Starting A Spiritual Life

Merle Feld is coming to Temple Israel on October 23. Go and hear her!

We have her A Spiritual Life in the library. I’ve only just started it, first by glancing at it backwards and reading the poems, which are easily seen and, even better, understandable by and meaningful to me, a person who doesn’t get most poetry. We seem to have come of age Jewishly at about the same time and our paths have overlapped. She has a delightful style of writing, using her own experiences to explain what was happening in the world around her.

I’m looking forward to reading and hearing more. I’ll share more next week, when I have gotten deeper into her book. Happy Holidays!

A 20th century biography

Memoirs of a Fortunate Jew: An Italian Story by Dan Vittorio Segre is a biography−not the sort of book I read a lot of−but this turns out to be a fascinating account of a man growing up as a Jewish Fascist in Italy and relocating to Palestine as a teenager. The book is filled with interesting insights: Since the Jews in Italy, living in ghettos, did not have the same feelings of local loyalty that most Italians did, they were more comfortable as “Italians” when the country became a single nation. Segre’s father was an Italian Fascist and local official and was protected by his neighbors during World War II. As an outsider in Palestine before it became Israel−as an Italian Jew he was neither Ashkenazic nor Sephardic, Segre saw the politics of nation-building there from a different perspective, although he is quick to admit that his youth and innocence may have made him not as aware as he might have been. He includes vignettes from the lives of people he met; some of them horrific. He did the translation himself, with help mentioned at the beginning of the book.