For the Love of Judaism
Rabbi Michael Pont, Senior Rabbi at Marlboro Jewish Center, shares his message of love, inspiration and Torah.
For the Love of Judaism
What Louis Brandeis Knows
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Louis Brandeis was among the most prominent figures of his time. He was also the first Jewish person ever appointed to the Supreme Court. His life, his values and his Judaism offer important lessons which are detailed in a brand me childrens' book, What Louis Brandeis Knows by author Richard Michelson.
Richard is a return guest to the podcast, having previously been interviewed about his book Next Year at the White House. This conversation offers a look at a unique figure in American Jewish history from his childhood through his appointment to the Supreme Court and focuses on Brandeis's fight for social justice, emphasizing lessons about equality, privacy, and workers' rights that he learned from his father and uncle.
Shalom, I am Rabbi Michael Pont, and this is For the Love of Judaism, and today we have a returning guest, Richard Michelson. Richard's books have been listed among the best of the year by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and The New Yorker. He has received a National Jewish Book Award and two Sidney Taylor Book Award gold medals from the Association of Jewish Libraries. His titles include One of a Kind, The Language of Angels, As Good as Anybody, and Next Year in the White House. He is the author of Poetry Collections and the owner of R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Massachusetts. And check out everything that Rich does, all of his work at RichardMichelson.com. Rich, welcome back to the show. How are you today?
SPEAKER_01I'm doing well. Thank you for having me back, Rev. I uh I enjoyed my last time with you, and uh I uh looking forward to talking to your audience again.
SPEAKER_00That's right. Everyone, you might remember last season, uh Rich and Eric Lester and I chatted about his book Next Year in the White House about President Obama's staters, Passover staters in the White House. Um it's really a terrific book. That was a great interview, everybody. You can check that out in season four. Um but today we're talking about another one of Rich's books that came out fairly recently. And the title of the book is What Lewis Brandeis Knows. So, Rich, this is a provocative title. What did Brandeis Know? And why did you choose this title?
SPEAKER_01So this is a book, of course, about the very first Jewish Supreme Court justice uh before Brandeis sat on the court. Uh every previous Supreme Court justice, I forget how many I have written in the book, uh, I have to read my own book, but uh was white and Christian and male. Uh so it was quite a break from tradition and from history. And I wanted, especially in these times when the Supreme Court is very much in our day-to-day discussions and things that are going on here, uh, to highlight Brandeis, who I felt was so prescient about what the future would bring when he was on the court. Uh, he did so many good things, we can talk about that later, that we've come to accept really as just the way things should be, that they weren't before him. So, so first of all, he knows about uh he seemed to me to know what was coming down the future, and he did his best to try to create a better world. The title came about because uh there's a little phrase uh that his father used to use, which Brandeis took up on. Uh his father used to say, uh, any fool knows that everybody should be treated equally, regardless of their race, regardless of their religion, uh, etc. etc. And that was um kind of Brandeis grew up hearing that. Whenever, uh, you know, whenever there was a social injustice, his father would not be able to understand how people could treat people differently. He would say, any fool knows that that is uh not the right way to behave. Later, Brandeis would adopt that phrase of his own. So the working title of this book was What Any Fool Knows, Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Justice of the Supreme Court. So the title came about because that was my working title. But when it came time to publish the book, my editors, with their greater wisdom, uh realized that uh often the subtitle is left out and they didn't want it hitting the airwaves with the title What Any Fool Knows, which doesn't really give you a good sense of what's coming up or what the book's about. So that's when we kind of took out What Any Fool Knows and put in What Lewis Brandeis Knows. And the first words of the book, of course, uh are Lewis Brandeis Knows his family immigrated uh to escape prejudice overseas, and it goes on from there.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah, all right. So that makes sense. And I I kind of assumed that it was uh a reference to that catchphrase of his, any fool knows. And I was gonna ask you, because you know, that phrase comes up again, again in the book in his childhood and things that uh Brandeis himself says, you know, any fool knows, dot, dot, dot. And, you know, that happens like three or four times. And I was gonna ask you in your research, was that really something that that he heard, or was that just you know, sort of something like a mnemonic that you were using? But now you're saying that that's something that his dad and his grandfather really said. Any fool knows that you shouldn't do this or you should do that.
SPEAKER_01And so uh so let me here say I'm gonna split the middle down here. I spent a year researching this book, reading all Brandeis's Supreme Court rulings, his letters, his personal letters, and uh his letters, of course, to his father, his father wrote in German, which was his language. So while uh it's not, and I don't speak German, my wife does, I do not, so I was able to translate it myself in a way that I thought uh got the theme across, got the idea across of what his father uh would say to him uh in a way that would keep it interesting, you know, for for children, for adults, etc. Uh and then, of course, I was fortunate to find in one of Brandeis's later writings that he did say in one of his letters, any fool knows that this is how it should be. So uh so it worked out.
SPEAKER_00It worked out in the end. All right, that's terrific. So in the opening of the book, you describe Brandeis's childhood, including a debate between his mother and his uncle. Tell us about this debate and why is this important in understanding the man he would become.
SPEAKER_01Well, uh, I love that debate, actually. Uh Brandeis grew up with no uh with very little Jewish education. He was not sent to uh to synagogue, he did not get bar mitzfit. His his parents were Jewish, uh, and of course they uh came over from Prague when uh Jews were being targeted there because they wanted a better life, so they came over as immigrants. But uh his mother had no had no interest in religious rituals. She never denied her Judaism, uh, but she believed that the only thing important was to be a kind person, uh, to be a good person, to conduct yourself in the way that God would approve. But she didn't see that uh in her experience that rituals helped create a better Jew. In a sense, I grew up in a very similar way. Uh I was not Bar Mitzfit, I did not attend Hebrew school, uh, I did not go to synagogue until uh as an adult, when my wife decided to convert to Judaism against my wishes, uh, and uh opened up a world for me that I had previously shunned. Uh so with Brandeis, his entree was his uncle, his mother's brother, who was a lawyer. Brandeis revered him, uncle his his uncle Dembitz. And even though at Brandeis's home they would celebrate Christmas per se, they did not celebrate the Jewish holidays. They did not celebrate Christmas as a Christian holiday, but they had a cheer had a tree, you know, it was a cultural thing. But uh now and again Brandeis did visit his Uncle Demetz, who again who he revered, and uh Uncle Demetz was very uh religious and uh he was an Orthodox Jew who was practicing law and followed all the traditions. And at his home, Lewis would celebrate uh the Sabbath and light the candles uh and do things like that. So the brother and sister would argue, but they loved each other. You know, his uh his uncle would say, sure, the most important thing is to be a kind person, to be a good person, but that shouldn't preclude you from also following the rituals, which can help you become the person you want to become. So Lewis kind of went between those two things. Later, he would change his middle name from David to Dembitz in honor of his uncle. Uh but but he did not, you know, he did not grow up with a Jewish community. He, you know, that was not important to his parents. Uh and uh it really wasn't until much later in life, uh, after he was already a well-known uh lawyer throughout the country and r and um Jews loved him at the country because he uh had such a stately figure and was you know spoke out so well that he later became, in a sense, the face of Zionism in this country. That all happens after my book ends. We have a little bit in the end notes, but that was an important part of Brandeis's life, even though it came when he was in middle age.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. I mean, I'm totally biased. I'm I'm a rabbi, I'm on team Dembitz here. Um, you know, rituals just enhance everything in your life, and in my in my view, um, you know, and that's where you learn to be a better person. Um, you know, when we say blessings, we it just enhances our feelings of gratitude for everything that we have. Um, when we study, you know, the Torah, when we read from the Torah and synagogue, learn its values, which encourage us to be kind to the stranger and the widow and the orphan, um, and to be fair in our business practices. I mean, I could go on and on. I think that's great that you know, that Lewis revered his uncle and respected both of these important people in his life. I and I love that you included that this important detail in the book. Um, obviously, as you know, as a rabbi, as someone who loves Jewish ritual, that really resonated with me. And we know that um, you know, Lewis grew up, Louisville, Kentucky, of all places, seems to be a perfect place for you know for Louis Brandeis to grow up. Um Rich, I wanted to ask you, speaking of his uncle, tell us about what inspired Lewis uh to become a lawyer.
SPEAKER_01Well, his uncle had a lot to do with that, of course. Yes. Um, you know, it was his favorite uncle. He looked up to him, uh, but he had learned at his mother's and father's knee the uh about injustice uh in during the Civil War where he lived in Louisville, Kentucky. It was kind of torn between uh the Union uh and the South. You know, there were it was one of those states that were kind of caught in the middle. Uh so there were neighbors on either side of the issue. But uh but his parents were solidly uh pro-union and used to uh bring the soldiers, the union soldiers, food. Uh Lewis would uh accompany his mother at times, and there he would uh he was told that that it was not right for one person to ever own another person, and any fool knows that. So you have to uh you know fight for that for that. You he knew that his parents had escaped tyranny, uh, and that that wasn't right, and uh that was something that needed to be fought for. And then he saw his uncle doing what he saw as good work. That was an avenue for him to be able to make the changes in society that he sought, uh, that he saw growing up. Uh he wanted things to be fair, you know, and and this was throughout his life, through all his opinions. Uh he thought that uh the society was stacked against the common man. I mean, it's not very different than today's debates. Uh he went after the corporations, he went after big government, he was the first lawyer, seriously, uh, that accused the president of lying. Uh he accused President Taft when he was a lawyer. Uh this made huge headlines and waves. He was considered ungentlemanly. You did not accuse the president of lying at the time. It was unheard of. People did not believe that the president would be capable of lying. Uh look how far we've come. But uh, you know, Lewis always took the side of the common person, and that's how uh his uh run-ins with Taft happened, because he was, in a sense, defending a whistleblower. Taft had promised to save wild land uh for recreation, for the people. Uh, at the same time, he was selling that same land, even though he ran on the platform of saving it. Uh, he was selling it to corporations for mine. And a whistleblower came to Lewis and said, you know, this isn't right. Uh, and Lewis decided pro bono to take the case. Uh, and he had accused Taft of lying. Uh, as it turned out, the uh Justice Department at the time hadn't gotten the president's memo and had released a memo proving that Taft was indeed selling the land. Even with that evidence in hand, the Justice Department uh censored Brandeis and took the side of the president. And this was a case where the common citizens, the people that Brandeis had helped throughout his life, rose up in protest and started writing letters and calling their legislators. And even though legally Brandeis did not win the case, Taft was pressured to drop the sale and the land was saved for conservation. Those are things that people can do if there's enough of them. And Brandeis, you know, that was always his idea was to help the common people. And he also helped to fish and hike and things like that. So uh he was an environmentalist in many ways.
SPEAKER_00Right. And that idea of, you know, all Brandeis influenced and um the idea that they wrote letters that comes up later in the book where you know Woodrow Wilson, you know, nominates him for the Supreme Court, but it's going to be a tough road in the sem in the Senate because of his reputation. You know, thousands of people wrote letters to their senators to demand that Brandeis be appointed to the Supreme Court. And in the end, as you say in the book, he was appointed, you know, by a pretty clear majority.
SPEAKER_01It was the very first contentious Supreme Court appointment.
SPEAKER_00Oh, really?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, before that, everybody just kind of sailed in. And of course, before that, everybody was white, Christian, and male. Uh so um the rap against Brandeis certainly anti-Semitism was a huge of the political machine trying to keep him out. Even though he had graduated Harvard Law School before he did not have a college degree, but he uh wiggled his way into Harvard Law School and uh graduated with the highest grade point uh average in their history, and the youngest graduate and the only Jewish person uh in the class. Still, later on, uh it was the president of Harvard that um was a leader of the anti-Brandeis confirmation, uh, using every uh anti-Semitic slander uh that was developed at the time. His loyalties were divided, you know, with his loyalty be to Israel or to America. Uh he was a muckraker, he was a troublemaker. Uh so uh it's really amazing how the reverberations remain today.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I know that in the book, you know, you allude to that, give us a little sense of maybe the tension between Brandeis and the president of Harvard, because he almost didn't get into Harvard. They gave him a hard time because he he finished at the top of his class and was ready to graduate at 20, and Harvard had this rule that you couldn't graduate until you were 21. So Lewis, I mean, at Harvard, he was causing a bit of a stir as well. I guess maybe the president didn't like that.
SPEAKER_01So uh yeah, you know, again, he was he was a very principled person, uh, and he uh didn't understand what his age had to do with him graduating. He used the course in flying colors, and eventually they did have to change the rule.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I love, by the way, the artwork in the book is really terrific. It's very, very stark, really captures your attention.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's amazing. Stacey interested. Uh I hope people get a chance to uh visit your local bookstore, look online. His uh illustrations are fun and amazing. We're talking very seriously now about Brandeis and the book, but I want to make sure you know it's it's a fun read uh for children and adults. Uh you want to turn the page to see what happens next, and don't be uh afraid to to pick it up. Uh, I think it starts conversations in the home between uh the adults and the children. Uh, how do we create a fair society? What do we do? Uh, how do we make things better for people who don't have what we have?
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's right. You know, I bet Brandeis would have loved the book of Deuteronomy because that is the theme, that is one of the major themes of that book of the Torah, about creating a just and fair society uh for everyone. One of the art details that I love about uh this book is that uh when Lewis and his friend and partner Samuel Warren have their own law firm, there's a picture on one of the pages of the book, there's a picture of his uncle Dembitz hanging on the wall of his office. That nice little detail that his uncle inspired him. And so there's the picture of his uncle looking down on Lewis's work at the law firm. I just love I loved that attention to detail.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And that, of course, his uh his partner, one of the most famous rulings that Brandeis had is the right to privacy. Before Brandeis, that the right to privacy didn't exist. Uh now, you know, it just seems so obvious, even though uh in our current day uh there's not too much that's private. In fact, when Brandeis was on the court later and the police wanted to tap into uh the phones of to tap phones of criminals or supposed criminals, uh it was Brandeis who argued on the losing side that uh we should not allow this because we're setting a precedent. And in the future, who knows what electronic means the government will have to keep tabs on people, maybe even in your own homes. And of course, now our computers are watching us, our TVs are watching us. That's right. You know, he he he knew that well. But the right to privacy came about because um his partner, when he was getting married, even though this was Brandeis' best friend throughout his life and in law school, he was not invited to his wedding because his wife would not deign, was part of the Boston hierarchy, uh, would not deign to invite a Jewish person to the wedding. Yet when the paparazzai were taking pictures and there was some unflattering pictures of her taken, she asked her husband to engage Lewis to keep those pictures from being published in the newspaper. So she was more than happy to go to him when she needed uh a mind that was able to do this, but God forbid uh she should invite him to the wedding. Uh, Lewis did eventually uh come up with the light right to privacy, uh, which basically, and as I mentioned in the book, uh ironically, zapped him of his own privacy because it made him a famous lawyer on the front page of the newspapers. Uh, and then he had a hard time keeping his privacy.
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's right. And, you know, I mean, Lewis took the high road there, right? He could have certainly said, Well, you know, you snubbed me uh by not inviting me to the wedding of my best friend. So no way I'm gonna help you. Lewis did not do that. He argued the case and uh, as you said, cost him his own privacy. But that's it was never personal. He did what that's like you said the right thing to do. Yes, it was the right thing to do. He was principled. And he just did the right thing. There's just that in and of itself is a great lesson. It makes Lewis Brandis a great role model for all of us. And he was so, I mean, clairvoyant in terms of thinking about issues of privacy, because, you know, we're still struggling with that today. Certainly with the technology that we have, you know, facial recognition technology go on and on. You know, he was right to identify that as a serious issue worthy of our attention. You know, Brandeis was wildly successful, Rich, as you talk about in the book, um, but he still made plenty of time for family and he encouraged his staff to do the same. And here's one of those statements he told his staff, any fool knows that if you work 12 hours a day, you get less than eight hours of work done because your mind becomes too tired to think. And that same logic he would use to convince large corporations to treat their workers well and to improve working conditions and to, you know, limit the number of hours that they had to work in very difficult, you know, difficult conditions. Um and he didn't he did it by convincing them that this would be better for everyone, better for the company, and better for the workers. Happy workers are more efficient, and that's better for the bottom line. It's brilliant.
SPEAKER_01Many of the lawsuits, you know, uh many of the of the unions were composed uh at the time where when he was practicing, there were a lot of uh Jewish immigrants uh in uh you know working in unsafe conditions for long hours. Uh, and we can't ignore the fact that many of those factories were owned by Jews as well, the previous generation uh of Western U European Jews uh versus the new immigrants of Eastern European Lewis, however, wasn't he was able to convince some of the these changes, make some of these changes happen, because he was trusted by both the workers who he had fought for, but also some of the for some of the owners. Uh, you know, he understood as well that factories needed to make a profit and that there was a line that uh sometimes couldn't be crossed. Oftentimes when strikes were going on, he would be brought in by the negotiators on both sides because he was considered a fair and honest broker. Uh so you know, I think that's that's important. But a lot of the uh a lot of the rules we have today on working hours and and union rules and safety came about because of Brandeis.
SPEAKER_00That's fabulous. And it's like you said, I mean, things that we just sort of take for granted, that was not the case in Brandeis' time and made it so that now we would benefit and be able to take those things, you know, just basic, basic things that we would be able to take them granted thanks to his dedication and hard work and you know, controversial work. I mean, it did not endear him. It did not endear him to everyone, put it that way.
SPEAKER_01I mean, he he would be aghast today at things like Citizens United giving uh power to corporations and money in politics. Well, he spent a lot of time going after the railroad tycoons of his day, JP Morgan, etc. Uh, some of those cases uh would uh stretch on for uh five, ten years. Uh and uh tycoons had money, which they would use to disparage Brandeis in the newspapers because they often own the newspapers. Again, you know, not that different from today. So uh, you know, Lewis would say, geez, the money that they're spending on trying to demonize him, if they actually paid that to the workers, everybody. They would they would make more of a profit. Uh, you know, he's sort of so narrow-minded that they were spending money on fighting him rather than spending that money to make life fairer for everyone, in which case he felt their profits would improve because they would have happier workers. I mean, it kind of makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And we start certainly we still see that today. It's just a matter of the priorities of, you know, the parties involved. Sometimes the priorities seem seem out of whack. They don't seem to make sense, but um, you know, we're still trying to learn these valuable lessons.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, he was he he was also the first lawyer to work pro bono. Again, that is uh something that's assumed today. At one point, when he had made his money, uh he declared he would not turn away anyone who could not afford his fee if they were fighting for the social justice. And so he started working, oftentimes, most of the time, pro bono. Again, I think uh he would be astounded to see how quickly the law firms today have uh bowed to the uh executive branch and to see lawyers working pro bono for you know for the president, for the executive branch, as opposed to the whole point of pro bono for him was to work for the people who couldn't afford something, not to be on the side of power.
SPEAKER_00That's interesting. Yeah, there's there's a real bitter irony there. That's that's well said, Rich. Rich, tell us about um Lewis's first case before the Supreme Court.
SPEAKER_01Well, uh, so he uh he did argue before the Supreme Court, and there was a case, I think it was Muller versus Oregon, uh, where Oregon had had a rule that women could only work 10 hours a day in the factories. And this was challenged by the factory owners because this was in most of the country you could work people much longer. Lewis uh gathered facts and studies, he always was uh reading and compiling things to prove, again, that if women would work more than 10 hours a day, and and the suit was about women, at the time it would have been uh considered totally crazy to uh restrict men's working hours, although later on in his career, Lewis did attack that as well. He wasn't foolish, he understood that he could only do step by step what he could do. So uh he gathered all these facts and proofs and opinions that uh after 10 hours uh women were more prone to injury with the machines, um, there were more sickness, etc. And uh he argued this before the Supreme Court in uh and and brought hundreds of pages of proof. That became known again as the Brandeis Brief. This was not something that was, it's so hard to understand, that was generally done before Brandeis. Uh lawyers didn't bring uh facts and proofs when they were arguing their case. They generally uh used general, uh, you know, the the idea was that everybody kind of was on the same side, and uh and it was weird to see somebody who actually could refute by having studies, social studies, medical studies, etc. And this became known as the Brandeis Brief, which was then uh lawyers all over the country started showing up with facts and figures and calling them Brandeis Briefs in honor of Lewis. Eventually, the judges, the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, and uh that started uh throughout the country uh people being bringing suits uh when women were were working 12, 14 hours a day. Uh let me say, however, that Brandeis wasn't above using stereotypes in his arguments. If you actually read some of his arguments today, they would uh be very odd. Uh he found medical opinions that because women had more water in their blood than men, they were not as strong and could not could not work as many hours. Uh-huh. He argued that uh when women come home from from work, they still have to clean the house and cook dinner and take care of the kids. Therefore, their day of work was longer than men's days of work because after 10 hours men could go to the bars and drink and go fishing, etc., etc. So so those were tropes which worked at the time. Uh it's hard to know how much Lewis believed and didn't believe himself. He was a creature of his times in some ways, although he was originally against women's right to vote and to and to suffrage, but he soon changed his opinion and said that from talking to women and discussing things, he realized that they were, in fact, as smart as men and their opinions were as valuable, and he became a huge supporter of the suffrage movement uh through most of his Supreme Court jersey.
SPEAKER_00That's terrific. Wow, there's a lot, there's a lot there. I'm just thinking about it, you know. Uh I mean, yeah, the stereotypes about women, but I mean, let's face it, I mean, it's still true, not as true today as it was about the you know, strong gender divide in terms of, you know, work at the home, but it is still true, at least to an extent, uh, maybe even to a large extent.
SPEAKER_01Um and I I should say, I should also say that while Lewis was arguing uh the case that women, of course, had to come home and do all this work and men didn't, et cetera, he was in his own household very much an equal partner. Uh he s made sure, you know, he released his staff after eight-hour days so that they could go home. He would go home and uh take the his daughters, uh, you know, he he would spend his time with his daughters. He would do a lot of work that at the time was considered women's work. And when other lawyers or business people visited his home, they were often astounded that Lewis was doing chores that were not typically men's chores. So uh so he argued one thing in court, but in his home, he was very much hands-on uh with the children, with the cooking, with the cleaning. So we're all a bundle of contradictions.
SPEAKER_00It's just another way that he was way ahead of his time. I mean, Rich, this book is just is just so needed. It's it's just a terrific book in so many ways. Um, I love the notes at the end of the book that, you know, pictures of of Brandeis and talking about the major milestones that he that he reached and such. How would you, in just a couple of sentences, how would you sum up Brandeis's legacy?
SPEAKER_01Oh well, it's uh I I kind of summed it up, uh, I think at the end of the book. I I should probably read it, but I won't. Again, without Brandeis, so many of the rights that we take for granted today would not exist. Eight-hour working days would not exist. Right. Union, you know, the right for privacy would not exist. Uh, you know, uh safe working conditions within factories or, you know, places of work would not exist. Pro bono work in the legal profession would not. These were all things that he championed. And I should say, uh, you know, as later when he did become the face and the president of the American Zionist Society, he very much envisioned that and then this was before um before the Holocaust, you know, certainly things were coming, uh, but he started championing uh, you know, Israel's right to exist because uh not only did he feel Jews needed a safe place, and he proved again to be more than prescient in that way, but he also was a great supporter of that original wave of kibbutzniks, uh which he felt were living the life that he was trying to make happen here, where everybody chipped in and everybody did the work and everybody got the rewards, you know, the education was free, and uh and also I should say he did envision uh equal rights for the Arab citizens. He was very strong on that as well. Yeah. So um, while the country might not have lived up to his vision, it has not lived up to many people's visions, he also saw the necessity, and he was a proud Zionist to the end and did a lot at what before he adopted that viewpoint. Uh, American Zionism was really a ragtag group of very few people with no power or influence because the Jews who had come here were very much fearful of being tarred as not loyal to the United States. That's right, yes. They felt they had to choose. Lewis explained that being loyal to who you are does not mean that you're not loyal to the United States. He almost he compared it to rooting for your sports team.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01You can root for your favorite baseball team. That doesn't mean that at the same time we don't all come together as Americans.
SPEAKER_00That's right. That's right. Rich, you know, 2025 has been quite a year for you. This book about Brandeis, I think, came out in January. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_01Uh no, in fact, this just came out a month ago. Actually, this book just came out a month ago. Oh, wow. Uh I had a book come out in January called More Than Enough, uh, based on Maimonides Guide to Charitable Giving. Happy to come and talk to you about that. Oh my God.
SPEAKER_00You had a book that just came out um uh two days ago. That's right. So that's three books in 2025. Uh four, because you already interviewed me for the White House. Oh my god, presidential stage. I can't keep track, I can't keep up with you. So, but tell us about your latest book that just came out two days ago.
SPEAKER_01So I'll I'll do it in two sentences and then we'll come back and talk about it another time. So November 13th, I'm not sure when this is airing, but November 13th is the hundredth anniversary of Jewish Book Month, uh, which was started as Jewish Book Week in 1925. And it was started by Fanny Goldstein. Uh, and I have a new book called Fanny's Big Idea, which is about the beginnings of Jewish Book Week and also the Jewish Book Council. Uh, Fanny was the first president of the Jewish Book Council. I'm happy to say that the Jewish Book Council is using an illustration from this book as their hundredth anniversary poster. Be sent to JCC's and anybody connected with the Jewish Book Council and PJ Library, sending it to all their uh people. So we'll be talking about Fanny, who really was the originator and uh and also the first Jewish librarian to run a bridge library.
SPEAKER_00That's great. All right, so Rich, we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna follow back on on Maimonides, on Fanny Goldstein. I'm just gonna move in with you up in Massachusetts. You know, I'm gonna be your rabbi in residence, and we're gonna have to do uh a number of just super interviews. I want to end our conversation today by just reading a little piece of what you wrote. Like I think it's the second to last page of your book on Brandeis uh that I think really sums up who he was, and you know, I think is gonna leave us just feeling good and really wanting to go out and read this book. You know, you talk about his legacy and that he saw a lot of challenges in American society, the things that he that he fought for, but then you say, but Lewis was an optimist. He trusted people to find the truth when given the correct facts and expert opinions throughout his life continue to put his faith in education and common sense. May we all follow his lead and learn from our mistakes. May we, like Lewis Brandeis, leave the world a better place than we found it. I just, I just love those two little paragraphs. You know, just reminds us that yes, there are challenges in the world, but we can always work hard to improve them. That's a very Jewish way of looking at the world to emphasize the positive, to never give up, to partner with God to make the world the place it's supposed to be. Just those two paragraphs really inspire me, Rich. I want to thank you for that. I want to thank you for this conversation today.
SPEAKER_01Absolute pleasure. Uh, love uh, I love chatting with you and talking to your audience. And thank you so much for having me on.
SPEAKER_00All right, everybody. That's Rich Michelson. Rich, thank you so much. Everybody have a great day and peace out.