The Buck and Mike Blog

My favorite author, Kurt Vonnegut, died yesterday at 84. My favorite high school English teacher, Alma Anthony, introduced many of us to Vonnegut and we were enraptured. I believe the first Vonnegut book we read was Cat’s Cradle, still one of my favorites. (A year ago, I bought and read it again, and rediscovered what was inside.) Most recently I read his book A Man Without A Country, recommended to me by my friend Eljay. (She was my girlfriend in high school more than 40 years ago, and we still e-mail each other from time to time.) I highly recommend you read that book. It’s not a novel, but more of a commentary on life in America. Other Vonnegut favorites of mine: Player Piano, the short story collection Welcome to the Monkey House, the classics Slaughterhouse Five and Sirens of Titan, the brilliant Mother Night, and the play Happy Birthday, Wanda June. (I know Vonnegut said later that he didn’t like Wanda June, but some of the ideas in it were brilliant nonetheless, particularly the notion that older people play shuffleboard because they are being prepared for the afterlife, where shuffleboard is the all-consuming pastime.) Adieu, Mr. Vonnegut. And thank you, Alma, for giving Vonnegut to us.

Passover (פֶּסַח - pronounced Pesach) begins at sundown tonight. This eight day observance celebrates liberation from “The Narrow Place” (מִצְרַיִם - pronounced Mitzrayim, the Hebrew name for Egypt) — but is also a solemn time of mourning the deaths of the Egyptians that occurred during our liberation. Passover is a difficult time for me — I wrote about that before, here. This year, I will let Pesach begin with an excerpt from a very moving post on the Radical Torah blog, and I urge you to read the full post by Alana Suskin:

We are used to thinking of scholars as rather dry people, alone in their hidey-holes, poring away at some arcane bit which can’t possibly have any relevance to one’s life. And it’s true that some are – but that’s not the Jewish tradition. The Jewish tradition of scholarship is, for one [thing], not for the elite. It’s for everyone. That’s why the Talmud requires a scholar to live only in a place where there is a teacher for the young. That’s why Jews were one of the first cultures with public education.

To study is shmirat hanefesh – guarding one’s soul. For the soul is not something which need[s] no tending. It is a gift, but a gift of a very special kind, like the pitch pines of Louisiana, which require fire to reseed itself. It must be burnt to the ground, and yet doing so, it never “goes out.” In order to grow, to see the sunshine, one must light a fresh fire, to release new seeds and begin new growth.

Passover, Radical Torah