The school buses are back on the streets and the music is pumping from North Springs High School next door, which mean the school year is getting started! And on the Jewish calendar, just in time, we've passed Tisha b'Av and now begin the seven week ascent to Rosh Hashanah. In honor of this season, I'd like to share with you a list of a few books and podcasts that I've gotten to spend time with this summer - these ideas may be making appearances in my teachings during the high holidays this year, so if you'd like to get an early preview, here's your chance! (And get the full high holiday run-down here!)
Books: Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--And How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari Stolen Focus looks at our ever-diminishing attention spans from a number of angles - neurological, sociological, and on the level of policy. Rather than seeing our inability to focus mainly as a personal failing that greater willpower alone should solve, Hari lays out some of the main questions for us to be thinking about as we build better educational systems, communities, and societies and attempt to regain our most valuable commodity from the grip of the machines.
On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by (Rabbi) Danya Ruttenberg This book isn't technically out yet - it comes out Sept. 13th. But, I was able to get an advanced copy from the author to read, and I highly recommend preordering the book. Ruttenberg uses the framework of Maimonides' Laws of Repentance (Hilchot Teshuvah) to build an approach for how we might think about repairing harm on a number of levels - interpersonal, institutional, and national. She brings a wide range of diverse examples, from cases from the #MeToo movement to reparations for slavery to intra-office disputes, and shows how this ancient Jewish framework might provide much-needed healing for our society beyond "let's just forgive and forget so we can move on."
Podcasts: On Being with Krista Tippett: "adrienne maree brown: 'We are in a time of new suns.'" Many devoted followers of On Being are mourning the loss of the weekly radio program (including myself!), but I was thrilled to find out that one of the last regular episodes was with a writer and teacher that I've been following for a few years now, adrienne maree brown (yes, the lowercase spelling is correct). brown builds on the work of Octavia Butler in crafting what is called "Emergent Strategy," an approach to change that looks to the natural world and how it is evolving for clues on how we might learn and grow as societies. This conversation, especially the unedited version, is a delight and offers profoundly new ways of thinking about growth and renewal as we enter the High Holiday season.
Podcasts from the Hartman Institute: For Heaven's Sake and Identity/Crisis This is a little taste of the learning I got to do in Israel this summer - the Shalom Hartman Institute produces two weekly podcasts that follow current events in Israel and America and take the conversation deeper into a conversation about values and morality, beyond the clickbait headlines. I was present for the live recording of this episode, "The Antisemitism We Tolerate," looking more closely at the incident last month when Haredi men attacked American Jews celebrating a Bar Mitzvah at the egalitarian section of the Kotel and why there wasn't more outrage in Israel. This is a great place to go if you want to take your conversations about Israel to the next level.
Please share with me your thoughts and reflections - I'd love to be in conversation with you!!
