In my dining room, I have two, huge, packed bookcases.
Not with comics, digests, sci-fi, or legal thrillers – those go on the additional shelves in the living room. The dining room is reserved for more serious, “important” fare.
There are at least seven different chumashim. Twelve versions of the Haggadah. A set of Shas. Commentaries from Rav Hirsch, Soloveichik. Ramban, Nechama Leibowitz, Lots of old editions of the Tradition Journal. And more.
All of these are evidence that we are a people that publish! And a people in search of wisdom.
But on the bottom right of those two towering bookcases there is what I have titled, in my own mind, “the sad shelf.” That shelf holds some of the newer additions to our family library, which I have been gradually adding to since my daughter Adira Rose, a”h, passed away, and I sat shiva for the first time.
That shelf represents a more desperate search for wisdom.
Why did this happen?
What do I do now?
Why?
And after reading all those sad pages in all those sad books that sit on that very sad shelf, the most profound, deepest wisdom I’ve learned is: we just don’t know.