Mark Gerson | St. Martin's Essentials | 2021

Reviewed by Stu Halpern

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“It took generations of Harvard social scientists to discover what the author of the Torah taught us in the ninth plague: that the determinant of happiness is relationships.” Mark Gerson’s The Telling is a charming and engaging take on the Passover Seder as a universally accessible lesson plan in human happiness. As its description of the plague of darkness makes clear, the volume, subtitled How Judaism’s Essential Book Reveals the Meaning of Life, affirms how Judaism’s ancient texts have long offered insights into how we can all live more joyfully. Gerson writes: If the problem were just physical darkness, the Torah would have used a broader term. It might have said that no man could see “another.” But this darkness produces a fear [in the Egyptians] that is so irrational, consuming and disorienting that it makes sustaining even the closest relationships impossible. Judaism’s emphasis on the home as key to individual flourishing receives extensive emphasis in The Telling, which Gerson bills as a guidebook to the greatest hits of Jewish thought. After all, the Seder touches upon education, history, dreams, happiness, memory, blessing, peoplehood, the meaning of time, the State of Israel, and more, all of which receive some attention in the book. Well-read in previous scholarship and traditional Jewish commentaries, Gerson cites psychological studies and novels alongside Hasidic masters and 20th-century rabbinic titans Norman Lamm and Joseph Soloveitchik. A representative couple of pages on the topic of how food at the Seder conveys collective Jewish memory cites a 2018 issue of the Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease, a 2013 study of family dynamics and music by a Cornell psychologist, a story about Pope Pius XII, a reference to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, and neuroanthropologist John Allen’s 2012 The Omnivorous Mind. While, as Gerson notes, “Those who wrote the Haggadah would not have known what is meant by a ‘remembrance bump’ or ‘evolutionary neuroscience,’... they somehow knew that sustaining a memory would be best carried by matzah and maror… dipping and desert, and lots of singing.” A passionate life-long learner and Jewish philanthropist, Gerson gears his book towards a wide audience and presumes no familiarity with Jewish textual learning. Blurbed by the former New York Giants running back Tiki Barber, the CEO of the Christian Broadcasting Network Gordon Robertson, and renowned American-Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi, The Telling is a wonderful primer for readers of all backgrounds to the Seder's sights, sounds, and tastes by a skilled and enthusiastic spokesman for Pesach’s eternal teachings. To read more Straus Center book reviews, click here. You can learn more about the Straus Center and sign up for our newsletter here. Be sure to also like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Instagram and connect with us on LinkedIn.