Just Give Me a Minute: Insights from the Radio Rabbi, Joseph Potasnik, Wordsmithy, LLC ©2019, ISBN 978-1-935110-24-8, p. 250, $18.95 (also available in e-book format).
WINCHESTER, California – Award-winning Rabbi Joseph Potasnik is the “Radio Rabbi,” having been on the New York airways at 1010 WINS and 770 WABC since 1972, and starting in 1999, serving as Jewish Chaplain for the New York City Fire Department. In the introductory chapter of his newest book Just Give Me a Minute, Potasnik confesses that people ask him questions about anything and everything. In Just Give Me a Minute, Potasnik shares his insights and answers.
Just Give Me a Minute holds a brief but heartfelt autobiography, followed by a wonderful collection of hundreds of anecdotes, folk tales, reflections, and stories, including observations about life, Jewish and secular holidays, Israel, the Holocaust, and 9/11. These are blended with a sense of morality and compassion, coupled with humor and poignancy. The contents of Just Give Me a Minute, divided into thirteen chapters, are as relevant today as they were when told years, or even decades ago. For example:
In the Sermonettes chapter, Potasnik tells the story of the early 1900s Chicago Cubs baseball team in which Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance were the team’s stars, and coincidentally inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame together in 1946. Tinker and Evers, however, disliked each other, never speaking to one another off the field. Yet, to them, the team was all that mattered. Potasnik links this story to Washington. “It seems that the common good has been replaced by conflict. Without compromise, they prefer standing in front of a camera spewing ideology and hurting vulnerable Americans instead of sitting at a conference table to make America the republic that cares for all its people. We should tell our elected representatives that they are a team that is supposed to keep America balanced, in many ways, for the sake of the people.” His moral: liking someone is immaterial to the task at hand, “just listen to one another and your constituents and realize that like baseball, we play better when we play together.”
Just Give Me a Minute’s vignettes are more than just a static assortment of narratives to be read and dismissed, they are true thought starters, and Joseph Potasnik shines as a great communicator.
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Dr. Fred Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. His works include: The Comprehensive Jewish and Civil Calendars: 2001 to 2240; The Jewish Calendar: History and Inner Workings, Second Edition; and Sepher Yetzirah: The Book That Started Kabbalah, Revised Edition. He may be contacted via fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com.
I am lucky enough to have Rabbi Potasnik as my rabbi. The book is as wonderful as he is. He is a very special and unique man. May God bless him.
potasnik like any Jewish so called leader should be judged based on whether he grew and strengthened the Jewish community or helped destroy it.How many conservative Jews were there in nyc when potasnik took over the reigns of the new york board of rabbis and how many are there today? what were the number of conservative and reformed Jewish births and deaths when potasnik took over and what is the ratio today?
My impression of potasnik is he is more catholic than Jew and has not done a good job