Books

A small cut from one of the sections in Unscrolled

I'm currently reading two very good books, one which is very serious and one which is much more loose and interesting but still just as thought-provoking.

The first one was assigned for our Intro to Judaism class, and I mentioned it before - Finding God.  It is very serious but is still pretty interesting.  Basically, it takes a look at some of the great Jewish writers and philosophers - Maimonides, Buber, Philo, Fromm (who I think I'm related to!), etc - and the way they looked at God.  There's rationalist, humanist, mystic, everything in there.  It's really helping me define how I feel about God, and I wanted to write down those feelings before I forget them.  Forgive me if it gets a little awkward and/or cheesy.

God is indescribable, on purpose. God is the word on the tip of your tongue that you just can't get out.  God is that color blue that you want to paint the bathroom, but you can't find the color chip that matches what you're seeing in your head and there's no way to describe it properly.  God is the idea for a short story that you dreamt last night but can't nail down enough to put onto paper in a nonsensical way.  God the name of the song that you know you've heard before and if you could just remember enough of the lyrics you could figure it out but...no, it's gone. As soon as you try to put a picture and personality to God in your head in a way that makes logical sense, it twists and turns and you lose hold of it again. 

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The second book is new and while still serious, is very creative and interesting too.  Unscrolled: 54 Writers and Artists Wrestle with the Torah.  There are a lot of famous names in this - Josh Radnor, Damon Lindhof, Joel Stein, etc.  The way each section is done (there's one essay/drawing/photograph/whatever for each weekly section of the Torah) is just fantastic.  There's a script where Abraham is questioned by police for trying to kill his son, there are photographs of an artist's grandmother, there are prayers written by authors...it's just so interesting.  I just can't decide if I want to read the whole thing now or read a section each week along with the Torah portion.  Decisions are the worst. 

That's mostly it.  I think I really just wrote this because I feel like Alex would find both of these books to be really interesting, but really really the second one.  So you should probably read them.