Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

The library staff wishes Shanah Tovah to all of its patrons, readers, blog readers, website visitors. May you all be inscribed and sealed for a good year.

In the September Shofar I recommended only three books for the High Holy Days, because I did not have more space. Now I would like to append that list with one more book, from the many I did nit mention. Ronald H. Isaacs‘ Every person’s guide to the High Holy Days is relatively short: 200, not too big pages with really nice typography (using 12 pint Weiss fonts.) The author describes the book on his site this way:

[It] is intended to help people properly prepare for the Days of Awe and to also assist them in understanding the prayers that have become part of the High Holy Day Machzor. The goal is to be basic but comprehensive, providing both home and synagogue observances that are essential to the Days of Awe.

Accordingly the second half of the book first half of the book takes you through all the major prayers of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, giving a modern translation and a short commentary on every one of them. But before that the first half provides background information in these areas:

• Preparing for the Days of Awe
• The Shofar
• Selichot (Penitential prayers)
• The meaning of sin, confession, and repentance in Jewish tradition
• Rosh Hashanah
• Rosh Hashanah: home and synagogue observance
• Selected Rosh Hashanah laws, customs, omens and quotations
• Rosh Hashanah in short story
• Ten days of repentance
• Yom Kippur
• Yom Kippur: home and synagogue observance
• Selected laws, customs, and quotations for Yom Kippur
• Yom Kippur in short story

The library will be open during the High Holy Days as shown in the schedule below.

Last Sunday I had a chance to read another story for the students of the religious school. As all the good children books related to the High Holy Days were out, borrowed by the students on previous weeks, I selected one about Shabbat. That is an always appropriate topic. The book was titled “Yossef Mokir Shabbos, a Talmudic story from our sages” and besides having big pictures on every page and only a few lines of text in English it also had the story in (pointed) Hebrew. Hence the book is good for studying/practicing Hebrew as well. But be aware that this is not original Talmudic text (from Tractate Shabbos 119, but a modern paraphrase by R. Keren.

The story is simple: a gentile is told by a stargazer that all his money will end up in Yossef’s hands. So he sells everything buys a huge diamond, puts it in his hat that is blown into the river, where a fish gulps it. The fishermen catch the fish; sell it to Yossef right before Shabbat, because they know that Yossef loves Shabbat so much he would buy an extra fish even if it is almost late. The lesson from the last page: “If someone lends to Shabbos, Shabbos will pay him back.”

The children liked the simple, but colorful pictures, learned a few new words (wealth, property) and some of them guessed ahead correctly what will happen at the end.

As announced in April Sonoma State University Library will host a series of five readings and discussions related to Jewish literature on the theme “Between Two Worlds: Stories of Estrangement and Homecoming.” Each event will start starting at noon on Thursdays (in room 3001 of the SSU Library) with a short lecture by Professor Anne Goldman. The first of the series is happening this week, on September 25 and the topic is the book of Exodus. The library has of course lots of different copies and translation too, but I would like to recommend five books we have that are written about the book itself. Each provides a different kind of insight.

Shmuel Yosef Agnon edited a selection of commentaries on Exodus titled, “Present at Sinai: The giving of the Law.” Agnon compiled and translated and integrated a comprehensive commentary from literally hundreds of sources. (If you do not believe me check the bibliography at the end of the book, printed in small print and filling over a dozen pages.) The first 40 pages of the book (after the foreword and preface) contain commentaries on the beginning of the Torah up to the Exodus. The next 320 pages though follow Exodus verse by verse from 19:1 to 20:19, in other words covering the story of the giving of the Law.

According to Baruch E. Levine, Professor at New York University, Nahum M Sarna’s Exploring Exodus: The heritage of Biblical Israel is “an excellent companion volume to the biblical book of Exodus itself. It integrates comparative materials from cultures of the Ancient Near East, thus placing Exodus in historical context. This does not detract, however, from Sarna’s ability to pinpoint the distinctiveness of Israelite religion and culture.” Unlike Agnon’s book this explanatory volume goes over the whole of the book of Exodus. The book is broken down to 9 thematic chapters that follow the chronology of Exodus.

“All the women followed her” contains three dozen essays, poems and stories, edited by Rebecca Schwartz. It is “a collection of writings on Miriam the prophet & the women of Exodus.” The pieces are organized around these themes: prophecy and leadership, Miriam the musician, the women of Exodus, standing at Sinai, Miriam the bitter, Miriam the rebel, and Miriam’s well. The volume fills in a void left by the patriarchal nature of our ancestor’s society.

Michael Walzer writes from yet another, much more political point of view in “Exodus and revolution.” He shows how the text and history of Exodus shaped Western political thought, particularly radical politics. At the same time he critiques is most extreme and unrealistic forms. The titles of the four chapters are outlining his line of thoughts: the house of bondage: slaves in Egypt; the murmurings: slaves in the wilderness; the covenant: a free people; the Promised Land.

Finally Aaron Wildavsky approaches the text from different political angle in “The nursing father: Moses as apolitical leader.” His two thesis are (from page 1) “first, that understanding of the Mosaic Bible may be enhanced by treating it as a teaching on political leadership; second, that our understanding of leadership may be improved by considering it as an integral part of different political regimes.”

The first installation of our “Breakfast @ the library” program was great success. It’s undeniable the result of Mark Sutter’s work (THANK YOU), who picked up the bagels, shmears and juices, set up the table, brought his own toaster and relentlessly served the waves of visitors. He opened up shop at 8.45 and did not stop till 10.45 or so. Some people only wanted coffee, (we need to thank you for Melissa to make that happen on short notice) or juice only, but most people appreciated the tasty bagels straight from San Rafael.

Come by next month (October 19) or later dates.

Here is Mark attending the needs of his clientele:

The 13th Annual Jewish Film Festival, organized by the Jewish Community Center of Sonoma County, starts tomorrow with Knowledge is the Beginning. This is the film’s description provided by the JCC.

A chance encounter between renowned pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim and the late Palestinian born writer and Columbia University professor Edward Said led to Barenboim’s creation of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an ensemble of eighty young musicians from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Tunisia. Part concert film and part documentary, Knowledge is the Beginning chronicles the orchestra from its beginnings, including unforgettable scenes of students from such diverse backgrounds creating music together. 115 minutes, In English, German, Hebrew, & Arabic. English subtitles.

For more information about the movie check its website I admit I was having a hard time connecting this news with any of the books the library has, considering that we have no items from Mr. Barenboim or Mr. Said or about the Orchestra. Instead let me recommend a classic that the movie’s title reminded me of: Martin Buber’s The Knowledge of Man. It contains an introduction, a Buber’ dialogue with Carl R. Rogers and six essays. The volume was edited by Maurice Friedman. He wrote an essay in 1965 for the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, where he described the selection as Buber’s final legacy. He descriptions after the chapter titles are form this essay

• Distance and relation – the direct fountainhead of all the essays that follow. The first of these two movements Buber calls “the primal setting at a distance,” the second “entering into relation.” The first movement is the presupposition for the second, for we can enter into relation only with being that has been set at a distance from us and thereby has become an independent opposite.

• Elements of the interhuman – distinguishes between the “interhuman”-that in human life which provides the basis for direct dialogical relations-and the sphere of the “social” in which many individual existences are bound into a group with common experiences and reactions, but without any personal relation necessarily existing between one person and another within the group.

• What is common to all – sets Heracleitus’ injunction, “One should follow the common,” in contrast to Taoist, Hindu, and modern mystical teachings, which he characterizes as a flight from “the arch reality out of which all community stems-human meeting.”

• The word that is spoken (no description)

• Guilt and guilt feelings – existential guilt transcends the realm of inner feelings and of the self’s relation to itself. But the order of the human world that one injures is not an objective absolute: it is the sphere of the interhuman itself. The order of existence that one injures

• Man and his image-work – shows how in art, as in knowledge, love, and faith-the other three potencies by which the human transcends the natural-, dissatisfaction with being limited to needs and longing for perfect relation raise man’s meeting with the world to a higher and fuller dimension.

I believe it was beneficial; for the library to present itself at the Sonoma County Book Festival. We, Susan Miller and Gabor Por, talked to dozens of people and I think a good majority of them will visit the library sooner or later. We certainly raised awareness off their existence, collection, and upcoming events. I am particularly thankful for Susan, who being long-time and active resident of the county knows lots of local people and invited them to our table as they passed us. In case we decide to go back next year here are some lessons I learned,

• Bring a large textile to put on the table, under our materials. It would have looked much nicer.

• Bring small stones to put on the piles of brochures; otherwise the wind will play too much with it.

• Bring large, colorful posters to be hanged from the edges of the tent, to attract people.

• Practice the one minute and the 3 minutes spiel, so if somebody asks I would have a good answer about the library. Don’t get me wrong, we answered every question, but having a well developed script would have helped.

• Don’t plan anything after the event. (There was a party for the exhibitors and volunteers I could not stay long for, because I had other obligations.)

To show how exciting the event was here is some of the more colorful characters e talked to, besides the more average inquiries:

• An elderly gentleman asked whether I am Israeli. Having told him twice that I am Hungarian Jewish he shouted a few times “Death to Israel” than added “I am Palestinian.”

• A man in his twenties cam to talk about how the Torah relates to apocrypha. He had somewhat incorrect understating of both of those terms, but we had a nice conversation. Half an hour later he brought over two of his friends and they all looked at us with somewhat of a disbelief that we do not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. They were just surprised and amazed that people like us exist.

• A man who I cannot describe anything else than as a spoken word artist, asked permission to speak and then did that for 3-4 minutes without a break. We think it was political, because Kucinich, Palin, Nader, and Ron Paul were mentioned, but we are not exactly sure what his point was. He gave us two photocopied pages afterward, but that did not clarify his message either.

Besides them kids and adult alike enjoyed our organic, kosher lollipops, picked up our flyers and I hope we made a few new friends.

Today (Elul 18) is the Baal Shem Tov’s birthday. Having born in 1698, he would be 310 years old today. For this occasion I recommend the “earliest collection of legends about the founder of Hasidism.” The Hebrew title of the book is “Shivhei ha-Besht” that the translators and editors (Dan Ben Amos and Jerome R. Mintz) translated as “In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov.” It is a rather throughout book with a translator’s note, an introduction, a preface by both the writer and the printer, a glossary, a bibliography, a list of sources, notes and index. But most importantly it has 251 legends. Here is a short one (#217) to give you a taste.

A Brand Plucked Out of the Fire
Once the Besht went to the bathhouse with Rabbi David Forkes. As they were on their way a very handsome man come toward them. His curly locks were combed and his clothes were well groomed. When the man came close to them the Besht jumped aside as far as he could. When he went by the Besht returned to the path, passed his hands over his eyes, and said: “Look who has passed us.” He saw that it was a brand plucked out of the fire(1) The fire glowed in his hair.
(1) Zech. 3:2. This designation refers to Joshua, the high priest. For Talmudic Midrashic legends concerning Joshua, see Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, IV, 336-67; VI, 426-27, note 108.

I admit I do not know much about the inner working of macro-economics and financial markets. But the news from the last few days got even me worried. However being more interested in history and literature instead of studying the markets my reaction was different. I searched out a book titled, Economic history of the Jews, edited by Nachum Gross. Here is the beginning of the introduction that is a far better recommendation than what I could write.

This volume is in its own way a pioneer -an overall survey of the economic aspects of Jewish history and a consideration of major trends and developments within the most important spheres of economic activity. For many decades much has been said about examining the economic motivations and facts of Jewish life throughout the centuries and a number of specialized studies have appeared, but not enough has been achieved in the direction of an overall synthesis. One reason for this is the relative scarcity of mature scholars versed in history and economics and Jewish studies. The field remains largely unplowed and this book is a first attempt at opening it up both for laymen and for future scholars. It reflects the state of knowledge of the subject at the present time. The reader will find here the colorful story of the economic life of the Jews throughout the ages, the impact of internal and external factors and chapters describing how the Jews have played key roles in a great variety of occupations in all parts of the world. The potential specialists will find here many topics that have still not been adequately studied and will discover topics and directions for future research. The contents of this book will be an invaluable complement to the standard Jewish histories.