A Reading List for the Resistance

As we take a deep breath before the would-be dictator Trump and his plutocratic appointees take office in January, one way we can prepare is by reading and thinking. Here are some books I am finding helpful right now.

For some inspirational examples from the past--

The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It, by Cory Brettschneider. Emphasis on the words "people" and "citizens." That's us!

Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, by Rebecca Hall, Hugo Martínez (Illustrations). Listen to Black women.

Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968, by Thomas E. Ricks. It wasn't just a dream: it was strategy, training, and discipline.

For how to apply those lessons to the present-- 

This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century, by Mark and Paul Engler. How to make our long-term community organizing support the protest movements of the moment, and vice versa. Read this to be prepared for highs and lows and periods when it feels like nothing's happening and we might have wasted our time--but if we use the quiet times wisely, we come back stronger.

For some tools we can use--

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip and Dan Heath. Because we've got to get better at getting our message across!

I'll be adding to this list as I go along. Your suggestions would be welcome!

I also have reading lists on prison and incarceration (which more of us may face in the years ahead), and on the way people have been deprived of decent housing, and on racism, antisemitism, sexism and homophobia, and on the history of capitalism (which may be giving way to fascism in the U.S. but has always been a fertile ground for repressive actions). If any of those are your particular interest, let me know.

Give yourself time and space to learn and to think...but please, do not think that learning and thinking will be enough by themselves. The ancient rabbis posed the question, "Which is more important, thought or action?" Their answer: "Thought is more important, when it leads to action." Be ready, please, to move between the two.

What we do, who we are, and the High Holy Days

 

Both last year and this year, in the month of Elul leading up to the High Holy Days, I have read Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg's On Repentance and Repair. At the end of 5783, I read it on my own, and this year, as we approached the close of 5784, I re-read it with a group led by Rabbi Eliana Jacobowitz at Temple B'nai Brith in Somerville. (Yes, it's worth reading and re-reading!) 

The book builds on Maimonides' teachings about teshuvah (the repentance and returning to the right path that is the focus of the High Holy Day season). Rabbi Ruttenberg stresses certain aspects of those teachings that she thinks that we, in Christian-dominated American society, may be in danger of forgetting: 

• that acknowledgment, amends, and apology by the perpetrator are the central issue--not forgiveness by the victim--and 
• that true teshuvah involves self-transformation so that if we found ourselves in the same situation again, we would not repeat our mistakes. We would act differently.

On one point, Ruttenberg (and, I think, most of us) would disagree with Maimonides. He states that if the perpetrator does true teshuvah and asks the person he has hurt to forgive him, and the victim repeatedly refuses, then the victim takes the sin on themselves. All of us in the TBB reading group recoiled at this. We are too familiar (and Ruttenberg gives examples of) cases where the harm was so deep and permanent that the sin is unforgivable. We have seen too many cases of victim-blaming (especially by men, of women they have hurt) to want to fall into that trap again.

To be fair, Maimonides is aware of such examples. It's clear he's talking about an extreme and extraordinary occurrence. Still, given our respect for his scholarship and thoughtfulness, I asked Rabbi Eliana: why does he bring it up at all? What makes it important to him to say that being unforgiving can sometimes be a sin in itself? She taught me that he is imagining a case in which the victim is now in a position of power. Refusing to forgive when the offender has truly repented can ruin their lives and their reputation, even lead them to desperation and suicide. It's that abuse of power, she explained, that motivates Maimonides to address this rare case.

I was satisfied. In Jewish learning, we do not have to agree with a conclusion in order to ask how the person stating it arrived at that conclusion, and to learn something from the person with whom we disagree. (See the ongoing debates between the schools of Hillel and Shammai.) The abuse of power is an issue I have been paying attention to for at least fifty years, and I honor Maimonides for being sensitive to it, even if I cannot go where we goes with that train of thought.

Teshuvah, virtue, love

I was reminded of this discussion just today, when I listened to Rabbi Shai Held discuss Maimonides on teshuvah, but with a different emphasis. Rabbi Held wants us to hear Maimonides--and, I think, God!--speaking to us in two different voices at the same time. He calls them the prophetic voice and the pastoral voice. The prophetic voice wants us to pay attention to how far we are from acting righteously all the time. The pastoral voice wants us to be encouraged to believe that we can and will do better.

Not only do, but be. Rabbi Held thinks of Maimonides as the principal Jewish advocate of virtue ethics, the idea that we want not only to do the right things, but for the right reasons, in the right spirit. (A Jewish school of thought that sounds a lot like virtue ethics is mussar.)  

He puts repentance and repair in the context of our relationship with God, which as he says in his recent book that I am also perusing this month of Elul is about love. Following God's commandments is important, but so is recognizing God's love for us and trying to live up to it--in part, by how we treat other people.

Held reminds us that if teshuvah is about trying to correct our actions and also transform ourselves, the High Holy Days are only the beginning of the process. Having a new beginning every year is vital, but every single day, we should be engaged in self-examination, acknowledgment of where we have gone wrong, making things right with people and with God, and changing our lives. It's a tall order, but it's a Jewish way to live.

Shanah tovah to all my readers, and if I have injured you in the past year, or week, or day, I hope you will lovingly bring it to my attention so I can do better by you, starting now.

Thinking about God: Jewish Views, by Rabbi Kari H Tuling: a review

 

This is an invaluable book, and what you get out of it will depend on two things: who are you, and what are you seeking?

If you're a reader (Jewish or not) who's unfamiliar with this tradition, you may become bemused by the sheer variety of Jewish views about God, and how different they are, and how all of them are valid parts of the Jewish tradition. It may change your sense of what thinking about God can be like. Along the way, you will also quietly learn a lot about Jewish texts and traditional ways to read them and about ways that our understanding of God can shape our daily lives. In fact, Rabbi Tuling insists, "Theology defines what is possible in our lives." Read it, and see if you agree!

If you're a Jewish reader who's well-versed in bible and midrash, like me, you will recognize some of the passages with which Rabbi Tuling begins each chapter and nod along with her line-by-line explication. Some of the medieval thinkers were unfamiliar to me, and some of the modern ones too. But as a person who usually approaches God as a partner in the project of tikkun olam, the repair and gradual perfection of creation, and not as a "God of the philosophers," I found it useful to read over the contrasting views and see how much I agreed with some, and less with others. It made me put into words some of what I believe about God rather than just relate to God as someone who's always already been there.

And if you're a person who's inclined toward theology but not familiar with Jewish approaches, you may be taken up short by how much Jewish views of God can contrast with the assumptions soaked into Christianity (to say nothing of Islam, Buddhism, or other traditions!) You may also learn the connection between daring exegesis and theology in Judaism--much more common than a purely deductive approach--and you will have to decide whether you agree with the author when she says, "Any theology that can confidently explain why children get cancer is a monstrosity."

All of us readers, I think, will get suggestions on what to read next!

There Shall Be No Needy: How does she get that from the sources?

If you've been following my summaries of There Shall Be No Needy by Rabbi Jill Jacobs here, here, here, here, and even here, you might be wondering: how does Rabbi Jacobs arrive at her conclusions? Are they predetermined, so that she goes looking for a prooftext to support them, or what is her method of reading Torah, Talmud, and other sources?

I admire the author's intellectual honesty. She is quite open about the fact that it's possible to derive different conclusions from the same texts. In chapter 5, for example, she points out that conservative commentators can look at rabbinic sayings about the need to follow minhag hamakom, the custom of the land, and argue that it means "let the market decide."  (She offers a quite different reading of minhag hamakom--in her view, it authorizes local living wage laws, for example--but she gives the sources for the opposing view. See page 109 and footnotes thereon.)

Over and above the close reading of texts, however, Rabbi Jacobs offers us this overall approach: repeatedly, she points out how the current situation in the U.S. denies the basic assumptions on which halakhah is based. Therefore:

Given the discrepancy between halakhic obligations on workers and the contemporary reality, we are confronted with two possibilities. We can either reconsider the halakhic [requirements], or we can accept the current reality as a challenge to traditional halakhah and in turn, use halakhah to critique the present-day situation. [my emphasis]

If applying halakhah in the U.S. capitalist society of the 21st century produces unjust results, then it is the society that has to change.

From this standpoint, she can make an argument using traditional Jewish sources that Jews should not only allow but actively encourage union membership,  require employers to hire union workers, and use the power of government to set wages, hours, and benefits in favor of the more vulnerable party, the workers. 

She can also use the text "Remember that you were slaves in Egypt" and say, remember that you were in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire--and in every major strike--and let that memory steer your moral intuition about how to act today.

If the book reaches conclusions that are conducive to liberal politics in the U.S., it is because liberality is deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition.

There Shall Be No Needy, part 1: What Tikkun Olam means in depth

I came to read Rabbi Jill Jacobs' book There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law & Tradition because Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg referred to it in her book on teshuvah and because I respect Jacobs' work at Truah. 

I expected an inspiring but somewhat dated book I somehow hadn't read when it came out, so I could fill a gap in my education with just a little attention. It is so much more than that! 

Jacobs' book is written for the general public, but it is definitely a work of scholarship. Despite my Jewish social justice background over decades, I am learning so much by reading it--slowly--that I thought I would share some lessons with you, and help my memory by taking notes at the same time! 

Four meanings of Tikkun Olam

Ever since I was in college, when I get to the passage at the end of the Aleinu prayer, I say the part l'taken olam b'malchut shaddai, "to perfect the world under the kingship of the Almighty," out loud. (I do this in memory of my teacher Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf.) Tikkun olam has become a byword of Jewish progressives. In some circles, as Jacobs laments, it has become divorced from anything specifically Jewish. But what does it mean?

Establishing the Divine Kingdom

In the prayer I just mentioned, tikkun olam is about everyone recognizing the sovereignty of God and putting away idol worship. That might sound like it means everyone becomes Jewish, but nothing could be farther from the truth! Modern-day idol worship, as so many of us recognize, is the idolatry of money, power, and social superiority, As Jacobs interprets it, tikkun olam in this sense could mean "an end to all the 'impurities' such as poverty and discrimination that hamper the manifestation of the divine presence." (27)

 

The Preservation of the World

In some of the midrashic literature (for instance, B'reishit Rabbah 4:7), tikkun olam means the physical fixing and stabilization of the planet, and perhaps the larger universe, "such as global warming, deforestation, or the extinction of animal species," as Jacobs interprets it. (40)

The Preservation of the Halakhic System and the Social Order

In the Mishnah, the base text of the Talmud, tikkun ha'olam often refers to problems in divorce law. Specifically, it applies in cases where a man divorces his wife and attempts to change his mind, or where the get (divorce decree) might be technically invalid. If these cases were left unchecked, soon no one would know who was legally married and who was not, and the whole community would be disrupted. So, rabbis in the Talmud stated they could close the loopholes even where they didn't have explicit authority to do so. Why? For tikkun ha'olam, the greater good of having a legal system that worked for the community, and especially for the most vulnerable members of the community.

 

Restoring Divine Perfection

In the Lurianic Kabbalah, there is a notion that the process of creating the world went dramatically wrong, and that everything we see around us as reality is merely the shattered vessels that were supposed to make up one whole, unified Creation. In this conception, it is up to human beings, especially Jews, to lift up the shards and reunite them--and in some sense, reunite God, who is in exile with us in this imperfect world--through prayer and observing the commandments (including the ones to help the poor and to do justice, but also the ritual commandments about Shabbat, holidays, etc.)

A Synthesis

I suggest a reimagining of tikkun olam that combines the four understandings of the term we have seen in tradtional text:

1. the Aleinu's concept of tikkun as the destruction of any impurities that impede the full manifestation of the divine presence; 2. the literalist midrashic understanding of tikkun as the establishment of a sustainable social order; 3.  the rabbinic willingness to invoke tikkun ha'olam as a justification for changing laws likely to create chaos, and 4. the Lurianic belief that individual actions can affect the fate of the world as a whole. (38)
   

How Should a Person Be?, by Sheila Heti

When I was a small boy, my father told me that it was important for a person to be able to laugh at himself. On my first day of school, the teacher gave us all name tags. On my tag, which she  pressed to my small chest, she spelled my name wrong. All during recess, I walked from child to child, pointing out the misspelling and laughing at my own name.

I couldn't understand why all the children running and shouting and playing dodge ball thought I was the weird one. I was doing what's important, after all.

Sheila, the viewpoint character in How Should a Person Be?, is in her twenties, but she's still trying to do what I did at age six: find out what's important to do and do it. Her rules don't include "Be able to laugh at yourself." If they did, perhaps this book would never have been written! Instead, she's trying to create something important, and she thinks that you judge how important a thing is by how intensely it makes you feel.

It takes a masochistic relationship with a man, the prospect of ruining her best friendship with a woman, and discarding mementos of her childhood to make her realize that there is no one way a person should be, and that she doesn't have to be a leader to be important. Each person is uniquely valuable, even Sheila.

I could sympathize with her desire to feel everything intensely, even if it hurts. That's what my early twenties were like too. And sometimes you have to cross boundaries and do ugly things just once, to find out what it's like. I also loved the way Sheila recognized people spewing theories as "just another man in the world who wanted to teach me something." It led to her realization that she had become that guy--like me on the playground, trying to show I could laugh at myself.

All through the book, however, as a feminist, every time I read about her wanting to be used by her sex partner, Israel, I wanted to shake her. Don't you know, I said in my head, that women and men already went through all that, so you don't have to? (And as a fellow Jew: what is up with naming the guy Israel when your Jewish identity shows up in the way you speak and the metaphors you use throughout the book? Seems like some unopened baggage there, still.)

So, I ended the book thinking that all the really interesting parts of Sheila's story begin when this book ends. I don't know whether that's a reflection on the book or on me. I'm glad I read it, just as I'm glad I lived my young adult life. And I would never want to do it again.

The Jewish Gospels, by Daniel Boyarin: a review

Boyarin argues that when Jesus claimed to be a divine being as well as the anointed king, he was saying something other Jews would understand and find normal. From Boyarin's perspective, the difference between Jesus' followers and other Jews was not that he claimed to be the unique Son of God but that most Jews didn't think he was that guy.

I'm not a biblical scholar. I'm a Jew, immersed in the Judaism of the 21st century CE. So, the challenge for me reading this book was to try to imagine myself in the 1st century, before most of what I know as Judaism had taken firm shape.

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I had no problem with the idea that Jesus kept kosher (the title of chapter three). It even made sense to me that he might have been aghast at the new ways of keeping kosher that the P'rushim (later called Pharisees by people who couldn't read Hebrew) introduced. These forerunners of the rabbinic movement had the radical idea that all Jews could live in a state of ritual purity--not just the priests--and that ordinary activities like cooking and eating could be made holy. On Boyarin's reading, Jesus was a conservative, saying "Don't add new rules to what the Torah already prescribes." I can't verify his reasons for saying that, but it seems plausible to me, perhaps because to my mind it makes the rabbis look as revolutionary as I think they were.

The idea that there were a lot of different ways of being Jewish at the time, and that Christianity was just one of them for centuries, also makes sense with what history I know.

Given that, there may even have been Jews who think what Boyarin thinks they thought: that the Messiah, son of David, would also be a divine figure. Boyarin uses ingenious readings of Jewish texts that are minor (Daniel) or totally obscure (First Enoch, Fourth Ezra) today, to back up this point.

According to his reading of these texts, "Son of Man" (ben adam, in the Hebrew) actually means a figure shaped like a man who sits on a throne at the right of God and then descends in the clouds to earth, to rule. "Son of God" actually means the divinely chosen ruler, who is a son of God the same way a bar mitzvah is literally a son of the commandment: he's under God's authority. (That is my comparison, not Boyarin's.) At some point, the two became identified.

Boyarin argues that these texts set up the expectation of a divine Messiah, that Jesus said he was that person, and that the Jews who rejected him understood what he was saying--it wasn't an innovation to them--but denied his claim to be The One.

This is completely intriguing, but I am dubious, for several reasons.

1. Boyarin cherry-picks the verses that support his argument.

2. When he comes across verses that seem to contradict his thesis, he writes them off as an editor trying to bring an unruly original text back into line. You can do anything with a text that way!

3. That picture of an orthodox editor implies that the view that the Messiah was NOT a divine figure was always the dominant one. The Christological idea that Boyarin says is "Jewish" may always have been as strange to most Jews as "Jews for Jesus" are to most Jews today.

4. Boyarin gives no evidence that Daniel (which was eventually included in the Jewish canon, or Tanach, but has no role in the liturgy) was widely read at the time. (A stray part of me wonders if Boyarin wants "Daniel" to be important because it's his first name.) Some of the other books he cites are only extant in the literature of the Ethiopian Jews. It may be just my ignorance, but I have no way of knowing whether those books were circulating in first-century Palestine or not--and Boyarin doesn't tell me. So is he making an argument that people in that time and place would find recognizable?

Finally, let's say for the sake of argument that Boyarin is right in every respect. I can understand why that would be important to a historian. But why in the world would it be important to the rest of us?

Judaism and Christianity may have parted ways later and over different issues than we used to think--but they did part. They have been separate religions for at least 1800 years now. Since the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, Jews have been persecuted in the name of Christianity. (I hasten to say that there have also been individual Christians who were great friends of Jews, even putting themselves at risk to do so.)

Harking back to a time when followers of Jesus were a recognized but minor Jewish sect does nothing to bring us closer together. Understanding where we are and how we differ today is a more productive path for Jews, Christians, and (I would add) the other children of Abraham, the Muslims, too.

The Talmud and the Internet, by Jonathan Rosen: a review

Growing up in Pittsburgh and attending the pretentiously titled School of Advanced Jewish Studies, I took a bite of Talmud. Not even a mouthful: just enough to taste. And it has nourished my curiosity forever.  Read this book if you want to whet your curiosity too.

Like me, author Jonathan Rosen finds the form of the Talmud even more intriguing the intricacies of its content. It's the original hypertext.

The Mishnah is at the center of each page, a set of oral traditions about how to read and practice what we find in the Torah that were finally written down between 180 and 220 CE by Rabbi Yehudah haNasi to keep them from being forgotten. The Gemara comes below, giving four centuries more of debate about what how those traditions make sense and what they really mean. More commentaries are arranged at the bottom and along the sides: the medieval scholar Rashi and his disciples especially. That's not even getting into the entirely separate books that comment on the Talmud, from Maimonides' Mishneh Torah to the latest one hot off the press.

As Rosen points out, these commentators hold lively discussions, even when one of them is rebutting another who's been dead for centuries. They don't confine themselves to any genre. Legal discussion rubs shoulders with etymology, moralism with fable. They remind him (and me) of nothing so much as weird and unpredictable discussions on the Internet--especially the more unbridled Internet of 2001, when this book was published.

Rosen is both incisive and evocative when he makes the case that Talmudic discussion is the lifeboat of the Jewish people. When the destruction of the Temple by the Roman empire cast Jewish life adrift, it was in these discussions that we made our home.

Rosen is elegiac when he looks at 21st-century Jewish life, changed forever by both the Holocaust in which some of his grandparents died and the acceptance of the Jews into secular society, and of secular society into Jewish identity. Can we find ways to transmute our existence in new circumstances as the creators of the Talmud once did? Or will the culture that he and I hold dear fade into memory? Or both?

I Read James Risen. Ed Snowden Told Me To.

In Laura Poitras' excellent documentary CitizenFour, NSA leaker Edward Snowden mentions how much he admires investigative journalist James Risen.

Neither Snowden nor Risen is any kind of leftist.  Risen is the national security reporter for the New York Times, for God's sake!  He was one of two reporters for The Times who in 2005 broke the news that Mr. Bush’s government had conducted warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. Bush hated that, but Risen kept right on reporting.

Now, Risen faces a possible prison term because he refuses to name the sources inside the CIA who helped him reveal a failed plot to give flawed and misleading nuclear blueprints to Iran.  If you want to know the full story, read chapter nine of Risen's 2006 book State of War--a book the U.S. government tried to suppress.

I'll be reviewing the book this coming week.

Creating Judaism: a review

Creating Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice by Michael L. Satlow

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I have always told my friends that in important ways, Judaism is not a religion: it's a lot more than that.  Satlow helps me explain why.  Jewish communities have lived in nearly every country in the world, for thousands of years, and they lived in ways that bear only a family resemblance to each other.  Even today (as the first chapter shows), American Judaism and Israeli Judaism look starkly different. What is "Judaism"?

Historically, Satlow says, what has held these diverse communities together is a lively and heated conversation about three things: Jewish identity (what it means to be a Jew, who is and who's not); relationship to sacred texts (the list of which has changed over time); and practice.  Jews don't have to believe the same things, which has shocked many members of other religions.  Satlow tells the story of the Calvinist Dutch government in the 17th century tolerated Jews but tried to enforce their own idea of what all Jews believe!  Within the Jewish fold,in the Middle Ages, Maimonides listed 13 principles of faith.  Today we sing them but we don't study them. 

It was only in the 19th century that Jews began to define their differences along ideological lines, and that has led to the different "movements" and in fact to "Judaism" as we know it today.  Even then, Satlow makes the point that the founders of the Reform, Conservative, and Modern Orthodox movements all kept kosher and wouldn't have any trouble sitting down for dinner at one another's tables.  That has changed--but still, you cannot tell much about the everyday life of a Jewish "lay" person by asking him or her what "kind of Jew" he or she is.  You would have to watch them from day to day.

I found this book fascinating because it showed me how Jews have always been influenced by the trends in the larger culture in which their communities were situated.  Because we live in the early 21st century, the book is particularly interesting when it shows the ways that Jewish and Muslim currents of thought flowed in and out of each other.  In the Muslim world in the 8th century, people were arguing about whether only the Qur'an was holy or whether the hadith, a set of traditions about Muhammad and his circle, should also be studied like sacred texts.  Muslims considered the Torah sacred, although some thought the Jews had a corrupted text, and many believed the rabbinic interpretations of the Torah (in the midrash and Talmud) had distorted the truth given to Moses at Sinai.  Look at the Jews in the same time and the same place, and you find many of the same arguments.  The Karaites wanted to get rid of the rabbinic commentary and go straight back to the Torah.  Meanwhile, the rabbis were working to recognize the Talmud (the work of earlier teachers, from the 2nd through 6th centuries) as equally worthy of study as the five books of Moses--and for a time, they succeeded as the Muslim scholars did with the hadith.  This is a very different conversation than went on in Christian lands at the same time, or ever.

Creating Judaism is not a perfect book.  It starts out strong and straightforward, but in later chapters it tries to cover too much ground too quickly and falls into the academic habit of referring to history instead of explaining it.  Still, it is a perfect book for right now.  It shows how we can recognize that our most cherished beliefs are historically and culturally relative and still continue to cherish them, which is the only honest way to be part of a religious community in the 21st century.



View all my reviews

The Novice's Tale, by Margaret Frazer: a review in brief.

The coziest of cozies, since it's set in a cloistered convent, yet this book manages to touch on Chaucer, Henry VI, the laws of entail and of marriage.

It also introduces an unique detective, Dame Frevisse, the hosteler (guest accommodator) at the convent of St. Frideswide's, who is good not because she is innocent of sin but because she knows herself.  I am looking forward to reading more of this series.

We First, by Simon Mainwaring: a review

 

There's a lot to like about Simon Mainwaring's We First. This former advertising executive pulls no punches. He tells his former clients that the way they do business has got to go.

Capitalism, Mainwaring points out, is flawed as a system. It leads to class rule, booms, bubbles, and busts. It promotes selfishness and greed. It sacrifices workers and their families and despoils the environment in a short-sighted grab for immediate profit. Capitalism is not sustainable, neither economically, environmentally, or ethically.

I agree with all of this, and I believe that if every reform Mainwaring proposed were put into practice, we would all be better off. Yet I finish the book profoundly dissatisfied.

This book proposes that:

1. By changing their mentality, corporate capitalists will be able to make "purpose" as important as profit.
2. If they won't change on their own, social media-savvy consumers will be able to compel them.
3. The changes they make will create the world we want to live in (and avoid the hell we're headed toward).

But none of these is true.

1. The profit motive is not a matter of mentality. It is the engine of capitalism. Yes, it may just be possible for global corporations to swear off some of the pollution and exploitation that has given them such extraordinary profits in the last thirty years--and it would be a good thing if they did. Always, though, they will feel the pressure to grow or die. Inexorably, they will be forced to push products at the expense of people and the planet. Only a countervailing pressure will force them to put "we first."

2. Consumers on social media can embarrass corporations. We can cost them money by ruining their reputation and reducing their sales. And we should. But this is not enough to compel real change. Mainwaring himself cites the danger of "greenwashing": businesses adopting feel-good policies that don't ultimately change their environmental impact (or simply donating to good causes to buy themselves a better reputation). Corporate PR has kept many the company profitable despite its terrible labor practices. Consumers can add to, but not replace, government regulation, social activism, and labor unions. (Mainwaring never mentions unions. It is a telling silence.)

3. Even if corporations make huge changes in the direction that Mainwaring calls for--and it would be a good thing if they did--they would still be in charge. That means they'd make those changes on the schedule and in the way they find best--not what's best for the rest of us. It's not just corporate greed that's unsustainable. It's corporate power as well.

I give credit to the author for recognizing that capitalism is the problem. I fault him for his naivete in thinking capitalism can be the solution.

For Better Social Skills, A Little Chekhov? (NY Times)

As a confirmed reader, I felt smug when I read http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/i-know-how-youre-feeling-i-read-chekhov/?_r=0.  But is that a sign that my social skills have lapsed?

Quiet, the Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain: a review

One point Cain makes about introverts is that they often express themselves more fluently in writing. For proof, simply look at all the Goodreads reviews of this book. One after another, reviewers who identify themselves as introverts go on and on! So, I'm not going to summarize the book here, only to share some of my strong reactions to it.

1. I appreciate the author's taking the time to tell extroverts, too, how they can take advantage of their strengths and learn strategies from introverts to help them cope with their weaknesses. If she had only boosted introverts' self-esteem, we might have thought she was overcompensating. As it is, we can take her claim that these are different temperaments with different advantages and drawbacks more seriously.

2. I also appreciate her study of how the Extrovert Ideal doesn't reign in Asian cultures, and in fact, may hold Asian Americans back in mixed company. I wish she would look at Jews, too. Jewish women are allowed to be much more extroverted than WASP women, and Jewish men are prized for being more introverted (in the sense of thoughtful, persistent, and scholarly) than the general idea of masculinity would permit.

3. Cain gives us a thoughtful analysis of when introverts should "to thine own self be true" and when they should "smile and the world smiles with you."

For the rest, please read the book!

The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: a review

 
What is serendipity?  Is it stumbling upon something by a happy accident, or shrewd observation and deduction, Sherlock Holmes style?  Does it involve looking for something and finding something else, or coincidence occurring without any effort on the part of the finder?  Does it pertain to finding books and documents, or discovering facts and ideas?  Can it be taught, encouraged, solicited, and if so, through individual effort or through organizational structure?  Is it talent or pure luck, or a combination of the two?

Robert K. Merton and Elinor Barber chased down the word "serendipity" from its first use by Horace Walpole in 1754 through its use in scientific papers in the 1950's, when this book was begun.  Their answer is "All of the above."  At different times, people have used the word in all these different ways.  Serendipity clearly answered a need for a way to talk about the ways that we find out things when our rational plans and orderly methods would never bring them to light.  Because we still don't understand exactly how that happens, we use the word variously to express our reactions to it: surprise, amusement, disdain, wonder.

I am with the authors in appreciating serendipity.  I believe in planning, but that includes planning to improvise at appropriate moments.  Be prepared to be spontaneous!

Being mentally and morally prepared to act in the moment is a trait of character that anyone can cultivate.  It takes a particular kind of organization (whether it's a business, a lab, or a nonprofit) to welcome serendipity and learn from it.  That's the kind of place I'd like to work, and that's the kind of environment I'd like funders to support.  Thomas Szasz once wrote of "the seriousness of a child at play."  As a society, we need to loosen the reins and give a little play to our endeavors.  Imagine what might happen then!

Western Motel, by Wendy Drexler: a review

 

In bright detailed glimpses, Wendy Drexler shows us two landscapes: the Western landscape in which she grew up, and the terrain of her marriage, divorce, and falling in love again. 


My favorite section is the thread of poems entitled "Gas Stations, Drive-Ins, The Bright Motels."  My favorite single poem is "What Distance Brings." I know Wendy and her family personally, and other readers may close the book and think they do too.

Share or Die: Voices of the Get Lost Generation in the Age of Crisis (ed. Harris & Gorenflo)

 
This is really three books in one.  "Share or Die" is the theme of several essays in the book, and you will find inspirational stories about how people pool resources, from housing to knowledge, in order to live better than they would otherwise.  You'll also find how-to tips about educating yourself, choosing a roommate wisely, and starting worker co-ops and housing co-ops.  Implicit in these essays is a critique of consumption as a lifestyle and of capitalism as a system that demands consumption to survive.

Another set of essays focus more on the "Get Lost Generation," the Millennials or Generation Y, who came of age expecting that a college education would allow them to do it all, have it all, and change whatever discomforted them in the world they inherited.  Society fostered some of these expectations.  Others seem to have been mass delusions.  In any case, the Great Recession dashed a lot of hopes and made young people re-examine the value of a college education, a job, owning a home, marrying (since none of them have turned out as expected, at least since the Great Recession). 

If you are white and from a middle-class background and a member of this generation, you will probably find yourself or people you know portrayed in this book.  For a late Baby Boomer like me, it offers a chance to listen in to conversations and soliloquies I might not otherwise hear.  I do think a limitation of the book is that it doesn't solicit the voices of Black, Latino, and/or immigrant youth.  I have worked with people from those cohorts, and I think they would have a whole different set of concerns (and express shared concerns in a very different way).

The least developed set of essays in the book deal with the "age of crisis" we live in.  When I was in my twenties and attending graduate school, I provided personal care to an old leftist who had suffered a stroke.  One day, I told him that the undergraduates I taught didn't know about Vietnam or Watergate. "They have no sense of history!" I exclaimed.  "Neither do you," he retorted, and reeled off a series of important events from the first half of the twentieth century that I had barely heard of.

So, I am not in any position to blame the writers of this book for exaggerating the unique quality of the age they live in--but that is what they do.  There is no sense that protest began before Occupy Wall Street.  There are no references to the long history of cooperatives in this country, let alone Mondragon, in Spain.  And few of these writers consider that some of the wonderful experiments in collective living, collaborative consumption, and political activism they are engaged in might not survive when they need enough income to raise a child, or health insurance for themselves, or money and leisure to afford to take care of an aging parent.  (The essay "Get on the Lattice" by Ahlander and Kofman is a notable exception.)

We should all read this book--and share it with others.  Then, we should invite friends and strangers to a potluck dinner and discuss what it means to each of us.  That way, we can take up the challenge this book poses and carry it further.

Share of Mind, Share of Heart, by Sybil F. Stershic: a review

Sybil  Stershic wants you Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: the employees, volunteers, and Board members of your nonprofit organization.  In her new book, Share of Mind, Share of Heart, she explains the top two reasons why.

1. "Your service is your brand."  Think about it: there are a lot more points where people touch your organization than just the newsletters and emails you send them, or the social media you want them to see.  Every time a client or stakeholder walks up to your reception desk, calls on the phone, takes advantage of a service, attends an event, or volunteers for one of your programs, they are forming their impression of your agency.  That means that the people who represent your organization the most often are not the Executive Director, the Communications Director, the Development Director, or the Board chair.  They are the employees and volunteers who face the public every day.
2.  "Connection is the key." People who work at your agency for love or money must feel connected to the mission of the organization (and know how they are helping to move you forward). They also have to connect with your customers (or clients) to stay dedicated to a high level of customer care.  They want and need to connect with other volunteers, and with employees. Indeed, that may be the reason they came to work for you in the first place.  It certainly will be key to keeping them coming back for more.

Stershic calls this concept "internal marketing."  The term focuses  attention on the fact that employees, volunteers, and Board members are also customers, and they need to be motivated to keep buying what you're selling: the good name of your organization.

What happens when employees don't feel valued?  They disengage and leave the organization.  Or worse, they disengage and stay.

Don't let this happen to you! Share of Mind, Share of Heart is full of examples, tips, and "action plan starter notes."  The book is slim enough that you can read it through in a couple of hours, then go back and put the suggestions into practice that best fit the way your agency functions now.  That will help you make your organization a better place to work, improve your customer service, and at the same time, communicate to the world what you are all about.

The Body in the Piazza, by Katherine Hall Page: a review

When Dorothy Sayers finally got Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane to marry, in Busman's Honeymoon, she subtitled the book "A Love Story with Detective Interruptions."  I would call The Body in the Piazza a food and wine tour with detective interruptions.  I am much more of a connoisseur of love than of food and wine: for one thing, it's much easier to give the flavor of lovemaking in a few words.  That may be the reason that, although I found Katherine Hall Page gracious and lovely in person when she spoke at Stellina last month, I thought this book was slight. 

The mystery made sense, but since all the characters were not what they seemed, who cared about any of them?  And although I am not annoyed at Faith Fairchild, the sleuth, simply for knowing the designer clothing at a glance the way my wife is, I do find her a bit too, too Manhattan.  Supposedly she has been living for years in small-town Aleford, Massachusetts, as a pastor's wife, yet so little of New England has rubbed off on her.  She has style but no taste, knowledge but no depth. She has grown older but she hasn't matured. 

I will probably sample this series again, just as I will probably try out one of the recipes in the back of the book, but I am not in any hurry to do so.  I dislike the way reading about such an airy character makes me feel so stuffy.  Perhaps I should go back to reading about tragic characters who remind me that I have a happy life, instead?

My Recent Book Reviews about Communications

I'm learning a lot, and getting many good reminders about what I already know, by reading smart writers' books about Communications.  Here are the links to some that I recently reviewed:

The Nonprofit Marketing Guide 
http://dfischman.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-nonprofit-marketing-guide-by-kivi.html

Robin Hood Marketing 
http://dfischman.blogspot.com/2013/04/robin-hood-marketing-by-katya-andresen.html

Strategic Communications for Nonprofit Organizations
http://dfischman.blogspot.com/2013/04/strategic-communications-for-nonprofit.html

Switch
http://dfischman.blogspot.com/2013/02/switch-how-to-change-things-when-change.html

How to Find a Job on LinkedIn...
http://dfischman.blogspot.com/2013/01/how-to-find-job-on-linkedin-by-brad.html

Many of these authors, and other smart people, are giving good advice every day on Twitter.  Follow me @DennisFischman and check out my Communications list.