Vows and free will

Another insight from my husband:

God gave us free will. Why restrict it by taking oaths?

The reason that there is a ceremonial annulment of vows on the Judgement Day (Yom Kippur) once a year, is to restore our full free will.

A vow to God restricts our free will.  If there is a vow we've forgotten about or uttered unintentionally, it still leaves a mark on our spiritual being. If we, even unknowingly, break it - it is a sin. If we keep it, it restricts our full range of potential actions as a human being.

How appropriate to do the vows annulment process during the time of judgement, the determination of our fortune for the next year. To fairly determine our portion for the future year, our being has to be capable of full range of potential action. Annulment of vows frees us to do just that.

Who is a righteous person?

I am going to revive this blog; it is not going to be only book reviews (since the last post we had another baby... now I have three little ones and work full time, so time is a problem), but random things of depth that I come across in my daily life.

Recently my husband shared a profound idea with me.

The only person who is completely in control of his or her behavior is a righteous person ( tzaddik in Hebrew).

All the rest of us at least sometimes cannot completely control what ends up coming out of our mouths or our behavior.

This has to be understood properly. It doesn't mean that we can excuse every outburst by the upbringing we had, or justify our short fuse by having inherited it from a parent, or our mistreating a friend by a depression we are going though.

Even if we cannot at times control our behavior completely, we are still responsible for it. It is our responsibility to try to improve our self-control, and to work on our shortcomings. Moreover, it is our task in life.
It is our responsibility to overcome our upbringing, to rise above our negative traits we inherited in our genetic makeup, and to get treatment for that depression.

"Main Street" by Sinclair Lewis

This book is about the life of Carol, a young middle-class woman living in America in the beginning of the 20ieth century. But it is much more than a biography; the book takes a view of the society, life, death, convention and rebellion through the prism of one person's life.

To me, the book read like a bildungsroman, albeit an atypical one. The story starts with a heroine's graduation from college, briefly looking back at her history and college years. But throughout the novel Carol is transformed, she matures and makes peace with her life and situation.

To many readers, this end might have seen like a failure, a giving up on her part. Carol, a woman full of enthusiasm and new transformational ideas, refuses to conform to the boring, conventional and puritanical microcosm of the small town where her marriage brings her, Gopher Prarie Minnesota. She cannot accept, she cannot and will not conform. Her thoughts and behavior elicit certain admiration from a reader. It seems like nothing can curb her enthusiasm or change her disdain for life as usual in this small town.  At the same time, she is blinded to many good sides of life and people in Gopher Prarie. She gives up easily on her iniatives (which is not bad, since most of them are ill suited to the reality of her town), but she also easily gives up on people. In the later part of the novel, after her transformation and final return to Gopher Prarie, she is suprised to discover new (to her) sides of people she knew and dismissed all this time.  She is even blind to the nobility and goodness in her husband most of the time. Sure, she pays lip service to respecting his work, and she is briefly impressed by witnessing an amputation performed by him, but it doesn't seem to last in her mind, or to get through to the core of her being. Her perception of her husband's inferiority to her in things artsy and literary and "cultural" trumps it all... Her value system seems unbalanced; she values what she has, a certain bookish sophistication, the results of being a good student of humanities in college. But life, and its real values, seem to go over her head most of the time.

In most of the novel, she is very sympathetic, smart and compelling woman, who is suffering in her situation, but very immature. Her immaturity is not obvious, and maybe not obvious to any reader - she is a very compelling heroine. But in the end that is what the book is about. It is a growing-up story. Carol grew up late, as a married thirty-something mother. She had to "sow her wild oats" by taking an almost two-year break from her marriage and living alone with her son in Washington DC around the time of the end of the WW1. 

It is very difficult to write briefly about this book; the story is much more complex that this, and in the end Carol does keep her enthusiasm and spirit of innovation. This is her fundamental nature, that cannot and should not be changed. But she learns to temper it with compassion and understanding, and find real and helpful ways of applying her energy.

With this personality, one would think that this quality of enthusiasm and spirit would translate into Carol's personal and intimate life with her husband. However, I was suprised to realize that for most of the time her marriage was sexless. The author is never explicit about it, but just before Carol leaves for Washington, he mentions that she and her husband were lovers for the first time in many years. Her son was about 3 at the time, so it must have been about 3 years. Her husband mentions several times that she is "cold", and I now understand that it means cold to him physically. She even takes a separate bedroom, but this alone didn't necessarily signify to me the end of physical relationship between her and her husband. I wonder if her frustration with the town and with her life was not exacerbated by her being unfulfilled sexually, without even knowing about it. When I learned that Will, her husband, was cheating on her, it didn't impress me as wrong or immoral. I understood him and forgave him even before I could get upset. There aren't that many words in the novel describing the inside workings, thoughts and feelings of Carol's husband, Dr. Will Kennicot. But what we can learn about him from his actions, speaks volumes. He is consistently positive, strong, his love for his flighty wife never wavers, and he always knows what's important in life. He is wise, wiser than Carol at all times, even though he might not have read as many books as her.

What surprised me about the novel is how little attention was paid to Carol's pregnancies and the births of her children. Pregnancies are mentioned in passing, we learn about her second pregnancy two months before the baby is born: the author mentions that when she returned to Gopher Prarie in June "her second child was stirring within her". Being a woman myself, I know how central such experiences are to the woman. I find it hard to believe that these times didn't play a huge role in Carol's maturing and transformation. Especially that her husband was probably her obstetrician and attended her births (it is never mentioned in the novel, but its the only correct assumption),  the experience of giving birth in the presence of the father, the experience of becoming parents together and seeing her partner act as a father is another huge stage in the life of a woman. I think the author neglected to use these events in heroine's life as more significant plot points because he was a man and didn't understand the impact of motherhood on a woman. On the other hand, Carol being "cold" and not sexually awakened, these very intense physically-spiritual experiences of pregnancy and birth might not have touched her as much. Actually, this would be totally in character for her, and add depth to understanding how unusual and "far gone" she was. Her spirit was very alive, but in the world of abstract ideas helping abstract people. Too bad the novel ends after just hinting to us how Carol now accepts and enjoys life in Gopher Prarie. It would be fascinating to learn how she continued to grow and develop all her potential.

"Vanity Fair" by W.M. Thakeray

It took me a very long time to read this book. I started it a long time ago, reading it on my PDA, and read it in spurts separated by sometimes weeks or even months.

This book follows the lives of several families and particularly two female heroines and their close relations during times of Napoleon in England. Amelia (Emmy) is a daughter of a wealthy merchant, and her school friend Rebecca is a daughter of a painter and a french dancer, but she has a lot of ambition and guile.

"Vanity Fair" is a good book, but it is not a great book. Its engaging, its easy to read and fun. However, I don't think it deserves a spot on the "100 best" book lists of all time. First thing that impressed me after I put the book down, is how unlikely and unrealistic the female characters are.

Amelia is a complete incarnation of femininity, or what was perceived as feminine in the author's time and age. She hasn't gotten a mean bone in her body, she is listless, perfectly patient, endlessly kind and kind of stupid and blind to certain things. I couldn't perceive her character as a person, couldn't feel fully for her. Even at the end of the novel, when she repents and sends her patient and devoted pursuer of 15 years, William Dobbin, a letter, it is most likely dictated by her repentant and loving soul, inclined to blame itself for everything and sacrifice herself for everybody. The novelist never explains what drove her to write it, but it was likely the same feeling of needing to provide a safe and prosperous life to her child, as drove her to another uncharacteristic act - one of the only two acts this woman really performed in her life - giving her son to her father-in-law to raise when she was destitute.

Rebecca on the other hand is evil itself, clothed in the pretty and soft and vile and deceptive body of a young attractive woman. This is another extreme of the take on a female nature in a patriarchal society - woman as either a pure Madonna or an evil Lilith. Rebecca is Lilith. Never when the author is describing her thoughts or actions we get an indication that she has any soul, love, or feeling in her. Sometimes the author says something like "she said it almost with a genuine feeling" or "it got as close to the real feeling for her as it could get", but we never know that she as able to experience human emotions.
Her character is written poorly; the end of the novel is not consistent with her portrayal at the beginning. I find it very hard to believe that a woman like her could become so broken and almost give up, and especially lose control so much as to engage in excessive drinking and gambling. This was probably a nod from the author to the moral authorities of the time, to show that evil doesn't go unpunished in the society. In the end, she doesn't really give up, trying again by leeching off Amelia's naive and pliable brother, Jos, and eventially driving him into the grave.

Male characters are much more complex, varied and true. Both Amelia's broken father and his rival are portrayed with a rich palette of emotion; the first inspires pity and respect, the second, even in his most despicable moments, doesn't evoke only hatred. They are neither good or evil, they are both, like all real people are. Rebecca's husband's portrayal is especially impressive. The author is able to convincingly depict a minor character's evolution through life, from youth to maturity, and showcase his goodness deeply hidden inside.

The author is capable of writing good stories, portraying complex characters, but his narrow view of women, probably totally justifiable for a male of his time and place, makes this book fall from the "best" list for me.

progressing in the reading of "Piligrim's progress"

The story is a long parable. It is a moral tale of a man who receives divine revelation, that his city (aptly named the City of Destruction) will be destroyed for its sins, and he must leave and go to a place close to G-d, heaven or otherwordly place. This recalls famous biblical stories of Lot and that of Jonah. Only Lot fled with his wife, and our hero here (Christian) must go alone because his family laughs at him and they don't wish to follow him; in the end he doesn't seem to insist too much.

The narrative continues to be saturated with quotes from the Christian Bible, especially densely in the beginning of the book. The names of the cities, places and people are descriptive of the lesson that they are supposed to convey: Mr Worldly Wiseman, Mr. Legality, the Slough of Despond... This makes reading this book easier, because lessons it is trying to teach and its view of christian morality are foreign to me and not easily guessed at or understood. 

I am trying to derive the values and read meaning into allegories of the book's images. The Slough of Despond is located almost next to the little wicket gate leading to the holy place where Christian journeys, symbolizing that base and dirty exists next to holy and elevated in this world; and also that temptation and obstructions are likely to hinder one when the goal is so close... 

What puzzled me was that some things and values that are considered positive in our society, in the author's time are not necessarily so. For example, Mr. Legality and Mr. Civility are portrayed as powerless and at best empty and foolish, at worst evil and plotting...

The piligrim is asked to singlemindedly pursue his goal, follow the teaching of Evangelist, without giving in to reason and logical thinking. He severely regrets his "error" of almost following the advice of Mr. Worldly Wiseman, that temporarily diverts him from his goal, when I, the modern reader, can find no fault or wrong with this advice. The only thing "wrong" with it is that it contradicts the initial direction of Evangelist. Evangelist's words though caused the Piligrim to abandon his family, and part of Mr. Worldly Wiseman's advice is that Christian will be able to reunite with his family. When repentant Christian laments his taking Worldly's advice to heart to Evangelist, who steps in to "rescue" him, he renounces his family again. 

It seems that the prerequisite for attaining holiness and following the right way is separation from all the things of this world - family, physical comforts and needs, sometimes even reason and logic... Mr. Worldly Wiseman's only fault is holding things of this world and its order in high esteem, as even the Evangelist explains. 

to be continued... 

John Bunyon, The Piligrim's Progress, starting to read

Today I started reading John Bunyon's "The Piligrim's Progress".

The author's introduction to it is lengthy, and in a form of a poem. I think it is more than just an introduction,  but a separate (and beautiful!) work in itself. I truly enjoyed reading it, despite the archaic language - a true test of a classic, a work that stands the test of time and is able to engross and touch a reader of any place, age, generation... 

The rhymes are flowing and easy, natural. The language sophisticated,  the meaning is deep and the logic is very clever. A great mind of an author really shines through this poem. 

But enough about beauty. The poem is an argument with an invisible opponent, or a small group of opponents, who would not want the author's work (being introduced) to be published. Even though I haven't studied the author's time and life, it is easy to see that this is an unconventional work of literature for the time, breaking some unwritten rules of good and proper writing, or even taboos.  I am starting to like this author, who is evidently a revolutionary in his time. In justifying the value of this tale, the author brings to his side arguments weighted with biblical references and comparisons, which in middle ages, when the work was written, were probably the gravest arguments in existence. Since I peaked a little beyond the introduction, I see that these references foreshadow what is to come... the work quotes the holy writings almost in every line..  

Well, the author convinced me. I was very eager to dig into the book itself, or shall I say, the second masterpiece contained in this volume. 

And in the end, I will quote some of the last lines of the beautiful introductory poem... It will convince anybody to read ahead!

"Dost thou love picking meat? Or wouldst thou see

A man in clouds, and hear him speak to thee?

Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep?

Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep?

Wouldest thou lose thyself and catch no harm,

And find thyself again without a charm?

Wouldst read thyself, and read thou knowest not what,

And yet know whether thou art blest or not,

By reading the same lines? Oh, then come hither,

And lay my book, thy head, and heart together."

My reading plan

I have collected and combined a few of "100 best novels/books" lists, and put the results here

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pgzsjenN7IBcfmQQnXUnASg

The very front tab lists all the books that repeat in all the lists more than once. I will be reading through it, skipping the books I already read, and blogging here about my progress (among other things).