If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen the cover reveal for the UK version of ON OUR BEST BEHAVIOUR—out on 5/23 in the UK, and one week later in Australia/New Zealand from the kind folks at Bloomsbury. A totally different take! You can pre-order here, or wherever you get your books. Meanwhile, if you haven’t yet ordered ON OUR BEST BEHAVIOR (5/23), please do—we’re closing in on the one month countdown, and boy do pre-orders count! I’m always a fan of people ordering through their favorite local bookstore, but if you want a signed copy, please order through mine: The wonderful Diesel Books. They are responsible for tracking down most of the books in my bibliography (plus so many more, including The Sabbath, the book that’s the subject of this newsletter). They’re too polite to admit it, but they have to be confused by my reading proclivities. (I don’t really drink, but sending them “will you please order?” Sending emails is my version of drunk shopping—I’m always surprised when I go to pick my books up.)
Now on to Resacralizing Saturdays…
It will surprise exactly zero people, but when I hear a name more than once in a short span of time, I pick up the thread. And the name I kept hearing—from the mouths of Krista Tippett, Ezra Klein, Rabbi Steve Leder, and Estelle Frankel—was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), a professor of Jewish ethics and mysticism at New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary.
Heschel maintained that religious ideals are universal truths, the dominion of no specific religion—and that Judaism called for social activism. Martin Luther King Jr. called Heschel a “truly great prophet,” and the two worked together closely in the Civil Rights movement. (Including walking in the Selma to Montgomery march, see below.)
Most of Heschel’s family was murdered by the Nazis. He arrived in New York City in 1940, thanks to the intervention of Julian Morgenstern, an American Rabbi, who helped a dozen scholars escape Europe—and possibly another Rabbi named Alexander Guttman, “who secretly re-wrote [Heschel’s] ordination certificate to meet American visa requirements.”
I want to write about Heschel and the Sabbath, but a quick detour here to brag about my friend, Anna Winger, the creator of Unorthodox and the just-released Transatlantic on Netflix. (Fun fact: Anna is convinced that my dad—a South African Jew who settled in Montana via the Mayo Clinic—had to have been a Freedom Fighter during apartheid because of his perfect Montana cowboy/doctor cover story.) I watched Transatlantic last week and cried through the whole limited series. It’s based on the true story of Varian Fry, an American journalist, who together with American socialite Mary-Jayne Golde, the German Jewish economist Albert Hirschman, and others, rescued 2,000 Jewish and anti-Nazi artists and intellectuals, including Marc Chagall, Hannah Arendt, and Max Ernst from Nazi-occupied France.
One of the quieter heroes in Transantlantic is Hiram Bingham IV, whose father was the first American to explore Machu Pichu and whose mother was the one of the heirs to the Tiffany fortune. Played in the series by Luke Thompson (of Bridgerton fame), Hiram was the only friend to Jews in the American embassy in Marseilles, and issued thousands of visas to save lives against direct orders from the U.S. government not to—in 1941, he was removed from Marseilles by the State department and eventually relocated to South America. The show, sadly and accurately, depicts how loath America was to engage in the war at first—and our lack of compassion as a country for harboring refugees, including children.
Here’s the remarkable thing: Bingham didn’t tell anyone about his heroic acts. After his death in 1988, his family discovered documents hidden in the wall of his office, detailing his efforts in Marseille. Posthumously, he’s been honored by the ADL, the United Nations, and Israel. He received a “Constructive Dissent” award from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2002 and has been featured on a postage stamp.
Would we all do the same if we were ever in that position. May we all “constructively dissent.” And may our country begin letting in more refugees and immigrants. America has benefited greatly by their presence over the decades—and I’m not just talking about intellectual refugees like Heschel (Vicky also sought asylum in the United States).
I’m early in my journey with Heschel, but I started by reading The Sabbath. As a not very devout half-Jew, we did not observe the Sabbath when I was growing up—nor did we do Shabbat dinner on Friday nights. I always assumed that “real” Jews spent all of Saturday at the Synagogue, in prayer, which seemed not fun, but in recent years, I’ve come to understand that I was wrong. Yes, many Jews go to Synagogue, but the point of the day is rest. You are not allowed to work. (Or, if you are Orthodox, kindle fire [or use electricity], use transportation outside your own feet, etc.)
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