Personal Encounters: Stories, Ideas, Lessons from Jewish Life

It is strange how vividly early memories come back to one. And the older one gets, the more does the mind insist on recalling the past. When we are young, we live in the future, in dreams and hopes of what is to be. When we begin to feel the approach of old age, the process is reversed: Instead of living in the future, we instinctively relive the past. Nature (for the religionist, God) has fashioned human beings with many different sensibilities, with special inclinations manifest in various areas of life. Thus, some have special propensity for history, some for politics, sports, psychology, for human relations, for literature, for religion. We could of course, go on and on. My special inclination for years has been with biography and autobiography, for the lives and times of individual people. I have been seized with the desire to study and conjure with the successes and failures, the virtues and foibles of the single person.During my lengthy sojourn on this planet, when young and later as rabbi and university educator, I've obviously had many interactions with family members, as well as numerous personal encounters with interesting and often complicated people in special ways. I do believe that a lesson, a story, a useful idea can be gleaned from these encounters; these might help readers derive some insight into the multi-dimensional and fascinating character of the human condition.