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Arts Life
On The Bookshelf
READING
from page 125
Wednesday, Nov. 12, at the West
Bloomfield JCC, writes about the
power of the 23rd Psalm.
In 15 chapters, one for each line of
the Psalm, Rabbi Kushner gives his
insights into what he calls "this corn-
pact spiritual masterpiece" and "this
masterpiece of faith and comfort."
Rabbi Kushner summarizes the
power of this Psalm in this way:
"In a mere 57 words of Hebrew
and just about twice that number in
English translation, the author of the
23rd Psalm gives us an entire theolo-
gy, a more practical theology than we
can find in many books. He teaches
us to look at the world and see it as
God would have us see it."
Rabbi Kushner, who has spent
many years studying the Book of
Psalms (he wrote his doctoral disser-
tation on its history), shares his
insights through stories. This, togeth-
er with his accessible, warm writing
style, result in a book that readers
can turn to again and again, as they
do the Psalm itself. They will find the
world of those 15 lines enriched by
the wisdom of Rabbi Kushner.
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The understanding of evil is often
considered the purview of the theolo-
gian or the philosopher, but has also
been addressed by writers throughout
the ages.
The word, and even the concept,
had pretty much fallen into disuse
outside a religious context, until
recently revived by President Bush.
Now, a new series will approach
the subject through contemporary
scholars and writers, although not
from the president's perspective.
The series will cover the seven
deadly sins, sin by sin, with the first
book just out.
Envy by Joseph Epstein (Oxford
University Press; $17.95) is an essay,
with cartoons, in Epstein's lucid, lit-
erate prose. It encompasses the per-
sonal, the literary, the philosophical
and the scholarly (a great deal in a
mere 100+ pages).
It doesn't lack for humor, either.
Envy,
Epstein
writes, is pos-
sibly the most
endemic of
the seven
deadly sins.
"Apart from
Socrates,
Jesus, Marcus
Aurelius,
Saint Francis,
Mother Teresa and only a few others,
at one time or another, we have all
felt flashes of envy."
As he goes through different kinds
of envy, much of it with a light
touch, Epstein concludes, in all seri-
ousness, that feeling and expressing
envy "is above all a great waste of
mental energy" for with envy, "judg-
ment is coarsened and cheapened.
Envy clouds thought, clobbers gen-
erosity, precludes any hope of sereni-
ty and ends in shriveling the heart."
As it says in Pirkei Avot ("Ethics of
the Fathers"): "Who is rich? One
who is content with what one has"
— or, as Epstein might see it, one
without envy.
A scholar and a playwright begin as
teacher and student but move past
that to become study partners, dis-
cussing different biblical texts, meet-
ing each week not at a yeshiva or
synagogue, but at a delicatessen out-
side of
Boston.
The result is Five Cities of Refuge
by Lawrence Kushner and David
Mamet (Schocken; $21).
The five cities of the title refer to
the Five Books of the Bible, with sev-
eral passages from each one up for
discussion.
The format is to quote the passage
in Hebrew and English, then give
each man's brief reaction to it.
Not surpris-
ingly, the reac-
tions of Rabbi
Kushner, a
teacher and
author of
books on
Jewish spiritu-
ality and mys-
ticism, refer to
the Midrash,
quote the
Chasidic mas-
ters and inter-
pret the
Hebrew in seeking contemporary
understanding of the ancient pas-
sages, while those of Mamet draw
more on outside sources.
This chevruta, this learning part-
nership, may not be of much interest
to the strict traditionalist, who
would not be pleased to see short
shrift given to complex biblical pas-
sages.
But others will enjoy the thinking
of two agile minds as they approach
the ancient text, in their own way,
but still learning together, as Jews
have done for thousands of years.
`z•