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.