Jon D. Levenson The American Mind Closes (Again) JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS Volume 8, Number 2 Summer 2017 $10.45 Uri Bar-Joseph • Allan Arkush Itamar Rabinovich • Ruby Namdar A. E. Smith • Erica Brown . . . Editor Abraham Socher FASCINATING SERIES BY MAGGID BOOKS Senior Contributing Editor Allan Arkush Art Director Betsy Klarfeld MAGGID MODERN CLASSICS Managing Editor Introduces one of ’s most creative and influential thinkers Amy Newman Smith Editorial Assistant Kate Elinsky FAITH SHATTERED Editorial Board AND RESTORED Robert Alter Shlomo Avineri Judaism in the Postmodern Age Rabbi Shagar Leora Batnitzky Ruth Gavison Moshe Halbertal Jon D. Levenson The starkly innovative spiritual and educational Anita Shapira Michael Walzer approach of Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg J. H.H. Weiler Leon Wieseltier (known as Rabbi Shagar) has shaped a generation of who yearn to encounter the Divine in a world Ruth R. Wisse Steven J. Zipperstein progressively at odds with religious experience, nurturing religious faith within a cultural climate Publisher of corrosive skepticism. Here, Rabbi Shagar offers Eric Cohen profound and often acutely personal insights that marry existentialist philosophy and Hasidism, Advancement Officer Talmud and postmodernism. Malka Groden Published for Associate Publisher the 1st time The seminal essays in Faith Shattered and Restored in English! sets out a new path for preserving and cultivating Dalya Mayer Jewish spirituality in the 21st century and beyond. Chairman’s Council Anonymous Blavatnik Family Foundation

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MAGGID www.korenpub.com local Jewish bookstores JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS JEWISH REVIEW Volume 8, Number 2 Summer 2017 OF BOOKS www.jewishreviewofbooks.com LETTERS 4 Ben-Gurion's Yiddish, Foucault on Yom Kippur, Rabin's Solution?, The Lamp and the Flame FEATURE 5 Uri Bar-Joseph A "New History" and Old Facts Fifty years later, Guy Laron’s The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East attempts to upend our understanding of the 1967 hostilities. REVIEWS 8 Allan Arkush East Meets West Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left 1967–1989 by Jeffrey Herf 10 Walter Laqueur A Dashing Medievalist : A Life by Robert E. Lerner 13 Ruby Namdar On Agnonizing in English A City in Its Fullness by S. Y. Agnon, edited by Alan Mintz and Jeffrey Saks Ancestral Tales: Reading the Buczacz Stories of S.Y. Agnon by Alan Mintz 16 Erica Brown Why the Long Face? A Horse Walks into a Bar by , translated by Jessica Cohen 18 Hindy Najman Inside or Outside? Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture edited by Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Lawrence H. Schiffman 22 Shai Secunda Purity and Obscurity Taharah u-kehilla ba-eit ha-atikah: mesorot ha-halakhah ben Yahadut Bayit sheni la-Mishnah (Purity and Community in Antiquity: Traditions of the Law from Second Temple Judaism to the Mishnah) by Yair Furstenberg • Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature by Mira Balberg • At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity Among the Jews of Roman Galilee by Stuart S. Miller 24 Diane Cole The Wandering Reporter The Wandering Jew Has Arrived by Albert Londres, translated by Helga Abraham 26 Samuel Goldman Great Jews in Robes Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court: From Brandeis to Kagan by David G. Dalin 28 Michel Gurfinkiel The End of Europe as We Know It? The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age by James Kirchick

READINGS 32 Jon D. Levenson The Closing of the American Mind Now Thirty years ago, a book was published that hit, in the words of its New York Times review, “with the approximate force and effect of what electric shock-therapy must be like.” How has it held up? And what does that have to do with the Bible? THE ARTS 36 Itamar Rabinovich Theater and Politics in Oslo Oslo written by J. T. Rogers, directed by Bartlett Sher 38 A. E. Smith : The Wages of Chaos Fauda created by and 40 Sarah Rindner Crazy-Beautiful Startup The Wedding Plan directed by Rama Burshtein

LOST & FOUND

42 Jerry Z. Muller "I Am Impossible": An Exchange Between Jacob Taubes and Arthur A. Cohen In the summer of 1977, two old friends ran into each other in front of a Paris bookstore and found themselves arguing about Simone Weil, Judaism, and their lives. 45 Marc B. Shapiro The Rogochover Speaks His Mind After he visited the odd talmudic genius, Bialik said that “two Einsteins can be carved out of one Rogochover.” LAST WORD 47 Amy Newman Smith Hashtag

On the cover: 50 Years by Mark Anderson. LETTERS

Ben-Gurion's Yiddish Imagine my surprise, therefore, on learning, Jewish books is silly—even if one ignores the canoni- In his fine review of The Story of Hebrew (“Adventure from Francoise Mirguet’s review of How Repentance cal Jewish commentators on those books. Story,” Spring 2017), Alan Mintz related Lewis Glin- Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the In- The evolution of these concepts, in the Jewish ert’s assertion that David Ben-Gurion “insisted on the terpretation of Scripture (“Repent, Repent,” Spring canon and beyond, is a serious question. It deserves suppression of Yiddish in official life in the country 2017), that neither the nor any other part a serious answer. A review, and a book, that ignore and refused to allocate resources to the preservation of the Jewish Bible knows anything of repentance. the basics is not serious. of its culture.” I think it is important to note, how- Even Jonah—who we read, of course, on Yom Kip- Jerome M. Marcus ever, that Bundist and other Yiddishist propaganda pur, the day mandated by the same book of Leviti- Narberth, PA has tended to exaggerate the extent of the persecution cus as a day for, well, I had thought it was the day of Yiddish in Israel. Avrom Sutzkever’s great Yiddish of atonement, but apparently that was made up lat- Francoise Mirguet Responds: journal, Di goldene keyt, was, after all, published in Thank you to Jerome M. Marcus for actively engag- Israel from 1949 to 1995 with the financial support ing David A. Lambert’s book and my review. To re- of the Histadrut, the Israeli Labor Federation, which pent is “to review one’s actions and feel contrition or was in control of Mapai, Ben-Gurion’s party. Yiddish regret for something one has done or omitted to do.” culture continued to flourish in Israel in libraries, David A. Lambert’s thesis is that the notion of self newspapers, the performances of the comedy team of presupposed in the Hebrew Bible does not allow for Dzigan and Shumacher, and in other forms as well. In such a capacity of introspection and inner transfor- fact, the decline of Yiddish in Israel was parallel to its mation. This does not mean that the Tanakh is not decline in the United States and for the same reasons. preoccupied with sins and other actions judged inap- To the extent that there was a campaign against propriate; the way to deal with them, however, does the use of Yiddish in the public sphere in Israel in not quite correspond to an inner process prompted the 1950s, Ben-Gurion was not its instigator. He by regret. Let us look at the texts mentioned by Mar- spoke Yiddish, wrote long articles in the Forverts, cus. Leviticus 16:29–30 prescribes that, on yom ha- and gave interviews in Yiddish. Indeed, he opposed kippurim, “You shall afflict yourself [nafshoteichem] the members of his government, from his own par- and shall do no work.” I translate the term nefesh as ty, who wished to prevent the appearance of a daily “self” and not as “ soul” as some translations do. In- newspaper in Yiddish, as I learned from the Yiddish deed, it is well attested that the notion of “soul” is historian Rachel Rozansky. Yes, he gave preference er—says nothing about repentance. Indeed Jonah’s quite foreign to the Hebrew Bible. Nefesh is rather an to Hebrew from his early childhood. This does not psalm in Chapter 2 does not mention repentance or organ of the body, but can also refer, as a metonym, to make him a persecutor of Yiddish. The myth of Ben- teshuvah. But Chapter 3 is the locus classicus of the the full human being. The self-affliction prescribed Gurion’s negative attitude to Yiddish is based mostly concept, which is why we read it on Yom Kippur af- by Leviticus is thus embodied; it manifests itself in on some remarks he made in 1945 after a speech by ternoon: There the king of Nineveh orders everyone the fast. By this interruption of bodily and economic Rozka Korczak, a partisan from the Vilna Ghetto, at in town—man and beast—to wear sackcloth and activities, the community recognizes its dependence a council of the Histadrut. When the “Linke Poalei to cry out to Elohim with force, and to return on the divine. It is the deity who removes the sin, Zion” (a small Marxist Yiddishist party) protested (ve-yashuvu) each person from his bad path and through the atonement performed by the priest, as vehemently, Ben-Gurion’s words were stricken from from the violence that was in their hands. Lambert argues. The biblical text does not hint at in- the minutes. It is not certain what he actually said, Even more foolish than reading Jonah 2 while ig- trospection or regret. Even confession of sin does not but whatever disparaging comments he may have noring Jonah 3 is the insistence on reading the Torah necessarily entail inner change. I invite Mr. Marcus to uttered should not outweigh the evidence. through the eyes of that careful parser of religious re-read Jonah 3: Nowhere does the text mention that Anita Shapira texts, Michel Foucault, to reach the conclusion that the Ninevites became aware of their transgressions, , Israel fasting is not about repentance but about (as every- regretted them, and took the resolution to trans- thing for Foucault is about) power relations. One form. What we find instead is a process of communi- Foucault on Yom Kippur fasts, apparently, to kowtow to the superior force of cation with the divine, expressed by bodily practices On a recent Shabbos I strolled home after shul and the Big Man in the Sky with a Beard who will pun- (such as fasting and crying), and an exhortation, by picked up the latest edition of the Jewish Review of ish us if we are bad, in the hope that if we put our the king, to turn away from evil ways. The removal of Books. The parsha (Vayikra, the first five chapters of Le- heads down He won’t hurt us. We should ignore the sin, as Lambert notes, is a condition for receiving di- viticus) was still in my mind, with its detailed enumer- Torah’s own words, in which we are given a reason vine care; it happens, however, through actions, not ation of the steps to be taken when a person, a leader, for the Yom Kippur fast: “You shall afflict your souls.” through mental exercise. or the entire community of Israel finds that he, she, or This day of fasting is a day of kapara (atonement). Mr. Marcus is right that there is no repentance to it has mistakenly (b’shgagah) committed an impermis- Far from repentance being an exclusively Greek be found in Homer, Sophocles, or Plato; it is during the sible act. The Torah lays out the steps and explains that concept, I have a hard time remembering where, in late Hellenistic period (in the works of Plutarch, for ex- if the steps are followed properly the priest will atone the Odyssey, the Iliad, in anything written by Hes- ample) that the notion of repentance starts to emerge. for the sinner and he will be forgiven. As explained in iod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, or Aristotle, any- I would stress that a study like Lambert’s neither a mishnah we read every single morning of the year, one engages in repentance or is urged to do so. In- delegitimizes repentance nor diminishes the biblical the chatat (sin) offering is a meal, consumed by the deed, it is in the ancient Greek world that we find an text. Quite the contrary: The development of repen- kohanim among whom will be the man to whom the angry man, in the sky, with a beard—Zeus—armed tance, by Hellenistic Jews, bears witness to their capac- sinner brought his sacrifice and to whom the sinner with lightning bolts and a temper, who must be pla- ity to adapt their practices to changing conceptions of must have declared it as such. The procedure is clearly cated and who cannot be defied. the human self, while keeping scriptural traditions designed to be a confession and expiation of sins. That the Torah’s conception of the interior of alive. Further, uncovering how the Hebrew Bible per- man, and the conception (if it is only a single concep- ceives the self provides us with distinctive resources tion) of human nature that animates the rest of the to reflect on human experience. It makes reading the TheJewish Review of Books Hebrew Bible, are different from the Greek conception scriptures all the more relevant: The Tanakh is not just mourns the passing of two of our most of human nature, and from the post-Enlightenment, a reflection of today’s beliefs and practices, including valued contributors: post-Renaissance, post–French Revolution idea(s) core ones like repentance; it reveals its own original Elliott Horowitz of human nature that animate(s) the zeitgeist now, ways to deal with human challenges. 1953–2017 is an irrefutable truth. That the concept of self- examination as we do it today is different from the Rabin's Solution? Alan Mintz concept of return as the Torah created it is therefore, As a vice president of the Religious Zionists of 1948–2017 necessarily, also true. But the idea that there is no America and father of Alisa Flatow, who was teshuvah, and no repentance, in these foundational (continued on page 41)

4 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 FEATURE A "New History" and Old Facts

BY URI BAR-JOSEPH

decades of Zionist efforts to create a Jewish state, it battles and yielded a great many published accounts. The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle established the contours within which Israel would Some were personal memoirs, while others focused East exist for the next two decades. It also marked the on specific battles. Recent years have witnessed a by Guy Laron beginning of the Arab–Israeli conflict and the wave of well-documented historical studies. Most Yale University Press, 384 pp., $28 important among them were Shimon Golan’s semi- official 1,350-page history of the decision-making Laron’s principal contribution of the IDF high command during the war and Hagai is to advance a narrative so Tsoref’s recent official biography of Golda Meir, Israel’s wartime prime minister. n May 15, 1967, Israel’s long-simmering poorly substantiated as to A great deal of the controversy surrounding the border conflict with and its PLO 1973 war focuses on the reasons for the IDF’s cata- clients came to a boil when the Soviet border on conspiracy theory. strophic unpreparedness for the massive surprise Union falsely warned Syria and Egypt attack launched by Syrian and Egyptian forces on the Othat Israel was about to carry out a large-scale attack Palestinian refugee problem. The first histories afternoon of October 6. While an official commis- on the . In response, President Gamal of the 1948 war celebrated it as the victory of an sion of inquiry, led by Israel’s Supreme Court presi- Abdel Nasser of Egypt advanced his army into the Israeli David over a host of Arab Goliaths. But the dent Shimon Agranat, concluded already in 1974 Sinai, which had been de facto demilitarized since opening of Israeli and British national archives in that the central failure was the lack of a timely warn- the end of the 1956 Sinai-Suez War. A few days later, the 1980s allowed a group of “New Historians” to ing from intelligence services, more recent theories emboldened by waves of popular indignation across challenge the earlier narrative. They argued that lay the blame mainly at the feet of Prime Minister the Arab world, Nasser expelled the UN Emergency Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Force from the Sinai and closed the Straits of Tiran Dayan. None of these theories—some to Israeli shipping, thus blocking Israel’s maritime ac- wilder than others—is really supported cess to the Indian Ocean through its southern port by the evidence, but they continue to of Eilat. Taken together, Nasser’s actions created the fuel a vigorous Israeli public debate sense of an imminent, existential threat to the State every fall, a quasi-ritual event that of Israel. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s government coincides with the approach of the regarded the actions as cause for war. Day of Atonement. American attempts to defuse the crisis led no- In sharp contrast to 1948 and where, and, once Syria and Jordan (with the ma- 1973, Israel’s incursion into Sinai in terial support of other Arab states) joined Nasser, 1956 (the only occasion on which Israel had no choice but to strike first. Its surprise it ever joined its armed forces with air attack against Egypt’s air force on the morning those of Western powers to defeat of June 5 lasted three hours and destroyed most of its enemies) is an almost forgotten it, giving Israel air dominance as the IDF launched event. Similarly, the Lebanon War of its ground forces into the Sinai—an offensive that 1982, in which Israel drove the PLO lasted four days and ended with the devastation of out of the country but failed to estab- the Egyptian army and the occupation of the entire lish a new regime led by its Christian peninsula. At the same time, and in response to allies and ended up in a quagmire, shelling by Jordanian artillery, the IDF launched an General Ariel Sharon meets with his officers a week before the has so far yielded only a few impor- attack that ended in three days with the occupation June 5 start of the Six-Day War, May 29, 1967, at their headquarters tant scholarly studies. of the West Bank, including east Jerusalem. Finally, in southern Israel. (Courtesy of the Government Press Office, Israel.) The Six-Day War stands some- Israel took the Golan Heights, in a battle that ended where in between the most and six days after the war began. Great Britain’s policy toward the Jewish com- least examined of Israel’s wars. One of the greatest This, at least, is the story that has been told and munity in Palestine tilted much less toward the military victories in modern times, it was a breath- retold by the authors of both older and more re- Arabs than had been previously believed; that takingly dramatic event that changed the shape of cent accounts, and it is this story that Guy Laron Israeli forces had not been vastly outnumbered by Israel and the Middle East. Inevitably, many books attempts to upend by placing it in the larger con- the Arabs, and may have even been the superior have been written about the weeks of crisis that text of Israel’s military plans in the late 1950s and fighting force; that the struggle between the IDF preceded the war as well as the fighting itself, but 1960s, as well as the Cold War competition between and the Arab Legion of Transjordan (the best Arab most of them came out shortly after the war ended. the United States and the Soviet Union for influence army in that war) was not a fight to the finish but In contrast to the reinterpretations of the 1948 and in the region. The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the one that was circumscribed by tacit cooperation 1973 wars, the opening of the archives in Israel, Middle East, which Yale University Press brought between the two sides; and, most significantly, that Egypt, and elsewhere did not inspire reinterpreta- out shortly before the recent 50th anniversary of the Israel was largely responsible for the creation of the tions of the 1967 war. Thus, Michael B. Oren’s Six war, is an attempt to thoroughly revise our historical Palestinian refugee problem. The debate between Days of War, published in 2002, and Tom Segev’s understanding of the conflict. traditional and “new” historians has continued for 1967, published five years later, provided important a quarter of a century now, yielding an ongoing new synthetic narratives, with their own distinctive evisionist histories of Israeli–Arab wars are, by stream of important studies. emphases, but they did not radically change our Rnow, a familiar phenomenon. The 1948 War of The Yom Kippur War of 1973 has also drawn in- understanding of what happened and why. Independence, the longest and most complicated tense scrutiny, albeit for different reasons. The most The first attempt to challenge the core narra- war in Israel’s history, has received the greatest at- traumatic event in Israel’s history, it was a personal tive of the Six-Day War came on its 40th anniver- tention, and for good reason. The culmination of horror for many of those who fought in its bloody sary, when Dr. Isabella Ginor (who is a doctor of

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 5 dentistry) and Gideon Remez, an Israeli foreign af- leaders or economic crises in Egypt and Israel had not be able to annex territories that it would occupy fairs journalist, published Foxbats over Dimona: The no impact, but to frame the story of the 1967 war in future wars, “the [IDF] General Staff had never Soviets’ Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War. Dif- around them is quite far-fetched. let go of the plan to expand Israel’s territory.” It re- fering with all those who maintain that the Soviets A second problem with Laron’s narrative is the peatedly updated contingency plans “which envis- were surprised by the swift escalation of the crisis wearisome journey that he takes the reader on in aged the annexation of Sinai, the West Bank, and the and tried to contain it, Ginor and Remez claimed attempting to prove his thesis. It involves too much Golan Heights.” This policy, we are told, received a that the Kremlin had planned to provoke a war in information about too many irrelevant issues and boost in the early 1960s when a coalition of expan- which Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona would be haphazardly jumps from one topic to the next. The sionists gained power. It consisted of generals from destroyed. But once the Egyptian air force was de- result is that he devotes the same number of pages to the Palmach (the elite fighting force of the Haga- molished in the war’s first hours, it had to abandon Nasser’s crucial decisions to advance his army into nah, the underground army of the Yishuv) driven the plan. This quickly met with sharp criticism by the Sinai, demand the removal of UN forces from by ; the Palmach commander and experts who pointed out that Ginor and Remez had now leader of the Ach- cherry-picked from largely anecdotal evidence and dut Ha-avoda political ignored all of the evidence and research that ran party, Yigal Allon; and counter to their theory. Even the book’s title was the kibbutzim of Achdut sloppy: The Foxbat (MiG-25) entered operational Ha-avoda, which wanted service only in 1970, and the first Soviet reconnais- to both expand its farm- sance flights over Israeli targets did not take place land and demonstrate until 1971. As Galia Golan, a renowned expert on its continued indispens- Soviet policy in the Arab–Israeli conflict, put it, the ability to Israel’s defense. book “makes a great story . . . appears authoritative Together, they conspired and will likely be believed in many circles, as often to provoke the Syrians happens with conspiracy theories. That the thesis is into shelling Israel. “Ev- true, or even logical, is another matter altogether.” ery barrage of artillery that landed on Ahdut uy Laron’s book is a more subtle work of schol- Ha-Avoda settlements,” Garship than Foxbats over Dimona (and much Laron writes, “seemed to less inventive), but it suffers from some similar prove that the kibbutzim flaws. Distinguishing his work from “all the books” were still Israel’s shield about the war that focused on the events between and armor” and provid- May 15, when the crisis erupted, and June 10, when ed another excuse for an the war ended, Laron maintains that two key sets Atop the walls of the Old City, Jerusalem, during the Six-Day War. (Photo by attack on Syria. of developments—stormy civil-military relations Leonard Freed, Magnum Photos.) This expansionist out- in Syria, Egypt, and Israel, and the economic crises look was bolstered by besetting Egypt and Israel—explain the lead-up to the IDF’s military intel- war. The first involves the growing tension in three the border, and close the Tiran Straits as he does to ligence branch (Aman), whose “assessments of the countries between bellicose officers and more- Israel’s 1954 Lavon Affair, which is irrelevant to the intentions of Arab states,” Laron contends, “have moderate civilian leaders. The second explains story. No wonder that we only get to a very partial always been politically skewed.” Aman’s director, why it became so hard for Nasser and Israeli prime 17-page discussion of the war itself at the very end Aharon Yariv, who owed his loyalty to Rabin, devel- minister Levi Eshkol to control their supposedly of a book called The Six-Day War. oped a paradigm according to which Nasser would trigger-happy generals. Laron’s book is also filled with factual errors. His avoid a confrontation with Israel as long as the Egyp- In attempting to validate his claims, Laron takes very first paragraph claims that during the war’s first tian army was mired in the civil war in Yemen, which the reader down a long and winding road that in- three hours, “Israeli aircraft wiped out the entire air had begun in 1962. This assessment gave the IDF a cludes, among other things, the history of Syria since forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and .” In reality, free hand to escalate hostilities in the north, allegedly World War II and of Egypt since the early 1950s; during these three hours 284 out of 419 Egyptian air- in order to create the conditions for a move against American monetary and foreign policy during the craft were destroyed, and none of the aircraft of the Syria without having to worry that it would have to Kennedy and Johnson administrations (with a baf- Jordanian, Syrian, or Iraqi air forces was engaged in fight with Egypt as well. fling excursion into U.S.-Indonesia relations); the rise those early few hours of the war. In one of the book’s Levi Eshkol, the dovish prime minister who, and fall of Nikita Khrushchev; and Soviet foreign and last paragraphs, Laron notes that in the Yom Kip- under the pressure of his predecessor David Ben- economic policies, including aid to Guinea in Africa. pur War, “60–80 Israeli tanks were supposed to stop” Gurion, struggled to portray himself as a tough All of this is in service of Laron’s implausible conten- the Syrian offensive, while their actual number was leader, yielded to the pressure of this group. “In tion that the global debt crisis of the 1960s, together 177. In between the first page and the last, there are December 1966,” Laron tells us, “the coalition of with changing patterns of foreign aid from the Unit- dozens of similar errors. Some, such as the claim Palmach generals and settlers won a victory when ed States and the USSR, created the conditions for that Syria lost seven MiG-21 fighter planes in dog- Eshkol gave Rabin permission to breach the cease- economic crises in Egypt and Israel, which led to the fights with Israeli pilots two months before the war fire” in the demilitarized zone on the Syrian border. crisis that preceded the war. (it lost only six), are merely sloppy. Others show an The result was a series of escalating incidents between The first problem with Laron’s narrative is that alarming lack of expertise. Thus, for example, when Israel and Syria, and the Fatah terrorists it sponsored, it stands on very shaky historical ground. It is true Laron attempts to show that Soviet arms sales to culminating in the crisis that led to the war. that by 1967 Nasser had lost prestige, but the main the Arabs were mainly profitable ventures, he notes cause for this was not Egypt’s economic crisis but that between 1955 and 1967, the USSR sold Egypt his is a fascinating narrative. Indeed, had Laron, a series of political failures, including the break-up MiG-15s, MiG-17s, and MiG-19s, which were all Tlike the New Historians of the 1948 war, been of Egypt’s unification with Syria in 1961, Egypt’s largely obsolete by June 1967. What he omits is that by able to base it on new evidence, his book might have endless and unpopular intervention in Yemen’s that time, Egypt had also received more than 200 MiG- deserved to become a central text in the history of civil war, and the rising challenge of the Baathist 21s, the most advanced Soviet aircraft at the time. the Arab–Israeli conflict. Unfortunately, he has pro- regimes in Syria and Iraq. His claims about Israel These are trifles, however, when compared with vided nothing of the sort. Instead, his theory is based are also problematic, not only because most of the the book’s deeper, thematic flaws. Laron’s principal on a biased selection of previously published sources, IDF generals identified with Eshkol’s Alignment contribution is to advance a narrative so poorly sub- mostly in Hebrew and thus beyond the independent Party, but also because they recognized the suprem- stantiated as to border on conspiracy theory. In es- assessment of most American and European schol- acy of Israel’s political echelon. This is not to say that sence, he claims that although Ben-Gurion realized ars. Anyone familiar with the documentary evidence the stormy relations between generals and civilian after the Sinai withdrawal in 1957 that Israel would will instantly recognize his account as groundless.

6 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 That the IDF acted aggressively along the Syrian da, its attempts to divert the sources of the Jordan opposite is true. Aharon Yariv’s characterization of border in the years prior to the Six-Day War is no River and prevent them from flowing into the Sea of Nasser’s strategy represented not his own personal secret. An excellent, thoroughly researched semioffi- Galilee, and its support for PLO operations against conclusion but the product of Aman’s Research cial analysis of this policy was offered by Ami Gluska, Israel. And, unlike other Arab armies, the Syrians Division, whose analysts sincerely—and not un- a retired IDF colonel, in his 2004 book Eshkol, Give were using their guns in the Golan Heights to shell reasonably—maintained that Egypt would not the Order! (published in an abridged version in Eng- Israeli kibbutzim, causing heavy damage. The crisis intervene militarily in the Syrian–Israeli conflict as lish by Routledge in 2006). While Gluska acknowl- that erupted in mid-May 1967, it is clear, had been long as a third of its army was stuck in Yemen. In edges that there were some generals who talked in created not by Israel’s expansionist intentions, but fact, Egyptian accounts reveal that Nasser’s generals the 1960s about occupying the West Bank or parts of by the pugnacious stances assumed by both the also believed that they were not ready for war and the Golan, he never provides any support for Laron’s Syrians and Israelis. objected to the closure of the Straits of Tiran. Aman claim that the army’s goal was to trigger an expan- The coalition of generals and settlers that Laron and Yariv erred in holding to their paradigm despite sionist war. In fact, he maintained the opposite. describes as the driving force behind Israel’s ex- clear indications that Nasser was under pressure to After Israel was compelled to withdraw from pansionist policy was, in fact, nothing of the kind. help Syria, but this was a professional mistake, not the Sinai in 1957, there was a consensus within It was basically an informal group of brothers-in- a political one. the military that acquiring territory by force was arms. True, the Palmach had been the incubator Shortly after I finished reading Laron’s deeply no longer a viable option. Gluska quotes Rabin for the IDF high command in the 1960s and the disappointing book, the Israeli Government Archive himself, in a meeting in IDF headquarters in July spiritual father of the IDF’s aggressive esprit de released a slew of important new documents on the 1965, saying that, “I don’t believe in the political corps. But the most militant generals in the 1960s, Six-Day War in advance of its 50th anniversary, most option of holding a territory that was occupied by Ezer Weizman and Ariel Sharon, never served in relevantly the protocols of the security cabinet meet- our own military initiative.” As Gluska and oth- the Palmach. Indeed, after retiring, both joined ings before, during, and after the war. Nothing I have ers have shown, the IDF’s goal was simply to com- Menachem Begin’s Likud Party, the successor of read in these documents supports his thesis. Good pel Syria to stop providing a base for Palestinian the Herut movement, which was Palmach’s histori- revisionist history must rely on either new docu- terrorists. cal nemesis. Laron’s claim that the coalition tried ments or an original interpretation that takes into When Laron, for his part, quotes a senior offi- to garner support for the kibbutzim of Achdut account the preponderance of existing evidence. cer who described General David “Dado” Elazar, Ha-avoda also shows very little familiarity with At its best, it is based on both. Regrettably, Laron’s the IDF’s northern commander during the war, as the subject, since the kibbutzim that suffered most volume is based on neither. having “had a very clear plan, to liberate the Golan from Syrian fire were Tel Katzir, Ha’on, and Ein Heights,” he takes this comment out of context and Gev, which were all affiliated with the Mapai party, omits the rest of the quote. Unlike Laron, Dado’s not Achdut Ha-avoda. Uri Bar-Joseph is a professor in the Department of biographer, Hanoch Bartov, in his book Dado: 48 Finally, Laron’s claims about tendentiously dis- International Relations of the School of Political Science Years and 20 Days, makes Dado’s motivations clear: torted intelligence ignore the fact that, unlike that at Haifa University. His most recent book are The Angel: “Not because of love of war but because in his per- of the United States, Israel’s intelligence community The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel (Harper) and (with ception the Galilee could not survive forever under has no tradition of skewing assessments accord- Rose McDermott) Intelligence Success and Failure: The the shadow of Syrian guns.” ing to its leaders’ political needs. If anything, the Human Factor (Oxford University Press). Gluska summarizes military deliberations in the summer of 1966 in which Dado proposed to cap- ture the Syrian territory used by Fatah as staging ar- eas for attacks on Israel. He also makes it clear that annexation was not raised as a topic in these discus- sions, and that Rabin’s position was that however far they got into Syrian territory, they would inevitably withdraw: “If we withdrew from Gaza [in 1957] we will certainly withdraw from Quneitra.” But if Israel had no plans to occupy and annex the Golan Heights, why did the IDF prepare only art offensive plans for a possible war against Syria? The photogr aphy answer has far less to do with territorial expan- architecture sion than with Israel’s military doctrine. Due to modernism the country’s small size and severe lack of strategic judaica & bibles depth before the 1967 war, the doctrine called for holocaust preemptive strikes and, whenever possible, imme- yiddish & hebrew foreign language diately taking the fight into enemy territory. olympic games Moreover, the IDF had no war plans for the con- appraisal services quest of the Golan Heights as such before late 1966. “THE NEW FREEDOM”: Its only war plan in the north, formulated in 1964 CORpORaTE CapiTalisM perlman, Fredy; John Ricklefs (illustrator) and dubbed “Axe,” envisioned the conquest of Da- 1961, New York. 1/91 copies. mascus, which, needless to say, Israel never imag- Fierce critique of capitalism that draws on history, economics, political theory, ined it would hold permanently. If, as Laron claims, philosophy, sociology, literature and religion. Details how corporate capitalism the expansionist generals intended to expand Israel consolidated production, education and only as far as the Golan Heights, why didn’t they communication while converting the masses into the means for maintenance plan to do so well in advance? and growth of private wealth. asserts an economic interpretation of the U.s. Besides preparing an offensive doctrine, the IDF Constitution. alexander Hamilton is had also cultivated an aggressive esprit de corps, repeatedly criticized for desiring governance by the rich and well-born, especially with respect to Syria, which was the only and for promoting economic speculation for personal profit by a few, which runs Arab state that continued to occupy Israeli territory contrary to the democratic ideals of equality, untrammeled communication, at the end of the 1948 war. From the moment the education and self-governance. Discusses Baath Party took over in Syria in a military coup in utopian and socialist commonwealth experiments, president Roosevelt, the 1963, and even more so after February 1966, Syria press, advertising and more. became more militant, as evidenced by its radical (28079) $475. Handprinted woodcut by John Ricklefs positions in Arab forums, its anti-Israeli propagan-

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 7 REVIEWS East Meets West

BY ALLAN ARKUSH

ly small, compared to those of the USSR and some ‘contributing to the cause of peace.’” Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany other Warsaw Pact allies, but they nevertheless ran Until virtually the moment it ceased to exist, the and the West German Far Left 1967–1989 into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The East GDR supported Arab terrorist organizations, justi- by Jeffrey Herf Germans also supplied the Arab countries with fied their actions against Israel, no matter how vi- Cambridge University Press, 506 pp., $29.99 hundreds of military, economic, agricultural, and cious, and even offered their members safe haven. other sorts of advisers, and admitted large numbers In the eyes of its official newspaper, Neues Deutsch- East Germany didn’t break relations with Israel after the n the quarter of a century following the Six- Six-Day War—because it had never had them in the first place. Day War, the East German government and the West German far left demonized Israel of Arab students into their own institutions of high- land, it wasn’t, for instance, the PLO that was time and again, often vilely equating it with the er education. What motivated them to do this was responsible for the massacre of Israeli schoolchil- Iworst thing in their own nation’s history: Nazism. not simply zeal to comply with the wishes of their dren in Ma’alot in 1974; it was “Tel Aviv’s break- Worse than that, they contributed not only rhetori- Soviet overlords. “Playing the anti-Israel card,” Herf ing of its word” to the hostage-takers that led “to cally but materially to the Arab countries’ and the explains, “proved beneficial to the East German the deaths of children and Palestinian partisans.” Palestinian terrorists’ war against the Jewish state. Where the East Ger- They didn’t do this by themselves, of course, mans drew the line, nor did they do it together. East Germany was part however, was at pro- of the Soviet bloc, which took its cues on Israel as viding a base of op- well as everything else from Moscow; members of erations for groups the West German far left were closer to their radi- that planned and cal counterparts elsewhere in the West and in the implemented attacks Third World than their communist fellow Ger- on Jews and others mans in the East. What they had in common, as on Western European Jeffrey Herf demonstrates in his deeply researched soil. As Herf explains, new book Undeclared Wars with Israel: East this was because they Germany and the West German Far Left 1967–1989, feared that it would was the perverse and perversely influential depic- “undermine support tion of Israel as the true heir to their own people’s for détente in West- genocidal history. ern Europe and for The drab communists who led the German continued West Ger- Democratic Republic (GDR) immediately after man financial pay- World War II weren’t anti-Zionist. Indeed, early in ments to East Germa- 1948 the Central Committee of the East German ny.” Consequently, the Communist Party declared: “We consider the foun- East Germans drew dation of a Jewish state an essential contribution a convenient distinc- enabling thousands of people who suffered greatly tion between the under Hitler’s fascism to build a new life.” But this , left, as Lieutenant Colonel , and Burt “moderates” it sup- was merely a reaffirmation of what was, very briefly, Lancaster as in Victory at Entebbe, which aired December 13, 1976. ported and the “ex- the official Soviet line, and when the USSR turned (©ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection.) tremists” it did not: against Israel so did East Germany. By the time that the East German leader Walter Ulbricht visited regime.” Until then, no country outside of the An “extremist” was a terrorist who extended “the Cairo in 1965, he could claim that “the issue of Israel Warsaw Pact recognized its legitimacy, but in 1969 international class struggle” to include attacks was utterly separate from ‘the suffering and injustice East Germany succeeded in establishing official in Western Europe while a “moderate” was a inflicted by the criminal Hitler regime on the Jew- diplomatic relations with Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Egypt, terrorist from the Arab states or the Palestinian ish citizens of Germany and other European states.’” and South Yemen. organizations who focused attacks only against Israel was, according to him, nothing more than a In the 1970s and 1980s, it was not only the Arab Israel, and perhaps “imperialist” targets outside base of Western imperialism. states with which East Germany stood shoulder to Western Europe. Unlike other Soviet bloc nations, East Ger- shoulder but the increasingly active Palestinian ter- many didn’t break relations with Israel after the rorist groups as well, which they supplied with funds This wasn’t their only hypocrisy. While the East Six-Day War—because it had never had them in as well as (covertly) weapons. There was one quasi- German government endorsed the Palestinian right the first place. This was mostly due to its refusal to exception to this rule: In 1972, in the aftermath of of return, it vigorously opposed the prospect of the pay reparations for the crimes of the Nazis. But it Black September’s murderous attack on the Israeli millions of Germans who had been expelled from did denounce Israel as the aggressor and likened athletes at the Munich Olympics, the East German Eastern European countries in the aftermath of it to the Nazi regime, and “[i]n the weeks follow- government “publicly condemned a terrorist attack World War II returning to their homes as a revan- ing the war, East German officials traveled to Cairo whose victims were Israelis.” But even as it did so, chist “threat to peace and stability in Europe.” and Damascus to express their solidarity and back it studiously avoided noting whom the victims were up words with agreements to deliver weapons,” or why they had been murdered, condemning only he West German far left emerged in a society often cost-free. In the ensuing years, East Germany’s “what it called a ‘crime against the Olympic Games,’ Tthat believed its own legitimacy to be bound sales of armaments to the Arab world were relative- which united the world’s athletes and thereby were up with a Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to

8 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 terms with the past) that entailed not only repu- nization and immigration, called for the return many others, , , Eliza- diation of the Nazis but reparations to their Jew- of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, beth Taylor, Linda Blair, Theodore Bikel, and perhaps ish victims. While East Germany was denying any and condemned “the Israeli aggression against the most improbably, Richard Dreyfuss as the heroic responsibility for the Nazi regime and excoriating anti-imperialist forces in the Middle East.” The Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu, who was SDS’s adoption of this resolution was, Herf writes, killed while commanding the operation. “the moment at which the leftist anti-imperialism In his 1979 Return to Humanity: The Appeal of For the most extreme of of the 1960s New Left . . . redefined the meaning of a Terrorist Who Has Abandoned Terrorism, Hans- the West German far leftists, West German Vergangenheitsbewältigung and its as- Joachim Klein renounced his Revolutionary Cells sociated focus on the memory of the Holocaust and past and expressed pride in his part in thwarting solidarity with terrorists . . . anti-Semitism.” the assassination of two West German Jewish lead- Over the next several years, SDS members began ers. Nearly two decades later, however, when the predictably extended to showing up at “Al Fatah summer camps” in Jordan, remaining members of the Red Army Faction dis- sometimes receiving military training. In 1969, Diet- solved their organization, the only other group “that collaboration with them. er Kunzelmann, a key leader of the West German far they praised by name” was the PFLP. left, summed things up in a “Letter from Amman”: Israel, West Germany was transferring massive he stodgy East German leaders didn’t learn any amounts of money to it and offering the country Palestine is what Vietnam is for the Amis [slang Tlessons from the West German firebrands, and its broad support. In line with the rest of the coun- for Americans]. The left has not yet understood one can’t say anything more of the latter group’s try, “the preeminent stance of non-communist that. Why? [Because of] the Jewish complex anti-Zionist statements from the Six-Day War on- leftist and left-liberal opinion in West Germany (Judenknax). “We gassed 6 million Jews. The Jews ward (and Herf says it a number of times) than that was emphatically pro-Israeli” in the years between today are called Israelis. Whoever fights fascism they echoed what the former had long been saying. 1949 and 1967. But Israel’s trouncing of its enemies is for Israel.” It’s as simple as that but that’s all There is, however, the curious fact that the West in the Six-Day War gave pause, at least, to leftists wrong. When we finally learn to understand the German policeman who shot Benno Ohnesorg was throughout the world, and those in West Germany fascist ideology of Zionism, we will no longer secretly a Stasi agent. “Ironically,” Herf observes, “a were no exception. hesitate to replace our simple philo-semitism murder carried out by an agent of the East German Herf shows that something close to happen- with an unambiguous and clear solidarity with intelligence services became conclusive evidence stance also had a role in the German New Left’s turn AL FATAH. In the Middle East, it has taken up for West German leftists that the West German gov- against Israel in 1967. On June 2, three days before the battle against the Third Reich. ernment and the Social Democratic government of West Berlin as well were intolerant of dissent.” But even if this policeman had intended (as he subse- quently denied) to stir up trouble, it couldn’t have been with the aim of ruining the relations between the West German left and Israel. In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first (and only) freely elected East German parliament voted in near unanimity to ask “the people in Israel for forgiveness for the hypocrisy and hostility” of the country’s previous policies toward their state as one of its first acts. Not long afterward, it adopted another resolution renouncing “all forms of the anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist policies that were prac- ticed in this country for decades . . .” Every party in the parliament supported this resolution, except the Communist Party’s successor. Jeffrey Herf has produced not only a prodigiously researched indictment but also a timely reminder. As he writes at the very end of his book, although they have been defeated, the communists and radical leftists in Germany

left behind a toxic ideological brew. Their distortions about the history of the state of PLO chairman Yasser Arafat meets with East German leader Erich Honecker, Berlin Schönefeld Israel, their extensive use of terrorism, and Airport, East Berlin, March 9, 1982. (Photo by ADN-Bildarchiv/ullstein bild via Getty Images.) their justifications for it have cast a long and destructive shadow over politics and political the war began, a policeman named Karl-Heinz For the most extreme of the West German far culture in the Middle East, in Germany, and Kurras shot and killed a Berlin university student, leftists, solidarity with terrorists predictably extend- around the world. Benno Ohnesorg, who was protesting the visit of the ed to collaboration with them. Herf sketches the shah of Iran. This sparked unrest that culminated on short careers of the most notorious of these people, Undeclared Wars with Israel is, then, a post- June 10 in a 7,000-student-strong protest march in Wilfried Ernst Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann, who mortem with a polemical edge, a book that very care- Hannover, Ohnesorg’s hometown, on the day of his collaborated with the Popular Front for the Libera- fully digs up half-forgotten enemies of Israel from the funeral. In the days following this event, the conser- tion of Palestine (PFLP) in hijacking an Air France recent past, in part to remind us that they have heirs vative German press, controlled by Axel Springer, flight and diverting it to , where they were who still repeat the same arguments, slogans, and cal- simultaneously vilified the New Left and extolled killed by Israeli commandos during Operation umnies. It is, unfortunately, doubtful that Herf’s tale Israel’s historic victory; the friend of the leftists’ en- Entebbe. He also tells us about their comrades in of two hatreds would shame them, even if they read it. emy became their enemy. “For the young Left,” Herf the Revolutionary Cells who bombed many Jew- writes, “the conjuncture of the Six-Day War and the ish and Israeli sites in Germany between 1973 and Ohnesorg shooting had enduring import.” 1980. Among these attacks were several attempted Allan Arkush is professor of Judaic studies and history Within three months, the Socialist German bombings of European theaters screening Victory at at Binghamton University and the senior contributing Student League (SDS) denounced Zionist colo- Entebbe, a 1976 extravaganza that starred, among editor of the Jewish Review of Books.

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 9 A Dashing Medievalist

BY WALTER LAQUEUR

long ago in a book that discussed this odd, impor- Moscow. He had just returned from China and was Ernst Kantorowicz: A Life tant cultural phenomenon, George wrote “about the trying to convince me that Mao had come close to by Robert E. Lerner need for a new nobility . . . about the Führer with changing human nature in his country. When I ex- Press, 424 pp., $39.95 his völkische banner who will lead his followers to pressed grave doubts, he said, “Walter, I also doubt- EKa had great courage and old-world personal charm— n 1922, the Hartwig Kantorowicz firm ran an his Berkeley students were almost as mesmerized by him animated advertisement of “two men having an argument until a bottle of liqueur miracu- as he had been by Stefan George. lously appears, golden liquid then flows down Itheir throats: they smile and make up; then a cap- the future Reich through storm and grisly portents, ed it, but believe me, I have seen it, and chances are tion appears: ‘Kantorowicz: Famed throughout the and so forth.” Despite the genuinely ominous ring that he will succeed.” The poetry of this circle was world.’” While this has long ceased to be the case, of these words, neither George nor his acolytes were frequently exquisite, but their political judgment the most accomplished scion of the Jewish fam- was not. ily that launched the company, the historian Ernst Kantorowicz, has retained more than a shadow Ka became an instant celebrity in 1927 with the of what was once a towering scholarly reputation. Epublication of his massive popular biography His 1957 classic The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in of Frederick II, the famous 13th-century emperor of Medieval Political Theology, which can be described Germany and Italy. The book idealized the Hohen- as a fantastically erudite commentary on the say- staufen (the German imperial family) and Fred- ing “the king is dead, long live the king,” is still in erick II in particular, who Kantorowicz described print and on the reading lists (if not the bedside as “the fiery lord of the beginning, the seducer, tables) of aspiring medievalists. Now, thanks to the beguiler, the radiant, merry. The ever-young, the appearance of Robert E. Lerner’s massive, deeply severely powerful judge, the scholar and wise man, researched, and fascinating biography, EKa—as the helmeted warrior leading the round-dance of Kantorowicz was known to his friends and is identi- the muses.” TheNeue Freie Presse of Vienna said fied throughout the book—is more famous than he of Kantorowicz’s book that “One reads it as if it has been since his death in 1963. Or at least since were the most suspenseful novel. The brilliant, Norman Cantor’s cartoonish portrait of him as the artful-hot-blooded style of the author identifies ideological “twin” of his friend and fellow medieval- him as a member of the circle of Stefan George and ist , who joined the Nazi Party Gundolf. . . . Breath-taking.” As Lerner notes, it was and spent World War II as the official staff historian also a celebration of authoritarianism and a call to of the German High Command. the German people to again make itself worthy Lerner begins his book with an account of EKa’s of such a leader and “redeem” Frederick. Göring early life in the city of Poznan, at the time located is said to have presented the book to Mussolini, in Germany. (It became part of Poland after World and Percy Schramm said that Hitler read it twice, War II.) His family was wealthy, and his friends Ernst Kantorowicz, ca. 1921. (Photo by Franz though Lerner quite plausibly doubts the claim. and acquaintances included many aristocrats. At Greiner. © Stefan George Archiv, Stuttgart.) But the book was also a genuine marvel of deep home, the thoroughly assimilated Kantorowiczes scholarship and creative synthesis, and on its merit celebrated Christmas but not Hanukkah, Easter the 31-year-old author soon leapfrogged into an but not Passover. In World War I, EKa fought in the typical German nationalist extremists. In a famous honorary position as a history professor at the new German army first on the Western Front, later in short poem describing his followers, George depict- University of Frankfurt. The position came without Turkey. He received several medals (including the ed them as a small elite group, apart from the crowd, a salary—but he didn’t need one, not at first. Things Iron Cross) for showing extraordinary bravery and making its own way under the banner of Hellas. changed, however, in 1931, when his family’s firm after the war joined the paramilitary Freikorps, As is widely known, the George circle attract- collapsed. Shorn of his inherited wealth, reliant fighting mainly against Polish intruders as well as ed many Jewish artists and intellectuals (Gundolf, solely on his significant but limited royalties from communists. These units were in various ways pre- originally Gundelfinger, was himself Jewish), but it the biography, EKa might have found himself in real cursors of the Nazis, and the presence of a Jew in is not easy to explain this attraction, even in retro- trouble, but “fortune smiled when a well-paid full- their ranks was highly unusual, to say no more. spect. Even Lerner in this wide-ranging and learned professional position became available at Frankfurt” After leaving the Freikorps, EKa studied at Hei- biography does not quite manage to solve the riddle. in February 1932. delberg, which was at the time still the university How could a man of such great historical knowledge A year later, Hitler came to power. In April, the with the greatest reputation in German literature and such wide life experience as EKa be so griev- Nazis took control of Frankfurt University, and the and history. Through one of his teachers, Friedrich ously mistaken in his political judgment? University Senate quickly suggested that Kantorowicz Gundolf, a major figure in German literary life at the I belong to a considerably younger generation take an immediate leave of absence for the sake of time, he became acquainted with the charismatic than George and his circle, but among my friends “avoiding disruptions of his classes.” He drafted a poet Stefan George. EKa soon became a member of and acquaintances were some who had been close bold response, which Lerner describes: George’s inner circle. These young intellectuals sub- to them. For instance, my academic colleague Klaus ordinated themselves to “The Master” and consid- Mehnert’s older brother Frank had been Stefan Instead of asking for a leave, he astonishingly ered themselves members of the “Secret Germany” George’s secretary and valet. I remember a long requested suspension of his professorship for that would one day become ascendant. As I noted conversation with Klaus as we walked the streets of the indefinite future, albeit with continuing

10 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 pay. The grounds were not that he agreed by the latest Nazi actions. On the other hand, the his classes were likely to be disrupted, for he draft, which Kantorowicz preserved in his papers, considered his “national” orientation to be well and the subsequent letter go on to indict recent Hitler’s known. But he maintained that the recent anti- anti-Semitic measures of the Nazis and state that American Model Semitic actions made it impossible for him to “so long as the fact of having Jewish blood in one’s The United States demonstrate his national commitment without veins presumes a defect in one’s beliefs . . . I con- and the Making of seeming to curry favor by continuing to teach. sider it inappropriate to hold a public office.” And Nazi Race Law yet, on the same day, he also sent a letter not only James Q. Whitman describing but apparently exaggerating his activ- ity with the ultra-nationalist Freikorps after World “ Hitler’s American War I. The upshot was that he asked for and was Model is a breathtaking excavation of America’s granted a leave of absence for the summer, from shameful contribution which he never returned. Nevertheless, he contin- to Hitler’s genocidal ued to receive his pension for many years, thanks policies. This book is a to the emeritus status (which he found comical) profound testament to what the past can teach us that went with his forced retirement. about the present and is more timely than Whitman In his surprisingly popular 1991 work on 20th- could possibly have imagined when he began this century medievalists, Inventing the Middle Ages, remarkable excursion into our nation’s original sin and its surprising European legacy. the aforementioned Norman Cantor alleged much A brilliant page-turner.” worse than this. For him, “Kantorowicz’s Nazi cre- —Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard Law School dentials were impeccable on every count except his Cloth $24.95 race,” and he made much of the nationalist rhetoric in EKa’s letters to the university. But this was merely the customary style, reflecting the spirit of the times. Any deviation from it would have been considered The Many Deaths almost hostile and certainly ineffective. Cantor also of Jew Süss charged that Kantorowicz actually stayed on in Ger- many after 1933 under the protection of “Nazi big- The Notorious Trial and Execution of an shots” he hoped would eventually help him return Eighteenth-Century to his position at Frankfurt. Cantor suggested that Court Jew Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II from De arte Kantorowicz thought “militant anti-Semitism [was] Yair Mintzker venandi cum avibus. (Biblioteca Vaticana, Vatican just a vulgar intermediary instrument for the Nazis City/Bridgeman Images.) [that] would burn away; then he would get his suit- “ This is a highly able reward and eminence in the Hitlerian intelligent, scintillating, regime.” This attack, which came in a chapter and fascinating book that will stimulate a titled “The Nazi Twins,” created a medium- great deal of debate. sized intellectual scandal when it was pub- The story of ‘Jew Süss’ is a wonderful subject and lished, with letters to the New York Review Mintzker is the historian to tell it. He has a fine of Books and so on. His accusations, as imaginative ability to recreate a whole world.” Lerner patiently shows, were almost entirely — Lyndal Roper, author of Martin Luther: Renegade unwarranted. and Prophet In 1934, EKa visited Oxford, where he Cloth $35.00 met the distinguished classicist Sir Maurice Bowra who, according to Lerner, became his sometime lover and his best friend for life (Kantorowicz had relationships with both The Origin men and women). If they were so close, it of the Jews is a little difficult to understand why Bowra, The Quest for Roots one of the most influential figures in Oxford in a Rootless Age and eventually a vice chancellor of the uni- Steven Weitzman

versity, did not find it possible to help him “ Compellingly argued to stay in England, instead of returning to and very original. Germany after a year and a half. In the ab- Only a scholar whose sence of any such opportunity in England, mind is as fertile as EKa focused his efforts on America and was Weitzman’s and whose lucky enough to find, in the nick of time, curiosity is as intense a temporary position at the University of as his could have pulled off a book like this with such success.” California, Berkeley, where he began teach- — Saul M. Olyan, author of Disability in the Hebrew ing in the winter of 1939. Stefan George, ca. 1906. (Courtesy of the Deutsches Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical Differences

Literaturarchiv, Marbach.) Cloth $35.00 n addition to his intellectual brilliance, IEKa had great courage and old-world “What are we to say?” Lerner asks. “If we re- personal charm—his Berkeley students were al- place the term ‘national’ with ‘patriotic,’ his state- most as mesmerized by him as he had been by ment becomes somewhat more palatable. But Stefan George—but these qualities sometimes nothing can rescue the fact that the letter refers led him astray. He seems to have realized in later positively to the ‘again nationally oriented Ger- years that his glorification of Frederick II went too many’ . . . and then goes so far as to maintain that far. He is reported to have said of his Frederick bi- See our e-books at the author’s ‘fundamentally positive view toward a ography after World War II that, “The man who press.princeton.edu nationally governed Reich’” had not been “shaken” wrote that book has died long ago,” and he did not

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 11

DO NOT PRINT THIS INFORMATION JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS SUMMER 2017 17-402 permit it to be reprinted in his lifetime. But the In the end, he gave up his tenure. This was an act ing hard (not always unsuccessfully) to escape his person who had allegedly died seems very close to of principle, but it was also to some extent an expres- background and his past. In this context, it must the EKa who survived, and one looks more or less sion of EKa’s vanity. He was a courageous man, but he be said that EKa never made a complete break with in vain among his writings for notice of this earlier also liked his courage to be noted. It is possible that his Jewishness. He seems to have realized that it self’s death. there had been a fundamental change in his political would be undignified and even cowardly to escape Some, including Lerner, have seen his conduct at from what became in the Nazi era an attacked, be- the end of a decade of highly successful teaching at He was a courageous man, leaguered community. He did not really want to Berkeley as evidence of a basic change in his politi- remain a member, but he was not a deserter. This cal stance. Faced with the demand to sign an oath of but he also liked his courage kind of attitude did exist among certain groups of loyalty swearing that he had never been a commu- German Jewry up to and including the early Hitler nist, he relinquished his position as a tenured pro- to be noted. years. fessor at the University of California. In fact, as he Lerner’s biography is worthy of great praise, and remarked to a colleague, he had shot communists attitudes, but this we cannot know. If there was such it is very unlikely that it will ever be superseded. in the Freikorps, but he found the oath stupid and a change, was it caused when he first heard about the He has evidently read all of the available material demeaning. At a public university meeting at which death of his mother and his sister after their depor- and interviewed many of EKa’s contemporaries at the oath was debated, Kantorowicz said: tation from Germany to Theresienstadt or earlier? Berkeley and Princeton. If it does not quite offer Again, we do not know. His correspondence is strik- answers to all of our questions about EKa, it is not re- History shows that it never pays to yield to the ingly silent with regard to these matters. ally Lerner’s fault. Kantorowicz was a charming man impact of the momentary hysteria . . . It is a Expelled from Berkeley, EKa had no trouble land- of immense talent, but he also took care to conceal typical expedient of demagogues to bring the ing on his feet at the recently established Institute of much of his inner life. He was brave and brilliant but most loyal citizens, and only the loyal ones, Advanced Study in Princeton, whose founder was at the same time, a very slippery customer. into a conflict of conscience by branding non one of his admirers. It was there, in the 1950s, that he conformists as un-Athenian, un-English, un- completed The King’s Two Bodies. It was also there, in German . . . It is a shameful and undignified 1961, that Robert Lerner, then a 21-year-old graduate Walter Laqueur was for many years head of the action, it is an affront and a violation of both student, briefly met his future biographical subject at Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener Library human sovereignty and professional dignity a faculty cocktail party, nattily dressed with a pres- in London, chairman of the International Research that the Regents of this University have dared to ence that “announced ‘great man’.” Council of the Center for Strategic and International bully the bearer of this gown into a situation in Not being a medievalist, my long-time interest Studies in Washington, D.C., and university professor which . . . he is compelled to give up either his in this strange and fascinating character arose not at Georgetown University. His most recent book, a tenure, together with his freedom of judgment, from his path-breaking studies, but much more collection of essays, should have appeared as Optimistic his human dignity and his responsible from an interest in the strange ideological contor- Reflections of a Veteran Pessimist but appeared as sovereignty as a scholar. tions of a German intellectual of Jewish origin try- Reflections of a Veteran Pessimist (Routledge).

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Zohar Pritzker Edition, Volume Twelve Jewish Salonica The Merchants Translated by Between the of Oran Nathan Wolski and Ottoman Empire Joel Hecker A Jewish Port at the and Modern Greece Dawn of Empire With this volume, the Devin E. Naar Joshua Schreier entire Zohar collection is now available. Visit sup.org/zohar for details.

Ninette of Holocaust Sin Street Memory in the A novella by Ancestral Tales Digital Age Vitalis Danon Reading the Buczacz Survivors’ Stories and Edited with an Stories of S.Y. Agnon New Media Practices introduction Alan Mintz and notes by Jeffrey Shandler Lia Brozgal and Sarah Abrevaya Stein

sup.org stanfordpress.typepad.com

12 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 On Agnonizing in English

BY RUBY NAMDAR

Not only is there an unprecedented consensus made him impossible both to ignore and to emu- A City in Its Fullness around Agnon’s greatness, there is very little sub- late; indeed impossible, or at least difficult, for con- by S. Y. Agnon, edited by Alan Mintz and Jeffrey Saks stantive criticism of him. In part this is, no doubt, temporary Israelis to even read. Toby Press, 617 pp., $29.95 because he did win the Nobel Prize, and in doing so The Hebrew writer S. Yizhar was said to have seemed to validate the whole world of Hebrew lit- hung a sign above his desk with the mock-biblical Ancestral Tales: Reading the Buczacz erature, ridding it (for a while, at least) of its deeply injunction “Thou Shalt Not Agnonize.” In A Tale of Stories of S.Y. Agnon by Alan Mintz The Hebrew writer S. Yizhar was said to have hung a Stanford University Press, 440 pp., $65 sign above his desk with the mock-biblical injunction “Thou Shalt Not Agnonize.”

t is hard to convey the specific gravity of S. Y. ingrained fear of marginality and provinciality. It Love and Darkness, confesses to a simi- Agnon in Israeli literary culture. For the He- is also, perhaps, because Agnon is more respected lar struggle. It has been some time since this was a brew reader, Agnon is not merely canonical, than actually read in Israel, and this has been the temptation for Israeli writers, who are mostly sec- he stands almost outside of time. One can case for a very long time. ular and, in any case, very far from Agnon’s world Iget a sense of this in the recent remarks of one of of rabbis, Hasidim, simple Israel’s leading literary critics. Writing in Ha’aretz Eastern European Jews and on the 50th anniversary of Agnon’s Nobel Prize in “books of the pious.” None- Literature, Ariel Hirschfeld described Agnon as theless, speaking person- unequivocally “the greatest Hebrew author of all ally, as an Israeli of Persian generations.” Jewish descent, I found Agnon’s work to be an His place is amongst the greatest Hebrew enormous source of joy and writers of all times: the authors of the Torah inspiration from my first and the book of Samuel; the poets of Psalms encounter with it. There is and of Song of Songs; the sages of the Mishnah something about the gran- and the great names of Hebrew poetry: Shlomo deur of his language, the ibn Gabirol, Yehuda Halevi and H. N. Bialik. vividness of his imagery, Those who will compare his work to that of the the compressed power in great names of world literature will see clearly his use of traditional sym- that there too his place is secure—side by side bols, and the intensity of with the greatest of the great: Dante, Dickens, the psychological drama in Goethe, Balzac, Flaubert, Pushkin, Tolstoy, his work that captivated me Chekov, Kafka and Joyce. immediately and irrevers- ibly influenced my aspira- One also gets a sense of Agnon’s unusual status tions as a Hebrew writer. in the words of literature pro- S. Y. Agnon, accompanied by his wife, waves before boarding a plane for It was liberating to witness fessor Yahil Zaban in another recent Ha’aretz piece, Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, December 1966. (Photo by a writer use the Hebrew bearing the bizarre and sensationalist title “Against Moshe Milner, courtesy of the Government Press Office, Israel.) language so regally, mak- Agnon. Or: This Is the Platform of Habayit Haye- ing it sing like a well-tuned hudi Party.” Agnon’s literary project always bore a curious ancient lyre. Agnon’s religiosity, too, spoke to me as relationship to the Israeli national project. Noth- someone who had grown up in a traditional Jewish And as the platform of Habayit Hayehudi ing could be further from the mythical tzabar (the home, albeit one very far from Agnon’s Ashkenazi conceals within it religious oppression, sabra, or native son of the Land of Israel) than milieu. All of which is to say that, unlike many of patriarchal values, cynical neo-liberalism and Agnon’s old-world characters or the allusive quasi- my contemporaries, I have had to take S. Yizhar’s a willful blindness toward the other, Agnon’s rabbinic authorial voice in which he told their sto- warning to heart and avoid writing in what others work too excludes Arabs and Mizrahis [Jews ries. Agnon himself was well aware of this tension. have called Agnonit (Agnonese). of Middle Eastern descent]; divides women In the speech he gave upon receiving the Israel Prize into monsters and saints, presenting them as in 1954 he described himself as “a stranger among iven all of this, there has always been some- essentially inferior; views the larger Israel ideal my fellow [Hebrew] authors,” who was “condemned Gthing heroic, even quixotic, about rendering as a God-given right and promise. . . . for my lack of ‘Modernity’ and for my choice Agnon into English—and how much more so the to write in the language of the books of the pious.” late, difficult stories recovering the everyday history Needless to say, such fulminations are no more in- In fact, it was Agnon’s linguistic register, his choice of his Galician hometown of Buczacz. These sto- teresting than over-the-top panegyrics. The Agnon of a literary style that somehow managed to feel ries, which ranged from short fragments to a com- under attack here is more the Israeli icon, the book- continuous with the classics of premodern Hebrew, plex novella of local politics called “In Search of a ish be-yarmulke’d image on the 50-shekel bill, than despite his deep, ironic modernism, that set him Rabbi, or the Governor’s Whim,” were often pub- the subtle, ironic 20th-century modernist. Nonethe- apart from the beginning. It seems to me that it was lished in Ha’aretz to little fanfare and some puzzle- less, Zaban goes on to make an interesting point: this stylistic choice more than anything else that has ment. Even Agnon’s great friend and champion

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 13 Gershom Scholem described this phase of the writ- heard the news of the city was the afternoon of Mainz as he was dying a martyr’s death on Yom er’s work as “peculiar” and perhaps more relevant before Shavuot, so I put aside my mourning for Kippur. Three days later Rabbi Amnon revealed to “students of folklore and Hebrew style than to the dead because of the joy of the season when himself to the great liturgist Rabbi Kalonymus readers of literature.” After Agnon died, his daugh- our Torah was given. ben Meshullam (who died in 1096) and dictated ter Emuna Yaron published them together, in the the lyrics to him in a dream. In using this famous sequence he had specified, in a massive book titled This surprising remark can and should be read model Agnon appears to transform the festive hol- Ir u-melo’ah, and it is an ample, well-chosen selec- on several levels. In the first place, Jewish law ter- iday of Shavuot, “when our Torah was given,” into tion of these stories that editors Alan Mintz and minates mourning for the dead as soon as a holiday the somber Day of Atonement—a time of reflec- Jeffrey Saks have now brought together for the such as Shavuot commences, as Agnon expected his tion and spiritual awe. English reader in A City in Its Fullness. In doing so, readers to know. But surely this is not all that is go- Agnon’s choice of Rabbi Shlomo ibn Gabirol as the they have succeeded brilliantly. As Mintz notes in vehicle of inspiration and remembrance is somewhat his concise, judicious introduction, earlier Hebrew Agnon’s strength was not in surprising. One might have expected him to choose readers intimidated by the size and variety of the a figure from the world which had been destroyed, original collection had been put off from “exploring the depiction of values and not a great medieval Spanish poet. Agnon was, after it in depth and discovering the full-fledged stories all, a master of the whole Ashkenazi literary tradition. that are as brilliant as anything Agnon ever wrote.” history, but in characters and Then again, the seeming arbitrariness of the choice A City in Its Fullness is not the only work by may betray the possibility of a strong autobiographi- Agnon that describes the Jewish life of his home- situations. cal element in this story. In his excellent new mono- town. As a matter of fact, a large number of his works graph on this phase of Agnon’s career, Ancestral Tales: take place in Buczacz or a fictional surrogate. Much ing on. Unable or unwilling to mourn for the world Reading the Buczacz Stories of S.Y. Agnon, Alan Mintz like Faulkner, perhaps the only American writer to of his childhood and youth, Agnon does what he did elaborates on this possibility: whom Agnon might also be compared stylistically, best: reconstruct and resurrect it by his gift of story- who set most of his stories in the fictional Yoknapa- telling. This decision is mediated by a strange occur- The story presents the revelation of Ibn tawpha County, Agnon was trying to represent the rence that lends the story a mythological air. Late Gabirol as a profound event that actually spirit of his place and people with all their greatness at night, as he keeps the traditional study vigil of took place rather than a dream or a reverie and smallness. But there is something essentially dif- ferent in A City in Its Fullness, something that sepa- rates it from the rest of Agnon’s body of work. Here he positions himself not as a subtly ironic—Scho- lem’s phrase was “dialectical”—modernist whose motivations were in the first place artistic, but as a humble, heartbroken preserver of memory. In addition to eliminating many of the shorter pieces, Mintz and Saks took one quite brilliant liber- ty with what Mintz calls the “orchestrated sequence” that Agnon left his daughter. This was to begin, rather than end, the volume with Agnon’s story “The Sign.” As Mintz has written of this choice, it “makes the composition of the lament into an invitation to be emulated in the narrator’s belated prosaic mode of creativity.” In Arthur Green’s fine translation, the story begins:

In the year when the news reached us that all the Jews in my town have been killed, I was living in a certain section of Jerusalem, in a house I had built for myself . . . Myriads of thousands of Israel, none of whom the enemy was worthy even to touch, were killed and A detail from Map of Buczacz by Elad Lifshitz, from S. Y. Agnon’s A City in Its Fullness (Courtesy of strangled and drowned and buried alive; the Toby Press.) among them my brothers and friends and family, who went through all kinds of great sufferings in their lives and in their deaths, by Tikkun Leil Shavuot alone in the little neighbor- or a literary conceit. . . . As modern readers, the wickedness of our blasphemers and our hood synagogue, the narrator is visited by the great we are well practiced in naturalizing the desecrators, a filthy people, blasphemers of medieval Hebrew poet Rabbi Shlomo ibn Gabirol, supernatural events we encounter in poems God, whose wickedness had not been matched the author of the piyyut (liturgical poem) he is read- and novels by recourse to the fact that they are since man was placed upon the earth. ing. This piyyut evokes the memory of the old haz- manifestations of the literary imagination. But zan (synagogue cantor) of his town, thus setting in the events in “The Sign” make a truth claim of The unusually strong style and vocabulary of this motion the large mechanism of remembrance that a different sort. Agnon is saying to us, “with all opening seems to mark A City in Its Fullness not as is A City in Its Fullness. It is, Mintz writes, “a narra- due regard to literary imagination, this really a 20th-century work of short stories but as a medi- tive of consecration.” h app e n e d .” eval cycle of martyrdom stories, the heir to the long This story of visitation has echoes elsewhere Jewish literature of destruction, which began with in Agnon’s work, especially in the story “Le-fi he stories of A City in Its Fullness are strung Lamentations. But the story (if that is what we ha-tza’ar ha-schar” (The Reward Is According to Ttogether as stations in a foot-journey around should call it) takes an unexpected and indeed baf- the Suffering) in which a righteous liturgist is the the now ruined town, each one of them a stop in fling turn. Immediately after Agnon laments the recipient of a poetic revelation he can never recap- this long stroll, and the editors have commissioned death of his family, friends, and neighbors, he writes: ture. But it also clearly alludes to the famous legend a map of Buczacz, beautifully designed by Elad about the composition of the U’netaneh Tokef, one Lifshitz, which graces the inside front and back I made no lament for my city and did not call of the great anthems of Jewish liturgy. According covers, depicting life in the town in the shadow of for tears or for mourning . . . The day when we to this legend it was first uttered by Rabbi Amnon death. But the journey is not only spatial, but also a

14 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 journey in time—as it traces Jewish life in Buczacz from its mystery-shrouded mythological inception to the day of its brutal annihilation. In his foreword to the stories—and with exem- plary scholarly thoroughness in his monograph— Mintz draws attention to the values attached to each one of the stations on Agnon’s journey, such as charity, piety, studiousness, and devotion to UNIVERSITY PRESS prayer and ritual, but he is careful to recognize that “Brilliant. . . Maciejko offers his own take on the Agnon was far from a simple didactic writer. “To heretical core of this heterodox be sure,” Mintz writes, “Torah study and worship messianic movement.“ are transcendental values that provide the key to ADA RAPOPORT–ALBERT the iconography of A City in Its Fullness. Yet the University College London vivid liveliness of the stories depends on Agnon’s “The best collection [available] in English. . . . grounding these values in the concreteness of Maciejko’s introduction is the most geography and history.” original contribution to the history of this movement since Gershom Scholem’s Nonetheless, as Mintz knew, Agnon’s strength 1936 essay ‘Redemption Through Sin’ and was not in the depiction of values and history, but will set the agenda for all future research.” in characters and situations. Agnon is a master- DAVID BIALE ful drawer of characters and is especially potent University of California, Davis when depicting characters and situations that are “This volume will help enrich and complicate idiosyncratic, willful, or perverse. Agnon resur- our understandings of Jewish theologies in the rects his hometown and its colorful characters in early modern period.” all their complexity, never once succumbing to the JONATHAN BOYARIN Cornell University temptation to flatten them into two-dimensional martyrdom. This refusal to bask in nostalgia and “A strikingly original interpretation of Sabbatianism. . . . An invaluable resource.” sentimentalism is, in my opinion, his true rebel- HILLEL J. KIEVAL lion against the horror. Nor did he forget when Washington University in St. Louis his beloved community betrayed its values. In the $26.00 Paperback story “Disappeared,” the narrator takes a jab at the $95.00 Hardcover community’s self-image as a compassionate people: $24.99 Ebook

“So what did that woman live on? What sustained HERESY PRAISE FOR SABBATIAN her? If not her suffering, then it was only her saliva that kept her alive, as she had told R. Leibush the THE BRANDEIS LIBRARY of MODERN JEWISH THOUGHT parnas before he took her son from her.” The great diversity of themes and modes of narration in these stories may be the result of the fact that they were written over many years, but it might also be seen as part of the book’s statement, as Agnon’s goal was to resurrect all aspects of the past, not just those which seem “worthy” of lament. As it turns out, loss hovers over the production of A City in Its Fullness. As originally conceived, the translation was to have been undertaken by James S. Diamond. At the end of his foreword, Mintz reports:

Sadly, in April 2013 he was killed by a car while Jews & Race: Jewish & Diaspora Moses Mendelssohn: Writings on Identity, Nationalism: Writings on Judaism, standing near the home of a friend in Princeton, & Difference, Writings on Jewish Christianity, & the Bible New Jersey. He had prepared draft translations 1880-1940 Peoplehood in Europe Michah Gottlieb, ed. of several of the stories, and those have been Mitchell B. Hart, ed. & the United States completed and edited by Jeffrey Saks. Other Simon Rabinovitch, ed. translators were invited to step in to complete the task. A City in Its Fullness is dedicated to Modern Middle Jewish Legal Theories: Jim’s memory. Eastern Jewish Writings on State, Thought: Religion, & Morality As I was writing this review, I received the star- Writings on Identity, Leora Batnitzky, ed. tling news that Alan Mintz himself had suddenly Politics, & Culture Yonatan Brafman, ed. 1893-1958 passed away. These two new books will now stand Moshe Behar, ed. AVAILABLE not only as a testament to the genius of S. Y. Agnon Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, ed. DECEMBER but as a memorial to Alan Mintz, who was a life- long scholar and, more importantly, an avid lover of 2017 .

Ruby Namdar is a Hebrew novelist living in New York. His novel Ha-bayit asher necherav won the , Visit us at www.upne.com/brandeis.html or call 800-421-1561 Israel’s most prestigious literary award, and will appear @UPNEBooks in English under the title The Ruined House with Harper this November.

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 15 Why the Long Face?

BY ERICA BROWN

who has decided that this show in a seedy Netanya he’s so skinny.” He lifts up his faded T-shirt and A Horse Walks into a Bar club will be his very last performance. As he be- a gasp passes through the room. “Ain’t it so?” by David Grossman, translated by Jessica Cohen gins his routine, Dovaleh does what all comedians He turns his bare chest to the people sitting on Alfred A. Knopf, 208 pp., $25.95 do. He plays off his audience, cajoling them, pacing either side of the stage and flashes a big grin. “See this? Skin and bones. Mostly cartilage. I swear “People come here to have a to God, if I was a horse I’d be glue by now, you know what I’m saying?” Embarrassed giggles and good time, it’s the weekend, repulsed exhalations in response. “All I’m saying, n amnesiac walks into a bar. He goes up sister,” he turns back to the woman, “is next time, to a beautiful blonde and says, “So, do I you wanna clear your head, and when you give someone this kind of news, you come here often?” need to do it carefully. Anesthetize him first. A this guy gives us Yom Kippur.” Numb him up, for God’s sake.” Two men walk into a bar. You’d think at least one of them would have ducked. about the stage, sweating, mocking them, leaning The physical exposure of Dovaleh’s cancer- into them, then away. He ridicules Netanya and its ravaged body mirrors his emotional exposure. The The past, present, and future walk into a bar. It residents constantly: “Of course I’ve had Netanya thin man and the thin horse will not last long. The was tense. women! . . . Beggars can’t be choosers, times were joke will not end. Numbing is required, the kind of hard, we had to make do.” The audience laps it up, numbing that comes from being on stage night after All of these jokes are variations on the old chestnut slapping themselves, bursting with raucous laughter. night in a pathetic grab for laughs. There is a loom- that is the unlikely title of David Grossman’s lat- Minutes later, he singles out table eight. He crouch- ing assumption that if Dovaleh can extend the per- est novel, A Horse Walks into a Bar, which was just es to get closer: “What are you beauties celebrating formance, he can extend his life. This is not unlike awarded the Man Booker Prize. Readers are used to tonight? Is one of you becoming a widow at this the ruse that Ora, the protagonist of Grossman’s To turning to Grossman for his explorations of the vast very second?” What had begun as typical stand-up the End of the Land, creates when she goes on a long, themes of memory and loss, which aren’t generally becomes a strange, unnamable form of performance extended hike to avoid the IDF coming to her door funny unless, of course, you count cosmic jokes. The art. We soon find ourselves not only identifying with terrible news. If she’s not there, it simply cannot book’s theatrical, saturated yellow cover flashes a with but actually becoming part of the audience. As happen. If Dovaleh continues to tell jokes, the Angel “One Night Only” banner next to Grossman’s name, the mood darkens, the question will be how long we of Death cannot claim him. and we understand that this is a stand-up show that stay, as Dovaleh taunts us: will span both an evening and an entire life. It is ovaleh has invited a childhood friend with Grossman’s shortest book, an arresting, disturbing You don’t just slam someone with “‘You’re in Dwhom he has lost touch to his show: Avishai read with no obvious punch line but one long face. Netanya.’ Bam! What’s the matter with you? You Lazar, a recently retired Supreme Court justice. At That face belongs to comedian Dov Greenstein, gotta give a guy some warning, especially when first, Lazar doesn’t remember him. The comedian is hurt but presses on. He needs a favor. He will even pay him to come to the show. The judge, however, does not like stand-up. “Don’t take it personally, but it’s really not something I relate to. . . . All that kid- JEWISH REVIEW BOOKS ding around, the jokes, the performing, it’s not for nd me, not at my age. I’m sorry.” Lazar even tells Dova- 3 Annual All-Day Conference leh, “I’m not judging anyone,” but, of course, he is. To him, comedians are bottom feeders: “everything is just fodder for jokes … illness, death, war, it’s all fair game, hey?” But Dovaleh persists:

“I want you to look at me,” he spurted. “I want Save the Date! you to see me, really see me, and then afterward Sunday, January 14, 2018 tell me.” “Tell you what?”

Museum of Jewish Heritage “What you saw.” 36 Battery Place, New York City This anti-comic judge is our narrator, and we watch Dovaleh’s unsettling show through his eyes, as For further information, please e-mail the comic banter becomes increasingly harsh. Dova- leh gets lost in digressive childhood reveries. At one Malka Groden: point on stage, he recreates a moment when his father [email protected] was using a knife to cut dough into lokshenbrat and then tells the audience that his mother, a Holocaust 646-218-9026 survivor, was not allowed near knives. “The crowd is stone cold,” Lazar tells us. What kind of comedy is this? Finally, an audience member gets up and

16 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 tugs at his wife to leave. Someone tries to stop them. from that of a child. During the long ride back, he undirected grief a child has for a parent. In Falling “‘Enough is enough’ the guy hisses. ‘People come here plays out each death in his mind, believing that he Out of Time, the first book he wrote after the death to have a good time, it’s the weekend, you wanna clear has become a mental executioner. Will he spare his of his son, Uri, a tank commander in Israel’s war your head, and this guy gives us Yom Kippur.’” mother or his father? The reader sits in that car with against the Hezbollah, he returned to the question As the show incrementally turns into a one-man of his relationship to his fictional characters: tragedy, Dovaleh reveals the comic’s dilemma: “The stress of having to make people laugh at any cost, And I have to mix it up with some part of me. and how we basically beg you to love us.” We love I must, from deep inside me, and then exhale them for ridiculing us. With this, he publicly outs into it with my pathetic breath so I can try and the judge. “…I would now like to welcome, with make it a bit—how can I explain this to you— great excitement and deference, from the country’s a bit mine, mine . . . Because a part of me, of highest seat of justice, Supreme Court judge Avishai mine, already belongs to it, deep inside it, in its Lazar, who came here this evening unannounced, in damn prison, so there might be an opening. order to publically support our pathetic, miserable art!” The judge realizes that a long-withheld punish- Perhaps like all great novelists, Grossman both ment of him is about to commence. As the audience is and is not his characters. This tension enables us gets more and more restless, Dovaleh begs them to to become part of the characters’ minds, embodying stay for a special story. All has been working up to both the comedian and the audience, switching from this. He is almost 14, away from home for the first one to the other, carrying the weight of both. time for a week of Gadna, a high school pre–basic At the book’s end, only three people remain in the training camp program, where he is bullied merci- shadows of the club: Dovaleh, a curious admirer from lessly. Lazar, who walks to school with him every David Grossman. (Photograph by Michael Lionstar.) his childhood, and Lazar. Lazar offers to take Dova- day and with whom he has enjoyed conversations of leh home, this time not abandoning him. Dovaleh greater depth and heft than with anyone else, now pauses, “Be an audience for one more second,” and ignores his friend. Dovaleh, suffocating with him, as if the windows closes the show: “That’s all I have to give you. There’s Suddenly, in the middle of the program, a sol- were closed and the air conditioner broken. no more Dovaleh being given out today, and there dier arrives and barks at Dovaleh. He must leave Grossman has written about the psychic trem- won’t be tomorrow either.” We are exhausted. immediately for a funeral in Givat Shaul. He has ors he feels in embodying his characters. The more no idea who has died until he overhears an army he writes, the more he feels the force of the Other, official refer to him as an orphan. But he still does “which collaborates with and completes the first Erica Brown is an associate professor at George not know which parent died. Ask, we want to yell one: the desire to know the Other from within him. Washington University’s Graduate School of out. Just ask. Dovaleh is too ashamed, too shocked To feel what it means to be another person. To be Education and Human Development and the director to ask. No adults come to his rescue. Like Momik able to touch, if only for a moment, the blaze that of its Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and in See: Under Love, Dovaleh is a child confronting burns within another human being.” In A Horse Leadership. She is the author of 11 books. Jonah: The a monstrous truth that separates the adult world Walks into a Bar, Grossman conveys the bizarre, Reluctant Prophet is forthcoming this fall from Koren.

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משכן הלב MISHKAN HALEV Prayers for S’lichot and the Month of Elul MISHKAN HANEFESH Machzor for the Days of Awe

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Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 17 Inside or Outside?

BY HINDY NAJMAN

in different languages and from different regions— collection of texts. These texts demonstrate that Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings as if they had not been produced in a world where the old lines dividing biblical and rabbinic modes Related to Scripture people spoke more than one language and where of thought, or rabbinic and Hellenistic ones, are at edited by Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Lawrence manuscripts could travel. best fuzzy. Instead of reinforcing anachronistic bor- H. Schiffman Texts from this Hellenistic (or Second Temple) ders, these texts reveal how actual flesh-and-blood Jewish Publication Society, 3,302 pp. (three-volume set), period, which include the Dead Sea Scrolls, texts Jews in this period understood God, interpreted $300 from Masada, the Septuagint (the Greek trans- biblical texts, suffered exile, and ultimately over- lation of the Bible), and many Greek texts from came its challenges. In reading these three volumes Alexandria and elsewhere, show us a world of readers will travel from Alexandria to the Dead Sea; These texts reveal how actual flesh-and-blood Jews in this Come to me, you who desire me, period understood God, interpreted biblical texts, suffered and eat your fill of my fruits. For the memory of me is sweeter than honey, exile, and ultimately overcame its challenges. and the possession of me sweeter than the honeycomb. creative interpretation, dynamic legal development, Tiberias to Rome; Elephantine to Sepphoris; Yavne Those who eat of me will hunger for more, and tenacious survival. These works can and should to Jerusalem. and those who drink of me will thirst for more. be read alongside biblical and rabbinic texts. Outside Of course, the texts collected in Outside the Bible Whoever obeys me will not be put to shame, the Bible, the massive three-volume anthology of will never eclipse those that are “inside” it (a dis- and those who work with me will not sin.

All this is the book of the covenant of the Most High God, the law that Moses commanded us as an inheritance for the congregations of Jacob. Wisdom of Ben Sira 24:19–23

he first Mishnah inPirkei Avot famously Ttells its readers that: Moses received Torah at Sinai and handed it on to Joshua, Joshua to elders, and elders to prophets, and prophets handed it on to the Men of the Great Assembly.

After the Men of the Great Assembly—about whom very little is known—came the first rabbis, who thereby inherited Mosaic tradition. It is a story of reception, inscription, and transmission, and it is unilinear—no breaks or branches, only links in an unbroken chain. Although the standard modern historical narra- tive is more nuanced and complex than this, it has, at least until relatively recently, shared many of the same traits. However, after the discoveries of the Cairo Geniza and the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars of Judaism slowly began to reconstruct the 400-year The Sacrifice of Isaac by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, ca. mid-1750s. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) period separating the latest parts of the Hebrew Bi- ble from the earliest rabbinic compilations. Not only did the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the such texts from the Jewish Publication Society, chal- tinction to which I shall return), nor should they. Cairo Geniza materials illuminate this ancient Jew- lenges its readers to do just that. It is the fruit of an On the contrary, they deepen our understanding ish world, they also helped scholars to contextualize extraordinary collaboration between the late Louis of Deuteronomy, Esther, Jeremiah, the Mishnah, and understand other texts that had been in plain Feldman, an authority on Josephus; James Kugel, a early collections of rabbinic midrash, and, indeed, sight all along, such as Jubilees and the writings of scholar who has revolutionized our understanding the entire ancient Jewish world. The past is remote Philo of Alexandria. Until then, scholars treated an- of early biblical interpretation; and leading Dead Sea and holes in our knowledge remain, even with all cient Jewish texts in Greek, which had been largely Scroll expert Lawrence Schiffman. They assembled of the recently discovered texts and resources, but ignored by the rabbis, as part of the pre-history of a distinguished international team of translators, we know far, far more than we did when the great Christianity, but not of rabbinic Judaism. Even now, who also provided concise, informative introduc- 20th-century scholars R.H. Charles and James scholars tend to erect arbitrary walls between texts tions and up-to-date footnotes to this extraordinary Charlesworth edited collections of apocryphal and

18 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 pseudepigraphic works decades ago. (Apocrypha, [one] roo[t]. People came, seeking to chop down from the Greek word for “hidden,” is the older term and to uproot the [ce]dar tree and to spare only the for ancient works that were not part of a biblical palm tree.” Waking up, Abraham admits to Sarah e “Spectral canon; pseudepigrapha describes those works that that he is afraid. It is now up to Sarah to save him. Turn” were composed by Jewish authors in the Hellenistic The authors of a different class of Dead Sea Scroll Jewish Ghosts in the Polish period but ascribed to biblical figures.) texts knew and drew upon biblical texts, but instead Post-Holocaust Imaginaire Outside the Bible will replace classic earlier of restricting themselves to interpretation, they cre- ZUZANNA anthologies as the premier compendium of primary ated new works, which present themselves as part texts for scholars and teachers of the period. But, of the biblical corpus. The editors call them “sectar- DZIUBAN it seems to me that one of the great virtues of this ian texts,” but it is far from clear that the so-called PUBLISHED BY collection—as, indeed, of its editors’ distinguished “sectarians” who wrote them understood themselves TRANSCRIPT-VERLAG. careers—is to precisely show the ways in which to be doing anything other than producing works DISTRIBUTED IN NORTH AMERICA BY PRESS these texts, including those that were forgotten, meant to stand alongside those that we now regard dismissed, or even unknown by rabbinic tradition, as part of the Bible. Similarly, the so-called “non- canonical psalms” collected in the Great Psalms PUBLISHED BY IBIDEM PRESS. Scroll were very likely regarded by their readers in DISTRIBUTED BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS the same light as the 150 biblical psalms with which we are familiar. After all, David was said to have Frozen Mud and composed thousands of psalms. Red Ribbons Jubilees presents a somewhat different case. For A Romanian Jewish Girl’s centuries, it has been known in Ethiopic, Latin, and Survival through the other languages. However, there was no proof that Holocaust in Transnistria it had actually been composed by Jews during the and Its Rippling Effect on the Second Temple period. But the discovery of more Second Generation than one copy in Hebrew amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls, along with what might even be expansions AVITAL E. M. or interpretations of Jubilees, changed all of this. As BARUCH James Kugel eloquently shows in his introduction and annotation, Jubilees completes, supplements, and transforms Genesis, while at the same time re- e Holocaust in inforcing its authority. This is the earliest sustained Central European commentary we possess of Genesis 1 through Ex- Literatures and odus 15. In reading it, one has a window not only onto how Jews of the 2nd century B.C.E. read the Cultures Bible, but what they thought about, among other Problems of Poetization things, angels, divinity, providence, and the place of and Aestheticization prayer, sacrifice, and ritual. EDITED BY Let us take two of the most famous incidents in REINHARD IBLER Genesis, the binding of Isaac and Jacob’s vision at Bethel, and see how they are transformed in Jubi- lees. The first verse of Genesis 22 tells us that “God Romania and A page from Wisdom of Ben Sira. (Courtesy of put Abraham to the test,” but it does not tell us why, the Syndics of Cambridge University.) a question that occurs to virtually every reader. In the Holocaust the retelling of Jubilees, the answer lies in the chal- Events – Contexts – Aftermath are profoundly relevant to the history of Judaism, lenge of an angel named Mastema: in part by showing the breaks and branching paths EDITED BY SIMON of tradition. One hopes, then, that these volumes And it came to pass in the seventh week, in GEISSBÜHLER will be acquired not only by scholars and research its first year, in the first month, in that jubilee, libraries but by synagogues and even the more ad- on the twelfth of that month, that words came venturous batei midrash (houses of study). in heaven concerning Abraham that he was faithful in everything which was told him ne fascinating class of Dead Sea Scroll texts and he loved the Lord and was faithful in all Oincluded in Outside the Bible are pesharim affliction. And Prince Mastema came and he e Sobibor and retellings. These texts, such as theGenesis said before God, “Behold, Abraham loved Apocryphon and Pesher Habakkuk, explicitly and Isaac, his son. And he is more pleased with Death Camp even self-consciously engage, cite, apply, and in- him than everything. Tell him to offer him (as) History, Biographies, terpolate their own interpretations into the bibli- a burnt offering upon the altar. And You will Remembrance cal texts themselves. In reading such works, we see whether he will do this thing. And You will CHRIS WEBB see how these ancient readers actualized and re- know whether he is faithful in everything in animated biblical texts in ways that anticipated which You test him.” (Jubilees 17:13–18) later rabbinic midrash. Thus, the Genesis Apocryphon worries out loud Jubilees answers the question of God’s motivation about its ethical concerns with the Genesis nar- by blurring the lines between biblical narratives, rative. How, for instance, did Abraham allow his incorporating a version of Job’s famous test, but beautiful wife Sarah to be taken to Pharaoh’s house it also draws upon prophetic characterizations of in order to save his life? In the Genesis Apocryphon, Abraham as a “lover of God” (Isaiah 41:8) and as this is resolved with a touching marital backstory “faithful” (Nehemiah 9:8), with which it expects its CUP.COLUMBIA.EDU · CUPBLOG.ORG unknown to the reader of the familiar story in Gen- readers to be familiar. esis. Abraham has a disturbing dream in which a Jubilees’s answer to what it was that terrified Jacob cedar tree and a palm tree appear “together from when he found himself alone at Bethel in the middle

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 19 of the night is fascinating. After receiving the patri- archal promise from God, Jacob has a vision:

. . . and behold an angel was descending from heaven, and there were seven tablets in his hands. And he gave (them) to Jacob, and he read them, and he knew everything which was written in them, which would happen to him and to his sons during all the ages. And he showed him everything which was written on the tablets. And he said to him . . . “Do not fear, because just as you have seen and read, thus will everything come to pass. But you write down everything just as you have seen and read (it).” And Jacob said, “My lord, how will I remember everything that I read and saw?” And he said to him, “I will cause you to remember everything.” And he went up from him and he woke up from his sleep and he recalled everything that he had read and seen and he wrote down all of the matters which he had read and seen. (Jubilees 32:16–26)

According to Jubilees, Jacob is afraid that he will not succeed at the task of remembering, preserving, and transmitting the vision that he has been vouch- safed. This is a transparent projection onto the bib- lical narrative of a fundamental religious anxiety of Cave 4Q of the Qumran Caves, Judaean desert in the West Bank, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Second Temple Jewish communities: the fear that (Photo by Sean Pavone/Alamy Stock Photo.) they will not be successful in preserving and trans- mitting their traditions in a time of political up- heaval and socio-religious turmoil. the Hebrew Bible nor authorized as rabbinic texts. have deep affinities with later, more familiar Jewish Nonetheless, many of them, like the interpreta- interpretations of the Bible. he texts included in Outside the Bible were tions of Philo of Alexandria, the works of Josephus, A work known as 4 Ezra (also called 2 Tneither included in the Jewish collection of and the scrolls discovered in the caves of Qumran Esdras) is one such tradition, produced by Jews in the aftermath of the destruction of the Sec- ond Temple and ascribed to the biblical Ezra, the Posen Foundation leader who reintroduced the Torah in Jerusalem after the destruction of the First Temple and the קרן return from the Babylonian exile. This work was פוזן ultimately preserved by Christians in both Latin and Syriac, but to read this text, as many earlier scholars have done, as Christian is to fundamen- Congratulations to the tally misrepresent its origins. This is not to say Posen Society of Fellows 2017-2019 Cohort that it should instead be regarded as a rabbinic text. Rather, 4 Ezra was written before the divide between Judaism and Christianity. Here is a par- ticularly repercussive passage about the origins and purpose of Jewish prayer:

I answered and said, “How then do we find that first Abraham prayed for the people of Amy Zuzanna Mia Charles Adi Yael Shai Sodom, and Moses for our ancestors who Kerner Krzemień Laufer McDonald Nester Segalovitz Tagner sinned in the desert, and Joshua after him for Israel in the days of Achan, and Samuel > Amy Kerner, Brown University > Adi Nester, University of Colorado, Boulder in the days of Saul, and David for the plague, Heritage and Loss: The Fate of Yiddish in Buenos The Exile Bible: Language, Music, and Dispersion and Solomon for those at the dedication, Aires, 1929-1961 in the Works of German-Jewish Émigrés and Elijah for those who received the rain, > Zuzanna Krzemień, University College London > Yael Segalovitz, University of California, Berkeley and for the one who was dead, that he might Salomon Dubno (1738-1813) and the Influence of New Criticism Int.: The Close Reader in the U.S., live, and Hezekiah for the people in the days East European Jews on the German Haskalah Israel and Brazil of Sennacherib, and many others prayed > Mia Laufer, Washington University, St. Louis for many? So if now, when corruption has Shai Tagner, Ben Gurion and Roma Tre Universities Le Goût Sémite: Art Collecting, Identity, and > increased and unrighteousness has multiplied, The Evolution of the Israeli Asylum Regime Antisemitism in Early Third Republic Paris, 1870-1914 the righteous have prayed for the ungodly, (1948-2017) why will it not be so then as well?”(4 Ezra >Charles McDonald, New School for Social Research Return to Sepharad: Jewish Revivalism and the 7:106–111) Pragmatics of Inclusion in Spain As Daniel Boyarin noted years ago, this passage res- Details and information about applications for the 2018-2020 cohort at: onates strongly with the mishnah from Ta’anit, 2:4, www.posenfoundation.co.il which was, of course, written in the same period. This mishnah is the basis for part of the penitential

20 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 selichot liturgy. Boyarin argued that key elements of advances the scholarly project of rewriting the that liturgy are also to be found in 4 Ezra. Thus, Ezra story of the Jewish scriptural past, drawing upon pleads for the people in what resembles the rab- an incredibly rich and complex array of texts. But binic formula for confession and appeals to divine it also does something more, or at least has the The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization attributes: “For we and our ancestors have passed potential to do so, if we take up the challenge: It our lives in ways that bring death; but it is because of provides resources for a renewed Jewish creativity us sinners that you are called merciful.” (4 Ezra 8:31) in the present day. The Carved Wooden Torah Arks In fact, Boyarin argued that this passage alluded to We generally tell the story of Judaism by looking of Eastern Europe a form of prayer that was already current in the au- backward. We look from a later point of develop- Bracha Yaniv thor of 4 Ezra’s day. ment, whether medieval or modern (or even post- Throws new light on long-forgotten traditions of Jewish craftsmanship The schematic understanding of the history of Judaism as and religious understanding. HB 9781906764371 • $64.50 occurring in two phases—first Bible and then the rabbinic

interpretation of the Bible—is deeply mistaken. Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination In the spectacular final vision of 4 Ezra, 70 eso- modern), and we trace our origins back and make Jewish Cultural Studies, Vol. 5 teric books are revealed in addition to the 24 books sense of our past through the prism of our present. Marjorie Lehman, Jane L. Kanarek of the Written Torah. This vision is clearly a repeti- We imagine a time and a context superimposed on and Simon J. Bronner tion of Sinai, with Ezra as a second Moses. an earlier set of texts. In doing so, we tell a story that A thought-provoking presentation of Jewish mothers as key agents in presupposes the changes that have been implement- the transmission of identity across a And when the forty days were ended, the Most ed and integrated into the world of Judaism that de- highly diverse ethnic-religious culture. High spoke to me, saying, “Make public the veloped and transformed, and yet the story of the PB 9781906764661 • $34.95 twenty-four books that you wrote first, and let texts in these three volumes provides the materi- the worthy and the unworthy read them; but als for a different kind of story. What if we told the keep the seventy that were written last, in order story moving forward from vibrant communities of to give them to the wise among your people. late antiquity and the traditions, customs, and laws For in them is the spring of understanding, the that inspired them and transformed this period in fountain of wisdom and the river of knowledge.” Jewish history? (4 Ezra 14:45–47) This leads me to my one criticism of these el- egant, important volumes. Does it still make sense J. N. Epstein, a great 20th-century Israeli scholar to characterize the texts collected here as “outside” of rabbinic literature, was right to argue that this the Bible? So many of them were composed during vision in 4 Ezra symbolized the beginnings of the the same period as the latest biblical books, such as Oral Torah and the rabbinic collection and inscrip- Daniel, and many present themselves as continuous tion of its traditions, in response to a destroyed tem- with the biblical materials. The late–Second Temple ple and yet another exile. period was a period of remarkable creativity and ongoing inspiration, in which new compositions rior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, were produced in a variety of Jewish communities. Pscholars assumed that there was some kind of Even if some biblical works were treated as uniquely closing of the canon in the Maccabean period or authoritative by most Jewish communities at this even slightly later, in the 1st century C.E. Referenc- time, their texts were not completely fixed, and es to the 24, or 22, books or occasional allusions there was apparently no obstacle to the production to the end of the prophecy line were often cited of others that also claimed scriptural authority. One to justify this hypothesis. Of course, this presup- of the main contributions of Outside the Bible is— posed that there was already something like a ironically—to demonstrate that there was no sharp canon, a set of texts that approximated our pres- border in antiquity between the interior and the ent day Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, and that other exterior of the Bible. ancient Jewish texts stood outside of this collec- Louis Feldman (who passed away this spring at tion. What the biblical manuscripts discovered at the age of 90), James Kugel, and Lawrence Schiff- Qumran definitively showed was that the canon man are among the leading scholars in our time didn’t close in the Second Temple period, indeed of what the Rabbis, whose texts they have also that it is anachronistic to think in these terms. illuminated and cherished, called “outside books.” Texts such as Jubilees show that new works were Nevertheless, their work has integrated these non- being written that continue to make comparable canonical texts into the traditions of Judaism and claims to Deuteronomy and Chronicles, while helped us to contextualize the rabbinic tradition in others, such as Philo’s Questions and Answers on ways with which scholars are still coming to grips. Genesis and Exodus, interpret and develop already Their own achievement has prepared us philo- established authoritative biblical works. This dem- logically, theologically, and conceptually for a new onstrates both that biblical books were being au- narrative concerning the origins of Judaism. For US orders, Littman titles are available from thorized and stabilized on the one hand and that our distributor Oxford University Press there was ongoing and continuous writing of Online at: global.oup.com/academic texts that can only be described as biblical on the Hindy Najman is the Oriel and Laing Professor of the For orders email: [email protected] other. Revelation did not end with the advent of Interpretation of Holy Scripture at the University of For UK orders visit us online at: interpretation. Oxford. She is the author, most recently, of Losing the www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/littman The schematic understanding of the history of Temple and Recovering the Future: An Analysis of Judaism as occurring in two phases—first Bible 4 Ezra (Cambridge University Press). She is currently For E-Library and your 30 day free trial visit: and then the rabbinic interpretation of the Bible— completing Reading Practices and the Vitality of online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/series/lejc is, in short, deeply mistaken. Outside the Bible Scripture (Oxford University Press).

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 21 Purity and Obscurity

BY SHAI SECUNDA

covered artifacts such as ritual baths and stone ves- from its scholarly foci and sober tone. Still, it opens Taharah u-kehilla ba-eit ha-atikah: mesorot sels (the latter were thought to prevent the spread with an arresting photograph from the 1960s of ha-halakhah ben Yahadut Bayit sheni of impurity) from archeological layers that postdate four ultra-Orthodox rabbis, fully garbed in black la-Mishnah (Purity and Community in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. show how hats and long coats, lowering themselves into a Antiquity: Traditions of the Law from Second the Jewish fixation on purity remained entrenched newly excavated ritual bath at Masada, the site of Temple Judaism to the Mishnah) long after the Temple had been destroyed. the infamous anti-Roman collective suicide in the by Yair Furstenberg The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 479 pp., $42 Like a nuclear reactor in which movements are carefully Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature measured and protocols strictly enforced, the Temple by Mira Balberg University of California Press, 262 pp., $90 operated according to stringent purity rules.

At the Intersection of Texts and Material Finds: Gaining an understanding of purity is thus cru- Judean desert. The story behind the image is that Stepped Pools, Stone Vessels, and Ritual Purity cial for appreciating many features of formative Yigal Yadin, the larger than life soldier-scholar- Among the Jews of Roman Galilee Jewish practice, belief, and society. The challenge, politician who directed the excavation, had invited by Stuart S. Miller however, is that this requires mastering a vast and a well-known haredi rabbi named David Muntz- Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 423 pp., $188 intricate literature, comparing this literature to the berg to examine the Masada ritual bath. As if in- archaeological evidence, and adopting an analyti- specting the suitability of a newly installed mikvah cal framework to make sense of the data. In three in an Israeli town, Muntzberg pronounced the out- recent and impressive studies, it is not so much the door bath kosher, enthusing that it was “among the body of evidence that is new, but rather the working finest of the finest, seven times seven times.” This urity methods and theories which are brought to bear on allowed Yadin to make an academic (and anachro- Is obscurity. the material. In Taharah u-kehilla ba-eit ha-atikah nistic) pronouncement of his own: The inhabitants P (Purity and Community in Antiquity), the Israeli of Masada were “devout Jews” who “had gone to Ogden Nash’s micro-poem is a cynical operation. scholar Yair Furstenberg dissects rabbinic texts with the arduous lengths of building these rituals baths The sweet little word that dwells in virginal solitude a sharp, philological scalpel; Mira Balberg’s Purity, in scrupulous conformity with the injunctions of on the first line is quickly betrayed as unintelligible Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature reframes traditional Jewish law.” and vague. But if purity seems impenetrable, it is these texts in terms of critical theory; and, as its title Miller’s reason for telling the Yadin and Muntz- also persistent. berg tale is cautionary. He warns In antiquity, many Jews were deeply commit- against straightforwardly inter- ted to ritual purity—a metaphysics of contagion preting the archaeological re- that endangers holy spaces and holy things. As in cord in light of rabbinic texts, modern biology, purity’s invisibility to the naked or vice versa. Contrary to the eye posed no problem; to the contrary, the unseen maximalists, Miller argues, not was more threatening precisely because its effects every excavated pool is an otzar, could not be seen. Against the odds and across the a halakhic term of art in mikvah ages, elements of this ancient view of the world have construction still used today. On persevered. When contemporary Jews of priestly the other hand, scholars ought lineage avoid cemeteries, when ordinary Jews wash not interpret technical rabbinic their hands before eating, or immerse themselves in terms like otzar strictly in light ritual baths, they are acting according to the dictates of the ancient archeological evi- of an ancient system. dence. In short, archeologists The temporal and geographic core of Jewish of late antiquity should not just ritual purity was Second Temple Jerusalem. Like a naively stuff mishnayot in their nuclear reactor in which movements are carefully rucksacks to guide their digs any measured and protocols strictly enforced, the Tem- more than biblical archeologists ple operated according to stringent purity rules, in- should follow their 19th-century cluding a gradated access system designed to keep predecessors in setting out to ex- away the tainted. Yet, purity was not only a Jerusa- cavate with a Bible in one hand lem syndrome. In the fields and orchards beyond Rabbi David Muntzberg examines the mikvah at Masada, ca. 1960s. and a spade in the other. None- (© 1966 Israel Exploration Society.) the Holy City, many of the laws governing priestly theless, Miller cautions against tithes were aimed at protecting produce from con- the opposite, and now more com- tamination. Even non-priests formed eating clubs implies, Stuart Miller’s At the Intersection of Texts mon, tendency: a trendy minimalism that denies that let the purity punctilious in and kept the care- and Material Finds takes stock of the considerable canonical texts any role in reconstructing the an- less out. In fact, Second Temple sectarianism was archeological evidence of ancient Jewish purity cient history of the region. In short, At the Intersec- fueled by debates about highly technical rules of practices and shows that they cannot be simply read tion of Texts and Material Finds calls for two things purity. Some scholars have even speculated that the off of the relevant rabbinic texts. sorely lacking in our world—erudition and nuance. sectarians living in the caves around the Dead Sea A professor at the University of Connecticut for abandoned Jerusalem because of the ritual chal- eighing in at 423 dense and heavily anno- some 25 years, Miller has devoted a long and fruitful lenges presented by urban plumbing. Recently re- Wtated pages, Miller’s book rarely wanders career to studying Roman Palestine, and this book is

22 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 a fine example of how sustained specialization yields identity of the contaminating dead (in rabbinic law, historically knowledgeable Jews about why they judicious insight. It also reveals an insatiably curious Gentile corpses do not convey impurity), the kinds ritually wash their hands before eating and they will scholar willing to follow new paths wherever they may of objects that were connected to human activity probably mumble something about Second Tem- lead, even to his own backyard. The book concludes and human consciousness and thus susceptible to ple priests and the consumption of sacred tithes. with a postscript about recent discoveries in Ches- impurity, and even which body parts were regarded Furstenberg begins his discussion by noticing the terfield, Connecticut, where, along with Connecti- as belonging to a body and were thus portals of con- curious rabbinic terminology for handwashing, cut’s state archaeologist, Nicholas which refers to the “giving” (noten) and “taking” Bellantoni, Miller excavated a 19th- (notel) of water to the hands. As it turns out, this century mikvah that was built by the terminology is precisely what we find in Greco- New England Hebrew Farmers of Roman manners, as detailed in Deipnosophistae, a the Emanuel Society. Far from the 15-volume work that translates as something like strong Galilean sun, Miller and his “dinner experts.” This philological insight, along colleagues discovered a ritual bath with the total absence of ritual handwashing in that conformed to virtually all of biblical purity laws, allows Furstenberg to build a the halakhic dictates, leading Miller case that Jewish handwashing before meals origi- to draw a modest historical conclu- nated in classical table manners and was only later sion of his own: Unlike many Jews recast as a ritually meaningful purification. living in 19th-century American According to Furstenberg, it was this innova- cities—or for that matter, medieval tion that laid the groundwork for the rabbis’ con- Egypt—who were ambivalent about cern with ingesting food that had become impure ritual immersion, a small group of by unwashed hands. And it was, of course, precisely rural Orthodox farmers, with help this concern that was famously criticized by Jesus from Baron de Hirsch, managed to of Nazareth, who declared “there is nothing outside construct and operate a community a person which by going into him can defile him, mikvah. rather the things which come out of a person are what defile him” (Mark 7:15). The rabbis, of course, f Miller bravely descends into disagreed, as do countless Jews the world over who Ithe historical chaos of Jewish every Friday night wash their hands, raise two chal- ritual purity and its textual and Stuart S. Miller at the 19th-century mikvah built by the New England lahs, recite a blessing, and break bread. material remains, Mira Balberg Hebrew Farmers of the Emanuel Society, Chesterfield, Connecticut. proudly asserts that she does not (© 2012 University of Connecticut Chesterfield Field School.) want to “utilize the mishnaic texts Shai Secunda is Jacob Neusner Associate Professor of for historical reconstruction of ac- Judaism at Bard College, where he teaches in the religion tual practices, but rather to explore the discourse tamination. As Balberg shows, by grappling with department. of impurity that the rabbis construct in the Mish- these arcane matters the rabbis developed a distinct nah.” This is understandable, since the founda- view of the human body; the relationship between tional compilation of rabbinic law resists historical Jewish subjects bound by divine rules of purity and Global Education analysis. It very rarely refers to historical events Gentiles who are not; the strange, invisible connec- and does not distinguish between current laws and tions between people and things; and perhaps even OutreachGlobal Education Program dead letters—such as those purity and cultic prac- the invention of a distinctly rabbinic “self.” Thus, Outreach Program tices that expired with the destruction of the Tem- even at its most complex and obscure, ritual purity supports Polish-Jewish ple. But Balberg does not flee to the “safe space” of played a critical role in the lives of the many Jews supports Polish-Jewish philological analysis. In italicizing the word “dis- who over the years studied these teachings and studies worldwide. course” in the above quotation, she invokes the leg- plumbed their meanings. studies worldwide. acy of French philosopher Michel Foucault, which lectures provides a critical-theoretical escape hatch and air Furstenberg thinks that one can write a lectures new vistas. Rather than historicizing the seeming- Yhistory of ancient Jewish purity and its role conferences ly ahistorical Mishnah, Balberg treats it as a text in society, using the Mishnah as a primary source. workshopsconferences that made history by getting its readers to conceive Skillfully, though not as extensively as Miller, workshops of people, places, things, and their interrelations in Furstenberg consults the relevant archeological fellowships novel configurations. evidence, and like Balberg, but to a lesser extent, fellowships Balberg’s step-by-step reconstruction of rab- he draws upon theoretical insights from outside binic purity is the most thoroughgoing and inno- the field of Jewish studies. His book shows how vative in years. First, she notes a seismic shift in the Pharisees developed a complex system of pu- Call for applications biblical versus rabbinic systems of ritual purity rity that was distinct from both the Bible and that Call for applications that had gone almost unnoticed. Where the Bible of contemporaneous Jewish groups, including Je- atat POLINPOLIN Museum: was concerned with discrete sources of impurity, sus’s circle and the Dead Sea sectarians. This early polin.pl/en/geop such as human corpses, the rabbis described purity Pharisaic system was the basis for the Mishnah’s polin.pl/en/geop as requiring a uniquely mindful mode of being. A treatment of purity. rabbinic Jew must constantly assess the menagerie Furstenberg’s chief innovation, however, is nei- of persons and objects encountered daily: Might ther in the path he cuts between text and material this crushed rodent, now lying alongside a pile of remains, nor in his use of theory, but rather in the fruits, have died on and contaminated them be- skill with which he dissects ancient texts, reveal- fore rolling onto the ground? Perhaps someone or ing hidden meanings and distinguishing between something died in this house, on this couch, inside accreted layers. For those possessing philological this pouch? souls, there is a palpable thrill to Furstenberg’s The program is made possible thanks to the support of the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture, In crafting their discourse of purity, the rabbis chase for the meanings of rabbinic purity. Thethe program William K.is madeBowes, possible Jr. Foundation, thanks and to the supportAssociation of the of the Taube Jewish Foundation Historical for Institute Jewish of Life Poland. & Culture, were prepared to define—and redefine—just about Furstenberg’s analysis of the rabbinic practice the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation, and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland. everything. This included determining the size and of washing one’s hands before eating bread is an appearance of defiling dead matter, the religious example of his ingenious scholarship. Ask most

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 23 The Wandering Reporter

BY DIANE COLE

From these works, it’s clear that Londres’s true Hitler’s rise to power, changed nothing. Instead, The Wandering Jew Has Arrived calling lay in covering the underdogs of life. His for Redfern, the volume was “a fine but materially by Albert Londres, translated by Helga Abraham subjects spanned a broad arc of human misery, ineffective lament over man’s infinite capacity for , 222 pp., $16.95 including convicts in the penal colony of Cayenne inhumanity.” (better known as Devil’s Island) in French Guiana, It is more than that. Londres asks almost every Jew he meets whether he would be willing to trade the known poverty and persecutions hoever put the idea of the Messiah into their heads? . . . of Europe for the unknowns of Palestine. By dint of waiting for him, they will all end up slaugh- exploited native Africans in Senegal and French ead today, The Wandering Jew Has Arrived tered.“W They are like the inhabitants of Stromboli, Congo, the white slave trade and prostitution in Rcan be seen as a chilling and prophetic piece waiting for the volcano to erupt!” South America, the horrific conditions of mental of historical reportage. An offhand mention of the This outburst—emitted in 1930 by a Zionist re- asylums, the shark attacks and long-term organ population of Eastern Europe’s Jews as six million cruiter whose pleas had failed to move the Jews of stands out like an entry in an accounting ledger of an impoverished, pogrom-pillaged Eastern Euro- the annihilation to come. A passing remark about pean shtetl—is only one of many prescient passages doors to America that were already closed to Jew- to be found in The Wandering Jew Has Arrived, a ish immigrants becomes a moral indictment of little-known work by the great French investigative uncaring abandonment. When he concludes, after journalist Albert Londres (1884–1932). Only pages witnessing the pillaged remains of several shtetls, before, Londres had observed, “A Pole or a Russian that “A Jew, in the eyes of an eastern European, is chases a Jew from a pavement as though the Jew, the incarnation of a parasite,” it’s impossible not to who is passing by, is stealing his air.” hear one of the foundational tropes of Nazi propa- Famous in his time in France, though little ganda. The sound of Nazi anti-Jewish prohibitions known today in America, Londres had in 1929 to come is clear as Londres reports the dismissal of and 1930 visited Jewish communities and ghet- Polish Jews from all state employment. Though he toes in London, Eastern Europe, and Palestine and was a Christian, just by virtue of socializing with collected his reports for the French press in book Jews Londres is targeted form under the title Le Juif errant est arrivé. Just for insult when a Pole in before the rise of Nazism, his travelogue exposed Lwów takes him for a Jew the growing presence of an increasingly virulent and “digs his elbow into anti-Semitism in Europe. What he, a Christian, my ribs and shouts . . . heard and saw bolstered his sympathy for the plight ‘Piss off, out of my way, of the Jews and his support for Zionism, even if you dirty dog!’” Londres he also all too accurately foresaw ever-greater could not foresee the ex- conflicts between Jews and Arabs should a Jewish tent of the atrocities to state come to be. come, but he was attuned Why haven’t most of us heard of Londres and his to a drumbeat growing book? Although an English translation appeared in ever louder concern- 1931 (titled The Jew Has Come Home), it has long Albert Londres, ca. 1910s. (Photo by ing the so-called Jewish been out of print in the United States—as have all his Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images.) Question (i.e., what to books. Only now is it available in English again, in a Right: The original edition of Le Juif do with them?). And so, new translation by Helga Abraham and published by Errant Est Arrivé, published by Albin a dozen years after the the Jerusalem-based Gefen Publishing House under Michel, Paris, 1930. Balfour Declaration, he the title The Wandering Jew Has Arrived. began his investigations Obscure in the United States, in France Lon- into the economic status dres’s memory is so revered that a journalist can damage endured by pearl-divers in of the Jews in Europe and receive no more prestigious an award than the Prix Bahrain and elsewhere. their views on Zionism. Albert-Londres, established in his memory the year In his 2004 monograph, Writing on the To be sure, in Londres’s descriptions there is after his shocking death aboard an ocean liner that Move: Albert Londres and Investigative Journalism, often a disturbing undercurrent of caricature and caught fire and sank on its maiden voyage. A rest- Walter Redfern wrote that Londres’s investigative stereotype. In his very first chapter, titled “A Bi- less traveler, he was fearless in his coverage of the reports on prisons and asylums “did produce tan- zarre Personage,” he introduces readers to a gentle- Great War’s battlefronts and intrepid in his pursuit gible results, in the form of alleviation of appall- man dressed in solid black, with flowing beard and of stories in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, the ing conditions.” And Daniel Epstein, in the intro- curled sidelocks and who in conversation “expresses Balkans, South America, China, Northern Africa, duction to Gefen’s edition, claims that Londres’s himself as much with his fingers as with his tongue. and the Middle East. He filed his initial reports in report on Cayenne ultimately led to its closure. If he were one-armed, he would be half mute!” contemporary newspapers, with the dispatches But this book, with its exposé of the hunger and Similarly, as he departs for Eastern Europe, he soon after collected into books—18 of them, many starvation of the Jews of Eastern Europe, already declares, with mock merriment, “I am leaving the of which remain in print in France. marginalized and stigmatized well in advance of civilized world to descend into ghetto country.”

24 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 And describing his first sighting of Jewish villagers Ditto for the sloping streets, flat streets, dead- shopkeepers of Czernowitz in Bukovina, “Do you in the Carpathians, he writes rather as if he were an end streets. The day before yesterday, from two want to go to Palestine?” They find not a taker explorer in an unknown land: to six o’clock, yesterday from nine to twelve, among them. today from one to seven, ditto. Ironically, then, it is Londres himself who goes And here they are! Here are the Jews! At first to Palestine, on the next leg of his journey. His de- glance, they looked to me like extraordinary And wherever he goes, Londres asks about scription of the “new Jews” he encounters reads like figures who had descended this morning from Zionism and Palestine. He asks almost every Jew an ode to Jewish Palestine: “From a state of slav- the most distant planet, but these were indeed he meets whether he would be willing to trade the ery, they became free men. In their hearts, pride Jews. They formed black silhouettes against known poverty and persecutions of Europe for the replaced shame. Confidence replaced fear. And the snow, and their beards and caftans make unknowns of Palestine. Although the two young each one could stand at his window and shout, ‘I them look like cypress trees. With beards and men who agree to act as guides and translators in am a Jew! This is my glory!’ without risking being caftans flapping in the wind, these cypress the course of his travels through Eastern Europe as- tied on the spot to the tail of a wild mare.” But it is trees trembled. . . . Ah! What ignorance—you pire to do so, the more usual response he receives a freedom that, as he is made all too aware of by the who thought you knew every species of man is tepid at best. In a typical example, an observant anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem, Safed, Hebron, that treads the earth! And this species lives in Jew in the Carpathians equates a Jew who goes to and elsewhere in August 1929, will be lived “from Europe, forty-five hours from Paris? labor as a pioneer in Palestine with “a nonbeliever, a massacre to massacre.” denigrator of prophecies.” Again and again, Londres It’s hardly a messianic vision. And yet, from Lon- Londres can also be cuttingly critical of Jewish re- hears the refrain, not until the Messiah comes will it dres’s point of view, it seems the preferred alternative ligious observance, commenting that one of the be time for Jews to return to the Holy Land. to the coming massacres he also foresaw in Europe villages he comes upon “is not in the twentieth and Russia. Perhaps it is this vision of bloodshed century. It has barely passed the age of Genesis.” t is in Bessarabia that Londres meets the visit- on one continent versus bloodshed on another that Was his jokey callousness a way to distance Iing Zionist pioneer, come to persuade fellow leads him to end his book without a real conclusion himself from identifying too closely with his mar- Jews to return with him to Tel Aviv, to which he to “the Jewish question,” but instead, with addi- ginalized subjects—or was it also pandering to had fled at the age of 18 in the aftermath of the tional questions: “Has the Wandering Jew arrived? his readers’ prejudices? He snipes at “bloodless” brutal Zhitomir pogrom of 1919. He is enraged Why not?” kosher meat and displays a showman’s dramatic by the icy reception of a local rabbi, uttering the flair in exclaiming an amused wonderment mixed prophecy of impending doom with which this with odd respect that a people can hold tightly to essay began. But Londres and his translator- Diane Cole is the author of the memoir After Great Pain: so many strict and arbitrary-seeming rules for guides have no better luck eliciting interest in A New Life Emerges and writes regularly for the Wall so many generations. Throughout, Jews remain Zionism as they go door to door asking the Jewish Street Journal, among other publications. “other” to the French journalist. But for all of his off-putting remarks, Londres also shows himself to be genuinely and engagingly curious about Jewish ritual and tradition. He is fair- ly conversant with Jewish history, providing readers with an outline of persecution through the millen- JE WISH REVIEW BOOKS nia, and accurately describes prayer practices and . He is also acutely aware that then, as now, there existed no single monolithic Jewish people, but numerous divisions in levels of observance, as- similation, and acceptance by the non-Jewish com- Without the critics, incoherence. munity around them. In the same way, Londres’s “ ” own stance toward his Jewish subjects was alter- — Cynthia Ozick nately empathetic and sardonic. This balance shifts as the book goes on, howev- er, and the more Londres travels and observes, the The Jewish Review of Books brings more sympathetic he becomes to the plight of the together critics, connoisseurs, Jews. His response is palpable as he bears witness to the abject poverty of the communities he comes cognoscente, and the occasional across. In the Czech countryside, Jewish villagers cynic, delivering coherence in show him “the open roofs, the mud inside, their the form of thoughtful essays four, five or six children shivering with cold . . . the grandfather dressed in rags and moaning over the about the latest in Jewish books, stove, the little girls who did not grow because of religion, culture, and politics. deprivation . . . the babies dressed in shirts, barefoot on the ice.” And yet, Londres points out with ironic outrage, “people say, rich as a Rothschild!” Subscribe today! He gags at the stench of sewage that pervades a Jewish section of Lwów. His mini-census of the Visit www.jewishreviewofbooks.com abject poverty he encounters on Synagogue Street has an outraged Dickensian cadence: or call 1-877-753-0337.

No. 1: nine families of five to eight children, crying of cold and hunger and rotting on the foulest of dung heaps.

No. 2: ten families, ditto. Jewish Culture. Cover to Cover. Cynthia Ozick No. 3, No. 4, on both sides of the street, all the from Fall 2016 way down, ditto.

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 25 Great Jews in Robes

BY SAMUEL GOLDMAN

It is fair to say that Ginsburg is articulating peren- Dalin praises Ginsburg’s explanation for Jews’ Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court: From nial themes of the Jewish success literature rather disproportionate role in American law as “aptly put.” Brandeis to Kagan than expressing a wholly original thought. Among But he also points out that Jews’ ascent from “rags by David G. Dalin the reasons that the argument recurs so frequently to robes” was not so smooth as she suggests. “Jew- Press, 384 pp., $35 is that it allows Jews with only attenuated connec- ish attorneys faced deeply entrenched antisemitism” tions to traditional Judaism to sustain a sense of as late as the 1950s, he notes, and even when they For most of the Jews on the court, Jewishness has been nce ubiquitous, books celebrating the more of an ethnic than a religious identity. Jews’ attainments in one field or an- other have in recent decades lost their piety. The association of Judaism with law suggests established their own successful practices, Jews were place in American Jewish culture. This that it doesn’t matter if Jews are ignorant of sacred rarely admitted to the highest echelons of the pro- isO no doubt a consequence of the normalization of texts or important rituals; so long as they’re experts fession. Dalin quotes the claim of the prominent at- Jewish accomplishment (except in sports, which is in mens rea or Chevron deference, they can see torney and Jewish communal leader Louis Marshall, the reason why the market for books about Jewish themselves as successors of great rabbis. The elision who was considered for a Supreme Court vacancy by athletes is still strong). Among major institutions of the distinction between divine and secular law President Taft, that “it was only in exceptional cases of American life, the NFL may be the only one in that men of my faith were appointed to committees which Jews can still be considered pathbreakers. of the [New York City Bar] organization.” David Dalin’s Jewish Justices of the Supreme Marshall’s description of discrimination against Court is thus something of a latecomer to the “men of my faith” is complicated by the fact that, library of communal success, but it is nevertheless a at least at the highest levels, many of these men— very revealing study of the elevation of Jews to the and later women—had little faith of any kind. Dalin pinnacles of American society as matters have un- reports that four of the eight Jews who have sat folded on the United States’s highest judicial body. on the Supreme Court grew up in Orthodox Just more than a century after Louis Dembitz households and the rest had, with the exception Brandeis took his seat in 1916, defying vociferous of Brandeis, at least some Jewish education. But and sometimes anti-Semitic opposition, hardly any- Dalin finds that only one, Elena Kagan, the “prod- one finds it strange that the nine members of the uct of a serious Jewish religious education who was court include three Jews. This means that Jews now raised in a religiously Conservative Jewish home” enjoy a representation more than 15 times greater and “still considers herself a Conservative Jew,” than their presence in the general population. If has been observant during her time on the bench. Merrick Garland had been successfully confirmed Benjamin Cardozo apparently kept kosher but was for the seat now occupied by Neil Gorsuch, Jews not otherwise religiously active. And several other would have been just one vote shy of constituting justices, including Ginsburg, Arthur Goldberg, and a majority on the court. Yet, as Dalin notes with as- Brandeis himself, played significant roles in Jewish tonishment, “for most of the country, [Garland’s] life without claiming any strong personal belief. For religious identity was utterly beside the point.” most of the Jews on the court, Jewishness has been How did this amazing state of affairs come about? more of an ethnic than a religious identity. One explanation is that Jews have a special affinity for In this respect, the Jewish justices are similar the legal profession. Early in the book, Dalin quotes to a majority of . That observation, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s version of this argu- Louis Brandeis, ca. 1916. (Courtesy of the Library of however, raises questions about the price and con- ment. In an introduction she wrote to a previous vol- Congress Prints and Photographs Division.) sequences of Jewish success. Dalin points out that ume about Jewish justices, Ginsburg contends that: several justices developed a stronger Jewish identity after they took their places on the court, partly out There is an age-old connection between Judaism helps Jews who cherish the idea of cultural conti- of a sense of responsibility to the community. This and law. For centuries, Jewish rabbis and nuity but have no interest in traditional learning to did not prevent many of their families, however, scholars have studied, restudied and ceaselessly rationalize their indifference to religion. from merging into the non-Jewish establishment. interpreted the Talmud, the body of Jewish law This explanation for Jewish success in law is at- One of Brandeis’s daughters married the son of the and tradition developed from the scriptures. tractive, then, partly because it flatters secular Jews’ social gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, . . . Jews prized the scholarship of judges and understanding of themselves. But that is not the only whom Brandeis himself welcomed, as Dalin notes, lawyers in their own tradition, and when anti- sort of vanity to which it appeals. It is also flattering as “a ‘rare find’ and a welcome addition to his fam- Semitic occupational restrictions were lifted, to Jews’ conception of themselves as Americans. The ily.” Felix Frankfurter married the daughter of a they were drawn to the learned professions of story of Jewish lawyers and judges using their power Congregational minister, a union that produced no those countries in which they lived. Law figured and influence to fight oppression fits a broader -nar children. Stephen Breyer is married to an Anglican prominently among those professions. . . . rative, in which American society moves ever closer and has a daughter who is an Episcopal priest. And, as it evolved in the United States, law also to realizing justice for all its citizens. In this respect, My intention is not to censure others’ domestic became a bulwark against the kind of oppression Jews do not only get to present themselves as sci- lives. Rather, it is to point out the way the curricu- Jews had endured throughout history. So Jews ons of an ancient lineage. At the same time, they can lum vitae of Jewish Supreme Court justices mir- in large numbers became lawyers in the United claim a position in the vanguard of social progress rors the broader trajectory of American Jewry. The States, and some eventually became judges. and thus see themselves as pioneers of the future. process begins with the rejection of strictures that

26 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 seem antiquated or oppressive in a new country. It juridical skill, but also on political loyalty and tal- istration and future colleague on the court to find a continues on to the stage of extraordinary accom- ent for cultivating relationships with the powerful. way around his own ruling. plishment, as flexible attitudes toward tradition and Abe Fortas, for instance, earned Lyndon Johnson’s The problem was not Brandeis’s personal hon- relatively weak patterns of anti-Semitic discrimina- total confidence by devising the legal strategy that esty, but his conception of the law as a tool for the tion allow individual Jews to make the most of their helped Johnson fend off Coke Stevenson’s challenge achievement of political and social goals. It is not talents. The result is the anointment of symbolic to his pivotal but highly questionable 87-vote vic- unreasonable to fear that this instrumental attitude Jewish leaders who are, in many ways, not very Jew- tory in the Democratic primary in the 1948 Texas to jurisprudence really does threaten to replace the ish. Finally, the descendants of these leaders, rec- Senate race. A decade later, when “George Parr, rule of law with the rule of judges. The same risk ognizing that they are not different in any substan- the notoriously corrupt Democratic political boss is implicit in Brandeis’s greatest innovation, the tial way from the rest of the American elite, merge of Duval County, Texas, who had helped ‘produce’ so-called Brandeis Brief, the prototype of which he seamlessly into it. Johnson’s extra votes to secure his Senate victory, submitted to the Supreme Court as a litigator when If this pattern is typically presented as a success was later convicted of mail fraud, Johnson engaged he was arguing Muller v. Oregon, which considered story, it can also be depicted as a crisis. The central Fortas on Parr’s behalf.” Johnson was clearly fear- the constitutionality of laws restricting working problem of American Jews today is not oppression, ful that Parr would be tempted to spill the beans hours for women. Prepared by Brandeis’s sister- in-law Josephine Clara Goldmark, the brief com- bined legal analysis with the findings of social sci- ence. The point was that judges had to consider the real-world consequences of their decisions as well as traditional considerations such as the statutory text and existing precedents:

While devoting only two pages of his brief to the legal precedents for regulating women’s work hours, Brandeis spent a full 110 pages on social science data and analysis in support of his legal argument. The approach worked: the majority of the court, while hostile to labor legislation generally, upheld the Oregon law and specifically credited Brandeis and his sociological approach in rendering its decision.

Admirers of this approach might point beyond its impact here to the court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education as a demonstration of its value. It would be well to remember, however, that osten- sibly scientific arguments were also used to justify the court’s endorsement of compulsory sterilization From left: Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Justice Elena Kagan prior to Justice in Buck v. Bell. Brandeis not only joined the deci- Kagan’s investiture ceremony. (Photo by Steve Petteway, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.) sion, but described it as showing how states could legitimately “meet modern conditions by regula- tions which a century ago, or even half a century but voluntary elimination through assimilation and about what happened in 1948. “Fortas, a master ago, probably would have been rejected as arbitrary intermarriage. There is something tragic as well as legal technician, took Parr’s appeal, pro bono, to and oppressive,” as quoted in David E. Bernstein’s inspiring, then, about the biographies and social his- the Supreme Court, where he won a reversal of the Rehabilitating Lochner. There is no reason to think tory that Dalin sketches. By attaching Jewish identity conviction on a technicality.” deference to science—particularly the unavoid- to professional accomplishment, highly successful Even Brandeis, whose pioneering role on the ably ambiguous social sciences—provides a more Jews can inadvertently promote its disappearance. court and leadership of the American Zionist reliable path toward securing the promises of the The tension between achievements of individual movement has given him a reputation as a kind of Constitution than does the text of the Constitu- American Jews and the communal future of Jews Jewish saint, appears here in a less flattering light. tion or the interpretive traditions that appeal to it. in America is one reason to regard this book as a Although he points out that “Brandeis was continu- Brandeis’s critics were not wrong to worry about his somewhat equivocal contribution to the success ing a Supreme Court tradition of justices engaging influence on American jurisprudence. literature. Another is the light Dalin shines on the in extrajudicial political activity stretching back to Jewish Justices of the Supreme Court is a narrative causes of Jews’ elevation to the Supreme Court— the republic’s beginning,” Dalin acknowledges that history rather than a critical analysis. Its accessible and their conduct once they arrive there. The con- Brandeis’s role as an advisor to Wilson and Roos- style, abundance of illuminating anecdotes, and help- ventional narrative attributes this outcome to their evelt on questions of policy went beyond even the ful synthesis of an extensive scholarly literature will undoubted talents and commitment to justice as more flexible boundaries of the time. In perhaps the make it valuable to historians of the American Jew- they saw it. But Dalin also reminds readers that most egregious example, Brandeis met secretly in ish experience. Yet I wonder whether the book’s em- appointment to the court is a political process. Jews 1935 with the New Deal insiders and Frankfurter phasis on its subjects as Jews is anachronistic. It con- have received their appointments because they have protégés Benjamin Cohen and Thomas Corco- cludes, after all, with the paradoxical proposition, in been useful to the presidents who selected them. ran after the court’s decision in Schechter Poultry which “it would seem unimaginable to many, within It is not just a matter of filling what used to be Company, which effectively rendered the National the Jewish community and without, that there could considered the court’s “Jewish seat.” Before joining Recovery Administration (NRA) unconstitutional. be a Supreme Court without a Jewish justice,” yet the the court, Frankfurter, Goldberg, and Abe Fortas He then encouraged Cohen and Corcoran to tell justices’ Jewishness is simply not very important. In were noted as party operatives and presidential in- Frankfurter to advise Roosevelt to find a new strat- many respects, this is an achievement worth celebrat- timates as well as for their legal abilities. This is not egy for the New Deal. This was not entirely an act ing. But it raises the question of whether it will be inherently a criticism; it is only recently that expe- of fealty to the administration: Brandeis had joined possible to write a similar volume in another century. rience on the federal bench or at least in the Justice Cardozo and all the other justices in rejecting the Department has become a prerequisite for appoint- NRA’s regulation of the poultry business, which ment. But it is worth remembering that the careers unintentionally complicated the sale of kosher Samuel Goldman is an assistant professor of political of many Jewish justices were based not only on chickens. Nevertheless, he colluded with the admin- science at the George Washington University.

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 27 The End of Europe as We Know It?

BY MICHEL GURFINKIEL

a public relations disaster—that is to say, anybody to these questions: Dictators, Demagogues, and the The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, but the chancellor. Within six weeks, Merkel had Coming Dark Age. We’re back in the 1930s again, and the Coming Dark Age reversed her stance, regarding both the Sahwil but instead of fascism and Stalinism, we now have by James Kirchick family and the “thousands and thousands” (actu- authoritarian populism of both right-wing and left- Yale University Press, 288 pp., $27.50 Anybody could have predicted that the girl would burst into tears, creating a public relations disaster—that is to say, anybody but Angela Merkel. ames Kirchick introduces us to one of the arch-villians of his new book, The End of ally more than a million and mostly male) refu- wing varieties. Instead of a German-led assault on Europe, with a characteristically witty flourish: gees seeking asylum in Germany. Moreover, she the Versailles treaties, we have Russian-led revision- suggested that all EU nations should do the same, ism. And instead of the good old anti-Semitism, JTry to imagine a Christian being fed to a in proportion to their population. we have new brands of racism and xenophobia, Coliseum full of lions (but make the Christian What has hurt Merkel, Germany, and the Euro- including anti-Semitism, now (at least on the left) a fusion of John Cleese and Colonel Blimp pean Union more, her icy arrogance in Rostock or rebranded as anti-Zionism. and the lions all herbivores), and you begin her reckless policy surrender in Berlin? In a fasci- As a European reader, and more specifically as to capture the essence of Farage’s regular nating coda, Kirchick notes that in a subsequent in- a French Jewish one, I must, very unfortunately, performances before the European Parliament. terview young Reem explained that her life’s dream agree with much of what Kirchick says—but with was, in fact, not to stay in Germany but to return to some reservations. For Kirchick is too unsystemat- This is, of course, Nigel Farage, the long-time lead- Palestine once Israel no longer exists. ic in some ways and too oversystematic in others. er of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). But cranks make history too. Farage was never able to secure a seat for himself in the House of Commons, but since British representatives to the European Parliament are elected through a sys- tem of proportional representation, he succeeded in being re-elected as a member of the parliament amid ever-larger numbers of fellow UKIP militants. In 2014, the last European elections in Britain be- fore Brexit, UKIP “earned more seats than any other British party.” Now that this “perpetually tanned and pinstriped, chain-smoking former London City banker” has won his campaign to get the United Kingdom out of the European Union, he may be “the most consequential British political figure of the past quarter-century second only to former prime minister Tony Blair.” To turn to another part of Europe, and a differ- ent Kirchickian blend of derision and insight, take the story of the Palestinian schoolgirl and the chan- cellor. In the summer of 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined a group of schoolchildren in the city of Rostock for a televised discussion. Rostock is in the poorest part of the former East Germany and has a high concentration of non- European asylum seekers. One of the students Merkel met there was a Palestinian teenage girl Nigel Farage, leader of the UKIP party, holds up a sign as he launches his party’s campaign for Britain named Reem Sahwil. She told Merkel that her fam- to leave the EU, May 20, 2016. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant.) ily, who had been in Germany for four years, was now facing deportation and asked whether they could stay. True to her image as the no-nonsense hy does Europe, the late 20th century’s great- The End of Europe is, he explains, organized “geo- “iron lady of Europe,” Merkel replied, “You’re a West success story, now look so chaotic? How graphically and thematically into eight chapters, very nice person, but you know that there are could a figure like Farage wrestle the second Eu- each a case study of a nation in crisis. None of these thousands and thousands of people in Palestinian ropean power out of the European Union? And crises, however, are exclusive to the nations where refugee camps in Lebanon and if I say ‘you can all how could Angela Merkel, of all politicians, lose they predominate,” so that “worrisome trends that come,’ and ‘you can all come from Africa,’ . . . we first her temper and then her sense of geopolitical are most visible in one country spill over borders just can’t manage that.” Anybody could have pre- balance? Just how dire is the European crisis? and reverberate across the continent.” This makes dicted that the girl would burst into tears, creating Kirchick’s subtitle provides his own bleak answer for a brilliant but uneven, sometimes messy book

28 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 (the chapter on a “France without Jews,” for in- of the recent snap elections on June 8, she fails to either in Hungary proper or in Auschwitz, not to stance, does not say very much about France); cobble together a stable majority, the beneficiary will speak of the fact that many Magyars supported the it might have been better to make a more linear, be Jeremy Corbyn, a very unenthusiastic supporter invaders, cannot possibly agree. synthetic argument. On the oversystematic side, of remaining in the European Union at the time of The Victims of the German Occupation Monu- Kirchick may make too much of some of the par- ment was commissioned by the present Hungar- allels he draws with the 1930s. Nobody can deny, ian government, led by Viktor Orbán and his Civic however, that he is right that populism is on Kirchick may make too much Alliance party (Fidesz). A loyal if skeptical follower the rise. of some of the parallels he of the communist regime in his youth, a center-right In all its forms, populism posits that the ordi- politician in the 1990s, a classic conservative prime nary citizens, “the people,” have been betrayed, im- draws with the 1930s, but minister between 1998 and 2002, Orbán returned poverished, and dispossessed by the system, and to office in 2010 as a populist-nationalist leader. He the nefarious predatory “elites” who run it. In its nobody can deny that then undertook to turn Hungary in an authoritar- present European incarnation, populism is pri- ian and, as he proudly defined it, “illiberal” and “na- marily directed against the European Union and populism is on the rise. tional” direction, following the examples of Russia, globalization, and very frequently, albeit not al- China, and Turkey. The constitution was revised, ways, against the United States and the Jews. Some the vote who now says that he will support Brexit if with a clear view to making Fidesz rule permanent: of today’s European populists are anti-Muslim; he takes power. As Kirchick argues, Corbyn’s Labour Either “we want to prolong the two-party system with some are not. Most are pro-Russian, though, again, Party shares many traits and positions with the au- the ongoing division,” Orbán stated in a public rally, some are not. thoritarian right (not least in its tolerance of anti- “or we assert ourselves as a great governing party, a It is indeed puzzling that such a mindset should Semites and Putin’s Russia). But to see how 21st- political force striving after permanent government.” be prevalent again across Europe. Western Europe century European populism truly works, one must Kirchick admits that Orbán and the present Fidesz has enjoyed peace and stable democracies for more turn to an EU country where the populists actually administration are nonetheless “genuinely popu- than 70 years, and its eastern half has spent the last won a general election: Hungary. lar.” And they owe their popularity, precisely, to their nationalism and the historical narrative they condone. Orbán’s populism, some have argued, is a re- sponse to his powerful competitor on the right, the Better Hungary Movement or Jobbik. While Fidesz won 52 percent of the national vote in 2010 and 44 percent in 2014, Jobbik swelled from 16 percent to 20 percent. An openly neo-Nazi party, it envi- sions much more than a mere taming of the liberal “elites.” It longs for a racially homogeneous state that would exclude the Roma minority as well as “the Jews,” who, in its parlance, comprise not just the present community of some 100,000, but all the real and imaginary descendants of 19th-century and 20th-century Hungarian Jews who assimilated or converted. Some of Orbán’s supporters see him as preventing the further rise of Jobbik; his oppo- nents see Jobbik as an unrestrained Fidesz. Whatev- er the interpretation, the unsettling fact is that this xenophobic, anti-democratic surge is supported by roughly two-thirds of Hungary’s population in the heart of the European Union. In fact, more EU countries and more of their parties are emulating Hungary and Fidesz. In Poland, the conservative Catholic Law and Justice Party has been passing Orbánesque legislation since Demonstrators gather in downtown Budapest for an anti-Zionist protest organized by Jobbik, the Hungarian 2015; Miloš Zeman’s conservatives have become radical nationalist party, a day before a World Jewish Congress (WJC) meeting begins, May 2013. increasingly authoritarian and nationalistic in the (Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty Images.) Czech Republic. Nor is the phenomenon restricted to Eastern Europe: while Marine Le Pen, the leader of three decades catching up. Thanks to the European reedom Square in central Budapest, Kirchick the sovereignist, “anti-system,” and anti-immigration Union, the Euro-American special relationship, Fpoints out, “teems with monuments attesting National Front and a staunch admirer of Orbán, did and, yes, globalization, Europe as a whole and indi- to Hungary’s turbulent twentieth century”: a huge not win France’s presidential election on May 7, she vidual European countries have risen from poverty obelisk dedicated to the city’s Red Army liberators; garnered an impressive 37 percent of the vote. to affluence. Even taking into account an economic a bust of Admiral Miklós Horthy, the conserva- Nor, of course, is populism restricted to right- slowdown in some European countries since 2008 tive regent who ruled from 1920 to 1944; a statue wing parties. As Kirchick shows, the left-wing Syriza and the European Union’s transition from a redis- of Imre Nagy, “the executed hero of Hungary’s regime in Greece is the clearest example of “the rise tribution agency to the budgetary and fiscal auster- 1956 anti-Soviet revolt”; and a marching “bronzed of a European hard left exuding the same authori- ity enforcer it has become since the introduction of Ronald Reagan” whose finger points to the Unit- tarian populism of the extreme right.” After five the euro currency in 2002, it is still a much better ed States Embassy. The most recent monument, years of bankruptcy and negative growth in Greece, bargain to be in Europe than outside of it. So why dedicated to “the Victims of the German Occupa- Syriza, led by an ex-communist named Alexis are so many Europeans convinced that the opposite tion,” is also the most controversial. Its design is Tsipras, won a majority in the Vouli, Athens’s parlia- is true? bizarre, an ugly, Teutonic eagle falling upon the ment, with the straightforward platform of promis- While Brexit is the most spectacular success luminous Archangel Gabriel, against a neo-Greek ing that Greece could keep its welfare system, never story of European populism to date, it remains a portico background, but its implication is worse: pay its creditors, and, if necessary, renounce the limited one: UKIP did not take over Britain, and All Hungarians were equally victims of the Nazi euro. It was, at least in part, a bluff, the opening bid Theresa May succeeded David Cameron as prime occupation. Those who know (and care) that more in negotiations with the European Union over fiscal minister, not Farage. If, after the surprising results than half a million Hungarian Jews were murdered austerity and financial aid. Underlining Kirchick’s

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 29 point about right and left, Nigel Farage lauded “the ist of Algerian descent, murdered or maimed four dox Jewish kindergarten director was tortured for an courage of the Greek people in the face of political soldiers in Toulouse and Montauban in Southern hour in her home in Paris by a young Muslim neigh- and economic bullying from Brussels.” Other fans France and then killed a Jewish teacher and three bor who was heard shouting “Allahu Akbar.” After include leaders of the French National Front and Jewish preteen children in Toulouse at point blank. throwing her lifeless body out of the window of her Hungary’s Jobbik party. In 2014, “at the height of the Gaza War, what can third-story apartment, he prayed. Although police Similarly, in the first ballot of the recent French presidential campaign, Jean-Luc Mélenchon gar- One of Kirchick’s strongest points is that a single powerful nered 20 percent of the vote, coming in third place as a representative of the newly revitalized populist player is at work supporting almost all European populists: hard left. After losing, Mélenchon declined for 10 full days, in between the two presidential ballots, Vladimir Putin. to endorse Macron or to take a stand against the National Front’s Marine Le Pen. only be described as a pogrom descended on the at the scene delayed storming the apartment while Don Isaac Abravanel synagogue” in Paris. waiting for the anti-terrorist unit, there is currently t is not, of course, from the right that the exis- a roiling public controvesy as to whether this will be Itential threat to the Jews of France has emerged, A crowd of several hundred people, chanting prosecuted as a hate crime. These are but the head- but from the very immigrants its rhetoric and poli- “Death to Jews” [in Arabic] and wielding iron lines of daily life in France over the last decade. cies have targeted (which is not, of course, to say bars and axes, tried to break into the building No wonder then that the French Jews, in spite that the National Front is philo-Semitic either). where about 200 worshippers were caught of their remarkable achievements as a community The “home to both the largest Jewish popula- inside . . . Though French police rushed to the since 1945 and their no less remarkable contribution tion,” as Kirchik writes, “and the largest Muslim scene, one witness reported that, had it not to French culture, are now leaving their country in population on the continent,” France has become been for members of the vigilante Jewish large numbers. Two thousand French Jews emigrated a notoriously dangerous place for Jews. “Anti- Defense League, “the synagogue would have to Israel in 2011. Four years later, Kirchick reports, Semitic attacks in France comprise 51 percent of all been destroyed.” the number had quadrupled. In fact, the decline is hate crimes even though Jews represent less than steeper than even these numbers suggest, for one 1 percent of the population.” Most of this anti- In 2015, in the wake of a mass shooting of jour- has also to take into account those French Jews who Semitic violence, from harassment to arson, murder, nalists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in settle in Israel as students or visitors without for- and pogrom-like street violence, is perpetrated by central Paris, an ISIS supporter of Malian descent mally undertaking aliyah, not to speak of those who radicalized Muslims. In 2006, there was the famous, shot a policewoman near a Jewish school in Mon- opt for other countries. Kirchick quotes the famous horrific “kidnapping, three-week-long torture, and trouge in southern Paris, and then, the following remarks of then–prime minister Manuel Valls after murderous dismemberment of twenty-one-year-old day, killed four hostages at a kosher supermarket the January 2015 killing spree in Paris: Ilan Halimi” in Paris by a Muslim-led gang who in eastern Paris. called themselves “the Barbarians.” As recently as April 2017, as we were about to Manuel Valls, the son of Spanish immigrants, In 2012, Mohammed Merah, an Islamist activ- elect a new president in France, a 66-year-old Ortho- declared, “If 100,000 French people of Spanish origin were to leave, I would never say that France is not France anymore. But if 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France.”

The Story of Herew “ In this incandescent narrative of an ever- At the present rate of emigration, this will take no renewing tongue, masterful linguist Lewis more than two decades, probably much less. eis inert Glinert traces how Hebrew, however severely Radical Islamic brotherhoods and preachers displaced from its native ground, has seem to understand their migration to an originally continued through centuries of tribulation to non-Muslim Europe as part of a religious-political nurture its heritage. Elegantly luring us from conquest, and many Muslims in France seem to one intellectual movement to the next, he accept this radical Islamist proposition at some arrives at history’s most moving culmination: level. On this understanding, Europe’s very acqui- the language of the Book returning at last to escence to a multicultural, multi-ethnic, and multi- the everyday voices of little children.” religious societal model appears to be an admis- — Cynthia Ozick, author of ritics Monsters sion of weakness. Ironically, they have a point. The anatics and ther Literary ssays political class has, too often, been unable to confront immigrant communities, even when basic legal and “ A marvelous and utterly engaging work.” societal norms are challenged. Muslim neighbor- — Barry W. Holtz, Theodore and Florence hoods have indeed been turned into “no-go zones,” Baumritter Professor of Jewish Education, not ghettoes where minorities are secluded, but Jewish Theological Seminary areas from which non-Muslims have been de facto expelled. As I write these lines, in the first weeks of the Emmanuel Macron administration, there “ To read [this book] is to appreciate Hebrew is much discussion of the “no women zones” that as the grammar of a dynamic dialogue are spreading across northern Paris. These are between the claims of the ever-changing places where women who do not dress and behave present and the imperatives of the past.” according to strict interpretations of sharia law —Benjamin Balint, all treet ournal are harassed and at times molested. France and its Muslim communities must figure out how they Cloth $27.95 will be integrated if that country is to remain a Library of Jewish Ideas Cosponsored by the Tikvah Fund viable nation.

See our e-books at ne of Kirchick’s strongest points, emphasized press.princeton.edu Othroughout his book, is that a single powerful player is at work supporting almost all European

30 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017

DO NOT PRINT THIS INFORMATION JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS SUMMER 2017 17-32 populists: Vladimir Putin. Right-wing populists even as he points to the shortcomings of the Euro- praise Putin’s Russia as the vanguard of the white, pean Union and the European political leadership in Christian civilization, against both the rising tide of its major member-states, he demonstrates surpris- Islam and American decadence. Left-wing populists, ing confidence in the grand project of the European on the other hand, still hail Russia as they did in the Union. Some may suspect that he confuses the Union mo•sa•ic Cold War days as the main adversary of American as it is now with what it was supposed to have been. imperialism. Both sides are generously rewarded. Certainly, he does not pay enough attention to what /mo za’ ik/ As Kirchick shows, even after the Soviet Union many observers or politicians, including committed 1. of or pertaining to Moses or the laws, faith, institutions, and writings attributed to him.

2. an artwork made of small pieces of inlaid stone, tile, marble, glass, etc., forming a patterned whole.

3. a web magazine advancing ideas, argument, and reasoned judgment in all areas of Jewish endeavor.

Russian president Vladimir Putin, left, and French president Emmanuel Macron at a joint press conference following their meeting at the Versailles Palace, near Paris, on May 29, 2017. (Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/AFP/Getty Images.) dissolved, its ruling elite stayed largely in place, Europhiles, call the Union’s “democratic deficit.” This especially in the very heart of the empire. The army describes the European Union’s steady drift from and the secret police remained intact, the planned democracy, or at least an administrative framework economy became a state-controlled oligarchy, na- under which democracy could flourish, to a bureau- tionalism was substituted for communism, and cratic system in which many if not most decisions Mother Russia sought to regain what she had lost. are made by unelected officials, and, once made, are It was the Yeltsin regime that began the process, close to irreversible. To read our recent editions, featuring with its “Near Abroad” doctrine, according to which Indeed, just this democratic deficiency in our powerful essays on Russia retained “vital interests” in the neighboring institutions may have prevented Europe as a whole, post-Soviet countries, and the parallel doctrine of “the and many of the individual European governments, Russian World,” which envisioned the “reunification” from identifying unavoidable political issues and why many American Jews are of all Russian-speaking communities into a single dealing with them effectively, including fiscal prob- becoming indifferent to Israel nation-state. Putin merely accelerated the process. lems and the refugee crisis. The European bureau- by Daniel Gordis In 2014, following the takeover of Crimea, he com- cracy, as well as the various national bureaucracies, the prospect for Russia's Jews plained that following the dissolution of the USSR recognized these issues, and others, but did not act, by Maxim D. Shrayer “the Russian nation became one of the biggest, if not often suppressing relevant information to legitimize the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by their inaction. In doing so, they actually contributed Jerusalem Syndrome at the Met borders.” “Presumably,” Kirchik observes drily, “it is to the rise of the populists and played into the hands by Edward Rothstein the Russian government’s duty to reassemble it.” of the Russian schemers. A second explicitly stated Russian goal is to Nonetheless, James Kirchick’s book is an impres- re-establish the former Soviet Union as a single sive, deeply reported, and incredibly courageous geopolitical unit if not as a single state: a “Eurasian report on the challenges Europe faces. If Europe were visit us at community” with Russia at its center. A concomm- to come to an end, its demise would not be through www.mosaicmagazine.com itant third goal is to weaken or eliminate rival pow- the populism of demagogues or Russian agression, ers. Kirchick adapts the motto of NATO’s first secre- nor through the continued rise of radical Islamism, tary general: “Keep the Russians out, the Americans but rather through the fossilization of its democracy. in, and the Germans down.” Today, Kirchick writes, “Putin’s strategy can be understood as a slight spin on this formula: Move the Russians in, get the Michel Gurfinkiel is a French journalist and the founder Americans out, and keep the Germans down.” and president of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute. He What Kirchik tells us about European populism is also a Shillman/Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East and Russian revisionism is deeply alarming. But Forum.

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 31 READINGS The Closing of the American Mind Now

BY JON D. LEVENSON

hirty years ago, a book was published that that voicing their dissent, or even sketching out an accepting everything and denying reason’s power.” hit, in the words of its New York Times alternative, might provoke. My sense is that at most With what sort of intellectual life does this leave us? review, “with the approximate force and elite institutions today, those professing convictions Speaking of a former colleague at Cornell, Bloom effect of what electric shock-therapy must on liberal arts education that are anything remotely wrote, “He said that it was his function to get rid of Tbe like.” A professor at the University of Chicago, like Allan Bloom’s could never get hired. prejudices in his students. He knocked them down previously known to those outside that institution The particular issues that provoke the harshest like tenpins. I began to wonder what he replaced principally for an annotated translation of Plato’s Re- responses are well known. They tend to center on those prejudices with.” Identifying a position as public, suddenly found himself the author of the top- questions of race, gender, sexuality, and, perhaps biased is easy enough; the hard part is identifying selling work of non-fiction in the country—and the center of a firestorm of public controversy of a sort At most elite institutions today, those professing convictions rarely seen among scholars of the humanities. Werner Dannhauser, in an appreciative survey, on liberal arts education that are anything remotely like listed fully 16 charges that reviewers leveled against Allan Bloom and his The Closing of the American Allan Bloom’s could never get hired. Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students: ideal- incongruously, Israel. Whatever the conceptual dif- the larger and encompassing truth that reveals it ism, sexism, racism, elitism, Straussianism, esoteric ference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, as a bias in the first place and not merely as a valid writing, sloppy writing, absolutism, making scape- the condemnation of Israel shades easily into con- alternative. goats of students, ignorance of professional philoso- tempt for all things Jewish, and Jewish students, es- Without that truth, or at least the conviction that phy, un-Americanism, failure to understand rock pecially those willing to identify as pro-Israel, have it exists and the passion to search for it, the univer- music, pessimism, uncritical advocacy of the Great been made to feel unwelcome on some campuses. A sity has become incoherent, a welter of “compet- Books, bad scholarship, and neglect of religion. similar distaste for committed Christians, especially ing and contradictory” departments. “The prob- In a particularly scathing (and influential) review, those who articulate dissent on the regnant sexual lem of the whole is urgently indicated by the very Martha Nussbaum added another, that Bloom ethic, is also evident. As William Deresiewicz, a existence of the specialties,” Bloom observed, “but ignored Greco-Roman texts that contradicted his scholar of English literature and a vocal critic of it is never systematically posed.” An individual pro- vision of the classical past, but it was the alleged the culture on elite campuses, has recently written, fessor or student may thus believe that this or that elitism of his vision that Nussbaum hit the hardest. “There is always something new, as my students discipline is more important than another, but the Bloom was, she charged, “really proposing that the understood, that you aren’t supposed to say,” and, reigning relativism of the academy degrades those function of the entire American university system as a result, not only students but also “many faculty judgments into merely idiosyncratic preferences. should be to perfect and then protect a few contem- members . . . are teaching with their tails between As a result, Bloom writes in one of his memorable plative souls, whose main subject matter will, appar- their legs. They, too, are being silenced.” The change epigrammatic flourishes, “the student must navigate ently, be the superiority of their own contemplative is striking and raises an intriguing question: Why among a collection of carnival barkers, each trying life to the moral and political life.” has modern academic culture proven so vulnerable to lure him into a particular sideshow.” No wonder Ironically, however much the credentialed pro- to the forces now transforming it so fundamentally? four years of such an education left students feeling fessoriate panned The Closing of the American Mind empty, as Dannhauser had observed. for its putative narrowness, the broader public found ere Bloom alive to see this situation, I sus- something of great value in it. At one point, Simon Wpect he would say that it is the predictable n the especially controversial and oft-disputed & Schuster was printing 25,000 copies a week— consequence of the issues he described in 1987. Isecond part of The Closing of the American Mind, no doubt a record for a book that dealt with such There would be some truth in this claim, but there Bloom traced the origins of this predicament to a difficult figures as Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and are also important aspects of the current situation set of German thinkers of the late 19th and early Weber and that was itself far from an easy reading (and even the situation in those days) that, in my 20th centuries who, rejecting ancient claims about experience. The discrepancy between the difficulty judgment, run counter to his analysis and call it natural law and divine revelation alike, asserted of Bloom’s book and its popularity became a topic into question. To sort this out, we must first exam- “the radical subjectivity of all belief about good of discussion in its own right. Dannhauser, a friend ine his interpretation of academic life as it stood and evil.” Now, instead of morality and command- and former colleague of Bloom’s, speculated that when he wrote The Closing of the American Mind. ment, we hear of “values,” which are barely distin- the sales were owing to the unease parents had felt Bloom’s central claim was that the university, guishable, if at all, from mere preferences. Unlike with the education for which they were paying. Such its curriculum, its professors, and—most impor- truth in the older model and in the educational parents “had watched their children go off to get a tantly to him—its students suffered first and fore- institutions of yesteryear, “values are not discov- liberal education,” he wrote, “and come back with all most from the lack of any conception of truth and ered by reason, and it is fruitless to seek them, to sorts of substitutes or by-products: addictions, neu- were thus enmeshed in a deep and self-destructive find the truth or the good life.” Worse still, such roses, unearned cynicism, a sense of emptiness.” cultural relativism that was, in fact, destroying the values rather easily came to be seen as human As bad as the situation was that Dannhauser possibility of a credible education. “The danger [the creations with an unfortunate result: described on campus some three decades ago, things students] have been taught to fear from absolutism have deteriorated markedly. Most newsworthy have is not error,” he wrote on his first page, “but intol- Producing values and believing in them been the recent incidents of violence against speak- erance.” Lest one praise this stance as one of open- are acts of the will. Lack of will, not lack of ers who dare to challenge one or another reigning ness—a trait much celebrated in academic circles understanding, becomes the crucial defect. orthodoxy of the academy. Less noticed, but argu- (at least verbally) then and now—Bloom observed Commitment is the moral virtue because ably more troubling, is the self-censorship on the that the term has undergone a drastic redefinition: it indicates the seriousness of the agent. part of faculty and students who are not inclined “Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us Commitment is the equivalent of faith when to face the shunning, or ersatz judicial procedures, to seek the good by using reason. It now means the living God has been supplanted by self-

32 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 provided values. It is Pascal’s wager, no longer on is, we remember what succeeded Weimar. In this rected, Bloom claimed, until colleges and univer- God’s existence but on one’s capacity to believe light, it is hard not to think of the vilification of sities reclaimed the works of literature that once in oneself and the goals one has set for oneself. Israel and Zionism now found on many campuses underlay the classical liberal arts curriculum: Commitment values the values and makes them as an omen—one that should be of concern to valuable. Not love of truth but intellectual honesty more than just the Jewish community. Of course, the only serious solution is the one characterizes the proper state of mind. that is almost universally rejected: the good o, what was Bloom’s remedy? First, the univer- old Great Books approach, in which a liberal As distant from the American university scene as Ssity must overcome the temptation to be socially education means reading certain generally the German figures on whom Bloom concentrates and politically relevant, a temptation that is espe- recognized classic texts, just reading them, (mostly Nietzsche, Weber, and Heidegger) may cially powerful in democracies. Instead, the univer- letting them dictate what the questions are and appear, he claimed to find a direct line between their sity must strive to “provide the atmosphere where the method of approaching them—not forcing thought and popular culture in the United States. the moral and physical superiority of the dominant them into categories we make up, not treating “Who in 1920 would have believed,” he asked, “that will not intimidate philosophic doubt,” cultivating them as historical products, but trying to read Max Weber’s technical sociological terminology therefore true “freedom of the mind,” which entails, them as their authors wished them to be read. would someday be the everyday language of the importantly, not only “the absence of legal constraints United States . . . ? The self-understanding of hip- but the presence of alternative thoughts.” And since Against those who treat Aristotle’s Ethics as a pies, yippies, yuppies, panthers, prelates and presi- “flattery of the people and incapacity to resist public discussion not about “what a good man is but dents has unconsciously been formed by German opinion are the democratic vices,” in a democracy [about] what the Greeks thought about morality,” thought of a half-century earlier . . . and the new the academy must fill the role once played by those for example, he pointedly asked, “But who really American life-style has become a Disneyland ver- aristocrats who offered ballast against the pressures cares very much about that?” His answer was, “Not sion of the Weimar Republic for the whole family.” of the masses. Otherwise, “there is no protection for any normal person who wants to lead a serious The effects of this transformation on academic life.” In sum, the Great Books are great not because life had, in Bloom’s opinion, been devastating, leav- they reflect a culture and a society—every book ing universities incoherent and the students purpose- does that—but because they communicate a pre- less. The policy of value-neutrality and its curricular cious message that transcends cultures and societ- consequences—the substitution of the study of his- ies and can, in the hands of the right teacher in the tory, society, and culture for the pursuit of right institution, speak profoundly to the perennial truth and wisdom—had raised enormous problems of being human. problems for the life of the mind. With- out something transcendent to which mong the Great Books, “the Bible” is mentioned to commit oneself, one’s commitments Aa number of times in The Closing of the Ameri- themselves inevitably pale and become can Mind, although Bloom never felt any need to shallow: “When one hears men and women specify the canonical contours of the scriptures he proclaiming that they must preserve their had in mind. Rather, the Bible, or, more precisely, culture, one cannot help wondering whether the loss of it as an effective cultural force, served this artificial notion can really take the place as an object lesson on the decline of Ameri- of the God and country for which they once can culture. “As the respect for the Sacred—the would have been willing to die.” To be sure, latest fad—has soared,” he lamented, “real religion Bloom did not advocate a re- and knowledge of the Bible have diminished to the turn to the old beliefs about God vanishing point.” Whereas in the America of not so or country, as we shall see, and long ago, “passages from the Psalms and the Gospels only with considerable qualifica- echoed in children’s heads,” now “the very idea of tion could he be called a such a total book and the possibility and necessity conservative. of world-explanation is disappearing,” and this, too, Rather, following his has impoverished the souls of today’s students: teacher Leo Strauss, Bloom was convinced that the new I am not saying anything so thinking fails to reckon trite as that life is fuller when people with the unavoidable costs have myths to live by. I mean rather that a life of abandoning traditional based on the Book is closer to the truth, that convictions. Whereas it provides the material for deeper research in “Nietzsche replaces and access to the real nature of things. . . . The easygoing or self- Bible is not the only means to furnish a mind, satisfied atheism with ago- but without a book of similar gravity, read nized atheism, suffering its conse- with the gravity of the potential believer, it will Allan Bloom. (Illustration by Mark Anderson.) quences,” today’s students are quite free of existential remain unfinished. agony and its attendant suffering—but only because, as the subtitle of the book suggests, their education the opponents of the governing principles as well as In fact, in the first sentence of his chapter entitled has left their souls impoverished. However high their no respectability for them,” and when that situation simply “Books,” Bloom confessed that he had SAT scores, they lack the psychic energy, the erotic obtains, what Bloom called “the theoretical life”— “begun to wonder whether the experience of the longing, to seek after the highest truths. (Revealingly, the unending quest to move beyond opinion toward greatest texts from early childhood is not a prereq- Bloom’s original title was Souls Without Longing.) genuine knowledge—is gravely imperiled. Ironically, uisite for a concern throughout life for them and And there is a still-darker side to the process. to revert again to Bloom’s subtitle, higher education for lesser but important literature.” Asked about his For, as Bloom saw it, without a longing for the had in his view not only impoverished the souls of personal beliefs in an interview with Time maga- truth that transcends society, genuinely calls pa- today’s students; it had also failed democracy. If his zine, he acknowledged the specific text that influ- rochial loyalties into account, and interrogates view is right, then the relationship of “elitism” to enced his own childhood: personal commitments, what awaits us is some rule by the people is something very different from version of authoritarianism. The “Disneyland the stark opposition that so many of his critics in- I’m not going to go into personal confessions. I version of the Weimar Republic for the whole stinctively assume. was raised as a Jew. I read the Bible. I was taught family” may seem innocent enough—until, that Second, the current situation could not be cor- the Ten Commandments and other laws. There

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 33 were demands made of me, and I questioned If the Christian, which would they choose, the Prot- Although the Bible presents an especially pointed them. I still question them, all the time, in every estant, the Roman Catholic, or one of the Orthodox example of the importance of practice, the principle book I read. Whether there is or is not a God is canons, and why? Would they treat the character- applies, in fact, to much non-scriptural literature as still among the most critical questions in life. istic interpretations of the rejected traditions with well. In Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises respect or as self-evidently wrong—or not at all? from Socrates to Foucault, the renowned historian of And in an exceptionally moving passage in The Even to ask those questions is to suggest that philosophy Pierre Hadot argued that “contemporary Closing of the American Mind, Bloom attributed there is something very different about the Bible. At historians of ancient thought have, as a general rule, to the Bible—here unquestionably referring to the the epicenter of that difference lies what Jews tend to remained prisoners of the old, purely theoretical con- Jewish version—a capacity to transcend social and call “chosenness” and Christians “election.” Although ception of philosophy.” What they urgently need is to economic class and to generate a common culture: the Bible, in all of its canonical forms, speaks of what recognize instead that “the philosophical act is not Bloom calls “the nature of things” and of univer- situated merely on the cognitive level, but on that of My grandparents were ignorant people by sal humanity, it mostly concentrates on something the self and of being.” This does not mean that such our standards, and my grandfather held only lowly jobs. But their home was spiritually rich Surely the spiritual richness of Bloom’s grandparents’ home did not because all the things done in it, not only what was specifically ritual, found their origin in the come from anything like his depiction of the ideal encounter with Bible’s commandments, and their explanation in the Bible’s stories and the commentaries on the Great Books—one in which the student is “just reading them.” them, and had their imaginative counterparts in the deeds of the myriad of exemplary heroes. . . . very different: the self-disclosure of God to a special works cannot be brought into the classroom of the This is what a community and a history mean, a community to whom he is thought to have made a modern pluralistic college or university, where “spiri- common experience inviting high and low into continuing commitment. The “common experience tual exercises” are thought to be a strictly private and a single body of belief. inviting high and low into a single body of belief” optional matter. It does mean, however, that the rela- that Bloom found in his grandparents’ home, it turns tionship of the two communities of interpretation— Yet precisely here we encounter a set of contradic- out, is common to the heirs of one of those particu- the one committed to study and practice and regard tions that calls the efficacy of Bloom’s Great Books laristic communities but not to humanity in general; for the authority of a community and its traditions project into doubt. it is not universal. To assume such experience in the and the other committed to a pursuit of the theo- Surely the spiritual richness of his grandparents’ classroom of the culturally pluralistic college or uni- retical life without expectations of practice—is more home did not come from anything like Bloom’s versity would be grossly unrealistic. complicated than Bloom understood. depiction of the ideal encounter with the Great Moreover, if the biblical books are read in the What Bloom failed to appreciate is that when Books—one in which the student is “just reading modern educational context as Bloom recommend- classical works of literature, especially those that are them.” Rather, by his own account, it came more ed, “with the gravity of the potential believer,” they philosophical or scriptural in character, are extract- from practice than from study, from observing those will not be presented “as their authors wished them ed from the thick culture of practice and interpreta- commandments that he continually questioned, and to be read” at all: They will be read through the in- tion in which they originate and transplanted into from creating a mode of life and not just of thought. terpretive lenses of the ongoing traditions to which the modern pluralistic university, they are willy- His grandparents’ highest pursuit was thus some- the believers are committed and, in some cases nilly transformed into something very different, los- thing very different from Bloom’s own ideal of “the (certainly the Jewish), in tandem with other books ing, importantly, their intrinsic connection to what theoretical life.” Nor is it likely that his grandparents with authoritative status in those same traditions. Hadot called “spiritual exercises.” If so, then perhaps read the scriptures “as their authors wished them Finally, despite Bloom’s dismissal of the “Enlighten- the underlying assumptions of liberal arts education to be read.” For just as these humble Jews had no ment’s political project,” if he really thought “philo- in Bloom’s preferred mode have, ironically, played a effective access to historical criticism, which sophical doubt” was essential to education, then role of their own in setting the stage for the turbu- seeks to reconstruct the origins of the composi- how could he banish the challenge to all systems lent transformation of campus life of recent years. tions without which the intentions of the authors of traditional interpretation that comes from the cannot be recovered, it is also unlikely that the Jew- astonishing recovery of the ancient Near Eastern and hirty years after Allan Bloom published The ish commentaries Bloom mentioned were those Greco-Roman worlds over the last few centuries? For TClosing of the American Mind, higher educa- committed to the plain sense of the biblical texts surely any instructor who banished the challenges tion in the mode he advocated is far weaker than apart from what the rabbinic tradition had made that have emerged after the Enlightenment would be in his day. Enrollments in humanities courses of them. Rather, the practices and virtues that char- vulnerable to accusations not only of naiveté but of have shrunk markedly for several reasons, not all acterized Bloom’s grandparents’ home derived only parochialism and obscurantism as well. of them owing to the dominant culture of politi- very indirectly from the Bible; they were mediated Bloom’s focus on “the potential believer” re- cal correctness. But, as one would expect in that by centuries of Oral Torah and folk tradition. flected the cognitivist or contemplative bent of his environment, it is not unusual for the focus now Whatever Martha Nussbaum may have meant whole project. But in the case of the Bible—again un- to fall reductively on the racial, sexual, or other when she observed that “Bloom presents himself der whatever definition but especially in the Jewish identities of the authors read, and there is room to to us as a profoundly religious man,” the religion in case—the objective is not belief alone but practice as suspect that this change, together with the wide- question, centered on reading classic texts “as their well, observance, that is, of the norms that the scrip- spread penchant for theory and for jargon among authors wished them to be read,” did not look much tures disclose and the tradition interprets. One thinks humanities instructors, plays a role in the steep like Judaism, or any other historical religion. of the famous talmudic dictum that study is greater decline in enrollments. The claim that literature, A few pages from the end of his book, Bloom than action—because study leads to action. If that is philosophy, art, and sometimes even science func- complicated the matter still further by acknowledg- so, Bloom’s Bible reader, who approaches it “with the tion primarily as modes of social control is often ing problems in including the Bible within the hu- gravity of the potential believer,” fails, ironically, to assumed to one degree or another, though less of- manities in the first place. “A teacher who treated take belief with the requisite gravity. To such a person, ten defended. But precisely because of the domi- the Bible naively, taking it at its word, or Word,” he reading the scriptures has become an end in itself, and nance of this ideology and the correlative silencing wrote, “would be accused of scientific incompe- in that, he is far from reading them “as their authors or even criminalization of dissent, the atmosphere tence and lack of sophistication. . . . Here one sees wished them to be read.” For this kind of literature in most colleges and universities is today anything the traces of the Enlightenment’s political project, presupposes not a solitary reader contemplating the but that of the easy-going relativism and tolerance which wanted precisely to render the Bible, and great truths and living the “theoretical life,” but rather that Bloom described at the opening of his book. other old books, undangerous.” But imagine teach- a community of readers whose common experi- To be sure, Bloom would almost certainly say ers in non-religious colleges and universities who ence derives from specific, distinctive, and identity- that the course of American academic life has fol- did take the Bible as “the Word.” Which would they conferring practices. The reading and the practice lowed the German trajectory from Weber through favor, the Jewish or the Christian canon, and why? enrich each other; neither is complete by itself. Weimar to the Nazi period, typified for him by

34 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 the philosopher Martin Heidegger’s philosophical saintly individuals celebrated in various religious Resources are always finite, and hard choices are wager on Hitler. “But the Weimar Republic, so traditions, is diametrically opposed to the smug always necessary. In the context of the liberal arts, attractive in its left-wing version to Americans,” he certainty and self-righteousness that Deresiewicz one would hope that the criteria for the choices wrote, “also contained intelligent persons who were finds on campuses. Finally, the ancient and wide- made would amount to more than just what will attracted, at least in the beginning, to fascism, for spread religious conviction that the misguided and generate the most wealth for the student, enroll- reasons very like those motivating the Left ideo- the wicked, including one’s enemies, are children of ments for the instructor, or prestige and funds for logues, reflections on autonomy and value creation.” God, possessed of a God-given soul, and thus de- the institution, or what will appease the interest To me, though, it seems that today’s campus serving of respect or even love—this, too, strikes me group that is most militant at the moment. But in radicals speak far less in the language of “autonomy as light years away from the regnant assumptions of the absence of a well-articulated, comprehensive and value creation” and far more in that of self- campus radicals (and their administrative and fac- vision of the liberal arts that commands broad sup- evident truths from which no one could ever dissent ulty facilitators) in elite and many non-elite educa- port from the faculties, and is pursued actively and in good faith and with innocent motivation. (Hav- tional institutions today. explicitly, these more practical and less noble con- ing been in college during the uprisings of the late For Deresiewicz, as for many others, the an- cerns will continue to win the day. 1960s, I found this true of the more extreme radi- swer to the rigidity and absolutism on campus It is into the vacuum created by the near disap- cals of that era as well.) I also have the sense that is clear and readily available. “It’s called the First pearance of an encompassing educational vision the language of “values” has declined markedly in Amendment,” he writes, “and First Amendment that the current political correctness on campus has academic life. Rather, values are often seen as mere jurisprudence doesn’t recognize ‘offensive’ speech rushed with such fury, providing something like what instruments of self-interest in a fashion reminiscent or even hate speech as categories subject to legiti- Deresiewicz calls “a religious attitude,” though of a of Marxist thought, except that now race, gender, mate restriction.” Therefore, he concludes, the First very low order. That this attitude is taken up by stu- and sexuality generally trump class as the key iden- Amendment should be “the guiding principle at dents whose souls long for something that the univer- tifiers. Of course, the trajectory that Bloom traced private colleges and universities (at least the ones sity is not giving them is central to our predicament. involved massive shifts as well—Max Weber was that profess to be secular), just as it is, perforce, at Given the social and cultural divisions charac- miles from a Nazi—but today’s radicals seem to me public institutions.” Here we see an echo of Bloom’s teristic of modern pluralistic societies, it is hard to to hold to a concept of truth (whether they use the stress on the “freedom of the mind,” which, as we imagine how an educational vision of the compre- word or not) in ways that are quite different from saw, requires not only “the absence of legal con- hensive premodern sort could ever be restored on the thinking of the figures on whom Bloom con- straints but the presence of alternative thoughts.” most campuses. The Closing of the American Mind centrates, at least as he interprets them. How many Now, if the issue is one of speaking on campus, this helped to clarify the problem, but it provides less of today’s campus radicals would ever say that “not makes eminent sense. The educational enterprise help in pointing a way forward. love of truth but intellectual honesty characterizes can gain only by ensuring that faculty and outside the proper state of mind”? And how many would speakers with controversial views are not assaulted refrain from driving a speaker off campus if they or otherwise prevented from expressing themselves, Jon D. Levenson is the Albert A. List Professor of Jewish were reassured that however objectionable his (or as has too often been the case of late. When the fo- Studies at Harvard University and the author, most her) views, they were expressed honestly and with cus shifts to the issues closest to the core mission recently, of The Love of God: Divine Gift, Human commitment? of the institution, however, and the question thus Gratitude, and Mutual Faithfulness in Judaism To some of its critics, the contemporary college becomes one of whom to hire, promote, tenure, (Princeton University Press). or university is a hotbed not of relativism, as Bloom and publish, the matter is more complicated, and thought (correctly or not) to be the case in his day, here Bloom’s concern for the coherence of the cur- but rather of something closer to religion. “Selec- riculum and its relationship to the truth stands in tive private colleges have become religious schools,” tension with his own unqualified endorsement of Deresiewicz writes. “They possess a dogma, unwrit- intellectual freedom. Should universities hire, pro- ten but understood by all: a set of ‘correct’ opinions mote, tenure, and publish the Holocaust denier, the and beliefs, or at best, a narrow range within which white supremacist, and the scientific creationist? A disagreement is permitted. . . . The assumption, on positive answer to the question is defensible only elite college campuses,” he goes on, “is that we are to the extent that the positions at issue are deemed already in full possession of the moral truth. This is sufficiently plausible as to warrant genuine consid- a religious attitude. It is certainly not a scholarly or eration. No one should want falsehood to be taught intellectual attitude.” or disseminated. Certainly Bloom, with his grave A stark opposition of “religious” to “scholarly or warnings about “accepting everything and denying intellectual,” however, describes religion at its worst, reason’s power,” would have to agree. or nearly so—a situation in which it has, truth to The implication is far-reaching. Truth is not only tell, often been found. In their better moments, the goal of academic inquiry; it is also the control on however, religions seek to hear the best case the it. No educational institution—secular or religious, opposing camp can make, as in the give and take public or private—can accommodate all positions of talmudic argumentation or in the willingness by or systems of thought, as if everything were true, many modern religious communities to face the nor should it aspire to. As Bloom put it, “with great results of rigorous historical investigation honestly openness it is hard to avoid decomposition.” To and to adjust accordingly. An analogous openness thrive, especially in the modern world, institutions and acknowledgment of fallibility can be found in of learning must maintain a balance of affirma- modern interreligious dialogue of the sort in which tion and challenge. Without the affirmation, it will the participants strive to overcome misunderstand- be impossible to determine which challenges must ings and prejudices without reducing their tradi- be faced and which excluded (though the judg- tions to the lowest common denominator. ment to include or exclude can be revised), and the Similarly, the claim that “we are already in full “decomposition” of which Bloom warned will be possession of the moral truth” contradicts a key abundantly evident. Without the challenge, the element—dogma, if you will—of many and, mutatis affirmation stagnates, loses a sense of its own con- mutandis, perhaps all religious traditions: that God’s tours, and, depriving itself of worthy debating part- mind is infinite, whereas ours is finite, and that the ners, degenerates into either apathy or fanaticism. truth is therefore larger than even a lifetime of study At a more practical level, the greater the open- and experience can ever approximate. The humil- ness in the sense of curricular inclusiveness, the less ity of those who have internalized that message, the chance there is of attaining depth in any one subject.

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 35 THE ARTS Theater and Politics in Oslo

BY ITAMAR RABINOVICH

PLO, the construction of an autonomous Palestin- bringing them to Gaza and the West Bank. Palestin- Oslo ian Authority in the Gaza Strip and parts of the ian statehood was not part of the agreement, and written by J. T. Rogers, directed by Bartlett Sher West Bank, and Yasser Arafat’s return from his exile not a single Israeli settlement was to be removed Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York City in Tunis to lead the Palestinian Authority. The issue within the five-year interim period, but for the set- April 13 through July 2, 2017 of Palestinian statehood, along with other thorny is- tler movement Oslo meant the end of their dream to sues such as the status of Jerusalem and the Pales- add the West Bank to Israel proper. tinian claim for a right of return, was deferred until he Oslo talks began with the initiative of Terje Rogers is a skillful dramatist, TRød-Larsen, the head of a Norwegian think n November 1995, the Dayton Agreement was tank, who secretly brought together two Israeli signed, ending the war in Bosnia. This ma- but the question is whether academics, Dr. Yair Hirschfeld and Dr. Ron Pun- jor achievement of American diplomacy was dak, with senior members of the PLO. Hirschfeld made possible by effective geopolitics and the he paints on a large enough and Pundak were working for Yossi Beilin, Shimon Idiplomatic skills of America’s chief negotiator, the Peres’s chief aide, who had become deputy foreign late Richard Holbrooke. It put a stop not only to canvas. minister with the formation of Rabin’s government armed conflict, but to civilian massacres and ethnic in the summer of 1992. Beilin took his time before cleansing. Nonetheless, there is no award-winning final status negotiations. It was a spectacular and briefing Peres on the new diplomatic channel, and Broadway show called Dayton, nor is there likely to controversial breakthrough—seemingly a rare suc- Peres took his time before he updated Rabin. Al- be one. There is, however, Oslo. J. T. Rogers’s play cessful case of “track two diplomacy,” while more though one would not know it from the play, the dramatizes the negotiations that led to the far-less public negotiations between Israel and a delegation political rivalry between Rabin and Peres was, in successful first Oslo Accord, which was signed by of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians in Washington, fact, an important dimension of Israeli diplomacy Israel’s foreign minister, Shimon Peres, and the Pal- D.C. were going nowhere. at the time. They were the Siamese twins of Israeli estinian leader Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala) in Norway, and sealed shortly thereafter in the famous Clin- ton-facilitated handshake between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993. If this discrepancy is less than surprising, it is still worth noting. Americans have been obsessed with attempts to make what President Trump likes to call “the ultimate deal” of Israeli-Arab peace for at least half a century. One can catch a hint of this obsession in the headline of the New York Times rave review of the new Lincoln Center production of Rogers’s play, which runs through the summer: “‘Oslo’ Fills a Large Canvas in a Thrilling Production.” The play, critic Ben Brantley wrote, “has now become the co- lossus it was always meant to be.” It certainly is long (three hours), and Rogers is a skillful dramatist, but whether he paints on a large enough canvas is a question to which I shall return. Before offering my own, rather different view of Oslo, I should mention my limited role in the actual Oslo process. When the talks began, I was Rabin’s peace negotiator with Syria, a separate—and to some extent—competing track of Arab-Israeli peace negotiations. By August of 1993, when the Israeli and Palestinian teams had come to agree- ment on a declaration of principles and an interim five-year agreement, I was also Israel’s ambassador to the United States. I joined the Israeli and Nor- wegian foreign ministers, Shimon Peres and Johan From left, Anthony Azizi (Ahmed Qurie), Dariush Kashani (Hassan Asfour), Jennifer Ehle (Mona Juul), Holst, at Point Mugu Naval Air Station near Santa Michael Aronov (Uri Savir), and Daniel Oreskes (Yair Hirschfeld) in Oslo. (Photo by T. Charles Erickson.) Barbara, to brief Secretary of State Warren Chris- topher and his team and get the Clinton adminis- tration’s endorsement. In the coming months, I par- The compromises made by the two sides in politics, now uncomfortably joined at the hip as ticipated in the transformation of this agreement Oslo were condemned by critics in their respective prime minister and foreign minister. into what would become “the Oslo process,” which camps. Radical Palestinians saw the agreement as a To everyone’s surprise, Rabin authorized the track would last throughout the 1990s. capitulation to the continued existence of a Jewish two negotiations in Oslo. In time, Hirschfeld and The most important elements of the agreement state. The Israeli right wing objected to the recog- Pundak were joined and then marginalized by Uri were mutual recognition between Israel and the nition of Arafat and the PLO, and, even more, to Savir, the director general of the Israeli Foreign Min-

36 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 istry, and Joel Singer, an expert on international law in 1994, does not come off well, but Holst’s friends sive wave of immigration from Russia. Moreover, he and a seasoned peace negotiator. But Peres and Beilin Terje Rød-Larsen and his wife Mona Juul (both of had bet on the wrong horse in Saddam Hussein. It were the real forces behind the Israeli team, as Rabin whom clearly had a major impact on J. T. Rogers’s was time to make a deal, and Oslo enabled him to uneasily monitored and guided the negotiations understanding of events) emphatically do, and are maneuver effectively without crossing any of his red from a distance while remaining ambivalent. In fact, given a healthy dose of credit for the agreement. lines—at least until final status negotiations. he hoped that the next big breakthrough in Arab- Rabin, in turn, thought that a diplomatic break- Israeli relations would happen elsewhere, in a deal through was necessary, and he accepted the Oslo with Syria, where the dispute had become territorial, In reality, the Oslo Accords option for lack of a better one. His original strat- not existential, and in which the other party was, at the were the product of historic egy with regard to the Palestinians had been to time, a strong, coherent regime. However, President seek an autonomy agreement through negotiations Hafez al-Assad insisted on an Israeli commitment to decisions made by political with local leaders, but he soon discovered that the a full withdrawal from the Golan as the very first step, negotiations were just shadow-boxing. Ostensi- which had brought negotiations to a standstill. leaders who were not present bly, the Palestinian negotiators in Washington, J. T. Rogers, who has said that he writes plays D.C. did not represent the PLO, but, in fact, they about characters “who struggle with and against . . . in the room. received their daily marching orders by fax and world events,” took upon himself the task of drama- telephone from Tunis. So rather than deal with tizing how the negotiators at Oslo succeeded under But more important than these failures of char- the PLO indirectly, Rabin reluctantly authorized these circumstances (to the extent that they did). acterization and historical detail is Rogers’s under- Peres and Beilin to pursue direct negotiations. On The result is good theater. Rogers’s play could (or, lying assumption that success of Oslo was a prod- August 3, 1993, two weeks before the signing in rather, should) have been shortened, but theatrego- uct of Rød-Larsen’s philosophy of conflict resolu- Oslo, Rabin made a final effort to make headway on ers are treated to a suspenseful story, good acting, tion. As Ben Brantley wrote in his New York Times the Syrian track when he told Secretary of State War- and—despite the essential talkiness of the action— review, “Their [Rød-Larsen and Juul’s] approach ren Christopher that he was hypothetically willing well-orchestrated to withdraw from the Golan, given certain condi- movement on the tions. When he realized two days later that, instead stage. It was nomi- of holding that card for an opportune moment, nated for seven Tony Christopher had instantly played it with Assad, and, Awards, including moreover, that the American diplomatic delegation Best Play and won was leaving the region for its summer vacation, he two; it will open at decided that he had no option but “to go to Oslo.” the Royal National (For the American delegation’s perspective on this Theatre in London incident, see Dennis Ross’s review of my biography this fall, after it ends of Yitzhak Rabin in these pages, “A Life with Conse- its run at the Lincoln quences,” Spring 2017.) Center. The Oslo Accords produced a great deal of hope But a play that is and a great deal of controversy. Rabin’s assassina- not only based on real tion, two years after the famous handshake, on No- and relatively recent vember 4, 1995, was a grave blow to the process. events of an ongoing Rogers inflicts a heavy and gratuitous injustice on political process, but Rabin by presenting him at the opening of the play, derives much of its in the words of Rød-Larsen, as “a sputtering clown,” dramatic power from an Israeli politician who under the influence of the sense that it is de- whiskey mistook him for a Frenchman. But with all picting them truly, his complexity, it was Rabin who made Oslo accept- cannot be judged able to the Israeli public. His Israeli assassin under- in purely theatrical Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres signs the historic Oslo Accords, in a ceremony stood that by killing Rabin he could derail, if not terms. This would be at the White House, September 13, 1993. Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, left, fully destroy, the Oslo process. true even if it were President Bill Clinton, and PLO leader Yasser Arafat look on. (J. David Ake/AFP/ This is a long and complex story, but several el- not the case that for Getty Images.) ements of the Oslo Accords are still relevant and theatergoers (and the important today. The mutual recognition between viewers of the film that will reportedly be produced in bringing together two seemingly irreconcil- Israel and the Palestinians is still valid and has en- by the makers of La La Land) Rogers’s version will able sides was rooted in the theory of gradualism.” abled Arab states to deal with Israel. And the Pales- be the only version of these events that they know. This approach involves decontextualizing politi- tinian Authority, weak, corrupt, and abused though And yet, Rogers’s play makes for remarkably slop- cal conflict and personalizing it. As Rød-Larsen it is, still manages the life of most Palestinians in the py history, in matters both large and small. Thus, himself has explained: “My model is rooted not in West Bank. Their many criticisms notwithstanding, Yair Hirschfeld was a professor of Middle Eastern the organizational, but in the personal. With each not many Israeli right wingers would like to return history not economics; Uri Savir was indeed sum- point of contention addressed separately by specific to Nablus and Jenin and administer them. One can moned by Shimon Peres from New York but in individuals, as themselves, not as the process they only hope that an Israeli-Palestinian negotiation 1984, not a few weeks before the negotiations but represent.” This may be a good working theory for will be revived. If and when this happens, the origi- nine years earlier; and so on. More troubling is the theatre about characters “who struggle with and nal Oslo framework will have to be significantly fact that many of the characters are mere caricatures against . . . world events,” indeed Rogers’s acceptance modified in order to accommodate the realities cre- of their real-life counterparts: On stage, Hirschfeld speech at the Tony’s suggested as much. But it is not ated on both sides during the past 24 years. In the is a buffoon, Palestinian negotiator Hassan Asfour a good way to understand actual world events. In re- meantime, Oslo tells an interesting story well—for can only utter Marxist slogans, and Yossi Beilin, Uri ality, the Oslo Accords were the product of historic those who don’t know the story. Savir, and Joel Singer bear little resemblance to the decisions made by political leaders who were not complex, fascinating, even problematic, real-life present in the room: Arafat, Rabin, Peres, and Beilin. people upon whom they are based. Ahmed Qurei Arafat was in a weak position. Time, a decisive Itamar Rabinovich is president of the Israel Institute. He (Abu Ala) does come off as an impressive figure, but dimension of every conflict, was no longer on his was Israel’s ambassador to the United States in the 1990s this is, at least in part, due to the power of Anthony side. Not only had the United States won the Cold as well as chief negotiator with Syria between 1993 and Azizi’s performance. As for the Norwegians, Minis- War, but the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc had 1996. His most recent book is Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, ter of Foreign Affairs Johan Holst, who passed away just vanished, and Israel was benefitting from a mas- Leader, Statesman (Yale University Press).

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 37 Fauda: The Wages of Chaos

BY A. E. SMITH

mirror, Doron drapes the keffiyeh over his head and The risk here—for Doron and the others, for Fauda then wraps it around his face. His eyes, until now cops and intelligence officers, even for terrorists— created by Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff sweet and green and slightly watery, are suddenly is that such sustained intimacy becomes normal. directed by transformed into pebbles, opaque, unknowable. And The job and the adversary become more real, more produced by Liat Benasuly, David Betzer, and Maria Feldman then his young son is standing in the kitchen door- meaningful, than husbands, wives, children, lovers. way. “Daddy?” he says. Doron swings around and Doron’s connection to his family, not particularly regards him from behind his mask. For an instant, strong to begin with, is severed when he returns to father and son do not, cannot, recognize each other. the team. Eventually, he slips the bonds of his identi- This initial glimpse of the hidden Doron sets the ty altogether and ends up living rough on the streets auda, the Arabic word for chaos, is also the tone for the entire 11 episodes of Fauda that follow. of Ramallah. Abu Ahmad has lived in hiding for title of an award-winning Israeli TV series This is a series that is less about the conflict between years and genuinely yearns for his wife, Nasrin, and currently airing on . Appropriately, it Israel and than it is about the corrosive for his children. But he does not hesitate to go ahead opens in an adrenaline rush of noise, confu- effects of that conflict on its ground-level partici- with an IED attack on Doron’s team, even though he Fsion, and jagged camerawork. A plain-clothes IDF pants, Israeli and Arab. Even its title seems to hint at knows full well that his own small daughter may die special operations team snatches a Palestinian Arab a deep vein of ambiguity and confusion lying at the horribly in the process. from a West Bank mosque and throws him in the back heart of the world that the series evokes. of a delivery van. Back on the other side of the Green In a number of key respects, Fauda gets the real- here is a lot of touching in this series, even Line, Gabi Ayub, an Israeli counterterrorism officer, ity of life inside counterterrorism agencies, probably Tallowing for the physicality of Israelis and makes the man an offer he can’t refuse: The prisoner helped by the fact that its creators, Avi Issacharoff, a Arabs. The team members caress each other like gives up information on an imminent terrorist nerve prominent journalist on the Arab-Israeli beat, and lovers; Doron embarks on a tortured sexual re- gas attack in exchange for the promise of life-saving Lior Raz (who also plays Doron), both served in the lationship with a Palestinian target. Most of the surgery for his daughter at Hadassah Hospital. IDF Duvdevan special operations unit. For if the se- intimacies we see are illicit, reflecting the attrac- There’s only one problem: Everybody thought ries has a prevailing theme, it is disguise, deception, tion to the adversary that permeates the storyline. that the infamous Hamas operative behind the planned attack—Abu Ahmad, aka the Panther—was dead. Meanwhile, the man who supposedly killed him—team member Doron Kavillio—is retired and quietly rusticating in his vineyard with his wife and two kids. But now that the Panther has returned— alive, well, and apparently planning a massive attack—the team needs Doron. So, his old boss, a smooth, slightly diabolical operator named Mickey Moreno, materializes in the midst of Doron’s arca- dia and persuades him to come back for one last hurrah. Doron’s wife, Gali, is furious, and deeply hurt. She wants Doron out of the game and, prefer- ably, out of Israel entirely. “Let’s go somewhere,” she says in a later episode, “for good . . . love . . . dance.” Through Moreno’s network of informants, he learns that Abu Ahmad will be attending his broth- er’s wedding near Ramallah. Doron and two of the others infiltrate the wedding celebration masquer- ading as caterers and guests. Just when it looks as if Abu Ahmad might be in reach, things go hideously wrong and the team has to shoot its way out. Abu Ahmad is wounded, but escapes. The only casualty, bleeding out on the floor, is the groom, Bashir, a A scene from Fauda. (Courtesy of Yes network, via Netflix.) goofy kid whose delight in the day and in his beau- tiful bride has been absolutely infectious, for us as and the manner in which operators like Doron and Real couples—such as Doron and Gali—confront much as for the guests. the others lose themselves within their own dissim- each other across an emotional abyss. When Do- So far, so riveting, with lots of gunplay, yelling ulations. Daily proximity to the adversary brings an ron demands to know why Gali is having an affair in Hebrew and Arabic, explosions, and interper- unparalleled level of intimacy, and often, the two sides with Naor, Gali replies, “ . . . because he loves me; sonal turmoil mirroring the much larger conflict come to identify with each other in unexpected ways. because you didn’t fight for me.” Doron, it seems, against which the series is set. But early on in the first Members of Doron’s team slip in and out of their fought for everything but what he was supposed to episode, something happens, something that seems identities as Palestinian Arabs, quite literally as easily be fighting for. In fact, the only character who truly to be saying that what we are watching has the poten- as they change clothes. When Naor arrives at the wed- seems to understand what is worth preserving is tial to transcend the usual action show tropes. After ding in the first episode to provide cover for Doron Nasrin, who, despite her devotion to her husband Moreno leaves, and the house is asleep, Doron goes and Eli, he transforms himself into an Arab before and his cause, ultimately cuts a deal with Gabi into the kitchen and pulls the tools of his old trade— our eyes. His look, his movements, the genuine joy he Ayub and takes her children to safety in Germany. a pistol and a black and white checked keffiyeh—out seems to be feeling at being part of the celebration— Despite the frenetic opening sequence and the of their hiding place. Watching himself warily in a he seems to have become what he is pretending to be. ticking bomb storyline, Fauda defies convention by

38 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 being surprisingly quiet, even meandering. As the narrative unfolds, there is an appropriately Middle Eastern quality to the passage of time, a willing- ness to explore curious byways suggested by plot Commentary and psychology. An extended sequence in which ebooks Abu Ahmad and his lieutenant quietly interview a prospective suicide bomber is a revealing study in terrorist motivations. It is also in these moments that we see how dependent the technologized world of intelligence and covert operations is on basic human relationships. While Moreno calculates de- cisions based on a constant stream of data from the drones circling Ramallah, old-school Gabi Ayub prefers to drink coffee with Abu Maher, his coun- terpart in Palestinian Preventive Security. They trade reflections on the nightmare in which they both find themselves entangled. Both are palpably exhausted, played out, but there’s no escape. “I sat in your prisons for 17 years,” says Abu Maher. “I am not afraid of you.” Fauda isn’t perfect, of course. It’s a TV series, and, whatever its intentions, it has to seduce the audience and keep it hooked. There’s plenty of action, but most of it is telegraphed—you usually know when there is going to be a gunfight or a “jump scare.” Some of the characters—Doron, Abu Ahmad, Nasrin—are carefully drawn, but many of the others are almost cartoonishly one-dimensional. Nurit, the sole female member of the team, seems to serve primarily as eye candy and, predictably, is sleeping with Moreno. And however gritty and realistic it may seem, Fauda takes liberties with the reality of enforcement and intelligence operations. A major plot point turns on a member of the team who is sent back across the Green Line days after his girlfriend is killed in a Tel Aviv nightclub bombing. This would never happen, even in the high-stakes world of Israeli counter- terrorism—not only would he be far too traumatized to function effectively, he would be an active liability, putting the rest of the team at risk. But these are relatively minor complaints. Fauda and its creators do an excellent job of defining con- flict in terms of what happens to and between people who have been thrust into impossible situations. It also captures, often quite subtly, the deep ambiva- lence felt by those who are caught up in that con- flict when they realize the human toll. In a moment recalling Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, a suicide bomber looks at the people she is about to murder and her eyes fill with . . . something: pity, fear, per- haps a fundamental recognition of shared humanity. Moreno’s team looks on as a Palestinian hostage is tortured, their faces a study in horror and sorrow. In the world of Fauda, counterterrorism is not glamorous, or romantic, or even particularly excit- ing. It is more like a form of psychosis (or at least counter-psychosis), ultimately destructive for all From rabbis to relationships, who are touched by it. Two thousand years ago, Tac- itus warned us about making a wilderness and call- latkes to lawyers, and marriages to miracles, ing it peace. It seems that this applies just as much to the mental and emotional toll of conflict as it does to COMMENTARY brings you the physical. Having binged on the first 12 episodes, I look forward to seeing how much further into the its collection of over sixty Jewish jokes. wilderness Fauda will take us in its next season.

A. E. Smith is a writer and a career intelligence official AVAILABLE AT in Ottawa, Canada. He writes about Jewish and Russian DOWNLOAD IT TODAY! culture, music, counterterrorism, crime, and national security.

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 39 Crazy-Beautiful Startup

BY SARAH RINDNER

days away. Burshtein’s film chronicles her gruel- challenged throughout the film. Nevertheless, per- The Wedding Plan ing, funny, and bittersweet attempt to find and vet haps unsurprisingly, Michal’s optimism is ultimately directed by Rama Burshtein, produced by Assaf Amir a potential groom. One seemingly eligible bach- rewarded and she receives her “Hanukkah miracle.” Roadside Attractions, 110 minutes elor proposes to her on the first date, only to admit Burshtein herself is a ba’alat teshuvah who stud- that he proposes to every woman on the first date, ied filmmaking before joining the ultra-Orthodox Burshtein’s story is closer to a quest narrative, in which the bout halfway through The Wedding heroine must keep her faith despite all obstacles and trials Plan, the main character Michal (Noa Koler) finds herself on a date with yet in order to reach her objective. another bachelor—this one is an engi- neer named Assaf—in her frantic last-ditch effort to regardless of her character traits, because he is confi- Breslov community in Israel. Breslov Hasidim ori- A th find a husband. She explains her thinking about life dent that God will ensure a happy marriage with the ented around the teachings of the late-18 -century and marriage in a rambling nautical metaphor: first woman who says yes. Despite her own desert- Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, and the members of its island philosophy of courtship and marriage, this is ba’al teshuvah community in particular, tend to be a My ship sank, and . . . I’m all alone now. Out at too fatalistic even for Michal. Another candidate is little funkier and more au courant than their more sea. I’m out of breath, I’m tired, I’m exhausted. deaf and shows up to their date with a sign language button-downed haredi contemporaries. One of . . . There’s no time . . . but then I look to the right Michal’s friends styles and see Assaf, you’re here too. Just like me, adrift her hair in elaborate at sea. . . . We swim and swim and we reach a braids and wears long beautiful island. . . . You and I on a desert island tribal caftans, and a forever. Do we get along? . . . I think if we were scene in a mikvah turns on a desert island together we’d become the best into a techno-infused of friends. That’s what I call true love and you’d dance sequence. An- become the most important thing in my life. other haredi character says to Michal that “this Alas, Assaf does not give Michal the chance to test wedding plan of yours this hypothesis. He is turned off by her intensity, is like a crazy beauti- but moved by it on some level as well. Yet as with ful startup-venture.” various other setbacks in the film, this is not nearly Yet the eclectic, mod- enough to make Michal give up, though she never ern sensibility of Bur- sees Assaf again. shtein’s film and its This is familiar territory for haredi Israeli film- characters shouldn’t maker Rama Burshtein, who in 2012 released the distract us from the film Fill the Void, in which a young haredi wom- A scene from The Wedding Plan with, from left, Ronny Merhavi, Noa Koler, and question of faith she an chooses to marry the widowed husband of her Dafi Alferon. (Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions.) places at its center. The deceased older sister. Fill the Void moved inter- techno song blasting in national audiences with its delicate depiction of a the mikvah as Michal community prioritizing religious and familial du- translator. Despite this awkward setup, he is charm- immerses herself for her wedding to a groom who ties above individualistic impulses regarding court- ing and intelligent, but when he asks Michal why has yet to appear is a remake of a contemporary ship and marriage. Burshtein cut a striking figure she consented to meet him after an initial delay she Breslov-inspired song called “Ve-afilu be-hastara” in promoting the film, walking the red carpet at the answers him with chilling honesty: “despair.” He is (Even in Concealment): Venice film festival in an elegant turban and long- not interested in proceeding. sleeved, high-necked gown, accompanied by her Although The Wedding Plan will inevitably be Our Father in Heaven says to us, Hasidic husband with a long beard and curly side- marketed and discussed as a wacky romantic come- “Children, I will conceal Myself on that day,” locks. Along with the earlier Ushpizin (2004) it was dy, there is no male lead who engages Michal through But Rabbi Nachman, Rabbi Nachman says, one of the first seriously acclaimed films to depict the length of the movie. Burshtein’s story is, in fact, “Even in a concealment within a concealment, the haredi community from within. closer to a quest narrative, in which the heroine must The Lord, may He be blessed, is certainly there The Wedding Plan is both looser and more keep her faith despite all obstacles and trials in order And even behind all the difficult things that sprawling than Fill the Void and is decidedly quirki- to reach her objective. If there is one steady partner stand before you, er. Michal is a 30-something Israeli ba’alat teshuvah, with whom Michal engages, it is God. During a brid- I stand, I stand, I stand.” a formerly secular Israeli who became religious and al gown fitting with a skeptical dressmaker, in order joined the Breslov Hasidic community. She also to explain her confidence that a groom will some- Burshtein has said that the music for a film comes owns and operates a travelling petting zoo. After a how materialize Michal cites the talmudic aphorism to her before the script, and one certainly sees how disappointing broken engagement with a man who that “the world was created for me.” She neglects, that would be the case here. decides he is just not “in love” with her, Michal is however, to mention a second quotation that often more determined to find a husband than ever. accompanies the first: “I am but dust and ashes.” Al- orn in New York and raised in Israel, Bursh- Although she lacks a groom, Michal reserves a though—or because—Burshtein is a deeply religious Btein currently lives with her family among a venue and sends out invitations for a wedding that filmmaker, Michal’s certainty that God will satisfy small cluster of Hasidic families in the predomi- will take place on the last night of Hanukkah, 22 her highly specific demand is questioned and even nantly secular Tel Aviv. Early in her career, she

40 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 worked in the ultra-Orthodox cottage industry confesses her desire for a husband to sing “Eshet intriguing and attractive suitors in an impossibly of films made by and for women, but when Fill Chayil” to her, and the film closes with a rendition brief amount of time. Her challenge ends up be- the Void came out she crossed over to the inter- of the song. While the traditional performance of ing one of keeping hope alive, rather than dealing national film festival and art house cinema scene, the song presupposes a husband to sing it, the wom- with what would likely be a much shallower pool without losing touch with her initial audience. It an of valor’s husband is not really described in the of suitors. Perhaps this abundance is simply part was possible to enjoy Fill the Void as the tale of an hymn. It is she who takes care of all of her family’s of the enchanting conceit of the movie, its sense of unexpected love story amid tragic circumstances needs, engages in complex business ventures, cares providential serendipity. However, given the com- in an exotic setting, but it also spoke to her origi- for the poor, elevates her husband’s standing, and is, monness of Michal’s predicament, it might not have nal audience. That film’s soundtrack was punctu- consequently, cloaked in strength and majesty, as hurt to depict it with greater accuracy. ated by a modern Israeli rendition of the song “Im well as wisdom and kindness. In incorporating this For Rama Burshtein, a life of faith means, at least Eshkacheikh” (If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem), which song, Burshtein places her idiosyncratic heroine in in part, recasting many of the challenges we face as is often sung under the wedding canopy. For those the tradition of great Jewish women, but not with- internal ones, as a matter of belief and perspective. conversant with Jewish tradition, the song power- out some gentle irony. How far, after all, is Michal Yet one wonders what the film, and Michal’s con- fully expressed the connection between the film’s from that desperate bachelor who proposed to her, victions, would have amounted to absent the happy plot and the tension between joy and tragedy al- and every other woman, on the first date? ending. Or perhaps we just need to have more faith. ready evoked in the Jewish wedding ceremony itself. The Wedding Plan is not a perfect film. Burshtein A similarly poignant countertext in The Wedding (or her editor) ought to have cut some of Michal’s Plan is the hymn “Eshet Chayil” (Proverbs 31), which dates short—one never loses interest, but at close Sarah Rindner teaches English literature at is traditionally sung each Friday night before Shab- to two hours the film feels a bit long. Furthermore, Lander College for Women in New York City. Her bat dinner. Like the film itself, it sings the praises of Michal is an older single woman, at least by haredi writing on Judaism and literature can be found a faithful “woman of valor.” Early in the film, Michal standards. Yet she manages to meet a wide range of in Mosaic magazine and on the Book of Books blog.

LETTERS (continued from page 4) murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian ter- to vote in Israel and have been running their own Jacob J. Gross (“The Menorah and Its Flame,” in rorist attack in 1995, I read Dennis Ross (“A Life with affairs since the Palestinian Authority was created. Letters, Spring 2017). With regard to Gross’s strong Consequences,” Spring 2017) with more than a pass- He is surely correct that Rabin made concessions in claim that “it is clear for the Jewish icon, it is not ing interest. Ross asserts that Yitzhak Rabin “would the hopes of making peace. But he is not correct to the vessel itself that is of sacred value (as would be not have let Israel become a binational state,” and say that the Palestinians run their own lives. Israel the case, for example, regarding a Jesus-less cross adds, “Whether Israel will have the political leader- retains control over movement, over all import and in medieval Christian art) but rather the flames,” ship to prevent that outcome is something that only export, over the ability to conduct business, and and that the flames on left and right of the menorah time will tell.” The implication is that the creation over many aspects of day-to-day life. When Israel were almost always pointed toward the central one. of a Palestinian state (which Ross has long advo- approves—as it just did—the Palestinians develop- cated) is the way to prevent Israel from becoming “a ing industrial zones in two Palestinian cities, Tak- binational state,” and Israel’s current leaders, unlike kumiya and Jalame, easing traffic restrictions at the Rabin, may not have the wisdom to realize that. Allenby Bridge, and construction in Area C, these But, in fact, Rabin found a different way to pre- are all welcome moves, but they also remind us that vent Israel from becoming a binational state, and Israel controls much of what Palestinians can do. It he implemented that policy during his lifetime: is why Ariel Sharon spoke of ending “occupation” In 1995, he withdrew Israel’s forces from the areas when he was prime minister long after the Palestin- where 98 percent of the Palestinian Arabs reside. ian Authority was created. It was why he also said, With that move, the Israeli occupation of the Pal- “We want for the Palestinians to run their own lives estinians came to an end. There is no danger of a in their own country, a democratic state in Judea binational state, because the Palestinian Arabs will and Samaria.” never be citizens of Israel and never vote in Israeli One can argue that a Palestinian state would be elections. They are residents of the Palestinian Au- a threat to Israel. One can argue that it is too big of thority; they vote in Palestinian elections (when the a risk to run. This is an honest argument, and it is The seven-branched menorah mosaic discovered PA lets them!). For the past 22 years, the PA has run understandable. But it comes with a price: If noth- in the Horvat Kur synagogue. (Courtesy of Jaakko its own schools, hospitals, courts, police and secu- ing is done to change the path that Israel is on, it Haapanen, www.haapanenphotography.com/ rity forces, and pretty much everything else that a will become a binational state. Younger Palestin- © Kinneret Regional Project.) state does—the only real exception being the right ians are already saying, “Let the Israelis stay where to import planes, tanks, and Iranian “volunteers.” they are and let’s just have one person, one vote.” Readers may be interested to learn of a recently dis- Remarkably, Mr. Ross makes no reference what- Many internationally will resonate to such an argu- covered mosaic on a synagogue floor at Horvat Kur soever to these far-reaching concessions that Rabin ment with little or no concern for Israel’s needs. I in the Galilee, which depicts a menorah composed made, concessions which completely changed the don’t want Israel to become a binational state, even of seven oil lamps. What’s interesting is that the political and demographic map of the region: The though I understand that a two-state outcome any lamps themselves are oriented toward the middle “demographic threat” is no more, the “occupation” time soon is not in the cards, especially given the lamp (three from each side) while the flames them- of the Palestinians ended long ago, and the Palestin- wide gaps between the parties and the absence of selves point up. The middle lamp has its flame in ians have a state in everything but name. an answer for ending Hamas’s control in Gaza. That its middle, which is highly unusual, being oriented Stephen M. Flatow is why I favor Israel building only in the settlement neither to the left or right. Thus, here it is the lamps Long Branch, NJ blocs and not outside them in the midst of what at themselves and not their flames which are facing some point could be a Palestinian state. Israel’s se- the middle. This, it seems to me, strengthens Al- Dennis Ross Responds: curity will not be compromised by such a step even exander’s response that “the menorah compelled Stephen Flatow responded to my review of the Itamar as its Jewish democratic character is preserved. interest initially as an object among other Temple Rabinovich biography of Yitzhak Rabin by taking is- objects and then later as a vehicle for its redemptive sue with my conclusion that Rabin would have acted The Lamp and the Flame flames.” to ensure that Israel would not become a binational I enjoyed Elizabeth Shanks Alexander’s review of Steven Fraade state. He argued that Israel won’t become a bination- Steven Fine’s new history of the menorah (“The Yale University al state because Palestinians will never be allowed Lamp of Zion,” Winter 2017) and her exchange with via email

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 41 LOST & FOUND "I Am Impossible”: An Exchange Between Jacob Taubes and Arthur A. Cohen

EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JERRY Z. MULLER

n the summer of 1977, Jacob Taubes ran into presses, he had published some of the most influential Finally, Taubes questions whether “study,” in Arthur A. Cohen on the Boulevard Saint- books of the postwar period. He was also an impor- either the sense of traditional erudition or of mod- Germain, outside of the famous Paris book- tant liberal Jewish theologian, an accomplished liter- ern academic scholarship, is truly capable of an- store La Hune, and they found themselves ary critic, and a novelist of ideas, whose own books swering fundamental contemporary questions arguingI about Simone Weil’s critique of Judaism. Although they had been in touch only episodically, Erudition, Taubes suggests, may be a way of fending the two men had known each other since 1948, when Taubes was a brilliant, flamboyant, indeed off confrontation with ultimate questions. scandalous, young post-doctoral instructor at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and Cohen was included The Natural and the Supernatural Jew: An about the plausibility of Judaism. Erudition, he his Talmud student. Historical and Theological Introduction; The Myth suggests, may be a way of fending off confrontation In the intervening three decades, Taubes had not of the Judeo-Christian Tradition, and Other Dis- with ultimate questions. Taubes concludes by sug- gone on to become the great scholar-philosopher that senting Essays; and In the Days of Simon Stern. gesting that Judaic scholarship, as it has developed Louis Finkelstein, the chancellor of JTS, and others, in the United States, is vitiated by apologet- including Leo Strauss and Gershom Scholem, had ics for a boring bourgeois form of Jewish life hoped he would. Indeed, after his doctoral disserta- typified by his erstwhile academic patron tion, Abendländische Eschatologie (Occidental Louis Finkelstein and the institution he led. Eschatology), which discussed messianic and anti- There is much naming of names, but there nomian movements from the Hebrew Bible through is also a subtle hermeneutic intelligence at 19th-century Marxism in terms that were deeply sug- work. gestive but also often vague or vatic, Taubes never There is a more personal dimension to completed another book in his lifetime. Nonetheless, Taubes’s argument with Cohen. As a student at Harvard, Columbia, and especially at the Free at the University of Chicago, Cohen had un- University of Berlin, where Taubes taught from 1961 dergone a crisis of faith in which he had been until his death in 1987, students flooded his courses tempted to convert to Catholicism; this led on the grand themes and broad patterns in the his- him to study Judaism with Milton Steinberg, tory of Western thought. It was in such lectures, which the well-known rabbi of Manhattan’s Park he delivered without notes, as well as in late-night Avenue Synagogue, and eventually to JTS, conversations and long, often autobiographical let- where he met Taubes. And yet, part of what ters such as the one to Cohen reproduced here, that made Taubes exciting to worldly, philosophi- he conveyed most of his insights, some real and some cally sophisticated students like Cohen and spurious, some original and some borrowed. Richard Rubenstein (whom he mentions in Impressionable students were not the only ones passing) was his fascination with Paul’s cri- fascinated by Taubes. A partial list of distinguished tique of Judaism as law. intellectuals who relished his conversation stretch- A few years later, Susan wrote her doc- es from the great talmudist Saul Lieberman to toral dissertation on Weil and published two Susan Sontag; from the German radical conservative essays about her, including “The Riddle of thinker Carl Schmitt to Rudi Dutschke, the leader of Simone Weil,” to which Taubes and Cohen the German New Left; from Irving Kristol, who once refer. In that essay, written for a short-lived described Taubes as the only truly charismatic intel- Jacob Taubes and his first wife, Susan, ca. 1949. (Courtesy of Greenwich Village literary magazine, Susan lectual he had ever met, to Jacques Derrida. Ethan Taubes and Dr. Tanaquil Taubes.) Taubes came close to endorsing Weil’s ex- A tormented—and sometimes tormenting— treme rejection of the Hebrew Bible and of figure, Taubes’s life was, by 1977, a mess, the subject aubes’s letter to Cohen begins “I am impos- Judaism as a worldly, particularistic, tribalistic faith, of academic gossip, if not legend. His first wife, Susan, Tsible,” although ostensibly this is only a re- writing that “greater familiarity with Jewish practices committed suicide shortly after publishing a coruscat- mark about his peripatetic life. In response to could only have proven to her the thoroughly histori- ing novel depicting their lives together; his second mar- Cohen’s dismissal of Simone Weil’s critique of cal and national character of Jewish cult”; and adding riage had fallen apart; during the previous two years Judaism as one made in ignorance, Taubes, the that “since the rise of Christianity, Judaism has tend- he had been committed to sanitariums in Berlin and scion of many generations of rabbis and Cohen’s ed to suppress precisely those elements in its spiritual- New York; and when he crossed paths with Cohen he first instructor in Talmud, mounts an incisive, ity which Christianity had seized upon and to stress was living in a monastery outside of Paris. wide-ranging critique of the rabbinic monopoly its particularism by making the legal and ritual code Although the letter Taubes sent to Cohen follow- on what counted as Jewish knowledge. He attacks the center of its religious life.” ing their conversation clearly, if implicitly, asserted the rabbinic valorization of learning and con- Of course, by the time Jacob Taubes and Ar- his scholarly and intellectual superiority—something comitant denigration of the “am ha-aretz,” or ig- thur Cohen met in front of that bookstore in Paris, Arthur A. Cohen never contested—Cohen was, by noramus, while making sure to remind Cohen that Susan Taubes was dead, Cohen was a leading post- that point, the more prominent figure. As a founder of he himself is at home in rabbinic literature while Holocaust theologian, and Jacob was living in a Noonday Press and an editor at several other leading Cohen is, by rabbinic standards, an am ha-aretz. monastery, a shattered man. So their jousting over

42 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 Weil, the great Catholic philosopher-mystic who was am ha-aretz ve-dalat ha’am [the rural and urban antinomian like Jesus and the early messianic Gali- famously a convert from Judaism, the value of Jew- poor] in late Scripture and surely in the time of the lean community. But with a sense of genius (of hate? ish scholarship and the limits of internal Jewish formation of . This process [was] not only like Nietzsche suggests!) he captures the “latent” critique had a deeply personal dimension, of which an “intellectual” development but deeply socially antinomian quality of Jesus’ life—and turns his both men were keenly aware. “I love your letters,” Co- tinged. Almost a difference in class or caste between death = crucifixion into a “manifest” antinomian hen replied, “They move me with their tenderness and the learned talmid chacham and the am ha-aretz. symbolon [symbol]. A highly complex affair for ferocity,” but he also hit back. 3. The Pharisees, a group of scribes, contesting which Freudian psychoanalysis isn’t sufficient a tool Beginning in the following year Taubes spent a on the one hand the prerogatives of the priestly to grasp the dialectics (not to speak of [Richard] portion of each year in Jerusalem, where he lived at clans, kohanim (who in the “Written Law” are quite Rubenstein’s “My Brother Paul”!). Nevertheless, the Lutheran Bible College, lectured on Paul to the central) arrogate for themselves, as prushim [those Freud in his Moses (in the appendix) has a few sen- monks at Dominican-run École Biblique, spent time set apart] in the chavurot [communities of scholars], tences on Paul that are worth a “theological” library! with the ultra-Orthodox Jews of Neturei Karta in the priestly qualities a) of study of Torah and b) of I have mapped the landscape of the problem nearby Meah Shearim, and shared insights and an- tahara [ritual purity] (in this “limited” sense a “de- of “study” in the time of the formation of Rabbinic ecdotes (many of them improbable, most, but not all mocratising” quality which Louis Finkelstein makes Judaism so concretely, because later, after the al- of them, true) with younger Israeli scholars and intel- a lot [of] ado about) but are concretely even more most total victory of Rabbinic Judaism (going hand lectuals. He died in 1987 at the age of 64; Cohen had “separatist” than the old priestly clans (prushim: in hand with the total defeat of the Jewish people = passed away six months earlier, at the age of 58, from “kedoshim” tehiyu = “prushim” tehiyu [that is, “be am, especially of the am ha-aretz, the people of the leukemia. thou holy,” is equated with “set yourself off,” in land of Palestine), one hardly gets an inkling into Taubes’s letter, handwritten on 13 pages, is in the Rashi’s commentary on Lev. 19:2]), whose preroga- vectors and motifs that constitute the act of “study.” Cohen papers at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book tives were “natural” ones = by birth, and turn ut- Studying becomes a pneumatic or liturgical ac- and Manuscript Library, as is Cohen’s two-page typed terly hostile toward the am ha-aretz who is not only tivity, a kind of Ersatz of living. Our martyrs are response. Taubes’s letter is transcribed here in its en- “unlearned” but also “unclean,” i.e., isn’t human at Torah scribes and die for Torah or the study of tirety. The main part of Cohen’s somewhat more scat- all. You must face up to the (usually suppressed) say- Torah. Read the medieval Eleh Ezkerah [a martyro- tershot and elliptical response is also reproduced. The ings on the am ha-aretz: whoever gives his daughter logical poem recited during the liturgy of Yom Kip- text has been lightly edited to correct minor mistakes, to an am ha-aretz etc. etc. [Taubes refers primarily pur], read the introductions to the Chatan Torah though preserving Taubes’s sometimes idiosyncratic to Pesachim 49a-b, in which the female am ha-aretz and Chatan Bereshit on Simchat Torah and you get use of quotation marks. Hebrew terms have been is likened to a beast and to vermin and the male to a an idea of the central social and “emotional” value transliterated. My additions are in square brackets. ravaging lion.] You have some source books around of study of Torah in the caste of Rabbinic Judaism, to check concretely the sayings. at least in the Middle Ages. Striking for me [is] the “confession” of Rab- In younger years I was “angered” by Max bi Akiba who admits that while being an am Weber’s use of the term “caste” for Rabbinic Juda- ha-aretz he hated the talmid chacham [schol- ism. I have come around to see that he was more ar] and wanted to tear him to pieces. Akiba justified using this term than he could know. You left his “class” or group of am ha-aretz and once read, study the seif or a paragraph of the Yoreh joined the rabbinic group or caste (= a group Deah with all its commentaries, including the Pri who transfigured Jewishness into a ritually Megadim [an 18th-century rabbinic commentary relevant caste system). by Joseph ben Meir Teomim] (of whom you never Elisha ben Abuyah, on the other hand, left heard, but whose work is infinitely more “impor- the Pharisee-caste and joined the am ha-aretz. There tant” to discern not only about kosher and not ko- are traditions about him that stress his antagonism sher but of the “sensibility” of Rabbinic Judaism ear Arthur, to the rabbinic “way of study,” there are traditions than all the contemporary shmalz-theology of the DI am impossible. I left my address book in about him that point to his “Gnostic” revolt. No- 19th and 20th centuries), then you become aware that Berlin, thus I only know Ethan’s and Tania’s ad- body understood that these two “antagonisms” are even the Indian caste system is overshadowed by dresses as well as [the publisher] Suhrkamp’s and, of sides of the same coin: Gnostics in the Middle Ages ours! What Weber did not see, is the internal strug- course, tout Berlin. Therefore this note reaches you often “express” revolt against upper city classes, cf. gle that went on during and after the formation via Ethan. the Bogomils in Bulgaria. Steven Runciman’s curso- of Rabbinic caste Judaism and the Jewish people- One remark of yours “follows” me. You think ry The Medieval Manichee is sufficient for this point. hood. The Rabbinic victory was never total. Some that in the history of Jewish self criticism there is Louis Finkelstein even in his first (best) edition loopholes remained. We get an inkling of it in some [a] principal difference between Spinoza who “stud- of The Pharisees didn’t understand the dialectics of apocalyptic midrashim, in some messianic constel- ied” and Simone Weil who was “ignorant.” I doubt Pharisaic Judaism, which is waging a war on two lations: Hivi ha-balki [a Jewish rationalist and her- whether this difference is as crucial as you think, for fronts: a) against priesthood trying to unsettle the etic of the 9th century] (do you know about him?), we have to consider what “study” means and entails Priestly Elite and b) against the am ha-aretz. There Karaitic heresy, some parts of Kabbalah (not all of in the context we are envisaging. is very little “democratic” (a word Louis Finkelstein it: error of those who hope from there a “renewal” 1. That Jewish religion is a religion of study: ve- “loves”) sense in the Pharisees and their successors: of Judaism!), then at the dissolution of Rabbinic shinantem levanecha [“you shall teach them to your the tannaitic Rabbis [roughly 70–220 C.E.]. I do not caste-Judaism which became socially and econom- children,” Deut. 6:7] . . . ve-limadetem otam [“teach know [Milton] Steinberg’s novel [As a Driven Leaf] ically dysfunctional in the 17th century: the revolt them,” Deut. 11:19] is not a “natural” quality of our to say whether he grasped the double edge point of Sabbatean and of (not the same) Frankian her- experience, but deeply connected with [the] expe- of Elisha ben Abuyah, but the so called “scientific” esy. Frank extols the prostak, the simple, unlearned rience of Torah as Divine Word. Compare Psalm literature is mute or idiotic on this issue. man and some [of] this antinomian cast still flavors 1 uve-torato yehege yomam va-laila [“he shall take 4. When the gospel-traditions put together early Hassidism. Then the Rabbinic caste Judaism pleasure in the Torah day and night”] or similar, “scribes and Pharisees” they see it from the point of swallows the Hassidic movement. On Haskala and compare Psalm 19 where a praise of nature is sud- [view of] the am ha-aretz. There is a naturally “anti- Zionism I pass over quickly because already in a denly interrupted (or cut?) and a hymnology on nomian” quality in the acts and sayings of Jesus (this complex way interacting with [the] modern world. Torah is inserted as follows: torat Adonai temima, Morton Smith rightly stresses in his essay on Jesus). But let me at the end of this excursion (before I meshivat nefesh etc. [“The teaching of the Lord is 5. When Paul joins the Christian messianic come back to Spinoza and Simone Weil! I have not perfect, renewing the soul.”] Compare the great movement, he leaves the Pharisaic-tannaitic caste, forgotten my starting point) point to a fascinating hymn: Psalm 119, a eulogy on Torah and the stu- becomes, as Brecht says, “a traitor to his class.” What- development in present day Judaism. [That is the] dent of Torah. ever seemed before of highest value to him, he, Paul, Revival of orthodoxy and orthopraxy not just “in 2. The other side of the coin: the am ha-aretz [the considers now—after joining “the movement”— general terms,” but [a] revival of almost medieval rural, unlearned person] is religiously devaluated: “shit” (his expression!). Paul is not “naturally” forms of social life in an industrial society or even

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 43 postindustrial society of abundance and waste ritual [of breaking the glass], who was at [a characterization of contemporary capitalism seders at Lieberman, who experienced Scho- borrowed from Taubes’s friend Herbert Marcuse]. lem rather closely; do you think it changed The old forms [of] marriage; son-in-law is on Kest her sentiments on key issues? Remember as the Yiddish expression goes, on cost of his (rich) her essay in Exodus? I am not defending the father in law for years goes on “studying” in a kolel essay per se, but I am arguing that by know- like Lakewood (USA) or x variants of it in Jerusa- ing—to speak of contemporaries—Ruth lem or Bnei Brak. 17th century pilpul methods are Hyman-Salinger or the Commentary group she ear Jacob returning and Jewish boys “excel” in “learning” had no reason to get away from the Simone Weil D . . . I love your letters. They move me with thereby earning according to “degrees” (decision in perspective. Forgive me to speak so drastically their tenderness and ferocity. Beginning with the the hand of the Rosh who basically “sells” first about life with the Jesuits, obviously preferable the young man to the rich father in law who is seek- Simone Weil cannot be rejected to life with the sociologists, but then there must be ing a talmid chacham). You are too much on the a vade mecum [a guidebook]. Rumor circulates that East side of Manhattan midtown to know what’s go- on grounds of her “ignorance.” you converted in Jerusalem to which my reply is ing on in Borough Park–Brooklyn, the “Jerusalem” that no city other for a conversion, but then I could of New York. It all started in Israel, I think, where There must be different and care less. That is to say, I could not care if you con- yeshiva boys of [this] kind are free from military verted, since I regard such as a statement about one’s service, i.e., the others, the amei ha-aretz or the more profound reasons to say relations to God. I would only be obliged to trounce pure North Africans can go to defend the country, converts if they proceed to reconstruct my relations our new jeunesse dorée sits and “learns.” There is no why she went wrong. with God according to their own. Which is only to study of this new phenomenon, almost 15 years old, say, theologically, I become animated; gossip inter- neither from a sociological nor from an ideological and ad hominem, but I want to prevent you to fall ests me not in the least. As I have told you several angle. But the reality of this phenomenon is uncon- into the pit [into which] they threw you (and me) times, if it relieves the burdens of your life, gives you testable, the kind of marriage fixing that goes on [namely to] to go on “studying” since they did not sanguinity and focus . . . in “Jewish” circles with fixed prices [of] one, two, [know] what you or I (and it surely was different Stay outside the church and ring the bells if you three years of Kest etc. is unbelievable but possible stuff) were talking about. I am just touching the wish like that other splendid lady [Simone Weil]. as an empty air pocket in the society of abundance surface of the question, but see that my letter is I think your comments about her are to the point. and waste. And all the “values” of Rabbinic caste I have such observations to make, but the differ- Judaism and its evaluations going strong. ence I suspect is that I could never—not now, not What I am trying to say (beyond what speaks after the inundation of Jewry—belabor the petit- for itself) is that I take a dim view of the so called bourgeois Jewish sensibility as she did, however knowledge or “go-on-study” binge “we” are send- its truth, however its wisdom in germ. The point ing those who ask questions. Remember yourself for me is forbearance. It is too easy, by far, being how Louis the Great [Finkelstein] was treating you. a wise and learned Jew to spill one’s rage before Since you came with questions he could neither un- Israel and before the nations. I dislike liberals as derstand nor answer his routine was: “go-on-study,” much as you and she, but I cannot conduct the you with Taubes, Taubes with Saul Lieberman and enterprise as though there has not been a caesura, so on. But what if you reach the “highest” point: a rupture of trust which demands vastly greater Saul Lieberman (whom Louis Finkelstein adores reparation (not on God’s part whom I hold in no in a way like a goy adores an avoda zara [i.e., an way accountable for the black holes of the uni- idol]) and you find out that he introduces his great verse) than it can bear greater assault. I understand lecture at Brandeis with the words: Non-sense is you too well, but I cannot go that route. Recently non-sense, the history of nonsense is science. This I thought—really as an extension of The Myth of as a prologue to some clever remarks on Gnosti- the J-C Tradition, to write a little book called On cism. Is this all the “hermeneutics” available on the the Further Justification of Anti-Judaism, but I top level? The lowest denominator a kind of defense realized that even though it would work out an as- of common sense. This as an answer or guide to the pect of my own messianic dialectics, it is a work to perplexities of an age of the Moscow trials, of Hitler, remain unpublished, perhaps even unwritten. You of Auschwitz, of Israel? Arthur A. Cohen in an undated photograph. know Schechter’s lovely remark: You have to love Imagine concretely Simone Weil in New York, (Photo by William B. Ridenhour.) the Jews a great deal in order not to hate them. I going to Hebrew Teachers College [an institution would prefer to work harder on loving them, since of the Jewish Theological Seminary] and because after all, to love them is at the very least to like she is extraordinarily gifted—once invited by extending to an epistle to a Galilean at Mallorca oneself. Louis Finkelstein for [a] lukewarm Shabbes meal— [where Arthur Cohen had a home] or a supernatu- . . . I take the same argument as Scholem took being granted the “grace” to study with—pick ral Jew at the East Side uptown. with Hannah Arendt—a defect of ahavat Yisrael your name: Moshe Davis, Bernie Mandelbaum, I am arguing that the whole enterprise of [love of Israel, i.e., fellow Jews], which I agree with or since she is interested in “theology” with Sey- Jewish scholarship, Wissenschaft des Judentums á la Scholem is a decisive social category of Jewish ex- mour Siegel, or because she reads English well: to 3080 Broadway [that is, JTS] [and] American Acad- istence and one virtually absolute (although not, study Kaplan’s Judaism as a Civilization or [Max] emy of Jewish Research is a fraud keeping a status repeat NOT, without critical valent and not without Kadushin’s foolish books on some “organic” I do quo of the lowest common sense philosophy going the obligation to chastise, but even that is yisorei not remember what, do you seriously think she with some talmudic quotations, not asking even a ahavah [chastisements of love]—both of which would have had reason to change one iota of her historical question in a radical manner. More than Simone Weil lacked and which Susan lacked in her notes? After all, we had, we both knew a experi- anything I detest the Judah Goldin cosmetics for essay . . . mentum crucis [decisive test] on this issue: Susan that kind of Judaism. He knows better than what Love to you. Taubes, who had the “benefits” of a marriage in he beautifies in a kind of intellectual acceptable the chapel of the Seminary officiated by Louis, English. Saul Lieberman and my father who never forgave Thus Simone Weil cannot be rejected on grounds Jerry Z. Muller is professor of history at the Catholic me the asinine English speech of Simon Greenberg of her “ignorance.” There must be different and University of America and the author of Capitalism and [acting chancellor of JTS at the time of Taubes’s more profound reasons to say why she went wrong. the Jews (Princeton University Press). His biography of wedding] which she considered disgracing the old I miss you, really. Jacob Taubes will be published by Princeton in 2018.

44 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 The Rogochover Speaks His Mind

BY MARC B. SHAPIRO

sk a yeshiva student who the greatest distance outside the city, then certainly one should he broke with rabbinic convention by refusing to deal talmudic genius of the 20th-century was recite it while flying hundreds of miles. The Rogo- with post-medieval rabbinic sources, the Rogochover and odds are he will answer “the Rogo- chover approached this question from “left field,” or was certainly different than his contemporaries. While chover.” Ask him who was the most un- usualA talmudic genius of that time, and you will prob- While responsa generally follow a pattern in which a question ably get the same answer. The Rogochover was Rabbi Joseph Rozin (1858–1936), rabbi of the Hasidic com- is posed and a halakhic response is formulated by interpreting munity of Dvinsk. Yet as with many rabbinic greats, his birth name has been supplanted by a resonant key texts, with the Rogochover almost all you get is “see this” phrase—in this case not the name of his famous book, but rather the city of his birth. and a lengthy list of rabbinic citations. The Rogochover’s genius and unconventionality are immediately evident to anyone who peruses his rather from an apparently unrelated talmudic passage other 19th- and 20th-century rabbis regarded the Shul- writings, which are collectively known under the title (Hullin, 139b), which discusses the commandment to chan Arukh as the standard code of Jewish law and Tzofnat Pane’ach (the biblical Joseph’s Egyptian name), send away a mother bird before taking its young (or the first place to look when one had a halakhic ques- but there is hardly anyone who does more than peruse tion, the Rogochover had little use for it. He made them, as they are extraordinarily terse and difficult. legal decisions based on the Babylonian and Jerusalem Take his responsa, for instance. While responsa gener- Talmuds, Maimonides, and other medieval sources ally follow a pattern in which a question is posed and when necessary. a halakhic response is formulated by interpreting key In fact, it is questionable whether the Rogochover’s texts, with the Rogochover almost all you get is “see behavior can always be regarded as halakhic. I refer to this” and a lengthy list of rabbinic citations. He wrote the fact that he famously studied Torah on both Tisha many thousands of such letters to scholars around b’Av and when he was in mourning, behavior that is the world. Such responsa have never been written by against accepted Jewish law. When asked about this, anyone else, indeed one often needs to be a significant the Rogochover is said to have replied that he was talmudic scholar to even begin to understand how all happy to be punished for the study of Torah, because these references relate to the question. It is said that the the Torah was worth it. Adding to the legend of the Rogochover, who found it hard to respect any of his Rogochover is how he treated his rabbinic contempo- lesser contemporaries, once sent such a letter to a less- raries and earlier rabbinic greats. Such outstanding than-stellar contemporary. Curiously, the references figures as Rabbi Moses Sofer and Rabbi Isaac Elchan- did not seem to have anything to do with the points an Spektor could be pushed aside with the wave of a raised by his correspondent—until someone pointed hand. As shown in the document published here, even out that all of the sources referred to an am ha-aretz the Vilna Gaon did not escape his tongue. (an “ignoramus,” in current rabbinic usage). The Rogochover’s special love for Maimonides, The Rogochover’s complete originality and in- who in his eyes stood above all other medieval greats, dependence as a legal thinker are striking. Take the is not only seen in his halakhic writings or in his vol- question of the halakhic standing of civil marriage, umes of commentary on Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah. which is one of the major rabbinic disputes of the Joseph Rozin, known as “the Rogochover,” rabbi of Unusual among his contemporaries, the Rogochover 20th-century (a dispute that was later extended to the Dvinsk’s Hasidic community, ca. early 1900s. also intensively studied Maimonides’ Guide of the Per- status of Reform and Conservative marriage). Does (Widener Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts.) plexed, and a number of his notes on it survive. (In a non-halakhic marriage create a marital bond that these notes he particularly attacked the 13th-century requires a halakhic divorce (a get) to dissolve the eggs). This discussion focuses on the significance of the commentator Moses of Narbonne, whom he regarded union? While halakhic authorities lined up on op- word derekh in the biblical verse recording this obli- as nothing less than a heretic.) A number of the philo- posite sides of the dispute, the Rogochover charted a gation: “If a bird’s nest chance to be before thee in the sophical expressions found in the Guide were applied unique path. In brief, he argued that the proper ques- way (derekh)” (Deut. 22:6). Because the word derekh by him in an original fashion to halakhic texts. tion is not whether or not a get is required, but rather is used elsewhere in the Bible with reference to the sea After the Rogochover died in 1936, his daughter what kind of get is necessary. The Rogochover held (Isaiah 43:16), the Talmud derives the rule that one Rachel Citron returned to Latvia to assist his student that the origin of the non-halakhic marital bond is in who finds a nest at sea must send the mother bird away Yisroel Alter Safern-Fuchs in collecting and saving the pre-Sinai Noahide code that also recognizes mar- before taking the young. However, the Talmud also con- many of the Rogochover’s manuscripts, which they riage. Lacking a halakhic marriage, a couple with a cludes that if you find a bird’s nest in the air (for exam- photographed and sent to New York. Some of this ma- civil marriage is married according to the Noahide ple, being carried by a flying bird), there is no such obli- terial was later published by Rabbi Menachem Kash- code, and for Jews this status can only be ended with gation, as the word derekh is not used with reference to er, but most of it still remains in manuscript. Citron a get, which is written differently than a typical get. the sky. The Rogochover concludes that one traveling in and Safern-Fuchs were murdered in the Holocaust. Another less consequential, but characteristically an airplane does not recite tefilat ha-derekh, as a route On December 11, 1933 the New York Yiddish original, idea of the Rogochover’s is with regard to through the sky is not considered a derekh. paper Der morgen-zhurnal published a rare profile the blessing one recites when embarking on a poten- The Rogochover’s genius was tied to his unconven- and interview with the Rogochover by its Riga cor- tially dangerous journey (tefilat ha-derekh). The ques- tionality. Whether it was his unrabbinically long hair respondent. As far as I know, this interview has never tion was raised if one should recite this for airplane (no one knows for sure why he allowed his hair to grow been discussed in the scholarly literature. I thank Shi- travel. For most rabbis this was not a hard question: so long, and there is no evidence that he was any sort mon Szimonowitz for producing an initial transla- If one recites this blessing while traveling even a short of Nazirite, as is sometimes claimed), or the fact that tion, which I in turn revised.

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 45 A Discussion with the Rogochover Rogochover, one needs to peel away all the talmu- a good situation for us, but when did we have it dic texts and commentaries [he quotes] in order to better? Now the oppressor is Hitler, once it was Gaon about Wordly Matters convey the main point. We will make an attempt at Haman, Pharaoh, Torquemada, Purishkevich— from Our Riga Correspondent M. Gurtz that. Let us hear what he, the greatest Jewish gaon only the names change, but the suffering remains of our times, says about the question that we are all the same. It is possible that the troubles in the past agonizing over so much. were greater. When we compare the entire Jewish he Rogochover Gaon lives in the Latvian “The Jewish situation is not good right now”— situation in the world to certain eras in Jewish his- Tprovincial city of Dvinsk. Occasionally, the says the Gaon—“a new war is unavoidable. I just do tory, it will emerge that Jews are now doing much Rogochover travels to Riga either because of his not see another way . . . When all [nations] are so di- better than in certain difficult eras of the past. There poor health, to preside over an important din vided and against one another. . . On one side there is no reason to despair.” Torah, or for some other reason. This is basically the opinion of the Rogocho- On these occasions, when the Rogochover Two Einsteins can be carved ver if we were to strip his words of all the multiple comes to Riga, he is friendly with the people and it Gemaras and commentaries [he cited]. Maybe he is is actually possible to converse with him. In Dvinsk out of one Rogochover. correct . . . He just freed himself of [the topic of] this is impossible since this gaon, by nature, does politics and he goes back into his domain [comfort not enjoy visiting or exchanging idle talk. Simply is Russia, Italy, and Japan, and on the other side all zone]. put, the Gaon is not a people’s person. He does not the others. Today there are troubles in Austria . . . “There is not even one person”—says the Rogo- have regard for people. He holds of no one. He holds and all because of Germany. This is no small mat- chover—“who can understand how important a only of one thing—learning Torah. The Gaon is so ter!” And the Gaon lectures about Germany, cites piece of Gemara is. Even in Russia where there are preoccupied with Torah study, that he does not even many Gemaras, and reveals that today’s Germans many Jews”—says the Rabbi—“and where so many have time to be frum . . . [The ellipses here and else- are not real Aryans. famous rabbis live, they also do not have the basic where are to be found in the original.] His prayers understanding of a passage in the Gemara.” take only a few minutes. He does not even put back What does that mean, everyone is wondering? his tefillin. It would be a sin to waste so much time— In Russia it is now forbidden to study [Torah]. Who he needs to learn! in Russia is now learning Torah? One must know that the Rogochover is not only The Gaon becomes angry. “In Russia they learn considered a gaon in our ignorant times. He would Torah now just like before. There are those who have been considered the same gaon in previous learn and those who do not. It was always like that. generations, when the Torah was still considered by Nine years ago, I was in Russia, and I learned as Jews to be precious merchandise. much as I wanted. No one disturbed me. The Jews The best characterization of the Rogochover whom I was with also studied undisturbed. It de- was made by H. N. Bialik. The Rogochover—Bialik pends on where you are . . .” holds—is the most brilliant talmudist whom he had “But Judaism”—someone interjects with a com- the opportunity of meeting: ment—“is going under in Soviet Russia, how can you say this?!” From one Rogochover one can carve out The Gaon gets a bit angry and mocks the ques- two Einsteins. The Rogochover is nowadays tioner. “Since when did you start to worry so much something unique, a rare mechanism of which about Judaism, about religiosity? Have you no only one exists, one of a kind. The Rogochover other worries? Since I remember, they are always needs to be considered a great spiritual national saying that Judaism is going under, and praise the treasure. Almighty! . . . ” We go back to the original discussion, in which If we were to translate the enormous talmudic the Gaon had said that no one knows how to [prop- knowledge of the Rogochover Gaon into erly] study a piece of Gemara. What does this mean? scientific knowledge, it would enrich the sciences What about the Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Akiva Eiger and with great new works. If we were to draw out the other gedolim? all of the Rogochover’s talmudic knowledge we The Rogochover waves his hand [in a dis- could then set up an entire cultural history. In missive way] and says: “The Vilna Gaon had all- Chaim Nachman Bialik, ca. mid 1920s. (Photo by short, this is the opinion held by the greatest encompassing knowledge, he took everything in. Zoltan Kluger, courtesy of the Government Press Jewish poet about the Rogochover: Two But that is not all [there is to knowing Gemara]. Office, Israel.) Einsteins can be carved out of one Rogochover. In a shtetl near me lived a melamed, a small reb- bele [teacher of children]. He dressed with a torn It is interesting and also fascinating to con- “The Rambam says in his commentary on the hat and he knew how to learn much better than verse with such a Jew. Of course, it is even more so Mishnah”—says the Rogochover—“that the name the Vilna Gaon . . . a thousand times more! You when one is able to draw such a Jew into a discus- Germany is derived from the Hebrew word gerem— see, the Rambam knew how to learn, he truly knew sion about contemporary issues—Jewish suffering, a bone. The Germans are hard like a bone and there- how to learn well.” Hitlerism and other problems. fore their wild actions should come as no surprise.” And for that reason, the Rogochover Gaon It is true that while the Rogochover is extraor- “But in truth”—concludes the Gaon—“today’s Ger- considers the Rambam to be his teacher . . . dinarily clever in talmudic subjects, in worldly mans, who inhabit Germany, are not real Aryans. The Rebbetzin, who accompanied the Gaon on matters he is not the greatest specialist. Neverthe- The real Germans immigrated to England hundreds his way, lets the people know that the Rabbi is not al- less, it is still interesting [to hear] his opinion about of years ago, and today’s inhabitants of Germany are lowed to talk so much. It is already two o’clock in the contemporary worldly matters. One must bear in the ancient Slovaks and Swabians . . . The English afternoon and the Rabbi still has not eaten breakfast. mind that in order to speak with the Rogochover, are to blame for the entire current situation . . . It is The people finally take leave of the Gaon. even about worldly matters, one must be a lamdan. better not to talk . . .”—The Gaon makes a motion In the course of the most basic conversation, the with his hand and moves on to other subjects. Gaon weaves in many Toseftas, Mechiltas, Sifras, I do not let the Gaon digress and I ask him a Marc B. Shapiro holds the Harry and Jeanette and other books, leaving one dizzy. In the eyes of foolish question: Rebbe, what will happen in the Weinberg Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of the Gaon, every issue in life can be solved with an end? When will we be redeemed? Jewish suffering Scranton. He is the author of Changing the Immutable: “open” Yerushalmi . . . is too much to bear! Hitler . . . How Rewrites Its History (The To present a discussion that was held with the The Gaon gets angry: “It is true that it is not Littman Library of Jewish Civilization).

46 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2017 LAST WORD Hashtag Holocaust

BY AMY NEWMAN SMITH

uring the height of last summer’s Poké- he was simultaneously repulsed and inspired. An Much has been made of the striking images: A mon GO craze, stories proliferated about Israeli who has lived in Berlin since he was 14, Sha- young woman in workout gear demonstrating her players of the game crashing cars, trip- pira merged the vaulting figures with an archival strength and flexibility is paired with twisted bodies ping and falling (in one case over a dead image taken at a Nazi concentration camp. When a piled up in a concentration camp building, the door body),D and, generally, behaving inappropriately in frame replacing the stele she was balanced against, her public places. So addictive was the game, so entic- feet in the air; a man kneeling, juggling bright pink ing the “gotta catch ’em all” slogan, that no place was Much has been made of the balls, is transported from the memorial to a burial pit. too solemn, not the United States Holocaust Memo- striking images: A man kneeling, Shapira’s repurposed images had so much impact— rial Museum or Japan’s Hiroshima Peace Memorial the word most commonly found in stories about Yo- Park, not even Auschwitz. In the few weeks before juggling bright pink balls at the locaust is “shocking”—that his subtle use of language the game’s maker removed the virtual creatures from in the project has been overlooked. In a FAQ on the “sensitive” locations, placards were placed at sites memorial, is transported website, he wrote, “Isn’t this disrespectful towards the about the unseemliness of catching cute virtual crea- victims of the Holocaust?” A reader might assume tures where mass murder had been committed or to a burial pit. that he was asking this of the Yolocaust project itself. was being commemorated. But then Shapira drily answers his own question: Das Denkmal für die Ermordeten Juden Euro- visitor to yolocaust.de placed his or her cursor over pas in Berlin was, for a time at least, also a Pokés- the image, the two young men, now rendered in Yes, some people’s behaviour at the memorial top, although playing video games turns out to be black and white, were shown quite literally jumping site is indeed disrespectful. But the victims one of the milder forms of disrespect one is likely on the bodies of dead Jews. His digital art installa- are dead, so they’re probably busy doing dead to encounter amid the stelae of the Memorial to the tions included 12 such juxtapositions. people’s stuff rather than caring about that. Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial stands in a part of the city once within Similarly, the address where you could email the “death zone” of the Berlin Wall and Shapira ([email protected]) if you were before that at the administrative center in one of the pictures and “suddenly regret having of the Third Reich. The Reich Chancel- uploaded it to the internet” carries two meanings. lery Building Albert Speer built for Ad- In current English slang a “douche” is, of course, a olf Hitler was just a few hundred yards jerk, but the site was also in German, and the word away; the führer’s bunker, his tomb, is clearly brings to mind the German word for shower. also close at hand. In part because a visitor can enter the Berlin me- Deliberately abstract, the rolling five- morial from any side, there is nothing in the way acre field filled with 2,711 rectangular of preparation or guidance as to what, if anything, gray stones evocative of graves is open it should mean. There is an information center on all sides to the city and bordered on (which, as it happens, Peter Eisenman strenuously its eastern side by a stretch of shops and resisted), but it is tucked underground, and few restaurants often dubbed “Holocaust- visitors ever make it there. When the New Yorker’s Strand” (Holocaust Beach) in the Ger- Richard Brody came to write a review, he didn’t man press: racks of postcards; shop- even realize the center existed, and left without ever fronts selling sandwiches, pretzels, and seeing it. “It’s not marked prominently, it’s not easy hot dogs; an ice cream place all at street to find, and it’s not integral to the display,” he ob- level; on the terrace above, sit-down fare A photo taken at Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of served. Care has been taken, however, to post signs Europe was the impetus for Shahak Shapira’s Yolocaust project. under large blue umbrellas. Deliberately warning of pickpockets. (if mistakenly), architect Peter Eisen- Time is, of course, picking memory’s pocket, pil- man left the memorial so open to interpretation that Shapira’s Yolocaust (he took the Yolo from the fering public memories of the Shoah, even among picnicking and sunbathing hardly seem out of place, popular acronym for “you only live once”) made the Germans, even among the Jews. Memorials re- and as the manager of one of Holocaust-Strand’s such a splash that the website crashed repeatedly, main, unmoved and unchanged by this inevitable restaurants observed to the Berliner Zeitung news- unable to keep up with the 2.5 million people driv- erosion of memory. Think, for instance, of the emo- paper, “Tourists have their needs.” The restaurant en to it by articles everywhere from the BBC to Fox tional impact of the Lincoln Memorial upon most shows due respect, he noted. After all, it serves its News. In less than a week, each of the people in the of its present-day visitors. How many truly feel the sausages on real plates—no paper or plastic—and photos that made up the online project had con- rupture of that conflict, fought over the fates of four you absolutely cannot get your coffee to go. tacted Shapira, asking to be removed, a request he million slaves and leaving more than 620,000 dead? Meanwhile, modern tourists feel compelled to honored. Of course, not all of them had intended Shapira’s close attention to our present-day lan- post a picture to social media, documenting for the their selfies as profanations of the dead. A woman guage and behavior offers one possible way for- ages (or at least their friends) their perfectly pack- who posted herself in a balanced pose atop one of ward: Holocaust Beach and Pokémon GO–playing aged presence everywhere. Articles and websites the memorial’s stones titled the Instagram photo museum visitors themselves become part of the ex- have attempted to draw attention to the problem of with the words “Yoga is connection with everything hibit. Part of the brilliance of Shapira’s ephemeral smiling selfies at concentration camps and Holo- around us” paired with a smiling emoji and pray- digital creation is that it allows us the space to think caust memorials and museums, but with only limit- ing hands. (Yolocaust.de now consists of a letter of about thoughtlessness. ed success. When Shahak Shapira saw an Instagram explanation from Shapira about the project, as well selfie of two young men leaping from the top of one as comments he received while it was active. Be- stele to another at the Berlin memorial captioned cause of the press coverage, all the removed images Amy Newman Smith is the managing editor of the “Jumping on dead Jews @ Holocaust Memorial,” are just a Google search away.) Jewish Review of Books.

Summer 2017 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 47 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS A Publication of Bee.Ideas, LLC. 745 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1400 New York, NY 10151

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