Last week when Leslie mentioned she would blog about family trees, my mind immediately jumped to Tu B’Sh’vat, the new year of the trees. This week as I anticipate the weekly Torah reading, Yitro, that includes the Ten Commandments, I think about the command that enjoins us “Do not covet.” I’ve talked with a few people about this strange command that seems like thought control—not so different from Soviet “ideals.” It bothered the commentators too, and their consensus is that thought leads to action. If you covet, you might be led to theft which might lead you to murder. I consider coveting or desire to be neutral—neither inherently good nor bad. Like other human impulses, we can deploy it for good or for evil, it can be directed by our yetzer ha-tov (good inclination) or our yetzer ha-ra (evil inclination). Now you, dear reader, can judge how to categorize my desire and covetousness.
My coveting has nothing to do with the material possessions of Vera and Alisa, but, rather, I covet of their qualities which are much tougher to steal than amaterial possession. For example, I covet Vera and Alisa’s knowledge. And doesn’t this coveting move me to improve my own skill set? I covet their language ability. Vera and Alisa both speak grammatical, idiomatic, and beautifully enunciated English. Since both women now live in English speaking countries (Vera in the Caymans and Alisa in London), I assume their language abilities are even sharper.
In mid December I began to read a Hebrew novel my cousin Lisa gave me in Israel. Neuland by Eshkol Nevo is a fascinating tale of two Israeli millenials who meet while in South America. Both are searching for a missing piece of their lives. It took me about six weeks of daily reading to complete the novel. I am used to breezing through an English novel in a few days. There was a deliciousness to slow reading that surprised me. I could savor the story and ponder the thoughts and actions over a longer period of time. I enjoyed Nevo’s language although I had difficulties until I realized some of the Hebrew words that were tripping me up were Spanish words written in Hebrew. Hunting for their roots in the Hebrew-English dictionary was a fool’s errand. Bueno!
Not all of Vera and Alisa’s family and friends have been able to read Jewish Luck—the English is simply beyond their skill set. Vera and Alisa, on the other hand, were able to respond to our interview questions with eloquence and had no problem fact checking the book. This needling, coveting feeling has prompted me to work even harder to read more Hebrew books. So perhaps coveting is a motivational device not sanctioned by the Torah.
Aside from their language skills, both Vera and Alisa have developed a very keen knowledge of free markets and how to operate successfully within the economic constraints and freedoms that such a market offers. Considering their economic training was in Marxist economic theory, mastering an understanding of the capitalist market is quite an achievement.
I was a social studies teacher which means I had to study economics in college to attain my teaching license. I even attended continuing education classes in econ. But, Leslie and I certainly demonstrate no economic wisdom in the balance sheet of our book. Every time we entertain the notion of traveling to give a book talk, we fail to realize before the moment of booking the flight just how many books we have to sell in order to break even on our trip. Our new economic policy(NEP) is FLNM—For Love, Not Money --although we’d like to not dig ourselves too much deeper into debt! As we struggled last week to fill out our Minnesota sales tax form, we ended up on the doorstep of a very kind CPA, willing to save us from ourselves and help us try and parse all the sales tax minutiae for the different Minnesota communities. Somehow I don’t see Vera and Alisa in a parallel situation.
Meanwhile, Leslie and I will continue to enjoy all our conversations with readers about Jewish Luck. There’s a joy others can covet!