Rabbi James RosenbergAhad Ha’am (1856-1927), father of Cultural Zionism, begins his 1891 essay “Avar v’Atid”(“Past and Future”) by pointing out that all of us, in our individual identities, are a combination of our past and our future. More precisely, each of our “I’s” is formed by memories of things past and hopes and desires for the future.

Of course, as we move through life, the relative influence of past and future is constantly shifting: In our youth, when our storehouse of remembered experience is relatively limited, our future is a large and open book whose pages are filled with what seems to be limitless possibilities.

Rabbi James RosenbergThere is much to admire in Jack L. Schwartzwald’s “Nine Lives of Israel: A Nation’s History Through the Lives of Its Foremost Leaders” (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012).  The book is well researched and packs a wealth of information within its 204 pages of historical narrative plus an additional 38 pages of notes, bibliography and a serviceable index.

Rabbi James Rosenberg

The 84-year-old writer, Gunter Grass, winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature, is best known in the United States for his first novel, “The Tin Drum” (“Die Blechtrommel”), which drew considerable attention when it came out in 1959.

Rabbi James RosenbergMy wife Sandy and I have a close friend who, in his retirement, has become an accomplished and passionate genealogist. During the past year or two, he has devoted countless hours to tracking down hard-to-find nuggets of information needed for the creation of the Rosenberg-Mattison family tree.