The Rabbi and His Famous Friends: Invite you to their table. Food for Thought, Character and Soul

by Philip M. Posner, Dick Sommers (Illustrations), Rollo Storey (Editor)

From President Lincoln's favorite almond vanilla cake, Rosalynn Carter's cheese rings, and a red, white, and blue raspberry pie to die for, the recipes have a decidedly American feel, but when you add a Mediterranean style suffed leg of lamb and Jewish favorites such as mandelbrot, a hard almond cookie, you get an eclectic and altogether international flare.

Rabbi Posner's "extraordinary ccokbook not only offers recipes to provide nourishment for the body, his highly imaginative ethical dialogues put forth many worthy ideas, ideals, and role models to give his readers food for thought as well. Building upon an honored Jewish practice, his book extends the principle of showing ethical virtues across both space and time." In a time of social and ideological polarization "reconnecting 'food talk' and 'soul talk' might just be the right recipe within the reach of us all to make the world a better place. - Rabbi Barry Kogan, Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Religious Thought, Hebrew Union College - JIR.

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 14, 2007

Reviews

[David Rubenstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last year I was doing the tourist thing in Santa Cruz. I was standing at the edge of the wharf, watching the sea lions jumping up onto the pylons to catch a nap. An elderly man on a bicycle came up to me. His bicycle had a basket of books. We got into a conversation, and it turns out he is a rabbi and an author, with some of his books for sale. I had never before been approached by an author, and I bought one of his books.

The idea behind this book is quite unique--at least for me. In each chapter he brings three or four famous people together. Some of them are alive, and some are historical figures. They discuss some aspect of ethics, and then the recipes for their favorite foods are listed. Their conversations are somewhat entertaining. The recipes are not at all my cup of tea--many of the recipes are for meat dishes, while I eat only plant-based foods.

Imagine getting together Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela and the prophet Amos in a room together, to talk about soul. Or imagine Bill and Hillary Clinton, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Joseph of the Bible together, to talk about forgiving. Or, how about Oprah Winfrey, Mr. Rogers, and Dr. Chuck Wall meeting to talk about kindness. These are examples of the meetings that take place. Unfortunately, this clever idea is squandered; the conversations are rather bland and maybe a bit Pollyanish. Ony briefly do a couple of characters start to get a bit feisty with each other.

The book is sort of fun at times, but it's really just the concept that is entertaining. The conversations themselves don't really catch my imagination. But, kudos to Rabbi Philip Posner for trying out a truly unique concept for a book!

[A Mac · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this work to be exceptionally creative. The inclusion of discussions of ethics with non-contemporaneous important figures was imaginative and thought-provoking. It highlighted common themes found between various figures in history and gave each character their own voice and perspective on the topic being discussed. Each chapter was also its own history lesson for me – there were several names I didn’t recognize, and I learned much about world history reading this work. The history as presented was also colored by the virtue that was the focus of that chapter, which created nice themes between seemingly unconnected historical events. As a bonus, many of the recipes look especially delicious and I’m excited to give them a try.

Unfortunately, there were numerous errors throughout the work. Many of them were largely related to punctuation so they didn’t affect the readability of the work much, but it could use another round of editing. There were also times when a character was quoting another person who was quoting another person, which made it a little unwieldy to keep track of exactly who was saying what, but this was just a minor thing that I disliked.

[Ada · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to try and give this book the old college try, but unfortunately I don’t think this book was quite ready for publication. I liked the philosophies of the book, and I think the set up was an interesting idea (a meeting of the minds of past and present influencers), but the stilted dialogue and prolific typos made it just unreadable.

[Hillary Chapman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bought this from the bicycle riding rabbi in Santa Cruz. Going to give it to my stepdaughter as a gift. Although this says Kindle Edition - I actually have the print version.