Recently, the Persian scholar and poetry translator Matt Miller sent me condolences upon the death of one of my teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh. I mentioned to him that the several of the teachers I first…
I went to my grandfather’s to say good-bye:I was going away to a school out West.As I came in,My grandfather turned from the window at which he sat(sick, skin yellow, eyes bleary–but his hair still…
Alan Morinis, Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: One Man’s Journey to Rediscover a Jewish Spiritual TraditionTrumpeter, 2002 Alan Morinis offers an engaging account of how he came to re-order his life according to the Jewish practice of…
Attention [prosoche] is the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude. It is a continuous vigilance and presence of mind, self consciousness which never sleeps, and a constant tension of the spirit. Thanks to this attitude, the philosopher…
Elie Wiesel, Somewhere a Master: Further Hasidic Portraits and Legends This is Elie Wiesel’s third of four installments thus far on his favorite Hasidic teachers, the ones whose tales enchanted him in his childhood, the…
Gershom Scholem, From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth Schocken paperback, 1988 I first read this book eighteen years ago. So much time has passed since those Maryknoll days when I thought I wanted to…
Joseph Leftwich, Great Yiddish Writers of the Twentieth Century The writer wakens you, the reader, he rouses you out of your indifference, he shows you the things you had not seen before, he makes your…
Regarding [Israel’s] methodical breaking of Palestinian bones, Wiesel courageously chose silence: ‘I refuse to see myself in the role of judge over Israel. The role of the Jew is to bear witness; not pass judgment.’ …
John Garrard and Carol Garrard, The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman Wednesday 1 August 2012 Vasily Grossman represents an inspiring figure of engagement, and old fashioned Russian insistence on telling…
The end of Yiddish, except as an academic pursuit or as a final nostalgia, is not at all Kafkaesque. Jewish history has many ironies and countless sorrows, as well as a panoply of cultural achievements…