A bit of a hodgepodge: part an anthropological attempt to distill
the Jews' essential characteristics, part history lite, and part
mini-profiles of premodern and modern Jews, as well as Hertzberg's
autobiographical anecdotes. Hertzberg (Humanities/New York Univ.),
a rabbi and very gifted, prolific scholar and essayist (The Zionist
Idea, not reviewed; The Jews in America, 1989; etc.) and
Hirt-Manheimer, editor of the journal Reform Judaism, state at the
outset, "This is . . . a scandalous book. It runs counter to polite
and politically correct portraits of the Jews. It dares to define
the lasting Jewish character." Unfortunately, despite its focus on
Jews' belief in their "chosenness" and other debatable traits, this
work is too unfocused to scandalize; rather, the authors flit from
topic to topic, rarely exploring any one in depth. Thus, a chapter
on the Holocaust discusses the fate of such assimilated and
converted Jews as the historian Marc Bloch and Sister Edith Stein,
Christian reactions to the genocide, and post-Holocaust theology -
all in fewer than ten pages. The authors also engage in some
untenable generalizations, such as their claim that "in the
medieval world, in every Jewish community throughout the world,
people met their peers daily to study together." This was not true
by any mans for Jewish men, and it ignores entirely Jewish women,
whom this book radically scants throughout (a section on "The
Ascendancy of Women" in the post-Holocaust period, perhaps the most
important trend in Jewish life of the past quarter-century,
comprises only three pages). Hertzberg makes his most substantive
contribution in the mini-profiles of premodern Jewish religious,
intellectual and political leaders, and particularly of ambivalent
Jewish modernists (e.g., the central European quartet of Heine,
Marx, Freud, and Kafka). But for a first-rate thinker and writer
like Hertzberg, this book has a disappointingly diffuse, sometimes
even slapdash quality to it. (Kirkus Reviews)
In this landmark work, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, vice president emeritus of the World Jewish Congress, and Aron Hirt-Manheimer, editor of
Reform Judaism Magazine, answer the question: What makes a Jew a Jew? These prominent Jewish scholars search for the soul of the Jewish character-from the archetype of Abraham and Sarah to the ambivalence of Kafka, Freud, and Woody Allen. They delve beyond conventional discussions of Jewish identity and explore the very essence of Jewish existence. Highly regarded,
Jews explains how and why great Jewish figures throughout history, who have been victimized by anti-Semitism, have succeeded to rise again and endure.
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