Reversal of fortunes

Everybody likes a good twist. If a story is predictable, we tend to roll our eyes or tune out. We want tension, mystery, uncertainty. I think that’s why everyone loves the story of Purim. What is expected to happen, doesn’t. That’s the core of the holiday: “V’nahafoch hu.” Over the past few years I’ve read many books about the well-documented Everest disaster of 1996. The most famous account is that of journalist Jon Krakauer, but it seems that nearly everyone who survived to tell the tale has written a memoir. For those who aren’t aware, in May, 1996, eight people were killed during a storm on the world’s highest peak. In one of the groups that climbed that day, not one person who “bagged the […]