el dang reviewed For Times Such As These by Ariana Katz
Some good food for thought, but also somehow too much lecture and too much "exercise for the reader" at once
3 stars
I love the idea of this book, and I probably will continue referring to it each month, but I also found the execution a bit disappointing. The authors seem inconsistent on whether they're writing a 101 type introduction or an overview for people who just need some prompts and reminders.
The introduction tries to be a comprehensive survey of what we might concisely call modern social justice Judaism, but ends up being very long and kind of repetitive. It might be interesting for someone newer to that scene--might even have been revelatory for me 15 years ago--but it felt like well trodden ground to me.
The month by month description of festivals and rituals feels the most useful to me, though in this section I keep wanting more detail. The poems and illuminations that start each month in this section are also a delight.
There's a second month by month …
I love the idea of this book, and I probably will continue referring to it each month, but I also found the execution a bit disappointing. The authors seem inconsistent on whether they're writing a 101 type introduction or an overview for people who just need some prompts and reminders.
The introduction tries to be a comprehensive survey of what we might concisely call modern social justice Judaism, but ends up being very long and kind of repetitive. It might be interesting for someone newer to that scene--might even have been revelatory for me 15 years ago--but it felt like well trodden ground to me.
The month by month description of festivals and rituals feels the most useful to me, though in this section I keep wanting more detail. The poems and illuminations that start each month in this section are also a delight.
There's a second month by month section which briefly describes the month's Torah portions, which I was looking forward to but found the most frustrating. Time and time again it describes a parsha, mentions or alludes to how the text is problematic and must be wrestled with, but says nothing at all about how people do that wrestling. It feels like the opposite problem from the intro essay, and an echo of a general frustration I have with scriptures: without a framework for how to deal with the extremely problematic parts, I keep bouncing off trying to read it.