I’m happiest when I’m surrounded by books!
Dear Friends:
I like reading even more than I like eating chocolate! Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But if you’ve read one of my quarterly messages before, you probably won’t be surprised by my assertion that it would be a good thing to reduce the number of distractions we face, allowing us to read more. In the early eighteenth century, a Jewish mystic from Prague named Moses Hasid wrote that “I prefer to pray the less so as to read the more.” [Hebrew Ethical Wills – Israel Abrahams, p. 290]. Rabbis probably can’t fully endorse this tradeoff, and I might lose my ordination if I tell people to pray less, but I think reading really is a wonderful pastime.
Perhaps more enjoyable than almost any other activity I undertook as a parent was that of regularly reading aloud to my children. This despite the fact that I would sometimes fall asleep while doing so. In order to keep myself alert, I occasionally read from two children’s books at the same time, interweaving the stories on the fly as best I could. The challenge kept me awake even when the subject matter of the books was less than scintillating. During one of my visits this quarter to New York City for my Sinai and Synapses Fellowship program which explores the intersection between science and religion, I got to read to my great niece and nephew (but they weren’t quite ready for the two-book technique). As an aside, I’m now reading aloud for the Jewish Braille Institute (see below in the reading list).
When not reading, I officiated at a number of life cycle events. Some were truly joyous: the Bat Mitzvah ceremony for one of our young adults in Los Alamos; weddings on consecutive Wednesday afternoons at the very end of December with a great turnout from the Los Alamos Jewish Center to help make a minyan for couples who had few relatives or friends in attendance; and participation in the ritual tribunal (Beit Din) for the conversion of four individuals who joined the Jewish people, now at a time when we need them most.
Some of the life cycle events were sad, however: I officiated at the funeral of the scientist who first hired me into the Laboratory in Los Alamos nearly half a century ago, and I led shiva minyans for Beverly who lost her father in December. Ben Post gifted me a tallit when Beverly and I married, and I continue to feel comforted as I wrap myself in the prayer shawl and remember his many kindnesses to me. Ironically, I had recently ordered another dozen bags of earth from Israel which I use at funerals, and they arrived the very day Ben passed away in Israel. May his memory be a blessing.
I delivered a handful of presentations this quarter, speaking about Jewish Humor as part of HaMakom’s Continuing Education series, and about Free Will in Jewish Philosophy and Modern Neuroscience at both the Albuquerque JCC and the University of New Mexico Hillel. I also led services for my two local synagogues as well as for the Hillel, and at Mt. Sinai synagogue in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where I spent a weekend as scholar-in-residence.
More outward facing experiences included co-leading the joint Los Alamos Jewish Center – United Church annual Thanksgiving celebration with our neighbors across the street and officiating at two outdoor Hanukkiah-lighting ceremonies at Ashley Pond in Los Alamos.
In all of my work, I rely heavily on my personal library which was featured recently in a documentary produced by my dear friends, Ron Duncan Hart and Gloria Abella Ballen. The library prevents me from aligning myself with Oscar Levant, the great musician and wit, who said, “I’ve given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.”
B’shalom,
Rabbi Jack
Rabbi Jack Shlachter
Judaism for Your Nuclear Family
physicsrabbi@gmail.com
www.physicsrabbi.com
Quarterly reading list
How on Earth do we Speak? – (pre-publication) – Mary E. Carter
Woman of Valor – Lihi Lapid; tr. Amit Pardes
Enter These Gates – Alden Solovy
What’s With Baum? – Woody Allen
100 Objects from the Collections of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research*
Ludwig Wittgenstein – Anthony Gottlieb
The Bubbe Meise* – Aaron Zevy
The Way Into Torah – Norman Cohen
Shlomo Yehudah Rapoport (Shir) and his Contemporaries – Isaac Barzilay
Leah Goldberg: Selected Poems; tr. Robert Friend
The Narrow Path: Yiddish Short Stories – var. authors; tr. Michael Eric Kovnat
You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right* – Brad Hirschfield
Free Will – ed. Uri Maoz and Walter Sinnott- Armstrong
1111 Days in My Life Plus Four – Ephraim F. Sten; tr. Moshe Dor
Carole King: She Made the Earth Move – Jane Eisner
Our Immoral Soul – Nilton Bonder
The Serviceberry – Robin Wall Kimmerer
Wine on Ice – Mordechai Geldman; tr. Haim Pessah
Raysn – Moyshe Kulbak; tr. Jason Wagner
The Rebbe, the Messiah and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference – David Berger
Your Comrade, Avreml Broide – Ben Gold; tr. Annie Sommer Kaufman
Vangelis Kyris: Light & Thread: A voyage through the collection of Jewish and local costumes at MUZA
The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
The Great Goldbergs – Daniel Goodwin (read aloud for the Jewish Braille Institute)
To Infinity and Beyond – Eli Maor
Shivitti: A Vision – Ka-Tzetnik 135633; tr. Eliyah Nike De-Nur and Lisa Herman
Vera, or Faith* – Gary Shteyngart