Ruth R. Wisse Mendele Mokher Seforim, Jewish Critic Benjamin D
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Jan T. Gross Law and Justice and the Holocaust in Poland JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS Volume 9, Number 1 Spring 2018 $10.45 Ruth R. Wisse Mendele Mokher Seforim, Jewish Critic Benjamin D. Sommer Lawrence J. Kaplan Did the Exodus Did Freud Really Think Really Happen? Moses Was an Egyptian? PLUS Gary Saul Morson Nadia Kalman Daniel Gordon Revolution & Morality Editor Abraham Socher BRANDEIS Senior Contributing Editor Allan Arkush UNIVERSITY PRESS Art Director Betsy Klarfeld Managing Editor The Road to Haifa Amy Newman Smith September 1939 City of Steps Polish Jews, Zionists, Nili Scharf Gold Editorial Assistant and the Yishuv Kate Elinsky on the Eve of “Haifa symbolizes World War II Israeli normalcy at its best, and Editorial Board Jehuda Reinharz and Robert Alter Shlomo Avineri Yaacov Shavit this important book proves it Leora Batnitzky Ruth Gavison “Well-researched and convincingly.” Moshe Halbertal Hillel Halkin pathbreaking.” A. B. Yehoshua Jon D. 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JEWISH REVIEW www.upne.com/brandeis.html | 800-421-1561 | @UPNEBooks OF BOOKS JEWISH REVIEW Volume 9, Number 1 Spring 2018 OF BOOKS www.jewishreviewofbooks.com LETTERS 4 Toynbee’s “Zionist Card,” Their Man in Beijing?, Kibbutz Dreams, and the Mortara Affair Redux FEATURES 5 Jan T. Gross Law, Justice, and Memory in Poland Under the Law and Justice Party, Poland has just criminalized the life stories of its Jewish survivors. Here’s why. 8 Ruth R. Wisse The Jewish Critic and the Devil’s Point of View We have never met this Mendele before, but he expects us to trust him, appreciate his wit, catch his references, and share his attitudes. In a few deft lines, the author created a figure so democratic you don’t have to look up to him, so familiar you don’t have to fear him, and so appealing you won’t realize you’re being flogged. REVIEWS 12 Benjamin D. Sommer Exodus and Consciousness The Exodus: How It Happened and Why It Matters by Richard Elliott Friedman • The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times by James L. Kugel 16 Richard Hidary God’s Law in Human Hands What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives by Christine Hayes 18 Mark Mazower In the City of Killing Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History by Steven J. Zipperstein 20 Liam Hoare Child of Occupation Pedigree: A Memoir by Patrick Modiano, translated by Mark Polizzotti • The Occupation Trilogy: La Place de l’Étoile, The Night Watch, Ring Roads by Patrick Modiano, translated by Caroline Hillier, Patricia Wolf, and Frank Wynne • Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano, translated by Joanna Kilmartin 23 Allan Arkush Strange Miracle God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America by Samuel Goldman 25 Amy Newman Smith Not of This World Adam & Thomas by Aharon Appelfeld, translated by Jeffrey M. Green 27 Daniel Gordon Telling the Whole Truth: Albert Memmi Tunisie, An I by Albert Memmi 31 A. E. Smith Black Money Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism’s Money Masters by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and Samuel M. Katz 33 Michael Weingrad Out-of-Body Experiences: Recent Israeli Science Fiction and Fantasy Ha-kavua ha-yechidi (The Unswitchable) by Yoav Blum • Ha-orchim (The Guests) by Ofir Touché Gafla • Lachatsot nahar pa’amayim (Crossing a River Twice) by Yoav Avni • Shadrach by Shimon Adaf • Teet (Mud) by Dror Burstein • Ha-masa el lev ha-tehom (Into the Abyss) by Hagar Yanai 36 Amos Yadlin & Strategic Imperatives Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change by Charles D. Freilich Ari Heistein READING 39 Lawrence J. Kaplan Moses, Murder, and the Jewish Psyche Sigmund Freud had always identified with Moses. At the end of his life, as the Nazis rose to power, he returned to the Bible and the origins of the Jewish psyche. We all know his scandalous theory—or do we? EXCHANGE 42 Gary Saul Morson Jews, Revolutionism, and Doublethink Even in the Gulag, it was difficult to give up the belief in the Revolution. Take Evgenia Ginzburg, for example . 44 Nadia Kalman In (Partial) Defense of Doublethink How does one survive psychologically under the control of chaotic evil? Take Evgenia Ginszburg, for example . LAST WORD 47 Stuart Schoffman Shabbtai at Seventy On the cover: Mendele the Bookseller by Mark Anderson. LETTERS Toynbee’s “Zionist Card” 1857 removal of a six-year-old Jewish child by Papal Catholic child to be raised by a member of anoth- Simon Gordon’s excellent article on Balfour’s 100th States authorities to be raised as a Catholic because er faith. That is why he resisted pressure to return anniversary (“100 Years of Solicitude: Commemo- he had been secretly baptized by the family’s maid. the boy to his family, and, as near as I have been rating Balfour,” Winter 2018), dissecting the di- Archbishop Charles J. Chaput responded on our web- able to determine, the law in the Papal States was vides of British Jewry then and now, can be supple- site, spurring a vigorous online conversation, excerpts consonant with Catholic doctrine in this matter. mented with a simple, geopolitical point. The dec- of which appear below, along with one letter. If Catholic doctrine today is different, I believe that laration was more related to Allied war aims than Chaput would have said so. I do not doubt his good any other factor. In November 1917 it was not yet intentions or his desire not to offend. In the absence clear who would win the war. There was a German- I was moved by Archbishop Chaput’s deeply hu- of a more explicit statement, my questions stand. Jewish Zionist group stoutly supporting German mane and ecumenical response to the baffling de- Peter Borregard aims with its Ottoman partners. Japan, then an fense of the kidnapping of a Jewish child by papal via jewishreviewofbooks.com ally of Britain, supported the Balfour Declaration authorities in First Things, a magazine that I have because it would bring “world Jewry” to its side. often found illuminating. Let’s note the descriptive words Archbishop Chaput That the foregoing is correct is further fortified by Rachel Cohen uses throughout his piece: toxic, stain, troubling, in- a young junior staffer at the British Foreign Office New York, NY sensitive, ugly, wound, damage, betrayal, violence— at the time who urged his superiors “to play the I think the archbishop’s own views are pretty obvi- Zionist card” to win the war. That then-junior officer In his editorial email to subscribers, Abraham ous. He writes that “Judaism is the root from which was none other than the young Arnold J. Toynbee! Socher wrote that he was shocked by Romanus Ces- our own faith grows. Being cognizant of that reality, Harold Ticktin sario’s defense of the kidnapping of Edgardo Mor- and respecting it in everything we say and write and Shaker Heights, OH tara in First Things. He shouldn’t have been. Father do, is the only way bitter actions in the past might Cessario is well within the norms of Catholic tradi- one day be redeemed.” tionalists who continue to hold that the pre–Second Patrice Roe Their Man in Beijing? Vatican Council claims of the Catholic Church— via jewishreviewofbooks.com Bernard Wasserstein’s interesting remarks about that its rules should be binding on everyone within Israel Epstein (“The Family Heretic,” Winter 2018) its reach—remain correct.