I just finished my first draft of my 74th book, entitled “Good Novels Can Improve Our Lives.” You may find the Introduction interesting.

Good novels, despite being fiction, can, and indeed should be read to improve our lives.

I am beginning this book exactly six months short of being 91. During these decades, I found that I could learn what I needed to learn to improve myself and help others do so from multiple sources, indeed from everything in this world and all people. I also found that learning is a never-ending endeavor.

There is a famous rabbinic teaching, “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.” It appears in Pirkei Avot (“Chapters of the Fathers,” often called the “Ethics of the Fathers”), Chapter 2, Mishnah 16. The Hebrew is: “Lo alecha hamlacha ligmor, v’lo ata ben chorin l’hivatel mimena.” Rabbi Tarfon said it.

The teaching focuses entirely on effort rather than outcome, relieves people of the pressure to solve a massive problem, and demands that they do their part without using the goal’s complexity as an excuse to do nothing.

More importantly, it tells us that people need to use their intelligence to learn and apply that learning to improve themselves and the rest of the world. The task of learning and using it never ends. We never reach the goal of knowing everything. But as Rabbi Tarfon states, we must never neglect to use our intelligence and learn.

In this book. I will stress that we can even learn from fiction. I will give eighteen examples from full-length books. But this truth can also be seen in short humorous tales.

For example, I. L. Peretz’s short novel If Not Higher (“Oyb Nisht Nokh Hekher”), first published in January 1900 and republished frequently in many books, is Peretz’s most beloved and enduring Yiddish short story. It is my favorite story.

Written as a Hasidic folk tale, it tells of the revered and loved Rebbe of Nemirov, whom his followers believe ascends to heaven during the season before the Jewish High Holy Days. A skeptical Lithuanian Jew decides to uncover the truth and secretly follows the rebbe. He discovers that the rabbi is not performing a miracle in the supernatural sense, but something much more profound. He disguised himself as a peasant, chopped wood, and brought warmth and comfort to a poor, sick widow. The story is short, simple, and deeply moving. Peretz uses gentle humor to contrast unquestioning belief with skepticism, yet he ultimately shows respect for both religion and reason. The skeptic’s investigation reveals that true holiness is found not in prayer but in acts of kindness........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)