Heart of the Stranger

 There are teachers, clergy or others who have made a lasting impression on our lives.  They words or actions have made them seem like giants in our memories. Sometimes there are books that stand out in our memory .  Ones we recommend and quote long after we have closed the cover.

Angela Buchdahl is one of those people and her book, Heart of the Stranger is one of those books for me.  I have watched her conduct religious services at Central Synagogue in New York City through the magic of zoom and livestream. I have heard her sing, the voice of an angel.  I have heard her speak on occasion, incredible wisdom and feeling.  So I was interested to read her book.

This is a both an interesting look at her life and a powerful book in which she shares her thoughts and ideas. Growing up in an immigrant family coming to America from South Korea.  She was in many ways a minority in her Tacoma, Washington home.  She was raised Jewish, attending Temple Beth El in Tacoma, Washington, which her great-grandparents had assisted in founding a century before. 

Her mother, Sulja Yi Warnick,is a Korean buddhist and her father, Fredrick David Warnick, an Jewish American of Reform Ashkenazi decent.  At the age of 16 Angela becomes interested in the rabbinate. 

Interestingly, Angela was of such a strong character that each of the challenges in her life became incentives for her to conquer, push past and move ahead.  In this book she shares with her readers her insecurities, a feeling of not belonging and the set backs as she travels to Israel, teaches at Jewish summer camps and attends rabbinical school.

She pushed back against the negativity, she fought back against her own self doubts, she found mentors who encouraged her and she found support from her mother and father to continue until she became the first Asian woman rabbi to lead one of the largest most influential synagogues in the world.

This is the story of the making of a rabbi, but even more it is the story of a mother/daughter relationship.  A mother who puts family above all else. The story of finding yourself and the pride that brings you.  But not only yourself, but your mother and other family and friends who have believed in you.  

Buchdahl's personal journey is a part of what makes her resilient and empathetic to all, embracing the notion that we are all bound to a larger mission and the healing power of community.  

Within this book Buchdahl has written both a memoir and a spiritual guide.  Her enthusiastic and joyful personality has created meaningful, upbeat worship.  Her belief in the power of faith and gratitude makes her a voice to listen to as she does not shy away from difficult topics or conversations.  She has faced head on some of the hardest challenges in recent history.

Angela Buchdahl is an American reform rabbi. She was the first East Asian-American to be ordained as a rabbi, and the first East Asian-American to be ordained as a hazzan (cantor). In 2011 she was named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as one of America's "Most Influential Rabbis", and in 2012 by The Daily Beast as one of America's "Top 50 Rabbis". Buchdahl was recognized as one of the top five in The Forward's 2014 "Forward Fifty", a list of American Jews who had the most impact on the national scene in the previous year.

Happy New Years

The friendship of women from your past are sometimes so important that you work hard to keep those people in your life.  Sometimes those relationships are the ones you can pick up where you left off even after a long passage of time. Some women have a yearly reunion and others keep in touch randomly.  In Happy New Years the characters all keep in touch through letters. 

We meet Leah Zuckerman as she is finishing up at the Teachers College hoping with her fellow classmates to find work teaching school in Israel. Summoned to the principal's office, Leah is offered a position teaching in a school in the United States.  As she leaves Israel she decides the best way to stay in touch with her classmates will be through letter writing.  She proposes they all write a New Year's letter each Rosh Hashanah updating each other on their lives during the year.

Happy New Years by Maya Arad, is a very multi layered look at Leah Zuckerman's life, through her New Year letters.  Each year she writes to the group as a whole with news of her life, then adds an even more personal look at her life when she shares more information in her letter to Mira, the one friend in whom she confides the deeper darker secrets to.

Leah's life is full of ups and downs as she is the last of her group to get married and have children.  She goes through a number of job and career changes always in pursuit of the American dream.  We follow as Leah reinvents herself many times, going through marriage, divorce, relationships and work ups and downs in a life lived to the fullest.  

This is a story that covers a fifty year span of time and historic events both in the US and in Israel.  Leah experiences all that life in America has to offer and the consequences of all her choices.  Choosing in her letters to present a certain narrative, she struggles with her ability for reinvention and self-delusion.  She also struggles with the accepted norms of her time.  

She raises two sons, giving them everything she thinks they need to be successful. Then she struggles with her inability to control how their lives turnout.  Ari, who becomes a substance abuser and does not finish college. Yonatan, who is successful in business but not in love. 

As she writes her New Year's letters, putting a positive spin on her life, trying never to show jealousy about the news of her classmates and their successes, we see the author, Arad, showing us the more subtle story of women's behavior toward one another,  judging and misjudging each other. The competition between women more than the support of one another.

Women of a certain age, who grew up in the 1960s, will find so many references that are nostalgic.  In her letters she mentions making Yonatan and Ari fit in with their friends she buys them Levi's and Nike sneakers.  There will be many ideas and concepts that they will be able to relate to.  Leah writes to her friends about being invited to party where they are selling storage containers and later she starts selling these Tupperware containers herself at home parties. 

 Leah also writes about the difficulty of negotiating between motherhood, romance and work balance.  The book brings back for the reader memories of the prejudices and challenges of the time and how things have progressed as she lives into the 21 century.

The Last Death of the Year

 Sophie Hannah, who is the official Agatha Christie appointed author, has published her newest Hercule Poirot Mystery, The Last Death of the Year.

Hannah who has been writing her own mystery series was honored by the Christie family and estate to be the designated author to continue writing the Hercule Poirot  series of mysteries.  She has done a great job continuing to bring us the wonderful detective Poirot's life and murders that he continues to solve.  

This time Poirot and his friend, Police Investigator Edward Catchpool, are visiting a Greek Island for New Year's Eve in 1932.  Though Catchpool is enjoying swimming off the island of Lamperos after a difficult Christmas with his mother, this is not just a vacation, there will of course be a murder to solve.

Gathered on the island is a unusual group of guests.  This small community has come together to form a possible cult or religious group.  They are all attracted there by the idea that they will be forgiven any sins they have committed and do not have to reveal their past.

Using the theme of New Year resolutions the group decide to play a game after dinner writing their resolution for the new year, putting it in a bowl and having everyone guess who wrote which resolution.  

The most threatening resolution someone makes to perform "the last and first death of the year."  Now Poirot reveals to Catchpool why they were invited to this weekend party.  Someone's life had been threatened.  

Poirot and Catchpool must get to work and solve the last death of the year before anyone else can be killed.  They must investigate all the guests and also some of the members of the Lamperos community to see who could have been angry enough to commit murder.

An entertaining mystery though maybe not quite as intricate as Agatha Christie would have been.  

Ink Ribbon Red

Author Alex Pavesi has written a new mystery novel, Ink Ribbon Red.  

Using the mystery within a mystery theme, Pavesi keeps the reader guessing which is reality and which is fiction throughout the novel. The reader is introduced to six friends together for a weekend at a country house.  The friends have a web of thin strands that interconnect them to each other.  Each has a secret to protect. 

They come together for a yearly gathering this time to celebrate Anatol’s 30th birthday.  He introduces a game he invented called “Motive, Murder, Death”.  He asks each person to write a short story about one of the other friends committing a murder of someone else in the group.

This is the confusing part of the book, where the stories each character is writing are mixed in with what is happening between the characters at the get together.  The author purposely has blurred the lines between what is reality and what are the stories being created.  Using the unreliable narrative keeps the reader guessing until the end.