Spirit and Story

CLAL Book Review: The Wisdom of a Starry Night
by Sharon Marson

By Brad Hirschfield 

Since Abraham looked into the sky and was asked to imagine founding a people as numerous as the stars, and probably since long before, we have looked to the stars as a way of connecting to our deepest hopes and greatest aspirations. With the publication of her new book, The Wisdom of a Starry Night, Sharon Marson continues that tradition and helps her readers to do the same.

She combines images from a wide array of great artists with simple, yet profound questions evoked by the pictures in a way that invites us to reflect on life’s big questions–a dancing figure by Matisse asks us to consider when we feel liberated, a work by Escher begs us to consider what imprint we want to leave in the world. There is no better time to pick up this book than as we begin a new year, a new cycle of the Torah, and imagine that with all that has come before, we have an opportunity to renew ourselves and our world.

As the new “survival guides” for the holidays continue to crop up, and we see an endless supply of commentaries which promise to make the inherited traditions come alive for us, this slim volume has the capacity to help us come alive to ourselves. It provides a wonderful opportunity to explore our own answers to those questions which each of us must answer for ourselves. As importantly, it reminds us that we actually have those answers, or at least the beginnings of them, already within us.

This is one of those books that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike. It might be left near the dining room table where it could provide the initial spark to a family conversation that we all want to have, but may not know how to initiate. It might be left by a night table, where it could be used to end the occasional day with a focused reflection on what it is we really want out of life and how we go about getting it.

However you choose to enjoy this book, it does what so many books such as this one promise but do not often accomplish: it offers a probing set of questions with an accessible approach to answering them. It’s a delightful method honed through the author’s years of practice as a pre-school educator, and it promises rich rewards to readers of every age.

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