Three beautiful books

I recently finished three books that complement each other in fascinating ways. I want to chat about each of them.

The first book is Harold S. Kushner's Conquering Fear, subtitled Living Boldly in an Uncertain World. As in his other books, Rabbi Kushner writes a beautiful, accessible book that is inspirational and educational. In 9 chapters, he writes about living with fear, including small things that are more personal to the big, scary things about this day and age.

One example that I appreciated in the book was the section where Kushner is remembering being in San Francisco when the major earthquake of 1989 struck. As he reflects about that natural tendency to say "Thank God I'm OK", he arrives at this point "I can give you the answer in six words: God is moral, Nature is not. Nature is blind, uncaring, incapable of distinguishing between good people and bad ones, between the deserving and the undeserving...." He goes on to this point "When God created the natural world, He withheld from it one blessing that He shared only with you and me: the ability to know the difference between good and bad, between morally right and morally wrong."

And so, for me, when I hear about the earthquake in Haiti, I don't worry too much about why God made it happen. I worry about what we can do to help the people who are suffering and what we can do to stop the massive poverty that creates infrastructures that aren't capable of surviving an earthquake.


The second book is Mitch Albom's Have a Little Faith. He writes about Rabbi Albert Lewis and Reverend Henry Covington, and their very different lives. He does a great job of weaving together the two stories to teach us about different paths to faith. It is a quick and easy read, but a book that stays with you after you finish. It prompts lots of questions about how we learn to do the right thing and how we can dedicate ourselves to doing acts of lovingkindness.

The third book is Andy Andrew's The Noticer. It's another small book that is a quick read, but with images that stick. The story is of a somewhat mysterious older man who appears in different people's lives at critical moments to teach and rescue them. From my perspective, I would describe it as a modern day Elijah story. It gives a lot of lessons that center around having or changing perspective. It's a book that would make for a good Seder discussion, as we sing about Elijah and talk about "next year in Jerusalem". Let me know if you decide to pick it up!

Happy reading everyone!