Israel from Abraham to Zion: BookMarks Update, March, 2023

Read My Review

Friends: My reading in March was dominated by immersion in Israel where we spent half the month. It was our first visit in more than 52 years to a country facing yet another existential threat to its existence---this time from inside not from military threat beyond its borders.. While still processing that emotional and challenging trip, here are the books I read in March:

I re-read 'Exodus' for the first time in 65 years, and its impact on my 13 year old self came rushing back with vivid memories----my first exposure to the Holocaust's horrors, my first realization of the importance of Israel as a Jewish homeland, my first steamy sex scenes between Ari Ben Canaan and Kitty Fremont (incredibly bland and tame today!). Uris's book has not aged well, and its version of history as well as its absolute black-and-white characterization of the Israelis (good) and Arabs and British (bad) are from another, more innocent time. But it was interesting to revisit it especially while in Israel, and I look forward to seeing Paul Newman, Eva Marie-Saint, and Sal Mineo in the movie.

Walter Kaiser's 'History of Israel' provided a way-too-detailed view of the years from 2500 BCE to 70 CE, from the earliest wanderings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans during the Jewish War. It's a scholarly work that spent too much ink sorting out arcane academic controversies, but it did provide a useful time line as it compared the Biblical narratives to the archeological evidence. My major takeaway was learning that one school of thought views the Exodus story and the conquering of Canaan by Joshua to be a metaphor rather than a true historical account. Since there is no evidence in the Sinai of the 40 years of wandering of what was likely 1.5-2.0 million Jews leaving Egypt and no evidence in Canaan of the destruction of cities like Jericho, this theory calls into question the Exodus story and theorizes that the Jews, the only monotheistic tribe in Canaan of the 1500 BCE period, gradually folded the Edamites, Moabites, and others into their faith and emerged as the dominant influence in the region before the Babylonian Diaspora in mid 6th C. BCE.

The 'Yom Kippur War' vaulted me 2000 years forward from Sinai of 1500 BCE into Sinai of 1973. In detailed and tense prose Rabinovich narrates both highly individual, personal stories and high level political and diplomatic events that followed the surprise attack of overwhelming Egyptian and Syrian forces on October 5, 1973 and describes how Israel finally prevailed. It is a gripping book, and the 500+ pages passed quickly as with white knuckles, I read of how close Syria came to reaching Haifa and how many Israelis---2656, more than three times as many men per capita killed in 19 days as the US lost in a decade in Vietnam---lost their lives to defend their nation.

Finally, the book about the Jerusalem Windows of Marc Chagall was an excellent, detailed view of these beautiful works of art and how they came to be. We saw these stunning windows, one for each of Jacob's 12 sons, at the Hadassah Medical Center on Mt. Scopus. It was fascinating to learn the history and see the details of the works in this book which I discovered on our bookshelves upon returning from Israel.

The rest of the month's reading comprised two fine novels, two books of essays, two books about the art world, and neurosurgeon Henry Marsh's reflections on aging and death. Marsh's book is quite good, a fine follow up to his earlier book, 'Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery'. It's perhaps the best book I've read by a physician who himself faces the prospect of serious illness and death. Highly recommended.

Tom Wolfe's New Journalism satire about American Art in the '70's. 'The Painted Word', occasionally showed its age but was a fun trip through the '-isms' of the time and the artists and critics who shaped that era. In 'Boundaries', Maya Lin, one of contemporary sculpture's superstars, describes her approach to her work and her techniques. The images are worth the time even without Lin's interesting narration.

The collection of 80 of John Carey's crisp, insightful, and often very funny book reviews from the Sunday London Times, 'Sunday Best' provided a number of additions to my 'to be read' notebook. His style and wordsmithing were great fun. Janet Malcolm, one of my all time favorite essayists who sadly died last year, adds another excellent exploration of the impact of photography on memory and our own personal history making in 'Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory'. Though not her best book, anything by Malcolm is worth reading.

In 'Horse' and 'Trust' I found my usual dismissal of contemporary best sellers to be wrong-headed. Both books had appeared on the best seller lists for months. 'Trust' was named one of the New York Times Ten Best of 2022, and 'Horse' was the book most often recommended by friends. To my surprise, I loved them both. They each approach what could have been a straightforward narrative tale with creativity, especially around the concept of time. I'll avoid any spoiler alerts and simply say that you should read both of these, either on the beach this summer or curled up on your couch on cold spring nights.

The Poetry Tree on the Charles this month features one of my favorite contemporary poets, Kay Ryan. Ryan a 77 year old writer who despite honors that include a MacArthur grant, a Pulitzer Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and a term as U.S. Poet Laureate, remains relatively unknown. Her 2010 book, 'The Best of It: New and Selected Poems' is a reliable source of pleasure, and her poem 'After Zeno' is a favorite. I hope you enjoy these poems and get to know Ryan.

I finish these monthly updates with an epigram or two. Here's one from Thomas Jefferson: "I cannot live without books." He lived that quote amassing a large library of 6500 books which he sold to the Library of Congress in 1815 to replace the library burnt by the British in the War of 1812.

And here, once again, is this extraordinary quote from Lewis Thomas that has elicited a great number of comments.

"Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely out-numbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.

Even more astounding is our statistical improbability in physical terms. The normal, predictable state of matter throughout the universe is randomness, a relaxed sort of equilibrium, with atoms and their particles scattered around in an amorphous muddle. We, in brilliant contrast, are completely organized structures, squirming with information at every covalent bond....

Add to this the biological improbability that makes each member or our own species unique. Each of us is a self-contained, free-standing individual, labeled by specific protein configurations at the surfaces of cells, identifiable by whorls of fingertip skin, maybe even by special medleys of fragrance. You'd think we'd never stop dancing."

Good reading and good travelling!