Last year, I compiled a list of literature I felt appropriate for the introspective nature of the High Holidays. Throughout the year, I shul hopped my way around the tri-state area and found a surprising form of synagogue worship: reading throughout the service. Everywhere I went, I found a steady group of people who came to synagogue to read. While some might find this offensive, I found it encouraging. The shul environment is tranquil, calm, and conducive to letting words wash over your mind. In that vein, here are eight more books—new and old—that I find transplant me to a more receptive mindset during these reflective days.

Fiction

Scenes From a Village Life, by Amos Oz

Oz, the elder statesmen of Israeli writers, writes this slim, beguiling state of the union address in the form of interconnected short stories about a fictional town in Israel. Death, decay, and loss pervade these stories that manifest an Israel uncertain of its past and frightened of its future. Yet despite the many dire situations, Oz evinces an infinite love for his homeland, albeit a homeland he sees as lost. Beyond their statement about the health of Israeli culture, these beautiful stories confront essential questions of family, loyalty, and the nature of commitment.

Love’s Executioner, by Irvin Yalom

Yalom is an interesting species of writer. Born Jewish, turned atheist and secularist, Yalom still displays an abiding spirituality in his embrace of existential thinking in psychotherapy. In his most famous book, Love’s Executioner, Yalom shares 10 stories from his therapeutic practice that allow the reader to explore personal fears and insecurities. The introduction itself, a pitch perfect summation of existentialist therapy, justifies the hefty price of the book.

Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes

Barnes’ meditation on memory and missed opportunities will entrance all types of readers. In this short book full of crystalline prose, Barnes weaves the story of Tony, a man in his sixties, looking back and questioning the tidy narrative of his life. In a time devoted to reflection, seeing Tony mine his experiences to understand how he got to the exact point he’s now at will open even the most cynical heart to the possibility of redemption.

Wise Blood, by Flannery O’Connor

One of the legends of 20th century fiction, O’Connor tends to get more notice for her short stories than for her novels. With her characteristic charismatic southern humor and darkness, O’Connor explores religious crises in an often surprising manner in her first novel. Though rooted in Christianity, the story of a young person returning home only to find himself struggling with his religious heritage will appeal to people of various persuasions. O’Connor, in her often mysterious way, makes the case that those who rail against God and those who live with doubt are some of the most religious people.

Gilead, Home, by Marilynne Robinson

Robinson represents one of the last bastions of religious writers. One of the best writers of our generation, she manages to combine some of the finest writing with the deepest religious sentiment. In Gilead, an aging pastor writes a letter to his son about the nature of faith, devotion, and the challenges of modern life. Robinson’s portrayal of religious life represents a true understanding of spiritual struggles and motivation. Home, a sequel of sorts to Gilead, tells the story not from the perspective of a dying pastor, but from the perspective of the prodigal son returning home. Any of her books, whether essay or fiction, would foot the bill for these introspective days, but this one-two punch captures the range of today’s religious experience.

Nonfiction

The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism, by Deborah Baker

Baker writes a stunningly brilliant biography of Maryam Jameelah, previously known as Miriam Marcus, a secular Jew who converted to Islam and became a famous writer of anti-American books in Pakistan. Baker weaves Jameelah’s story from her letters to her parents and others, but eventually Baker widens the book’s scope to investigate the charismatic leader that guided Jameelah’s transition, Mawlana Mawdudi, the divide between Islam and the West, and ultimately, an exploration of Baker herself. She questions her own assumptions about life, civilization, and the limits of knowledge—all while pushing the boundaries of a biography considerably beyond what we may expect from the genre.

In the Valley of the Shadow: On the Foundations of Religious Belief, by James Kugel

Kugel, a renowned biblical critic, explores his beliefs through his experience with cancer. Never one to shy away from the struggles of contemporary Judaism, Kugel seeks, with the mind of an academic and the heart of poet, to find “the starting point of religious consciousness.” He also takes the reader on a journey into the depths of religious experience.

HHhH, by Laurent Binet

We focus so much on the Jewish experience in the Holocaust that we risk forgetting the larger context of the war. Binet masterfully explores a secret mission to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Prague, while considering the nature of courage, heroism, and meaning—crafting an exciting, dramatic, true story. Binet also sheds light on more recent histories of war, genocide, and heroism, acknowledging that these episodes can make us feel our lives are a bit, well, mundane. Binet acutely taps into this epochal insecurity of ours. Often our lives can feel small and insignificant compared to those heroes of previous generations, but Binet also finds redemption in our ability to learn from history.

Previously: Days Of Awe(some) Books: A High Holiday Reading List

The post Days Of Awe(some) Books: A High Holiday Reading List, Part II appeared first on Jewcy.

This was the first Rosh Hashanah I didn’t go to shul. I still saw friends, went to meals, dipped the apple in honey more than once, yet I never entered any one of the several minyanim I’ve frequented in the past. I never opened the machzor I’ve been using for years, the one I received free in the mail for a hoped-for donation that I didn’t send. And I never heard the shofar blasts calling me to repentance.

Does this mean I was blameless all year, that I had nothing to repent for? Hardly. It’s just that despite the myriad of rituals, the primary way the Jews I know mark Rosh Hashanah is with an extra-long synagogue service. And I don’t enjoy prayer.

This is not merely a sign of how degenerate I’ve become since leaving Orthodoxy. Prayer, even when I was a full-on believer, was always the most difficult part of Judaism for me. I’ve never been able to sit or stand still and even the most vigorous shokeling, the ritualistic swaying that the religious set do while davening, was never enough to keep boredom at bay. As a child, I was able to leave services without glares of disapproval and would spend hours in the ladies’ room with a friend, swinging from stalls (though I never did giant swings like John Cage did on Ally McBeal) and giving bubbies the scare of their lives when I popped out.

As I got older, I was expected to stay in the women’s section for even longer periods of time as though age had miraculously reformed my twitchy nature. It did no such thing. Throughout the practically daylong Rosh Hashanah services, I’d alternate my foot tapping from one leg to the other and then back again. I would leave my seat as often as possible to get sips of water from the fountain or to visit the restroom. I no longer attempted acrobatics in the stalls. Rather, I engaged in the more teenage-appropriate behavior of checking my hair in the mirror. But after five old ladies entered the bathroom and then left, I felt obligated to return the sanctuary.

Despite these stratagems, there was still left ample time to stew in my seat. Or stand and pray. The worst was mussaf, which translates to “additional service.” The first part is recited to oneself and I did my best to complete it as quickly as possible in order to get a chance at sitting before the even longer repetition portion began. (Woe unto me when I learned at school that I wasn’t supposed to sit down in front of a person still engaged in prayer. I’d stare angrily at the woman behind me who seemed to be taking her sweet time communing with God and seeking blessings for her family. I hated her so much.)

I also engaged in “machzor math” by flipping to the end of the mussaf service to figure out how many pages were left until the final shofar blasts of the day. (As a math-phobic person, this remains the only type of arithmetic I’ve ever been any good at.)

At times, however, I took a grim satisfaction in surviving the service as though I had run some sort of liturgical marathon. Back at school after the holidays, we’d boast to one another about how long our davening lasted. The winners (and losers) were the ones who didn’t get to eat lunch until it was practically time for seniors in Florida to get their early bird specials. (This same sort of competition was applied to Passover seders. Eating dinner before midnight was a sign of impiety.) In Orthodox Judaism, as in my beloved sport of gymnastics, your grit is measured by how much suffering you can endure.

As an adult, I stopped attending Orthodox services. I found congregations that shared my values, from egalitarianism to social justice. There is just one problem—these guys use a liturgy very similar in content and length to the service of my youth. And they really like to sing it out.

Again, I found myself resorting to the same time-killing strategies I used as a kid. I showed up late, got up often to go to the bathroom and get sips of water. I found people to speak to. I rose and sat with the congregation. And I counted how many pages we had to go until we would be free for the day.

When I woke up on Monday morning, I was ready to go through all of it again. I’d show up late and then distract others with mindless chatter. And then I’d distract myself when they’d finally shush me. I’d rise and sit in accordance with the script. Once again I’d hope that instead of ten or twenty minutes of connectedness with the material and the songs, maybe I’d get half an hour this year.

Then I decided to go back to sleep. Perhaps it was pure laziness that kept me in bed for hours with a book and a cup of coffee until it was time to meet my friends for lunch. And it was that, at least in part. But it was also me finally recognizing that prayer wasn’t meant to be my form of spiritual expression and engagement.

On some level, this is surprising. I’m a writer and rabbinic Judaism (as one good rabbi friend once pointed out to me) is a verbal culture. I enjoy text study and can argue for hours. You’d think that prayer, being comprised of a lot words written into books, would also thrill me. But when confronted with the liturgical text, I rarely feel anything in the recitation of it, even amongst a group of friends I love and respect. It mostly leaves me cold.

So what’s the difference between the intellectual discussion that excites me and the prayers that bore me to distraction? It is, in part, the demand for stillness. I’m not a meditative sort and I feel most connected when I’m moving and dancing. But it’s also the rote nature of these lengthy services. What I cherish about literary analysis and debate is that though we are working from a static text, we’re improvising as we argue. For me, spirituality is achieved, however briefly, from constant shifting and changing. I can’t work from a script. (Or remember a beam routine much to my former coach’s chagrin.)

This reminds me, like virtually everything else in life, of a moment from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When Werewolf Oz is asked about Sunnydale High School’s marching jazz band, he explains, “Since the best jazz is improvisational, we’d be going off in all directions, banging into floats…scary.”

Similarly, a standardized davening keeps the congregation together. The unity and cohesion of many voices joining together, saying the same words, is for some an incredibly spiritual experience. I have friends who find great fulfillment and connectedness in the traditional service.

Thankfully, these folks mostly indulge me and my inability to daven. After two years of living in Los Angeles, my friends hosted a Shabbat lunch to bid me farewell. When it came time to bench after the meal, one announced, “I think that because it’s Dvora’s last Shabbat here, we should bench quietly and to ourselves, the way she likes it.” It was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.

Though undoubtedly these friends also find Rosh Hashanah davening overly long—I’ve spied others doing machzor math—they enjoy a good sing-along and get into it. I wouldn’t want anyone to cut it short on my behalf.

Besides, the longer they spend in shul, the more time I get to spend in bed or dancing around my apartment before I meet them for the most Jewish act of all—eating.

(image via Shutterstock)

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