My Mother’s Books
My mother is why I am a writer.
She passed away this morning (as I write), March 3, 2019.
Please, take a moment, read the below and learn from her. If you want, buy or borrow a book and learn some more. She lived a rich life steeped in the real world – and she enriched others through it. For my eulogy visit here.
A River Went out of EdenAutobiographical – Chana’s life as a nice, Jewish girl who followed her husband into the most remote wilderness in the lower 48. Wonderful, gripping, funny – and tragic.
Liberty: God’s Gift to Humanity
Religious freedom led to and created economic and political freedom. Tolerance of other religions is unique in human history to the period leading up to the creation of the United States. And the US is the archetype for religious freedom and only then also for economic and political freedom.
Reflections on the Logic of the Good
The Good is not on a line – the music of Vivaldi and a Van Gogh cannot be compared.
Not all goods can be maximized. There ARE yardsticks, but not true qualitative ones.
Anti-determinism: outputs in a society or a mechanistic system or a person are not solely dependent on the inputs.
The classical concept of a society as a brain-controlled animal is dangerous and wrong. Good societies should be described as being in homeostasis – a moving conflict with no perfection, only temporary and moving balances. The more competing elements, the more evolved and adaptable the organism. Applies to the body, engineering, the free market, and society.
It is impossible, and even evil, to try to maximize all goods – that leads to tyranny.
The utopian philosophers believed in perfection perhaps because they had so little real-world understanding. That is how they could make a machine of a world of people whom are not – and should never be – machines.
Available here.
Pharaoh King of Egypt (play)Dramatization/fictionalization can be true to the Midrash and our Mesorah, and add significant understanding to the personal dynamics and growing and changing characters of Moshe, Aaron, the Avos and others. This was an act of Midrashic creation -possible for and accessible to every yid. She had her college students write Midrash.
In addition to Pharaoh, the other plays include:
- Feivel Mit’n Fiddle which captures some of the stories of the world her own ancestors fled.
- Academic Overtures which speaks to the unforeseeable impact of thought on the world – long after the thinkers have left it.
Pharaoh, King of Egypt is now available on YouTube.
This and other plays can be purchased here.
InungilakInungilak is a fictionalized account of her life in the Arctic; based on her own experiences and stories in the North. A wonderful and predictive thriller about the Arctic – unbelievably written in 1981, before the fall of the Wall.
Available here.
Intermezzo – a Coventry Romance that is really a memorial to my oldest brother.