And eighteen days again

Little ol' Dovidl, looking for thing to make him go and post to his weblog, yep, dot's me. Yessirree. I say nothing about the situation in Israel, nor will I say anything about the current meltdown in the world's financial markets (except to say that the dollar bet that I had with my friend Howard from way back in the spring of '99 - looks I will be winning that bet - and the luscious dollar riding on it).

I'll talk about Chaim Potok's passing.

I never read any of his fiction, though The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev both sat on my parents' bookshelves. I've only read Wanderings, his literary history of the Jewish people. I read it so much when I was nine that my dad's paperback copy fell apart in the spine along three seams. Chaim Potok became a foil for my genial goyische friend Andy to prove his benevolent judeophilia and tweak me when I got tired of his relentless Puritan moralizing in our late-night coffee fueled bull sessions.

Chaim Potok is one of the writers whom I have wanted to draw into myself. He was on my list of people with whom I wanted to have lunch and dinner - a list that every year grows longer through discovery, and then shorter again through mortality.

Now I read the rest of Potok.