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It's been a long time since I've read a book as kick-to-the-head good as this one. I've loved Chaim Potok's other work, but, man...just wow.
He does such a good job of being fair, of giving every character their say. You can see the reasons for everyone's descisions, even the ones that don't seem right (the school's at the end, for example). The characters all felt real. If some were a little oversized, well, they were supposed to be.
I'd love to talk about the book with other people. I'm well nigh aching for it. It's like a great song that has gotten into your head and you feel like if you don't do something about it, you're going to burst. It's a splinter of startling truth stuck into the fakeness of the everyday world. No labels, no stereotypes; just people and stories and the meanings you take from it.
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I like Chaim Potok as well and have read The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev, but I've never heard of this book. I will look for it if I don't forget. Has this book been out for a while?
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Yeah, I loved it. Chaim Potok is wonderful. I'm very sorry that I've nearly come to the end of reading all his books.
Tell me what you thought about it?
*****POSSIBLE SPOILERS*****
I loved the thing about saying the kaddish. When Davita went down on a weekday and saw her mother in that little cage that they had built to keep her separate from the men. How she asked about it and was told it was the law. What Potok said then was one of those things that stick with you always. That was how Davita realized that for some people the law is a cage, and for other people a cage is the law.
I can't think of this without tearing up. As a female Latter Day Saint, I feel torn that same exact way. There is no solution to that problem.
*** *** *** *** *** *** ***
About the school, the thing that got me was how they were so sure she would be perfectly delighted with the consolation prize they offered. I've seen that idea again and again. "Of course we know you would not want us to choose you, a female. Of course you will be more than content with this consolation prize." Of course, nothing.
Potok's books are so full of the spirit. I just love to read him for his books are charged with sacredness. What a wonderful man! I am so sorry he is dead. I wish I had known him.
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Dead? I didn't know that.... Dang, that was such a good book. I first read it when I was in high school, then I read it again recently after reading My Name is Asher Lev, The Chosen and The Promise. It's fascinating how she goes from not having a particular religion to going into a structured culture. I really love that book.
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It's an old boo, It came out in '85. In my opinion, the other books I've read of Potok's are great books that should be read, but this one blows them out of the water. However, now that I've read this one and learned so much from it, I'm going to have to go back and reread the others.
**************SPOILERS******************
I've only just finished reading it for the first time, so my thoughts are bound to be pretty jumbled. Anyway, here goes.
One of the things that I really liked about this book was how deft Potok was in handling themes and symbolism. This is not The Glass Managerie where you're beat over the head with "This is a symbol!!!!". Potok weaves a story where the deeper meanings are completely part of the pattern.
The name thing was incredible. It uses the orthodox Jewish belief that names are extremely important to make some powerful points. Ilana Davita Dinn nee Chandal (probably not the right usage, but how do you signifiy that someone's name changed after her parent remarried? With the world as it is right now, we probably should have a way of doing that.) is the grey horse; She's at the mid-point between so many worlds. It's interesting to see who calls her Ilana, who calls her Davita, and the one person who calls her Ilana Davita.
Kind of going along with this is the constant division of the world into in-groups and out-groups based on names and on laws. For many of the people in this book, group affiliation is one of the main determining factors in how they treat people and ideas. Ilana Davita, having no group, except for those who know about the harp, is one of the few who looks at ideas and people more for what they are than what their label is. For so many others, it's a case of "Your old man was a Commie, serves him right he's dead." or Ilana Davita not being allowed to to win the Akiva award because the law says the women are weaker than men or Anne having to fight not to be thrown out of the Communis party, of which she is one of the leading workers and scholars, because her daughter goes to a yeshiva.
This comes to the law as well. As you quoted, Anne Kate, for some people laws are cages and for some cages are laws. There are so many laws, stated and not, in this book. So many of these laws are ones of separation, of breaking people, things, and ideas into groups. So many of these separations are so unthinking and so unnecessary.
Certainly there are the laws of orthodox Judiaism. It is very important for many people, largely the ones who gain power for these laws, that these laws must have been given by God himself. This must be true, and can never be questioned. Else, why should everyone follow some of the laws that seem to make no sense or especially seem to not be fair. In what was for me a scene that was deeply critical towards the attitudes of both many Jews and many Christians, the yeshiva class discusses the main sin of the cities of (translated) Sodom and Gommorah, which was their compeletly unjust treatment of strangers, of those in the out-group. I don't know if this was intended, but I read into this a criticism of those who preach hatred against homosexuals by calling them sodomites are actually naming their own sin.
There are also the laws of separation of attitudes. As David says at one point, "Politics is boring.". What he really means, as Ilana Davita draws out of him, is that anything that he doesn't see as affecting his in-group, the Jews, is not worthy of interest.
Continuing on this group theme is the idea that one has to chose groups at some point and that every group has goods and bads. When joining the yeshiva, Ilana Davita comments that while she's looked down on because she's a girl and gets in trouble because she's interested in dicussing forbidden topics, at least no one laughs at her because she wants to learn or squeezes her chest and yells "Grapes!" at her.
Just at the there's good and bad to every group situtation, there is good and bad in all groups. Ilana Davita's life as the grey horse exposes her to good people from widely different groups and backgrounds. Likewise, she is shown badness coming from all sides. Even in people, this is true. We've given strong hints that Michael Chandal was in the group of people that tortured and killed Wesley Everest in Centralia, probably as a bystander, not as a participant, and yet he then spends the rest of his life (in a very literal sense) trying to do the right thing. Jacob's little bird finds that there is music that is good, which provides jow without illusion, and music that is bad, which allows people to forgt the bad things that they and others do and thus do nothing about it. I don't know if Ilana Davita really actually learns that goodness and badness cannot be captured by labels, by groups, but the lesson is there nonetheless.
Looking back over that, it looks like a book report. I haven't captured the cutting beauty that I found in this book. I've got much more to say, but I'm going to hold off for a while and see if I can put it into better thoughts.
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<post unremoved> Nah, you know what, screw it. It's probably organizing my thoughts that made that last bit so bloodless anyway.
Ok, one of the things reasons why this book spoke so strongly to me is that I see myself as a social reformer (well, as a soon to be social reformer, anyway). I hate labels. I hate the walls that people build up between themselves and their cliques and their groups and everyone else. I hate laws and morality that are there to say who it's ok to hate and hurt and kill.
How can people look into other people's eyes and see nothing but an object to be used or removed? I refuse to believe that this is a natural thing. It's part of the music that the Jacob's little bird is out to stop. We get hurt and we respond by withdrawing into our own lives and our own groups and label other people "Not Us". We're afraid of strangers, and, instead of trying to turn them into not strangers, we embrace systems that says that it's right to be afraid and to act on this fear.
Why do they have to put Anne or Channah or whatever into a cage so that she can say Kaddish? Because otherwise it wouldn't be sacred. Why wouldn't it be sacred? Because that is the law. Why is it the law? Because. Just because.
I spit on your because. You're "because" tastes like blood to me, like the ashes of innocents. Because is a mask you where so that no one can see that your real face is so ugly.
Why is he worse than me? Because his skin is a different color. Why does that make him worse? ... (Five whys later) Because. Just because.
Why can't Ilana Davita win the Akiva award? Because she's a girl. Why can't a girl win the Akiva award? Because they are worse than boys? Why are they worse than boys? You can tell. A girl has never won the Akiva award.
And most people don't care. They just don't care unless the injustice crosses the boundaries of their in-group. Millions of jews are getting slaughtered in Europe? Not my problem. I'm not Jewish, I don't live in Europe. Let them take care of it. Rwanda? I've never even heard of it. Are the people white, or at least christian? Will we get anything for helping? Oh well, then it's somebody else's problem. I’m even upset with you for making me face something so unpleasant. I’m a good person. I don’t deserve to have my peace spoiled. I agree, someone should do something, but it's sure as hell isn't me. It's not my responsibility. Oh, by the way, I hate how horrible the world we live in is. I wish it were different.
I'm 25 and I'm already tired. Not of working, not of learning. I love the field. I love the information. I'm tired of people, or trying to get them to care, of trying to get them to do the right thing. I'm so tired of the casual ignorance that is almost a virtue in our society. And the thing is, I can barely even grasp the tiredness of Michael and Anne and Jakob. I'm not there yet.
I can understand those in the book who have turned to violence for what they think is a good cause. I could understand if Jakob's bird found the person who made the music and then tore their eyes out. I'm so tired of working to keep because and laws and in-groups out of my mind. It's so much easier if I can hate. It’s so much easier if I just don’t care.
edit to add: I make myself look pretty good here. The selfless reformer decrying the the evils of those around. That iamge is bull$#%#. I do the same things. The only thing I can claim is that I'm actively trying not to do them.
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I feel the same way. I'm 24 going on 25 and I'm already getting worn out. I've spent at least 20 years knowing about this stuff, knowing that people STILL persist in persecuting each other because of these walls, these lines, these cages. I've gotten to the point in which i realize these walls don't really exist. That people will spend 50 years or more fighting and killing over something that doesn't matter, over things that aren't real. Really, whenyou start to think about it, there are no lines or distictions. No race. You look at the planet itself and realize that the borders between countries don't even exist. And yet it still pursists. The wars, the hatred and everyone will have some foolish reason to justify that, like some grudge from about 5,000 years ago. No one really wants to think for themselves. I sit around wondering if there is any use of hoping in the first place or if this is simply the way the world is and there is not a single thing that can be done to change it. But I don't want to believe that... I want to hold up the fragile candle of hope no matter what.
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I wonder what was in that post that was removed? It sounds like it may have been something quite interesting. I think the antidote to the foolishness of group boundaries is places and people who transcend all groups. I'd like for Hatrack to become one of those. Already we do have a wide sampling of people from different countries and religions and cultures. We are united by something else, maybe it's a love of books or a similar outlook. I don't know. But I'd like to see us become very much more diverse in backgrounds and cultures.
Why do we have so few Asians here, those who live in Asia, I mean? And of Africans I can think of maybe two. South Americans I only remember one. We're very much a North American and European dominated group. Partly that's because we're almost exclusively in English.
It seems to me that the internet provides us a way to become close, loving, friends with people from very different backgrounds and circumstances. I think when the world is joined by many such friendships, then wars and oppressive governments will become a thing of the past.
That's why I want to invent an internet game that will teach people each other's languages. I figure it should involve passing picture tokens back and forth, but beyond that it hasn't hit me how exactly it should work. I want the intelligence of the game to come from the other players much more than the game itself, so it won't be so limited, though as much smarts as we can build in would be cool. It should be very addictive and fun.
I was just thinking that if I had played some game like that instead of all the many hours I've spent playing stupid stuff like freecell and minesweeper, I'd know several languages by now.
If anyone has any ideas for this game, I'd love to hear them. My programming skillz are about 10 years out of date and I've never done any game stuff, but I'd love to actually put this into effect.
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Ralphie, I've been on AIM every once and again, but I get no loving from you. Things haven't changed radically since we talked last.
Syn, I wish I knew what to tell you. I'm pretty much in the same boat, although I've decided to make social reform my profession. My infinitely frustrating profession.
ak, No, it wasn't that interesting. I got carried away and was talking more about myself than anything else. Upon review, I wasn't comfortable with what I said. Now, though, I'm feeling uncomfortable about taking it down. That's not something I normally do. I guess I'll put it back up.
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I am definitely going to have to read Davita's Harp again. I read it years ago and recall liking it very much, but I cannot recall much detail about it. Of course, everything Chaim Potok wrote that I've read, can easily bear re-reading.
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I'm nuts, so I want to become a write and contribute something to the world with that... It's not easy being a dreamer these days.
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I'm really glad you put that back up so I could read it. I feel the same way, but maybe I'm more hopeful. Why am I hopeful? I just am. Because of the internet, and because all the forces of technology and information and knowledge are working to make the world a place where people can not be kept ignorant. And you know what? If you can't keep a people ignorant, you can't oppress them. Oppression is due for extinction here very soon.
And all those borders just come from fear and ignorance. Ignorance is due for extinction, too. Only the willful kind will remain, but even that will become harder and harder to sustain.
[ July 25, 2003, 04:26 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
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ak, We disagree there then. I think that the level of willful ignorance in our society, if changing, is on the rise.
****************Book Discussion Spoilers************** A side issue from the book that I wanted to deal with was the cost for doing what you think is right. In many ways, it was clear that Ilana Davita's family have put themselves outside of regular society because of their convictions. The constant moving is a sign of this as is the disapproval they are constantly faced with. At some point this price becomes too much, especially in the face of the betrayals they went through. Where Anne in the beginning of the book glared unashamed at the movers who dissproved of Marxist books, later, after the death of her husband and the alliance of Stalin with Hitler, she is willing to lie about the books.
However, that's not really what I wanted to talk about. The thing for me that scares me is Ilana Davita's mother and father willness to have Michael go to Spain, against Ilana Davita's strongest protests. What an amazingly heavy price to pay. I don't know if I could do it.
That got me thinking. Is family part of the music that keeps people from working against the evil in the world? Where's the line between doing what's right for your family and actingly responsibly for the rest of the world? I think that this is one of the themes I really disagreed with the lastest two books in the Shadow series, that once you have a family, the rest of the world can go spit for all you have to care for them.
I don't know what to do with this. All I do know is that I'm afraid that if I ever have to make the choice between my children and doing what I really think is right, it's likely to tear me apart. It's so much easier to bear pain yourself that to have people you love bear it.
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So very true! It must have been extremely hard for Michael to have to leave his wife and daughter to go and try to make a better world for them. I want to try to find a way to build a better world. It makes no sense to me to care about your tiny circle when the rest of the world is burning down. It reminds me of the attitudes of the people in The Chosen and the attitudes of some of the people in Davita's Harp. The way they didn't care about the war because it was a "Goyish" (sp) matter. No one really cared until they found out that their people were involved. It would be ideal if we realized that everyone is our family regardless of where they come from. If you cannot care about matters outside your safe fortress the outside world could destroy the fortress There is no such thing as, "It's not my problem." But at the same time, it's not a good thing to care so much about the world that you neglect your children. It's difficult and involves middle ground.
Spoiler: Another interesting thing about the book is the way Davita's mother changes. How she goes from being a revolutionary woman to a content wife... What do you think of that?
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Davita's mother was loved by three men. With each of these men she was a different person. It seems that her choice of which man to marry was connected with her choice of whom she wanted to be.
Weird, isn't it? That when a woman chooses a husband, she is choosing who she will be, but when a man chooses a wife this does not seem (so much) to be the case, does it?
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Was it Reuven who refused to take the prize when it was taken from Davita? I loved Reuven for that choice. I think Reuven is more or less Chaim Potok, and Davita is modeled after his wife.
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Mr. Squicky, I've seen things change, these last 40 years. Things are very much better now. Just in 40 years, they are. Very much. We would not have been even worrying about Rwanda at all 40 years ago. There would have been no soul searching over it. The world is (very slowly by human timescales, but quite certainly) becoming a better place. There is a thread that runs through it all. Order beneath the chaos.
We are gradually becoming one world with one heart. We are being bound up into a single family. Not just people but even other species too. We're all related, all cousins, all siblings.
Ever so slowly, we learn from history, from our mistakes. Ever so slowly we are becoming more civilized.
[ July 25, 2003, 08:15 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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If nothing else, you made me want to read this book.
I realize something though. You and I feel the same way about some things, we just took opposite roads.
You want to fix them for the world. And you will fail (as you already know) and it will be discouraging and terrible, but maybe you will do some good.
I have accepted them as unfixable, and am just protecting the little piece of the world that I can. And maybe by doing this, I will miss some good that I might have done, but I will be more at peace.
I have no idea which of the two is better.
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It's happening way too slowly and patience has never been my strongpoint. I want racism, sexism, homophobia and ignorance to go away NOW. It's like when they say crime has gone down 12% on the news, then you hear that someone has been mugged and left for dead. What does that 12% matter? It would only matter if it was 100%.
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Slash, I think each person responds in the way that is right for them, based on what is in their heart. There is need for all responses except despair.
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Slash, I got pretty much the same insight after considering your - to me initially confusing - praise of V for Vendetta. It's wierd how some books and our reactions to them can give a window to our thoughts.
Back to the book and some spoilers....
I wanted to talk about the idea of sacredness. Ilana Davita doesn't believe in God and has, at best, a tenuous connection to Judiaism, and yet I feel her Kaddish for her father to be of powerful sacredness. For me, it is to be celebrated.
Obviously, most of the characters in the book disagree with this assessment. For them, it is rather almost an affront to the sacred, which, if it cannot be stopped, will at least be barely tolerated and harshly segregated from the "real" Kaddish.
"The domestication of the sacred" - it's a phrase that I've come across, purporting to be a definition of religion, that sums up one of my main problems with organized religion. I feel that far too often, they take this amazing transcendent reality and try to limit it and control it. For me, the real sacred is wild and unpredictable and untameable. It's a not a tool to serve your ends or a dog to broken. If it has a name, it's one you'll never know. If we're talking about the spiritual, I'd love to hear about the path you're walking and to tell you about mine, but I have no interest in seeing your maps. Those maps only seem to lead to where you want to go.
Ilana Davita's Kaddish is sacred. So is Anne's. It's because the others need for them not to be sacred that they try to stop them or block them out. That's why they put Anne in her "cage". It's a lot like them refusing to give Ilana Davita the Akiva award or denying that the evidence is that the Torah was written by men after it happened. They need to believe that their domesticated sacredness is the only real one, that women are inferior in all ways to men, that the Torah is the infallible word of G-d.
If they were sure, really sure, it wouldn't matter that Ilana Davita says her Kaddish, that she was the best student. However, their belief is imperfect. They need to shut out the truth, so they hide it and they lie. Everyone does it. We forget those things that make our beliefs look bad and remember vividly those things that confirm them. Likewise, while everyone knew at the time that Ilana Davita was the best student, I'm sure that as little as 5 years later, most of the people would not remember it that way. They weren't just trying to beat her down or save face, they wre preparing to forget.
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Simultaneously with that feeling, I hold another one that seems contradictory. It's hard to describe but Chaim Potok summed it up best for me in The Chosen when Reuven's father said to him after they attended Danny's wedding, "But we cannot sing and dance as they do, Reuven." The adherence to divine law, giving your whole life to that and having total faith in it.... there's something there that's unattainable for the rest of us. Something sacred and right. I can't explain it or reconcile it with my other sure feelings about cages.
It seems like everything that really matters is paradoxical somehow.
[ July 29, 2003, 12:49 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
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I read and loved Davita's Harp, and I like a lot of what people have said about it, especially about cages, but I'd have to read it again and not be at work to say a great deal more, I think. Just one quick point - Davita is modelled on Adena Potok - being denied academic honours in favour of a male student is taken directly from something that happened to Potok's wife. I forget where exactly he mentioned it, but it was in one of his interviews on the website about him.
What did you think of "Old men at midnight," those who read it? Was the older Davita how you expected her to be? Personally, I was surprised at the absence of her family from the book - I thought at least David Dinn would turn up... I found a lot of it very dark, too, with less of the hope of "Davita's Harp."
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I have to say that Potok was the first author whose death made me feel a personal loss.
I've read all of Potok's books, including his children's books -and with the exception of "Zebra and Other Stories," (and possibly "Old Men at Midnight," which I think wasn't fully realized) I've loved them all. Davita's Harp, definitely.
I go back and forth between books as to which has made the biggest impact on me, my life. What I love about them is that they're all relevant. They all ask the hard questions. The Chosen is probably my favorite because it was my first exposure to Potok.
I had the opportunity to talk with him a few times before he died. He was humble, polite and while he had always hoped his books would have an impact, he never seemed anything less than amazed at the effect they had.
Instead of talking about his books, though, I guess this post has turned into more of a eulogy. I'm not entirely sorry for that, but I should probably end it here.
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I'm sure he must have been wonderful to talk to. I just feel from his writings that he was a great and holy man.
My favorite ones are the Asher Lev books. I loved those so much! After that probably The Chosen. I, too, have read almost all his work. I've yet to find "The Sky of Now", and haven't started on "Wanderings", his history of the Jewish people, but I think that's all I lack. I'm currently in the middle of "The Gates of November", his non-fiction history of a Soviet Jewish family with a father who was a high ranking party official and a son who was a dissident.
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asQmh, you met him? Wow. I had a brief e-mail conversation with him once, and it was pleasant and he was very kind to me, and I was thrilled by it. To meet him would have been out of this world. I still can't quite believe that he's dead and that we'll never know how he planned to continue Reuven's story or finish Asher's. I think my favourite is The Book of Lights... but The Gift of Asher Lev runs it very close. I keep going back to them and finding more and more. Recently when I went back to The Book of Lights I appreciated Karen a lot more and felt more of an identification with her than I had done before. I'd always previously identified with Gershon a lot more, but now that I have more of a clear path, it's Karen's tenacity that I'm drawn to.
Hobbes, I've been working full-time and I don't have always-on internet at home, so I've lurked rather than posted. If I'm at work through lunch or late, I check the board, but other than that I don't check it much these days. Always on e-mail though, I pick that up every day - address in profile.
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I agree that there can be something quite powerful about the type of commitment you're talking about. I'm going to try to sum up my feelings about rules and walls and how they go together.
People need walls; they need protection. It's a rough old world out there. You need a shelter so that you can grow and explore without fear. The problem comes in when these walls instead serve to limit your growth. When that happens, the walls are no longer a shelter, they're a prison.
People need to realize that walls are good because they allow you to grow strong and healthy enough to no longer need them. The proper model is that of a hermit crab, leaving one shell for a wider one when the first gets too restrictive. The big problem sets in when people forget that the rules are only there to serve a purpose and start treating them like an end in themselves. That's when you get adherence to a rule simply because it is a rule.
One of the best examples of this I can think of is many people's idea of a "mature" child. It's been my experience that many people link cetain behaviors, such as not talking when somebody else is talking, with being mature. So, for them, to have a mature child, all you need to do is to get them, by whatever means, to display these "mature" behaviors. To me, this is putting the cart before the horse. Maturity is not a derived from behavior. Behavior springs from maturity. A child who doesn't talk when others are talking because they fear punishment is most likely less mature than one who doesn't talk them because he realizes that it's disrespectful. Here one child is following a law that is specific to one situation; the other is following a principle that influences him in everything he does.
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Thanks for recommending this book, MrSquicky. Right now I am reading it, only halfway through, but I LOVE it! It's great.
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Ooooh, I'm glad you like it! I just now started "In the Beginning". I'm sad cause I'm almost to the end of everything he ever wrote. I will be so sad when I've finished reading all of him. He's so wonderful! He makes me want to be Jewish. Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Finally am I able to read this thread, because I just finished the book. I didn't want to read the spoilers, of course.
Strikingly, what impressed me most was also in Ann Kate's post: the saying of the Kaddish by Davita. I also like the idea of Davita being the gray horse. I didn't think of that.
What I find amazing is how a male writer is able to write from the perspective of an eight year to twelve year old girl so convincingly. And he is somehow showing the subtile changes in her too! That is really a great job.
I cannot wait to get other books from Potok from the library. Posts: 1247 | Registered: Apr 2000
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In the Beginning is so sad, but it's just wonderful. It has Potok's subtle way of communicating feelings. He's really an amazing writer. I'm not sure how he manages to say so much without saying it, but the more I read him the more I understand and the better I like him.
I keep crying while reading this book. I wonder if David is based on someone in Potok's family, perhaps his father or grandfather or someone.
Has anyone else read this book? I'm about 2/3 of the way through now. I'm not reading it very quickly but I may finish it tonight.
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I finally got around to reading Old Men at Midnight and I was wondering if amira or anyone else would be up for discussing it. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it yet, especially the last story section.
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Mr. Squicky, I'm interested in hearing how you feel now about working toward a better world. I wonder if you are still tired, or if you have been infused with new energy? I think about Davita's father dying in the Spanish Civil War and how the good guys lost and so much blood was spilled. One is tempted to think his death had no meaning.
Yet there is always meaning. Even more than we know. The very hairs on our heads are numbered, and the fall of a sparrow and all that. I can see that the whole tapestry of life is infused with far more meaning than ever we are capable of grasping at this level of our development. I suppose that's a glimpse of the sacred.
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ak, I'm still tired, but I'm also full of energy. It's a funny little paradox that way. I am fully, vibrantly made tired by the state of humanity.
It's like story of the man chased over a cliff by a tiger and barely hanging onto a ledge. Above him is the tiger, below him is a 100 foot drop onto jagged rocks, but on the ledge is a little clump of strawberries. The best thing for him to do is to eat the strawberries.
If you can't find something that delights you each day, you're not looking hard enough. Yeah, people suck. They are selfish and immature and bigots and they don't want to think, etc. One the other hand, people rock. They are giving and wonderful and creative.
I try to fill my life with light and wonderment. The alternative is just a bad idea. And I ty to spread this light and wonderment, because, hey, what else do I have to do that's better? I'm just hanging out here on the ledge. Either the tiger or the drop is going to get me. I can't change that, so what's the point in worrying about it. The best I can do is the best I can do.
As for meaning, I create it with everything I do. meaning doesn't come from having done, it comes from doing. It's not an achievement, it's a process. If there is a God that sees every sparrow fall, his plan and his judgements don't add a scrap of meaning beyond that which I create. Meaning is my job, not his. If I need redemption or validation, it's my blood (and sweat and laughter and dancing and tears and thinking) that counts, not his.
I am the change in the world. I am the better place. How can I not be joyful? I get tired because my oughts are not what is. But life is still sweet and I free to work on what is to make it what ought. There's nothing beter I've found in this life.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Squick, have you read the two Asher Lev books? Those are my favorite Potok books, I think. My Name is Asher Lev, and The Gift of Asher Lev. I would love to hear what you think about those two.
One thing that particularly struck me about Asher Lev was that in order to follow his art and be true to his art, he had of necessity to offend and outrage his parents and his small closely-knit community. But his art was such a great gift to his community, and to the larger community, that of all humankind. Should he have been untrue to it for his parents' sake? Or should the parents and the community have seen the divine in his gift, and acknowledged it?
Potok gives me such a strong sense of the sacred in every day and every moment of our lives, of how it is always renewing, and always grows and extends us beyond the limits we can currently accept. To me he points out the paradoxical need to hold fast to the law and simultaneously be always open to accept more truth, more good things, more beauty and joy, from wherever it may come, from far beyond our comfort zone. Perhaps it is when we have strength enough at the core (in the law, the commandments, or in our principles) that we can be unafraid enough to expand our current boundaries and grow.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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*laugh* I did a good deed when I introduced you to Potok, Anne Kate. I've just been re-reading all of them (though not "In the Beginning" - for some reason I never liked that as much as the others) and I finished up with Davita's Harp at the end of last week. What I love about Potok is that his books grow with you. You can read them again years down the line and find something that speaks to your current situation, or something that you just didn't see before, or something that didn't make sense on previous readings but does now. And the way that the spiritual world is just there, a given almost - visions are... not commonplace exactly, but entirely natural in the scheme of things. Which I guess is a different way of saying what Anne Kate said about the sacred.
The thing about Asher Lev is that he did manage, somehow, to remain true to both his family/community/faith and his art, though it requires terrible sacrifice and heartbreaking choices "You give me a gift and a son, and force me to choose between them." *shakes head* what a choice... It just occurred to me that the Rebbe in those books is a remarkable human being. To have the insight he did into what Asher needed and what consequences it would have and how it would affect the community. And when the whole community was afraid and outraged, his faith in Asher... a true tzaddik, I think.
What was it that made you bump this thread, Squick?
Posts: 1550 | Registered: Jun 1999
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I honestly don't remember now why I bumped this, probably something about the nature of sacredness, maybe from the Li and Qing-Jao thread on the other side.
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I was going to post that I read and loved both of the Asher Lev books, but then I realized that I had no recollection of what The Gift of Asher Lev was about. Upon checking, I realized that I never read it. I think I might have been thinking of The Promise. I think MNIAL was the first Potok book I read, except for I am the Clay, which I had to read for school and I still can't really get into. It was fantastic. Asher Lev was a character possessed with a burning zeal and talent that was, mostly against his will, pulling him away from the world and the people that he knew. But at the same time, you got a sense of him as a somewhat rebellious teenager who was self-conscious about his roots. I was sort of hoping for a reconciliation in the book, but the crufixion climax was amazing. I really felt the wrenching pain from all sides. From what you're saying amira, the reconciliation shows up in the Gift, and I'm going to have to get a hold of it.
I just recently read In the Beginning and I have to say, I really liked that as well. It really helped me to better understand many of the other books that hinge on conflict between Orthodoxy versus Biblical criticism and the Talmud versus the Bible. Plus, man, you've got to empathize with the Jews.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I did re-read In The Beginning after posting in this thread, and I liked it better this time. It's funny how strong the threads are that link all of Potok's work - I couldn't help noticing the commonalities, reading them all one after the other. Small things - best friends born two days apart, teachers called Jacob K (Kahn, Kalman, Keter), an older cousin called Saul (who survives in In the Beginning but dies in The Book of Lights). Larger things too - the core to core culture confrontation, as Potok puts it. And the betweenness of the young people caught up in that confrontation and how they have to find it in themselves to unite the worlds that they move in.
Has anyone read "Old men at midnight"? I still don't know what to make of it...
Posts: 1550 | Registered: Jun 1999
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amira, While I found Old Men at Midnight to be piercingly sad and beautiful, I had a lot of trouble of what to make of it too, especially the last story. What was the deal with Davita appearing as different ages? And the title sounds like it's a reference to something, but I don't know to what. I thought it was Dylan Thomas, but that's neither correct nor does it fit the theme I see of journeys and transitions. I think I'm going to have to give that one another read.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Which actually made me think. I remember books reasonably well and the ones that I tend to reread I remember most well. But these books are almost always different, sometimes very much so. I think it's because I am constantly changing as well as adding to the books and perspectives that I bring to them. I wonder what it would be like to read through all these books now after I finished up In the Beginning.
I don't know, just an idle thought.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I try not to overdo it, but from time to time, I bump certain threads that I really like. So...err...I've read The Gift of Asher Lev, didn't find it quite as moving as it's predecessor, but still really, really enjoyed it.
There. Now it's not a completely empty bump.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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It's been a long time since I read any Potok, but I love his work. I actually loved The Gift of Asher Lev more than the more acclaimed My Name Is Asher Lev.
(spoilerish) . . . . .
There was something incredibly poignant about Asher's ultimate "gift"--giving his son up to the community he was so deeply conflicted over. It was a story about love at its most complicated and beautiful.
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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