Yom Kippur Reading: Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks

#whatireadoveryomkippur Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, translated by John E. Woods (1901; Everyman's Library, 1994)

There’s a line in Buddenbrooks that says, “When the house is finished, death follows.” This chronicle of the decline of a German business family is about what happens after you get what you want, after success. I read Mann’s novel over Yom Kippur, a holiday that rejects success and perfection, that asks us to deliberate over what we’ve left unfinished and how imperfect we’ve been. The Buddenbrooks fall because they are obsessed with their achievements and success. Yom Kippur teaches that to stay inscribed in the Book of Life, we must never be finished with the project of bettering ourselves.