how we treat the poor than how we treat the Torah, and He cares more for how we relate to the rules of the Torah than how we relate to Him.

7. (pg. 304) We should study; Judaism has always insisted that knowledge has the power not only to make people smart but to make them good. Having studied, we should commit ourselves to live differently as a result of what we have learned. And having resolved to live differently, we should then go forth to bless God's world and sanctify it.

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BOOKS: ISAAC OF GIRONA Series

Remedy for Treason by Caroline Roe

My rating: 5 of 5 stars




This excellent series, by Caroline Roe, is about a blind Jewish physician in medieval Spain. They are presented as mysteries, but as one Amazon.com reviewer mentioned, they are really more like historical novels than mysteries. I have enjoyed all of her books so far.

ABOUT THE SERIES:

Favorite Part: The historical details about Jewish family life in 14th-century Spain.

Most Disappointing Part: I wish there was more of an emphasis on Isaac's ethnic background

Something New That I Learned: I didn't realize that during medieval times that Christian holidays were especially dangerous for Jewish families. The religious fervor of the holidays would actually incite riots against Jewish people.

The books are pretty cool to read. Of course, since I have grown up in contemporary America, it is difficult for me to understand how Christian holidays could have possible incited people to riot and kill others. The holidays today seem to be so focused on peace and love. I am grateful for the growing levels of religious tolerance in this country and that the rights of all of our people are protected by law. I guess it really is a blessing to live in a time and place where some of the evils of the past seem so impossible to understand!



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QUOTE: Telushkin on Eternal Life

"Maybe the Bible didn't raise the issue of eternal life because it realized that the moment the next world becomes the central issue in religion, it takes people's minds away from the real business of repairing this one."
-Joseph Telushkin, THE FINAL ANALYSIS OF DR. STARK pg. 104


This quote struck me because it was so different from the way I had been trained to think...........and because it made a lot of sense. I used to focus a lot on the afterlife. It seemed like I was just passing through this life to get to my goal of heaven. Anyway, even though the quote (and the idea behind it) made a lot of sense, it felt so weird to think about the present life in a totally different way. But, the more I thought about the idea, the more I liked it. The whole idea about repairing the world really changed the way I look at my relationships with other people, my relationship with God, and my whole life in general. Anyway, the whole afterlife/current life thing was a huge issue for me and it's hard to believe how much the change in my perspective on that alone has affected so much of the rest of my daily life.