“I think Trump has made it really hard for people to read, period. He's made it hard for me anyway. Part of his evil is the way it constantly distracts us, constantly upends our horizon. To leave your computer for three hours now is to miss a year's worth of drama. This is programmatic and common to other autocratic regimes of our times.” PeopleThinkingWayYearsMadeHardThreeEvilHoursCommonMissingTrumpPeriodsDramaComputerMade ItOur TimeHorizonRegimes Author:Jonathan Raymond
“I grew up with very little religious training. Actually, like, none. I think what Jewishness I felt as a kid stemmed almost entirely from this atrocity in our family tree.” ThinkingKidsReligiousTreeTrainingOur Family Author:Jonathan Raymond
“We moved up to Oregon when I was eight, and I think the radical absence of Jewish life here might have strangely made me feel more Jewish. It's a contextual thing I guess.” ThinkingMovedAbsenceRadical Author:Jonathan Raymond
“As a book person and a movie person, I feel Jewish. My Dad was more Buddhist than anything, and on the West Coast I've often had the impression that Jews become Buddhists. I think, if anything, my religion has more to do with California consciousness, vibrations and energy. My wife isn't Jewish. There's nothing ceremonial going on at our house, I mean, occasionally a candle gets lit. But, definitely, my Judaism is an ongoing relationship, one that remains to be consummated.” ThinkingMeanBookHouseEnergyConsciousnessWifeDadMy DadJewMy WifeImpressionBuddhistCandleJudaismLit Author:Jonathan Raymond
“I think these large bureaucratic institutions are created in some way explicitly to inoculate anyone from actual responsibility, to create a much more diffuse and blameless kind of society.” ThinkingKindResponsibility Author:Jonathan Raymond
“I guess I will say, going back to the Judaism questions, there are mental reflexes or patterns that I think of as Jewish in my own feelings about mysticism and theology.Franz Kafka is someone I very much revere. If I believed in holy texts I'd go to him as a touchstone. Not that I read Kafka all the time at this point. In a way, this is what I most want to talk about and it's the hardest to talk about.” ThinkingFeelingsHolyTheologyMysticismJudaism Author:Jonathan Raymond
