Worthwhile as a travel guide to exotic Jewish areas, though less successful as a compelling narrative.
Travel-guide scribe Frank (A Travel Guide to the Jewish Caribbean and South America, 2004, etc.) describes his experience in visiting "little-known Jewish enclaves in the most unusual places" in an effort to "meet my people and learn how they lived and survived.”
The communities visited include Russia, the Caribbean, Asia, North Africa, Cuba and Israel. Some, like Vietnam, are made up of only a few expatriates, while others, like those in Russia, are returning to vitality after decades of repression. The author shows his guidebook-writing background, including plenty of street addresses of sites and other information useful to travelers. The author also includes plenty of non-Jewish–related facts. Frank often digresses into historical, political and literary references, as well as personal memories connected to his destinations. The narrative has a genial, meandering style, though it lacks the grace of the finest travel writing. While the author relates some fascinating stories of the people he encounters, the somewhat matter-of-fact presentation fails to truly convey their personalities and emotions or get to the heart of what it's like to live as a Jew in Myanmar or Tahiti. Nevertheless, there is something to be learned here for anyone seeking insight into the current state of the Jewish diaspora, or a basic knowledge of Jewish life in the various places visited by the author. Though Frank's depictions of his travels are not quite top-notch fare, his obvious knowledge and passion for the subject may inspire readers to follow in his footsteps.
Worthwhile as a travel guide to exotic Jewish areas, though less successful as a compelling narrative.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7627-7033-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Globe Pequot
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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