SUNDAY READING

INTO THE WILD:
There’s a great story about the film adaptation (written, directed, and sometimes shot, too) by Sean Penn of Jon Krakauer’s extraordinary 1996 book, Into the Wild, in today’s New York Times (Arts&Leisure section). A must-read for fans of Krakauer’s book (like Mr. Penn, when I first read the book in 1996 and got to the last page, I quickly turned back to the front and read it a second time), but also for those intrigued by the creative process, of how films ever get made, and about passion for storytelling. Click HERE to read the piece in the Sunday NYT.

HILLARY & JESUS:
The current issue of Mother Jones magazine has a fascinating examination (one of the best I’ve seen anywhere) of Hillary Clinton’s spirituality. To quote from the introduction:

For 15 years, Hillary Clinton has been part of a secretive religious group that seeks to bring Jesus back to Capitol Hill. Is she triangulating—or living her faith?

Hmmmmm. The piece, by Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet, delves into the theological foundations of Mrs. Clinton’s public faith and political style. Worth a read. Click HERE for the whole article.

THE DIAMOND CUTTER:

The New York Times Sunday Magazine has an intriguing (spiritual) profile of Israel’s richest man, a billionaire diamond mogul named Lev Leviev. Here’s the beginning:

When Lev Leviev’s first son, Shalom, was born in 1978, Leviev decided to circumcise the baby himself. He was only 22 years old. He had never studied the art of circumcision and never performed one. But he had seen it done. His father, Avner, had been an underground mohel in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbek Republic, at a time when performing any Jewish ritual act could get you in trouble with the Soviet authorities. The family had been in Israel for eight years. There were plenty of trained ritual mohelim in Tel Aviv. But Leviev regarded the act of circumcising his own son as both a religious duty and the fulfillment of a family tradition.

Avner Leviev advised his son to prepare by cutting chicken legs, but young Lev felt no need to practice. “I knew what I was doing,” he told me when I spoke to him recently at his office in Yahud, a suburb of Tel Aviv. “I was a diamond cutter, after all. It’s not all that different.” He extended his hands, palms down, for my inspection and smiled. “I’ve got steady hands.”

In the years since he introduced his son into Israel’s blood covenant with the almighty, Lev Leviev has performed more than a thousand ritual circumcisions — many on the sons of employees in his ever-expanding business empire. In those years, Leviev has gone from impoverished immigrant to the man who broke the De Beers international diamond cartel. His companies build vast shopping malls, housing projects, highways and railways throughout Israel, the former Soviet Union and Western Europe. He owns everything from diamond mines in Angola to a string of 7-Elevens in Texas. Recently he has been buying up iconic American properties, including the former New York Times Building in Manhattan for a reported $525 million.

Lev Leviev is probably Israel’s richest man. Forbes ranks him 210th among the world’s wealthiest people, with an estimated personal net worth of $4.1 billion. (People close to Leviev put that figure closer to $8 billion.) However much Leviev has, he is hungry for more. His business role model is Bill Gates, whom he says he hopes to eventually join in what he calls, in Russian-accented Hebrew, “the world’s starting 10.”

To read the full story, “The Missionary Mogul,” by Zev Chafets, click HERE.