Gefen Publishing, 2009. 110pp.

Reviewed by Pnina Kass

Man’s inability to understand his fate, let alone accept it, is a recurring theme in all the arts. Whether it is Rodin’s “Thinker” pondering his fate, or the Biblical Job asking “why me?” and “what am I?” These are  questions common to all cultures. For many years a staple of the non-fiction market has been the book that promises to help the bewildered, the worried, the lonely, the dissatisfied, all those sensing that the acquired knowledge of our century still hasn’t answered this deep and troubling question. Many books, including bestsellers have barely scratched the surface and many, rightly so, have been dismissed as “pop psychology.” What has become more and more obvious, and troubling to many people, in an age of rapid technological advances is the vacuum in our personal lives. Human communication whether it be MySpace, Youtube, Twitter is to many only a synthetic reconstruction of the humane and the human.

In this slim volume, Dr. Kaplan has approached a fascinating group of thinkers, activists, and academics, and asked them to bring their particular insight to the problem of individual character and ethics. This veritable roundtable of theoreticians, businessmen, and religious  thinkers makes for a spirited read; Natan Sharansky side by side with Prof. Robert J.Aumann, followed by the scholar Rabbi Abraham Twerski – a wonderful and quite different approach to the usual “take” on this subject. A thoughtful read.