Shabbat Gathering: Badenheim 1939.

Gud Shabbos Khaveyrim, as is our custom, we will gather tonight at 5.45p ct to welcome Shabbat. These are the coordinates:

Zoom
Meeting ID: 883 8469 4181
Password: 822665
Phone: +1 312 626 6799

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Here we go.

The book group I belong to recently finished the novel, Badenheim 1939 by Aharon Appelfeld. It’s a chilling story of a group of Jews who are slowly but surely being processed for transportation to a camp. I highly recommend it.

The novel is set in the resort town of Badenheim and tracks how a disparate group of Jews manage the ever encroaching machinations of the town’s “Sanitation Department” as it takes a census of the Jewish residents ahead of deportation to Poland. It’s summer in Badenheim and the city is under the spell of its annual arts festival. The characters are a cross section of society, high ranking citizens all the way down to the friendly prostitutes that call Badenheim home for the season. The city’s docile residents greet the encroaching work of the Sanitation Department with a range of emotions, from wild self destruction at worse and hopes of a better life in Poland at best. A dark shadow looms over the reader as we know that the worse possible outcome is about to fall upon the characters we come to love.

For the most part, the characters in the novel are in denial about their impending fate and struggle with the inertia of trying to live their lives as they have become accustomed. Much of the novel reminds me of how I process the constant deluge of news raining down on us. For the most part, I think I’ve become inured to the cavalcade of horrors. My coping mechanism, as shaped by my social media feed, has been performative repulsion to laughing at how the news is a punchline for a late night host. The result is a dearth of direct action.

The characters of Badenheim 1939 act as if they are in a dream, or a nightmare. For me, reading the novel is a signal that it’s time to wake up and get busy with the work of meeting hate with love and confusion with clarity.

And may it be for all of us a blessing. And, if it is your custom, may you have an easy fast.

See you tonight!
Mit vareme grusn,
(With warm regards,)

All my love,
brian.

PS

Yom Kippur puts forgiveness on the calendar. Real repair doesn’t work that way. - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Apologies need to come from the heart, not the clock, writes a teacher at Hadar.

Jewish Telegraphic AgencyRabbi Matthew Anisfeld

A rabbi writes a book on why we need religion. Just don’t call it ‘self-help.’ - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Noa Kushner urges Jews to stop asking what religion can do for them — and start asking what it means to enter into a relationship with God.

Jewish Telegraphic AgencyAndrew Silow-Carroll

DuoYid

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