Our New Read

Dari chose our book for February.  We will be reading The Chosen by Chaim Potok.  Here is a little description of what the book is about:

In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a Modern Orthodox Jew with an intellectual, Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together they negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered when Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S., loss, love, and the journey to adulthood. The intellectual and spiritual clashes between fathers, between each son and his own father, and between the two young men, provide a unique backdrop for this exploration of fathers, sons, faith, loyalty, and, ultimately, the power of love.

So, go to your local Library, borrow it from a friend, or if you feel like this is something you'd like to own you can purchase it on Amazon for $7.99 if you get the Mass Market Paperback edition, or $10.20 for the regular Paperback edition.  Happy reading!

Teaser Wednesday--The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

Rehnquist loved to sing, and he always led the caroling at the Court's annual Christmas party.  (Every year or so, a group of law clerks would write the chief justice an earnest letter complaining that the party created an atmosphere of exclusion for non-Christians; Rehnquist, who pointedly never adopted the term "holiday party," would reply by invititing the young lawyers, in effect, to get over it.)  In his early years on the Court, Rehnquist even sometimes wrote the sketches for the occassion.  In 1975, as Jeffrey Rosen first reported, he wrote a song about his least-favorite Supreme Court opinion, Miranda v. Arizona.  Sung to the tune of Angels from the Realms of Glory," it went: Liberals from the realms of theory should adorn our highest bench / Though to crooks they're always chary / At police misdeeds they blench."  The members of the chorus then fell to their knees and sang, "Save Miranda, save Miranda, save it from the Nixon Four."  Nixon's nominees were Warrent Burger, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, and of course, Rehnquist himself.

Debby's Tuesday Teaser

"Contrary to my legal training, I have come to realize that feelings are often more important than facts.  The law doesn't have much to do with feelings.  A feeling is rarely actionable or even admissible. But our most important decisions, though accompanied by a careful study of facts, are usually most immediately motivated by feelings.  Who we marry is an example.  What fact or facts, unaccompanied by feelings, would motivate that decision? 
Feelings are vital to the process of revelation.  In a talk, I listed eight purposes or functions of revelation.  They were testifying, prophesying, comforting, uplifting, informing, restraining, confirming, and impelling. Significantly, seven of these eight - all except informing - come as a feeling.  For example, we should always be prepared to act upon an impression when we "feel that it is right" (D&C 9:8), even though it is not justified by the facts."

From Life's Lessons Learned ~ Personal Reflections by Dallin H. Oaks