Nina
Having read some of Steinsaltz's other stuff, I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. Some of it resonated. Whilst I believe everything he wrote here is true, I think if this book was read by someone of a lower level of spiritual maturity (like myself, in all honesty), without a mentor, there is the potential for you to make some inferences about the world and about yourself that are not necessarily correct.
Currently reading, recommended by Andrew Hubermann.. Both Freud and Jung were absolutely correct in the importance they ascribed to dreams. Yet this book repudiates Freud, in a way in which I'm not sure I completely understand. An ambitious book in scope, and one that I probably need to re-read to fully understand
Interestingly explains why we cannot remember our dreams - the malleability of the term “consciousness” - why the brain state whilst dreaming is very similar to the brain state when administered ketamine...
This is one of those brilliants books that makes you realise that the dichotomy between (1) subjective, euphoric experiences and (2) “objective” empirically measurable data is an utterly false one
But what is undeniably true is the impact Freud has, and his unique capacity to evoke fairly emotive (I can't think of any other word!) responses from otherwise “hardened” scientists. Robert Sapolsky, too.
Staggering level of insight from this author, who is certainly ahead of his time. His kookiness reverbates from the pages - he is exactly what a Harvard professor should be. Bizarre, brilliant, unforgettable.
Not actually enjoying this book as much as I thought I woudl, given Sapolsky's brilliant lectures. He is able to make flippant, “trite” comments - an ability that you only gain once you are so excruciatingly familiar with your subject matter. But sometimes, I feel parts of it are too “dumbed down”. Or the flippant jokes can catch me off guard.
Coming back to this book because it's annoying me. The whole Descartes error thing - yes, we know that tangible brain injuries can produced different mental states. But what is more interesting is the bidirectionality - how “subjective” emotions are actually measurable by bio markers. I'll come back to, I'm just aversive to anytning with too many anecdotes,
There's something so oddly intimate, even intrusive, about reading anyone's diaries - but with Tolstoy, especially. I love Vol 2, because it is based on the last years of his life, and you can see the way his relationship with Sofia (Kitty) deteriorates. Some of the entries at the end give the same jumbled impact as the pages in Anna Karenina, when Anna was walking to the station to commit suicide - these schizophrenic switches between the mundane and the profound invoke this chaotic, anxiety inducing quality. And so, its quite ironic how “Anna Karenina”, although meant to be autobiographical in the sense that Tolstoy represents Levin, towards the end, remains an autobiography, but in the sense that Tolstoy resembles Anna! Which is quite interesting, because I always found Tolstoy's ability to write about women so incredibly personal.
What would be fascinating is to go back and read Tolstoy's “Youth” trilogy straight after reading this.
I picked this book up because Dr Andrew Hubermann recommended it.
I'm currently halfway through, and tbh, sorely disappointed.
Any book with SCIENCE in the title will have to do better than the formula of “personal, non-verifiable anecdotal story about how using X protocol revolutionised the life of a patient who had Y chronic condition”.
The science of breathing has the relevant clinical literature to support it, and the author does not need to resort to rhetorical fabrications to make this case compellingly. I understand that some degree of this is inevitable in a book geared toward the general reader, and I'm likely not the intended target audience.
I'm a big fan of the Cambridge University Press Bookshop that is just off King's Parade, for the main reason in that I find books that I know I would otherwise never receive any recommendations for. I suppose it is because the books published here are by academics, who are usually notoriously dull.
The trouble I often find when I approach a subject I want to learn more about (particularly if its one that I have a foundational knowledge in) is that so many books are filled with meaningless “fluff”. This can be, for example, anecdotal embellishments that detract more than they add anything to the book. I know what the idea of such anecdotes is - it is is to liven up what can be otherwise seen as a dry subject matter. But that type of writing is just not for me. Alternatively, the writing is just too vague, too airy for it to really be enriching.
A good example of this (sorry, Baxter) is Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. My dad is also a big fan of him. His writing is full of “feel good” platitudes - he takes concepts or biblical stories that are so overwhelming in their depth and extrapolates some sort of nugget of wisdom from them that can be used as a practical life lesson. The problem is, he does not go into his methodology as to how he even arrives to this process. It is all well and good talking about the “dignity of difference”, but where is the law, where is the animosity? There's almost something quite insulting about the sentimentality some of his books (which admittedly are not aimed at audiences who have an interest in Jewish law, so have to, by their nature, be sparse on particular details).
Anyway, where am I going with this? David Novak is a brilliant author who I discovered by pure coincidence thanks to the Cambridge Press Bookshop - and is a guy I would love to go for a pint with. He treats his audience as both intelligent and inquisitive - practically pre-empting some of the most difficult rebuttals to his points made, and conceding the more weaker points in his own arguments.
The book is a collection of essays, which cover subject matter which, quite frankly, several Jewish scholars have avoided due to sheer awkwardness such as “The Status of Jews in a Non-Jewish State”, and “Can Israel be Both Jewish and Democratic?”. There is also an interesting essay on Spinoza as the “first Zionist” which could probably have done with being separately published.
WHY SECULAR ZIONISM IS PURELY REACTIONARY, AND UNSUSTAINABLE
Novak's central conclusion is that the current state of Israel is an awkward and utterly deformed amalgamation of secularism and religious law. Questions of why Jews should recognise Israel's right to exist are too often left to rhetoric, rather than reason.
I can personally attest to this - my own father, the child of a German Jewish woman who barely escaped with her own life, loves lines like “the Holocaust would not have happened if it were not for Israel.”
Although this is (arguably) true, it fundamentally misses the point. Sorry to be blunt, Dad, but so what? Emotional intensity should accompany rational action, but it cannot itself justify it.
If Israel is to exist as a Jewish state with a cohesive raison detre for its existence - an ontological jutsification, rather than a purely sentimental or pragmatic one, Zionists have a big task ahead of them. They must prove (1) the state of Israel is rooted in Jewish tradition (2) Zionism furthers, rather than hinders the purpose for which Jews exist and (3) Zionism is integral to this practice of Judaism.
My repudiation of secular Zionism stems from my love of Judaism. Herzl's Zionism was itself a reaction to the alienation that Jews experienced in the 19th century. Ironically, through us being castigated as a perpetually alienated people, Herzl turns around and practically declares: “We will become an alien people. But we shall become this alien people on our own terms [in our own state] and not yours!”. But for him, the Torah/Judaism is nothing more than a cultural ornament - something that plays a ceremonial role in the life of a secular state.
This is almost identical to the advice given to the Maccabean king, Alexander Jannaeus (76 BCE). When asked “what will happen to the Torah?”, his advisors answered: “Let it be rolled into a corner; who ever wants to study it, let him study it.”
The Israeli Chief Rabbinate is, in essence, no different from this.
To go back to my Dad's comments - avoiding the Holocaust, and resistance to evil, should intend to some transcendent end that attracts it. Without this transcendent end point, the whole project in the end, is purely reactionary, just like Herzl's Zionism.
This is embedded within the landscape of the Israeli constitution. Take the “right of return” (the criteria by which one is eligible for Israeli citizenship). The criteria for this are truly staggering, when you think about it. The definition of a Jew is not one informed by Jewish law. Instead, a “Jew” (for the purposes of obtaining Israeli citizenship) are identical to that of the Nazi Nuremberg laws. That is, you can make Aliyah (move to Israel) if you have (1) just one Jewish grandparent/great-grandparent (2) you are not Jewish, but you are married to a Jew. Truly staggering.
TO BE CONT.....
Novak is a student of Abraham Heschel. It is really difficult to find books that are both (a) engaging and educational that also (b) presuppose an intermediate (but not extensive) knowledge in both Jewish contemporary events, religion and philosophy.
This book is catered for an admittedly narrow crowd (the author himself says that it is intended for Jewish readers) but if it is a crowd you find yourself in, this is a fantastic, thought-provoking book.
Eh... I think this book has a lot of valuable wisdom behind it, but for me, I do not find this style of writing personally effective. (Yes, I really am ‘its not you, its me'-ing to a book). The writing style was the literary equivalent of a young man in the gym hyping himself up in the mirror. It is good advice though, and if the style is one you resonate with, I imagine it could be an invaluable thing to read.
I love Robert Greene. The crux of this book is that you should not look at successful people and think, “well, some people are just innate geniuses.” Greene's writing is infused with this almost Jungian sense of pneuma.
Every single person who has found sustainable and long-term success has worked incredibly hard. There is not any short-cut around this. This piece of knowledge is emancipating.
I would have liked a bit more information as to how to actually work in practice and build habits. In that way, this book is most valuable in setting you on the right track and reiterating to you that you need to do long, sustained work, and there are not any shortcuts around this. It is a book that sublimates decades of knowledge in a concise way (I occasionally skipped over some of the anecdotes) and a book I intend to be returning to for years to come.
“In our culture we tend to denigrate practice. We want to imagine that great feats occur naturally—that they are a sign of someone's genius or superior talent. Getting to a high level of achievement through practice seems so banal, so uninspiring. Besides, we don't want to have to think of the 10,000 to 20,000 hours that go into such mastery. These values of ours are oddly counterproductive—they cloak from us the fact that almost anyone can reach such heights through tenacious effort, something that should encourage us all.”
Ahhh, Gabor Mate. There's something so comforting about him, in a way that Jewish authors can only ever fulfil. I read this in Summer 2021, and it blew my mind. It helped me understand my own behaviour, but also that of my family.
Mum had read this book 20 years ago, and she remembered this line in the book about how a doctor, operating during WW2, said “all of my Jewish babies are crying right now.” This made me realise the impact of stress on babies - how they pick up, almost via this osmosis like process, or the stress of their parents. Mum said it made her think of the contrast of Babushka's sister (born pre WW2) and the anxiety that paralysed Babushka (born during 1941). It's weird that babushka, rather than her sister, came out more traumatised, as her elder sister surely would have been more cognitive and aware of the horrors surrounding her, right? But no, not at all. And with this knowledge in mind, it makes me think of my own mother, who was just 23, who barely spoke English, scared and traumatised in a new country... and so much more of my own childhood makes sense.
Particularly when it comes to English speakers, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are categorised within the typical binary of Dostoevsky as the psychologist, and Tolstoy as the world-builder. But I don't think this is accurate. Tolstoy's portrayal of Anna is so harrowingly on point - I cannot think of a male author who conveys femininity with such startling accuracy.
It is always difficult to talk about a book that has such a powerful effect on you. I become so acutely aware of the inadequacy of my own vocabulary to even begin to discuss the different parts that had an effect on me.
What is this tendency to treat works of classical literature with this sort of reverence, as if they are untouchable, or beyond criticism?
This also exists alongside a willingness to attribute a profundity to it, that sometimes is quite simply not just there.
Anna Karenina - even as a physical book - is a tower of literature. And yet, there is something so pitiful about its universe - how almost pathetically human its characters are. As the story of Levin is autobiographical for Tolstoy, by extension, how pathetic Tolstoy is.
And this is truly what makes Russian literature so unique. There is none of this attempt to attribute nobility to flaws - you see them, in all of their squalor - with no redemption, with the characters just falling back into the same self-destructive habits, the same agony of inertia.
Anna Karenina suffers the same fate that every piece of Russian literature that ever is translated into another language suffers - it far too often, and unforgivably misinterpreted.
I'm not going to lecture too long about how a lot of meaning is lost in translation, because I think people who tend to do that sound wanky. I'll just give a brief example - many people are familiar with the famous first opening words of Anna - the second sentence of the novel: “Everything was in confusion in the Oblonsky's home.” In Russian text, the word ‘dom' is repeated 8 times in 6 sentences. This solemn reptition ‘dom, dom, dom, dom' tolling, as it does, for doomed family life, is one such way.
The first cardinal misinterpretations is that of Karenina's moral issue. The story is not about oppressive social standards that drive a woman who engages in a forbidden romance to suicide. Nor is the “moral” that Anna, having commited adultery, Anna must “pay” for this (which is the moral of the French piece of trite that goes by the name of ‘Madame Bovary'). Nor are we, as the reader, even expected to sympathise with Anna.
First, regarding the point about how the story is misinterpreted as being about how a parochial, outdated system of social norms stifled and suffocated Anna and Vronsky's passionate love affair. Think of the word of Darya (Kitty's sister), in response to the discussion of Anna's potential divorce: “Anything but divorce! She will be lost!”
I cannot even initiate my analysis of why this is such an incorrect way to interpret the text without fulling getting my feelings about how offended this interpretation makes me off my chest [yes, I'm allowed to be self-indulgent about my own sensibilities, this is my own blog]. Do you really think that Tolstoy is so simple minded that this story is merely a social critique? How could anybody possibly, possibly believe that Russians are so pitifully simplistically minded? In the Russian society that Anna inhabits, affairs were commonplace and known about - and therefore, often the novel is interpreted as exposing the hypocrisy of how this stratified society allows affairs, yet forbids “serious love affairs”. Nothing could be a more perverse interpretation of this text. The conventions of society are temporal - as all conventions are - and have very little to do with the eternal demands of morality which Tolstoy was so paralyzed by.
There's a reason why in a book that is nearly 1,000 pages long, almost no attention is paid to what Anna's social circle is saying.
To interpret Anna and Vronky's pathetic “love affair” (which is being far too generous to either of these selfish hedonists) as two people who were “prevented” from being together not only demonstrates (i) a really awful reading comprehension skill but (ii) a toleration for harmful hedonism which is reminiscent of the nihilism which ironically, Tolstoy himself so detested and feared.
Instead, the moral point that Tolstoy makes is that: when love becomes egotistic, such a love is carnal. Love that is carnal destroys, rather than creates.
The direct juxtaposition of the Lyovin-Kitty story and the Vronski-Anna story hammers this point down.
Lyovin's marriage to Kitty (which is Tolstoy's autobiographical account of his own marriage) is based on a metaphysical concept of love, that includes a willingness of self-sacrifice. Anna's love is so excessively carnal that the egotism it generates borders on the pathological.
Lyovin's love is austere, unromantic, and painfully Christian. The riches of sensual nature are still there, but harmonious in the atmosphere of tenderness, truth and responsibility.
Nothing could be a more harsh contrast than that of Anna, who although appears richly sensual, is entirely spiritually sterile.
Yet this is not to say that we are to take from this a
ANNA'S LAST DAY
The stream of consciousness employed by Tolstoy is noteworthy as a method of expression which is entirely Tolstoy's creation (although admittedly refined and improved later, by James Joyce). The narrative is an erratic record of Anna's mind switching from idea to image without any comment from Tolstoy: “Was that really me? Those red hands? Everything that seemed so wonderful and unattainable is now so worthless, and what I had then is out of my reach forever! How awful that paint smells. Why is it that they are always painting buildings? Dressmaker.” This contrast between the incidental (specific) and the dramatic (general) give the text an almost anxiety inducing quality. To read Anna switch effortlessly from recognising a passer-by, to instantly thinking about how she will never ever again see her son - this instant juxtaposition is utterly terrifying.
Often seen as a rebuke against Tolstoy. But, as Donald Rayfield writes, “Chekhov does not debunk Tolstoy, but strip his ideas of sacrimony.”
Tolstoy (who is my favourite Russian author, may I add) occasionally falls into the cliche (which he did not start, and indeed, still occurs to this very day) of this romanticisation of the working class / poorer people. The idea is that through their simpler lives, that they have tapped into a wisdom of the human spirit that even the most learned person could learn from. You see this today, in the fetishization of indigenous cultures, too. But sorry, back to Chekhov... first, the depiction of Tolstoy as this romanticist of the serfs isn't entirely accurate, but I don't have time to go into it here.
The hero is Misail, who a slow, passive and tolerant protagonist (tolerant against all but philistine deadness, and his search for an alternative way of life). He persists, in solitude, not in some rural Eden of saved humanity. He accepts the consequences of his choice.
Chekhov wrote to his friend Dr Orlov in 1899 “I have no faith in the intelligentsia. I have faith in individuals, I see salvation in individuals here and there, all over Russia, for they're the ones who matter, though they are few.
Some think that Chekhov's refusal to force these contradictions into a resolution is a cop out - a vacuum, that leaves him vulnerable to accusations of moral relativism. But nothing could be further from the truth.
