Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/arts-cultural-critique/books/page/10/)
Imagine the ancient artist, before the tribe has gathered, putting aside his charcoal crayon or horsehair brush, chewing lumps of an ochre-rich clay, and spitting it in bursts through a narrow reed, to create a fine mist of color capturing the silhouette of his hand against the wall. Was it a kind of signature?
When most people think of evolution, the first thing that comes to mind is either survival of the fittest or selfish genes. Yet the psychologist and system theorist David Loye argues this is a misreading of the gist of evolutionary theory and the intent of that theory’s founder. Moreover, misreading Charles Darwin has severe social consequences: it fosters the belief that the worst side of humanity is bound to win.
In Sacred Trash, husband-and-wife co-authors Peter Cole and Adina Hoffman, who met while working on the editorial staff at Tikkun in the late 1980s, have produced a fascinating hybrid — part historical adventure, part bibliographical paper trail and scholarly prospectus, and part poetic meditation.
Phil Wolfson’s Noe describes the experience of a family facing the serious illness and eventual death of Noah, their sixteen-year-old son. This wasn’t an easy book for a bereaved father to write: “The memory of losing him still ignites the most intense feeling of emptiness and longing. It took me ten years after he died to complete the chapter on the last days of his life…. Even now, writing this is complete torment.”
Socialism, contrary to generations of conservative (often also, liberal) propagandizing, may not be un-American after all. A review of “The ‘S’ Word: A Short History of an American Tradition… Socialism” by John Nichols.
Matthew Fox reviews Peter Kingsley’s “A Story Waiting to Pierce You: Mongolia, Tiber and the Destiny of the Western World.” He writes that in this book Kingsley tells “An earth-shattering, history-breaking story. One that raises whole new possibilities of humans understanding other humans whom we imagine to be so different from ourselves.”
Or Rose reviews Arthur Waskow and Phyllis Berman’s new book, “Freedom Journeys: The Tale Of Exodus And Wilderness Across Millennia.”
The time-honed debate about whether the Song of Songs is a celebration of sensual love or a depiction of the ever-changing, running-and-returning relationship of the Holy One and the People is put to rest in Rabbi Shefa Gold’s recent translation and commentary of the Song.
THE NEW UNIVERSE AND THE HUMAN FUTURE: HOW A SHARED COSMOLOGY COULD TRANSFORM THE WORLD by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack, Yale Press, 2011.
A review of BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH: AN ILLUMINATED TORAH COMMENTARY by Ilene Winn-Lederer.
Like Kafka’s parables and the enigmatic, humane tales of Rabbi Nachman, Rodger Kamenetz’s Burnt Books has an economical generosity that is thoroughly secular, deeply religious, and seriously joking.
UNTOLD: A HISTORY OF THE WIVES OF PROPHET MUHAMMAD by Tamam Kahn, Monkfish, 2010
THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER, WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES by Avraham Burg, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008
SECOND SUBURB: LEVITTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA, edited by Dianne Harris, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010