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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Tevi Troy</title>
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		<title>The Book of Life</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/tevi-troy/the-book-of-life/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-book-of-life</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Sep 2011 04:54:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Tevi Troy]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Two new books help in the search for meaning during this annual season of repentance and renewal.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/rosh.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-106923" title="rosh" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/rosh.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="214" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Reprinted from <a href="http://www.jewishideasdaily.com">JewishIdeasDaily.com</a>.</strong></p>
<p>The High Holy Days are traditionally a time for introspection. Even the  sturdiest soul must pause with trepidation over the more harrowing  passages in the somber liturgy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Who  shall live, and who shall die? Who in his time, and who not in his time?  Who by fire, and who by drowning? Wrestling with such questions is  nothing new in Judaism, but this year, by coincidence, two newly  published books, though vastly different in character, jointly aid in  the search for meaning that is the watchword of the season.</p>
<p>In another set of coincidences, both books are by laymen rather than  scholars or rabbis, and both laymen are active in American politics. The  first is Joseph Lieberman&#8217;s <em><a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/Gift-of-Rest/David-Klinghoffer/9781451606171">The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath</a></em>; the second is David Horowitz&#8217;s <em><a href="http://www.regnery.com/books/apointintime.html">A Point in Time: The Search for Redemption in This Life and the Next</a>.</em></p>
<p>Lieberman  is coming to the end of a tumultuous and reverberant political career  that saw him arrive in the U.S. Senate in 1988; run and lose as the  Democratic Vice Presidential candidate in the 2000 national election,  the closest in our lifetimes; be expelled by his own party for his  maverick views on foreign policy, in particular his steadfast support  for George W. Bush&#8217;s determination to stay the course in Iraq; return  victoriously to the Senate as an Independent in 2006; and receive  serious consideration as a potential GOP Vice Presidential candidate in  2008.</p>
<p>One is tempted to speculate on the connection between  Lieberman&#8217;s soul-trying peregrinations in the political wilderness and  the impulse to compose a book on that sheltered island of respite,  contemplation, and prayer that is the Jewish Sabbath. But he himself  draws no such connection, being content instead with a few tales of how  he has coped with the inevitable conflicts between the requirements of  Sabbath observance and his sometimes urgent legislative  responsibilities. Mostly, though, he focuses on the ultimate meaning of  the Sabbath in his own life as an Orthodox Jew and as an American.  Though produced with the assistance of David Klinghoffer, a professional  writer, <em>The Gift of Rest</em> is quintessentially Lieberman.   Conversational, humorous, and at the same time morally serious, it is  redolent of the spirit of a witty and well-educated man who has been  blessed with a strikingly equable temperament.</p>
<p>The book follows in  sequence the stages of the Sabbath itself, from prior preparations on  Friday afternoon all the way through to the concluding <em>Havdalah</em> service after sunset on Saturday. In each section Lieberman intersperses  information about the laws, rituals, and customs pertinent to that  aspect of the day with anecdotes about his own habits of celebrating it.  Each Friday, for example, he buys flowers for his wife, Hadassah;  during the Sabbath itself, he will not so much as wear a watch, lest he  be distracted by reminders of the scheduled rigidity of his work week.  In a chapter titled &#8220;Sunrise, Sunset: Intimacy, Human and Divine,&#8221; he  muses suggestively on the traditional injunction that husbands and wives  make a point of cohabiting on the Day of Rest.</p>
<p>A bit of a how-to  manual, the book also has consciously universal implications. At the end  of each chapter, Lieberman offers practical hints for how all persons,  Jew and Gentile alike, can bring a little more of the Sabbath into their  lives. As he writes at the outset, the Sabbath &#8220;is a gift from God that  I want to share with everyone who reads this book, in the hopes that  they will grow to love it as much as I do.&#8221; Lieberman loves it, clearly,  for itself alone and because it is a proven pathway to discovering the  purpose of life on earth. As a deliberately modest reflection on that  pathway, <em>The Gift of Rest</em> is worthy of its subject: a wise, measured, and joyful exercise.</p>
<p>A bracing if far less upbeat exercise awaits readers of David Horowitz&#8217;s <em><a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/productlist.html?key=DBERMFBVMXYH">A Point in Time</a>. </em>This  is the last in a trilogy of brief books on the theme of mortality, his  own included, that Horowitz has published in recent years, the earlier  two being <em>The End of Time</em> (2005) and <em>A Cracking of the Heart </em>(2009).  The author on display here may seem unrecognizable to followers of the  gifted and voluble polemicist who has battled mightily against the  pernicious influence of the American Left on American politics and  culture. But the same David Horowitz has composed <em>A Point in Time</em>,  a deeply thoughtful, at times lyrical meditation that is serious  without a hint of solemnity, and quietly but powerfully moving.</p>
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