JEWISH REVIEW of BOOKS Volume 4, Number 4 Winter 2014 $7.95
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Daniel Gordis A Requiem for Conservative Judaism JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS Volume 4, Number 4 Winter 2014 $7.95 Laura Rosenzweig Hollywood’s Anti-Nazi Spies Stuart Schoffman Did Hollywood Collaborate? Michael Weingrad Israeli Sci-Fi & Fantasy: Not Quite Narnia But … Don Seeman Pew’s Jews Lawrence Kaplan Franz Rosenzweig’s Kugel Paul Reitter Bambi’s Zionism Rebecca Schuman Kafka for Kids Hillel Halkin Lawrence of Oxford & Arabia ANNOUNCING Editor Abraham Socher the Jacob Kronhill Visiting Scholar Senior Contributing Editor at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research Allan Arkush Art Director The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is pleased to announce Betsy Klarfeld the appointment of the first Jacob Kronhill Visiting Scholar,D R. Associate Editor STEVEn ZIppERSTEIn, Daniel E. Koshland professor in Jewish Amy Newman Smith Culture and History at Stanford University. Administrative Assistant The Jacob Kronhill visiting Scholar will conduct a graduate-level semi- nar in east european Jewish history, lead a professional development Rebecca Weiss workshop for YivO fellows and other young scholars in the field, deliver a series of public lectures, and play a leading intellectual role in other YivO projects in research, education, and publications. Editorial Board dr. Zipperstein, who will begin visiting regularly in January and take up residence in March, is a Robert Alter Shlomo Avineri widely published scholar of modern Jewish history. he is the author of acclaimed books, includ- Leora Batnitzky Ruth Gavison ing The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History, 1794-1881 (Stanford University Press, 1985), Imagin- ing Russian Jewry: Memory, History, Identity (University of Washington Press, 1999), and Elusive Moshe Halbertal Hillel Halkin Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism (University of california, 1993). he is co-editor of Jon D. Levenson Anita Shapira the journal, Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, and Society and sits on the editorial board of Michael Walzer J. H.H. Weiler The Jewish Review of Books. For sixteen years, between 1991-2007, dr. Zipperstein was director Leon Wieseltier Ruth R. Wisse of the Taube center for Jewish Studies at Stanford which under his leadership emerged as one of the leading programs in the field. Steven J. Zipperstein “The YIVO Institute is most grateful to Irene Pletka and the Kronhill Pletka Foundation for the generous gift that makes possible establishment of the Jacob Kronhill Visiting Publisher Scholar position, which represents an enormous first step in rebuilding the educational Eric Cohen and research activities of the Max Weinreich Center. We are delighted that Steven Zip- perstein has accepted the position as our first Kronhill Scholar. His stature, accomplish- Associate Publisher & ments and range of interests precisely match the ambitions of YIVO’s vision for the Director of Marketing future.” Lori Dorr —Jonathan Brent, executive director, YivO institute Marketing Associate Chaya Glasner Jews and the Russian Revolution The Jewish Review of Books (Print ISSN 2153-1978, Online ISSN 2153-1994) is a quarterly publication The Impact of World War I and the Russian Revolution of ideas and criticism published in Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, by Bee.Ideas, LLC., 165 East 56th on the World of Russian and East European Jewry Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10022. FEBRUARY 19, 2014 | 7pm For all subscriptions, please visit www.jewishreviewofbooks.com or send $29.95 Lecture by RichaRd PiPeS, ($39.95 outside of the U.S.) to Jewish Review of Books, historian of Russia; Baird emeritus Professor of history at harvard University. PO Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834. Please send notifi- his books include Russia under the Old Regime, The Russian Revolution and cations of address changes to the same address or to [email protected]. Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. For customer service and subscription-related issues, please call (877) 753-0337 or write to Jews and the Russian Revolution [email protected]. Letters to the Editor should be emailed to letters@ 6 sessions: Mondays, 7pm-8:30pm, ApRIl-JUnE 2014 jewishreviewofbooks.com or to our editorial office, 3091 Mayfield Road, Suite 412, Cleveland Heights, Taught by Prof. STeveN ZiPPeRSTeiN, OH 44118. Please send all unsolicited reviews YivO’s Jacob Kronhill visiting Scholar; Stanford University. and manuscripts to the attention of the editors at [email protected] or to our editorial office. Advertising inquiries should be visit YIVO.ORG for more information sent to [email protected] or call (212) 796-1665. Review copies should be sent to the attention of the associate editor at our editorial office. JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS www.jewishreviewofbooks.com 15 West 16th Street • New York • NY • 10011-6301 • tel 212.246.6080 • fax 212.292.1892 • yivo.org JEWISH REVIEW Volume 4, Number 4 Winter 2014 OF BOOKS www.jewishreviewofbooks.com LETTERS 4 Cyprus Bound, A Salter Exchange Between Readers, Time to Proselytize? FeatURES 5 Laura Rosenzweig Hollywood's Anti-Nazi Spies In 1934, Hollywood’s Jewish moguls met secretly at the Hillcrest Country Club to hear an unusual pitch. A former ADL official was running a network of World War I veterans who had infiltrated the local Nazi organization. The intelligence was alarming, and he needed funding. 7 Don Seeman Pew’s Jews: Religion Is (Still) the Key Who are the “Jews of no religion” in the much-discussed Pew Research Center’s “A Portrait of Jewish Americans”? It’s a question that gets at the deep structures of Jewish life and the inadequacy of many of the sociological measures used to describe it. 9 Daniel Gordis Conservative Judaism: A Requiem In 1971, 41 percent of American Jews were part of the Conservative movement. Today it’s 18 percent and falling fast. What happened? Maybe its leaders never knew what Conservative Judaism was really about. REVIEWS 12 Hillel Halkin Wisdom and Wars Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson 17 Stuart Schoffman Hollywood and the Nazis Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939 by Thomas Doherty • The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler by Ben Urwand 21 Michael Weingrad Riding Leviathan: A New Wave of Israeli Genre Fiction Eshtonot (The Book of Disorder) by Ofir Touché Gafla • Etsba’ot shel pesantran (Piano Fingers) by Yali Sobol • The World of the End by Ofir Touché Gafla • Shedim be-rachov Agripas (Demons in Agripas Street) by Hagai Dagan • Alma by Roni Eshkol • Kesheha-meitim hazru (When the Dead Returned) by Ilan Sheinfeld • Arim shel mata (De Urbibus Inferis) by Shimon Adaf 26 Amy Newman Smith Scaling the Internet No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet by Molly Knight Raskin 30 Rebecca Schuman Kafka at Bedtime Philosophy and Kafka edited by Brendan Moran and Carlo Salzani • My First Kafka: Runaways, Rodents & Giant Bugs retold by Matthue Roth, illustrated by Rohan Daniel Eason 32 Nadia Kalman Forget Remembering The Property by Rutu Modan 34 Allan Arkush The Devil You Know Die Sprache der Judenfeinschaft im 21. Jahrhundert (The Language of Hostility Toward Jews in the 21st Century) by Monika Schwarz-Friesel and Jehuda Reinharz • Resurgent Antisemitism: Global Perspectives edited by Alvin H. Rosenfeld • The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Antisemitism by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen READINGS 38 Paul Reitter Bambi’s Jewish Roots Felix Salten was a hack who cultivated ties to the Habsburg court and wrote the bestselling memoir of a fictional prostitute. He was also a charismatic Zionist who outshone Buber on the stage and—not so coincidentally—wrote Bambi. 41 Lawrence Kaplan Kashrut and Kugel: Franz Rosenzweig’s "The Builders" In 1923, Franz Rosenzweig wrote an open letter to Martin Buber on being bound by Jewish law in the modern age. Interestingly, he was just as concerned with minhag (custom) as halakha. LOST & FOUND 44 ChaeRan Y. Freeze & Scenes of Jewish Life in Imperial Russia What was Jewish life like in pre-revolutionary Russia? It certainly did not Jay M. Harris take place in an unchanging shtetl. LAST WORD 47 Abraham Socher Salsa and Sociology On the cover: “Hollywood Hills” by Mark Anderson. LETTERS Cyprus Bound Cohen’s use of analog to Isaac Babel is less “What those who accuse Salter of anti-Semitism convincing. Babel was a great artist, and he didn’t ask is that he’d have made a better world than this It is a great tragedy that religion has all but been made hide his Jewishness, not even from the Cossacks. one is . .” I don’t know who Jane Vandenburgh has redundant in Israeli society. (“Fathers & Sons,” Fall As a convinced Bolshevik, like Trotsky, he be- in mind, and I don’t know what kind of question 2013) Our “either or” attitude with regard to obser- lieved that anti-Semitism was a bourgeois phe- she is asking. For my part, I don’t think of Salter vance, while softening over the years, has been re- nomenon not applicable to Lenin’s Russia. God, as a great writer (his anti-Semitism has nothing to placed by indifference. It is with a heavy heart that were they wrong. I love Babel’s art; his short do with it). Dostoevsky was an anti-Semite and a in my own rabbinate I have counseled couples to ob- stories have what James Salter said of an Italian great writer nonetheless. On the other hand, Isaac tain civil marriage in other countries and then return woman in Burning the Days (his only readable Babel was a great writer no matter what one thinks home and choose a “mesader kiddushin” to their lik- book), the “ring of truth.” of his private life. I usually don’t bring up a writer’s ing rather than have to deal with the rabbinate.