JEWISH REVIEW of BOOKS Volume 4, Number 3 Fall 2013 $7.95 Upcoming Programs at the YIVO Institute Editor Abraham Socher
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Solomon Maimon, Rona Sheramy & Mark Gottlieb Go Back To School! JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS Volume 4, Number 3 Fall 2013 $7.95 Upcoming Programs at the YIVO Institute Editor Abraham Socher PAST wiNNERS iNclUDE: Senior Contributing Editor Prof. Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Allan Arkush Max Weinreich Center Professor of American and Comparative Literature, Research Fellowships Director of the Center for Jewish Studies, Maria Curie- Art Director Sklodowska University, Lublin Betsy Klarfeld 2014-2015 Dr. Justin Cammy Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and Comparative Associate Editor The YIVO Institute offers a series of research Literature, Smith College Amy Newman Smith fellowships for scholarly research in the YIVO Archives and Library, for a period of one to Dr. Jonathan Dekel-Chen Senior Lecturer, Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Administrative Assistant three months. We currently offer awards in Hebrew University of Jerusalem Rebecca Weiss seven categories of up to $9,000; five awards are intended for graduate students and emerg- Dr. Glenn Dynner ing scholars, and two are intended for post- Associate Professor of Religion, Sarah Lawrence College doctoral researchers. Dr. Gershon Hundert Editorial Board Professor of Jewish Studies, McGill University Robert Alter Shlomo Avineri TO APPlY: Dr. Naomi Seidman Leora Batnitzky Ruth Gavison Online applications open Koret Professor of Jewish Culture, Graduate Theological Union Moshe Halbertal Hillel Halkin September 15, 2013 Dr. Daniel Soyer Jon D. Levenson Anita Shapira Contact Jennifer Young at [email protected] Professor of History, Fordham University Michael Walzer J. H.H. Weiler for more information. Eliyahu Stern Leon Wieseltier Ruth R. Wisse Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish Intellectual and APPlicATiON DEADliNE: Cultural History, Yale University Steven J. 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JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS www.jewishreviewofbooks.com 15 West 16th Street • New York • NY • 10011-6301 • tel 212.246.6080 • fax 212.292.1892 • www.yivo.org JEWISH REVIEW Volume 4, Number 3 Fall 2013 OF BOOKS www.jewishreviewofbooks.com LETTERS 4 Superpowered Thinking, Kant’s Dignity, Proust’s Jewish Melodies, & More FEaTures 5 Yehudah Mirsky Fathers & Sons This summer, as the current Ashkenazi chief rabbi was being investigated for corruption, and issues of religion and state dominated public debate, Israel elected new Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis. The process was messy, complicated, and ugly. The result? Sixty-eight votes apiece for the sons of two previous chief rabbis. What does a broken rabbinate mean for Israel? 8 Rich Cohen The Hunter James Salter has been justly celebrated as a composer of gorgeous prose, and his new late-life novel All That Is confirms his reputation as a “writer’s writer.” How much of his artistic vision is predicated on being James Salter rather than James Horowitz? REviEwS 12 Curt Leviant Jake in the Box Jacob: Unexpected Patriarch by Yair Zakovitch, translated by Valerie Zakovitch 14 Matthew Holbreich Hebraic America American Zion: The Old Testament as a Political Text from the Revolution to the Civil War by Eran Shalev 16 Abigail Green Karl Marx, Bourgeois Revolutionary Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life by Jonathan Sperber 19 Mark Gottlieb A Student-Centered Tradition Chovas HaTalmidim: The Students’ Obligation and Sheloshah Ma’amarim: Three Discourses by Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira 21 Abby W. Schachter On Not Bringing Up Baby What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster by Jonathan V. Last 23 Allan Arkush All-American, Post-Everything American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society by Shaul Magid 26 Sylvia Barack Fishman Exogamy Explored ’Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage Is Transforming America by Naomi Schaefer Riley 29 Michael Weingrad Fiction and Forgiveness A Guide for the Perplexed: A Novel by Dara Horn 32 Nadia Kalman Who Owns Margot? Margot: A Novel by Jillian Cantor 34 Eitan Kensky Meanwhile, on a Quiet Street in Cleveland Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster—The Creators of Superman by Brad Ricca • Superman Is Jewish? How Comic Book Superheroes Came to Serve Truth, Justice, and the Jewish-American Way by Harry Brod REadinG 38 Rona Sheramy The Day School Tuition Crisis: A Short History The day school tuition crisis turns out to be as old as day schools. Controversy 40 Patrick Tyler & Athens or Sparta? A Response and Rejoinder Benny Morris Lost & Found 45 Solomon Maimon The Joy of Being Delivered from Jewish Schools Results in a Stiff FootBefore he became a brilliant, radical, and disreputable Enlightenment philosopher, Solomon Maimon was a miserable cheder student. 46 Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv Notice Posted on the Door of the Kelm Talmud Torah Before the High Holidays In the 1860s, Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv tried to found a new kind of yeshiva in which students would devote significant time to thinking about their moral lives. Last woRd 47 Abraham Socher Hebrew School Days On the cover: “Back to School” by Mark Anderson. LETTERS Superpowered Thinking of Kant’s mature and well-known opinion about in the Seder scene, the text paraphrases “Shefoch lying. When I referred to Kant’s difficult view that chamatcha el ha-goyim” (Pour out Your wrath upon As always, Mr. Laqueur’s considerable erudition is lying is under all circumstances impermissible I had the nations . who have devoured Jacob,” from the very welcome. (“From Russia with Complications,” in mind his article “On the Supposed Right to Lie haggadah), while seated next to his daughter is a Summer 2013) I fear that the phenomenon he from Benevolent Motives.” Kant argues there for an Christian suitor pretending to be a Jew who later points to—of Russian immigrants’ bringing a “su- extremely rigorous, exceptionless duty of truth tell- becomes justification for a horrible death sentence perpower” mentality to bear on the small country ing. He does not base his argument on another per- for his Jewish hosts. where they now live—might mesh all too well with son’s right to the truth but rather on an uncondi- For Jews who left the ghetto to enjoy the bour- a parallel Israeli tendency on both the Right and the tional duty as an end in itself. (He does, somewhat geois world outside, opera was a place of fantasy (increasingly eclipsed) Left. I speak of the mindset inconsistently however, invoke the consequences realized. It gave voice to rebellion against oppres- that Israeli actions alone can determine the future of lying, however well intended or exigent under sion. As it happens, in his classic “Culture and Edu- of the country. On the Right, this means the idea the circumstances. For him, the consequences are a cation in the Diaspora,” reprinted in the same issue, that the settlers can behave however they want, in weakening of what we would today call social trust. Hayim Greenberg writes of the Jew who “cannot complete defiance of U.S. and world opinion; on the He foresees the destruction of the whole moral and carry a part in that choir that gives voice, conscious- Left, this means a belief that a “land for peace” deal judicial underpinning of society.) Kant suggests ly or not, to what I have called the Jewish melody.” is the only thing holding back a utopian peace. That, I submit, is what the grandfather in Swann’s Martin Berman-Gorvine Way is trying to discover: a response to a melody via jewishreviewofbooks.com not “drained of those powers that build a Jewish personality.” Larry W.