TBR

A shelf full of amazing things to read

Every season is a busy book season, I suppose, but this one has a lot of great things in it. So I thought I’d share some things I’m reading or have in my TBR (to be read) pile.

So, OK, there’s ON REPENTANCE AND REPAIR

(you’ve ordered your copy? And your copy for your kid’s school principal or your university dean or your aunt who could use a nudge or your cousin who’s on their abolitionist journey or your friend who still feels guilty because they think they’re supposed to forgive their abuser?) (OK, I’ve read that book—Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley says it’s “A must-read for anyone navigating the work of justice and healing," so, nu?)

And also there are three (3!) events happening this week, conversations about accountability, transformation, about addressing structural harm in ways that center those who are most impacted.

And WASHINGTON DC I AM LOOKING AT YOU!

Tuesday, September 20th, 8:00PM ET, VIRTUAL-- I get to talk to the wise Rabbi Josh Feigelson in a conversation hosted by the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Register here.

Wednesday, September 21st, 7pm ET: BOTH LIVE IN WASHINGTON DC AND LIVESTREAMED: I get to talk to the fierce Soraya Chemaly at Sixth & I with National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW)!! GET TIX NOW! Spread the word to DC folks! Register here.

Thursday, September 22, 8 PM ET, VIRTUAL-- I talk to the amazing Judith Rosenbaum at a Jewish Women's Archive/ Sacred Spaces / National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) / SRE Network event. Register here.

Now. Here are some other books I’d want to know about, if I were you:

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Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future by Patty Krawec

I had the great honor of blurbing this magnificent book and phew. It offers history, it’s about creation, destruction and rebirth, it maps a vision forward centering Indigenous wisdom and ways of being, and a generous, insightful set of possibilities for everyone. Really. Please get and read this. It will nourish and inspire you in ways you didn’t know you needed.

Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America by Dahlia Lithwick

If you would want anyone to tell the story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, misogyny, xenophobia and anti-democratic impulses of the Trump administration, it would be Dahlia Lithwick, to whom so many of us have turned to understand and make sense of the chaos of the last howevermany years (it’s all a blur at this point, really.) Sally Yates, who refused to sign the Muslim ban! Becca Heller, who brought the travel ban to the airports! Roberta Kaplan, who sued the Nazis in Charlottesville! Stacey Abrams!!! This is a feminist book about the heroes of a bleak era.

Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey

Tricia Hersey takes many of the ideas that are present in the Jewish approach to Shabbat—and amps it up a few notches, not only talking about rest as an explicitly anticapitalist way of doing and being (like Shabbat, I think; but unlike Shabbat, her approach is integrated into a person’s whole life and being) but also rest as reparations, a necessary component of Black liberation in a culture that not only exploited unpaid Black labor for far too long (a moment is too long, a second, obviously) and that still does, in so many ways.

Maybe It Happened This Way: Bible Stories Reimagined by Rabbi Leah Berkowitz and Erica Wovsaniker

This is an engaging, delightful way to introduce kids to the concept of midrash, sharing classical midrashim on Biblical texts in a way that kids can access. It takes some of the wide-eyed reverence out of Torah texts and brings them into the Rabbinic world of playful possibility, with fantastic, feminist guides who make sure that the stories are told in ways that add more wholeness to our understanding of text, and the world.

The Family Outing: A Memoir by Jessi Hempel

This forthcoming book (I got an inside peek) is a beautifully constructed memoir of a family coming out and coming apart—and coming back together again. Jessi comes out as gay, her sister comes out as bi, then their father is…well…outed, their brother comes out as trans, and it turns out their mother has been harboring a secret of her own as well. This is about fear, honesty, shame and the vulnerability of allowing the people we love most to see us as we really are.

There Are Still Woods by Hila Ratzabi

This is a book of poetry that… well, Hila’s work is about mortality and vulnerability, connection to the Earth and the trees and the water and profound grief about our climate disaster, the ability to cherish what we have now, tenderness, tenuousness, clear-sightedness about where we really are and yet, at the same time, somehow, still hopeful.

This poem below is in this new collection.

How to Pray While the World Burns

Hila Ratzabi

Go outside.
Find a patch of grass, sand, dirt.
Sit, kneel, place a hand or just
A finger to the soft earth.
Feel it pulse back.

Open your palms and divine
The words creased between.
Rub the specks of dirt
Between your fingers,
See how they cling to skin,
How they listen in their soft-rough way.

The earth will hold you better
Than God can.
God could not stop the bullets
Or the sale of weapons.
God could not block the open
Synagogue doors.

But we keep saying, Shema.
Listen.
Israel.
Our God is One.
Singular.
Invisible.
Hiding in plain sight.

But listen, Israel, our God is beneath
Our feet, between
Our fingers, coursing
Through our veins.

Our God is trapped
In the poisoned grass,
Where the blood of our brothers cries out,
Where the ants heave centuries on their backs.

Pray to the God who sharpened the tiger’s teeth,
Who stored the roar in its throat.
Pray to the God who gave you lungs and tongue
To sing and groan and hum.

I swear to you
When the leaf shivers in the wind
You have given it chills
From all its listening.

The earth hears your prayer.
There is nowhere for God to hide.
Get down on your knees and let
This precious earth soften for the weight of you.

You are held.
You are heard.
The wind pulls its blanket over your back,
Smooths the hair from your face,
Touches your cheek
With its cool, trembling hands.