Allan Arkush in the Melting Pot

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Ilana Kurshan on a Brilliant New Torah Commentary JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS Volume 9, Number 2 Summer 2018 $10.45 Allan Arkush In the Melting Pot

Cecile E. Kuznitz The Book Smugglers of Vilna Jenna Weissman Joselit W. E. B. Du Bois at the Warsaw Ghetto Matt Goldish Isaac Newton and the Secrets of the Temple

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9 Shai Secunda Sacrificial Speech Blood for Thought: The Reinvention of Sacrifice in Early Rabbinic Literature by Mira Balberg 11 Matt Goldish Maimonides, Stonehenge, and Newton's Obsessions Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton by Rob Iliffe 13 Yitzhak Y. Melamed No Empty Place Nefesh HaTzimtzum: Rabbi Chaim Volozhin’s Nefesh HaChaim with Translation and Commentary (Volume 1), translation and commentary by Avinoam Fraenkel • Nefesh HaTzimtzum: Understanding Nefesh HaChaim through the Key Concept of Tzimtzum and Related Writings (Volume2), translation and commentary by Avinoam Fraenkel 16 Michah Gottlieb The Founder of Jewish Studies Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity by Ismar Schorsch 19 Amy Newman Smith To Spy Out the Land Spies in Palestine: Love, Betrayal, and the Heroic Life of Sarah Aaronsohn by James Srodes • The Woman Who Fought an Empire: Sarah Aaronsohn and Her Nili Spy Ring by Gregory J. Wallance 22 Allis Radosh & Free Radicals The J. Abrams Book: The Life and Work of an Exceptional Personality by Jacob Abrams, edited Ronald Radosh by the Jewish Cultural Center in Mexico, translated by Ruth Murphy • Left of the Left: My Memories of Sam Dolgoffby Anatole Dolgoff 25 Cecile E. Kuznitz A Book and a Sword in the Vilna Ghetto The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis by David E. Fishman 29 Catherine C. 33 Days and Four Years 33 Days by Léon Werth, translated by Austin D. Johnston • Deposition 1940–1944: Bock-Weiss A Secret Diary of Life in Vichy France by Léon Werth, edited and translated by David Ball 31 Tom Ginsburg You Shall Appoint for Yourself Judges The Purse and the Sword: The Trials of Israel’s Legal Revolution by Daniel Friedmann, translated by Haim Watzman 33 Ilana Kurshan Containing God's Presence The Heart of Torah, Essays on the Weekly Torah Portion: Genesis and Exodus by Rabbi Shai Held, foreword by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg • The Heart of Torah, Essays on the Weekly Torah Portion: Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy by Rabbi Shai Held, foreword by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg 36 Eitan Kensky Dress British, Think Yiddish Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual by Nathan Abrams

READINGS 38 Allan Nadler Maimonides in Ma’ale Adumim Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch has been working on his commentary to the Mishneh Torah for the last 41 years. It may be the greatest rabbinic work of the century. 41 Robert Zaretsky On Literary Brilliance and Moral Rot Why did the prestigious publishing house Gallimard want to publish three vilely anti-Semitic pamphlets by Louis-Ferdinand Céline? And is he still worth reading? 44 Jenna Weissman Joselit Du Bois, the Warsaw Ghetto, and a Priestly Blessing When the editors at Jewish Life asked the venerable civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois to speak about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, they had no idea that it would lead to a priestly blessing. LAST WORD 46 Abraham Socher Says Who?

On the cover: The Melting Pot by Mark Anderson. LETTERS

Poland and the Devil's Point of View the Jewish Psyche,” Spring 2018), but I am not sure pressed memory of the murder of Moses that gave I read Ruth Wisse’s brilliant portrait of Mendele that I am convinced by his, uh, analysis. The (short) rise to Jewish guilt. In the second story it was the Mokher Seforim directly after I read Jan Gross’s standard version of Freud’s theory is, as Kaplan initial appearance of Father Moses to his beloved blistering criticism of Poland’s new Holocaust law explains, that Moses was an Egyptian priest in the children, the “poor Jewish bondsmen,” that elicited (“The Jewish Critic and the Devil’s Point of View” monotheistic cult of the sun-god Aton, who led the that guilt. This leads Freud to change his story about and “Law, Justice, and Memory in Poland,” Spring Hebrew slaves out of Egypt, taught them monothe- the nature of Jewish chosenness. Oh—“just one 2018). The “wide aerial” perspective on Jewish suf- ism, and was murdered for his efforts. The Israel- more thing.” Unlike my teacher Yosef Yerushalmi fering that Mendele gets when the Devil takes him ites repressed the memory but then got a second and others, I never tried to put Freud “on the couch.” on a flight above tsarist Russia immediately re- Midianite Moses who they conflated with the first I am not a psychiatrist nor the son of a psychiatrist, minded me of the historical perspective Gross gives one in their guilty memories. But Kaplan, like some but one thing I have learned from studying Talmud in contextualizing the Law and Justice Party’s con- and Maimonides, reading Freud, and watching Co- temptible rhetoric and actions. On the other hand, lumbo: Pay close attention to detail. what is one to make of the fact that Poland is, unlike Lawrence Kaplan its liberal European neighbors, reliably supportive McGill University of Israel? Apparently, things are complicated even when you can see the whole picture. Who’s the Sabbatean? Peter Kahn Stuart Schoffman celebrates Shabbtai Zevi’s messianic Los Angeles, CA movement of the mid-1660s as a harbinger of future national consciousness and activism (“Shabbtai at Abraham’s Genome Seventy,” Spring 2018). But it strikes me that the failed In Richard Hidary’s review of Christine Hayes’s What’s messiah is as much a potent symbol and harbinger of Divine about Divine Law? (“God’s Law in Human modern diaspora Judaism and in particular its less Hands,” Spring 2018), he summarizes her position orthodox and more syncretic expressions. After con- as being that the Torah is “the expression of a divine verting to Islam to save his neck, Shabbtai spent the will that can change, and, in any case, must be inter- last decade of his life waffling between the Muslim and preted.” In other words, divine fiat and human (rab- Jewish worlds. While this could be seen as hypocrisy, binic) reason are the elements that continually inter- it was also, I think, a sign of a new Jewish identity that act to reshape Torah law. So far, so good, but another talmudic Columbo, walks carefully through Freud’s welcomed the influence of other traditions and tried factor is missing. The Jewish moral code is not only text asking questions that no one seems to have to meld them. The mixing of Islam and Judaism into based on revelation and reason; its origins stem from asked. Why does Freud suddenly stop talking about something that was not quite either one continued an evolved human moral sense or instinct which fa- the second Moses? And why does he eventually say with Shabbtai’s followers in Salonica who converted vors cooperative social behavior. Cooperation within only “if they happened to strike their great man to Islam but maintained Sabbatean rites and called social groups in the earliest humans was an adaptive dead” (emphasis added) about the first one? themselves the Ma’aminim. In the Christian West, trait that led to greater survival and reproduction and These are good questions, but it doesn’t seem to Shabbtai’s spiritual descendants under Jacob Frank hence was incorporated into the human genome. Just me that they prove the case. Aren’t they arguments flirted with and often converted to Catholicism. And as language unfolds in all human beings as a built-in from silence? And couldn’t Freud have just assumed the greatest descendant of Shabbtai’s followers in 19th- module shaped by our early environment, so all of us that the historical existence of the second Moses century Prague was one of the greatest liberal assimi- possess an instinct for moral (as well as immoral) be- had been established, that he was being rhetorical in lated Jews who has ever lived, Justice Louis Brandeis. havior that is shaped by our experience and culture. saying “if,” and so on? Barak A. Bassman Abraham can ask “Shall not the judge of all the Carol Shaw Ardmore, PA earth deal justly?” because he has this innate sense Chicago, IL of wrong and right. It is a sense that is not based on Horse, Buggy, and History divine fiat—this is precisely what Abraham argues Lawrence Kaplan Responds: I enjoyed Mark Anderson’s whimsical portrait of against! Neither is this moral sense based on human I very much appreciate Carol Shaw’s kind praise of Mendele Mokher Seforim on your Spring 2018 reason. Rather, it seems to me, Abraham knows in my essay, particularly her witty description of me— cover and found myself compulsively scanning his his kishkes what is right and wrong. What’s missing perhaps inspired by my suggestion that the first two stock for what to buy, until two details of his horse from this erudite review is the concept of a natural essays of Moses and Monotheism take the form of a and wagon caught my attention. The smaller wheels moral sense which precedes divine revelation at Si- detective story—as a “talmudic Columbo.” Despite appeared to be in the back of the wagon rather than nai and underlies our reason. her praise, Shaw maintains that my essay is built on in the front, where they could turn under the wagon Joel Rutman, MD the weak foundation of arguments from silence. Even and permit steering, and the horse was harnessed Zikhron Yaakov, Israel were that the case, arguments from silence are valu- around his middle rather than by his breast and able when the silence is significant. After all, it was shoulder, by which he could exert his pulling power. Reading List the fact that the dog did not bark in the night that led The breast-and-shoulder harness dates from the th9 I especially appreciated that, in his review of Albert Sherlock Holmes to the identity of the villain. century and small-front-wheel steering from the Memmi’s newly published diary from 1955–1956 Back to our case: Freud comments, “if they hap- Middle Ages. (See my recent book Where Have All (“Telling the Whole Truth: Albert Memmi,” Spring pened to strike their great man dead,” and Shaw sug- the Horses Gone?) Still, a charming picture. 2018), Daniel Gordon took the occasion to provide gests that the “if” may have just been for rhetorical ef- Jonathan V. Levin a broad overview of Memmi’s work on postcolonial- fect. Indeed, it was, but to what effect? Given Freud’s Teaneck, NJ ism, Jewish identity, and Zionism. I knew little of early emphasis on the central importance of the Israel- Memmi other than his name, and Gordon convinced ites’ murder of Moses, inasmuch as it was the repressed me that I need to read him now. In fact, I promptly memory of that murder that triggered Jewish guilt, the Correction went and ordered a couple of his books from Ama- deflationary rhetoric of this passage is odd. It should In Daniel Gordon’s review of Albert Memmi’s Tunisie, zon and another one from my college library. alert us to the fact that the murder no longer plays An I (“Telling the Whole Truth: Albert Memmi,” Andrew Pessin the central role it played earlier. In fact, in the second Spring 2018), the Jewish population of Tunis in 1961 Professor of Philosophy, Connecticut College part of the third essay Freud never mentions Moses’s was given as 250. While the majority of the 65,000 Campus Bureau Editor, The Algemeiner murder, though he refers several times to the Jewish Jews in Tunis emigrated to France or Israel between people’s rejection in the desert of the Mosaic religion. 1956 and 1967, the Jewish population in 1961 was Freud and the Talmudic Columbo But, I did not only argue from silence. My main higher than stated. According to Hebrew University I like the way Lawrence J. Kaplan put Freud and his point was that Moses and Monotheism contains two demographer Sergio Della Pergola, as of 2015 there Moses book on the couch (“Moses, Murder, and contradictory stories. In the first story it was the re- were between 1,100 and 1,300 Jews in all of Tunisia.

4 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 FEATURE In the Melting Pot

BY ALLAN ARKUSH

hat’s a great play, Mr. Zangwill, their religions, their philosophies,” but “[t]hey Or, in an influential phrase Kallen patched together that’s a great play.” President Theo- cannot change their grandfathers.” Since the “self- a decade later, America would become a land of dore Roosevelt famously shouted hood which is inalienable” in different nationalities “cultural pluralism.” out these words to Israel Zangwill “Tas the curtain went down on the Washington, D.C., For baby boomers exploring what Horace Kallen called the premiere of the British Jewish author’s The Melting Pot in October 1908. The president, who on later “aesthetic and intellectual forms” of Jewish culture, the United occasions explicitly deplored the very notion of “hyphenated Americans,” could only have been States has truly been “a land of unlimited possibilities.” pleased by a drama whose Jewish hero celebrated America as “God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot is ancestrally determined, their respective efforts ho came closer to prophesying what Ameri- where all the races of Europe are melting and re- at “self-realization” would necessarily have to take Wca would really be like in the middle years of forming,” and where, out of “Germans and French- very different forms. the 20th century, Zangwill or Kallen? In 1963, Na- men, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians . than Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan famous- . . God is making the American.” ly—if not wholly accurately—declared in their book Even before the performance of the play and the Beyond the Melting Pot that “the point about the universal adoption of its title as a metaphor for the melting pot . . . is that it did not happen,” not in New process of complete assimilation, American Jews had York, at any rate, or other big cities that resembled been busy devising means of withstanding the pres- it. Americans, by and large, kept their ethnic identi- sures that Zangwill welcomed. Among other things, ties, if not, for the most part, their languages of ori- they founded (or rather, refounded) in 1888 the Jew- gin. And certainly, it has been relatively easy in the ish Publication Society. One of the first works the so- half-century since Glazer and Moynihan published ciety published was what Jonathan Sarna has called their book to be a “hyphenated American,” and a “the first best-selling Jewish novel in America,” Israel Jewish American in particular. For baby boomers Zangwill’s Children of the Ghetto—a book that sensi- like me who have spent much of our lives exploring tively depicted the lives of Eastern European Jewish what Kallen called the “aesthetic and intellectual immigrants in London (without pointing hopefully forms” of Jewish culture in these years, the United to their disappearance through assimilation). States has truly been, to borrow the famous phrase Zangwill was also for a time one of the most im- coined more than 100 years ago by the forgotten portant figures in the Zionist movement, a key ally German Jewish banker and writer Ludwig Max of Theodor Herzl in its earliest days and one of his Goldberger, “a land of unlimited possibilities.” ardent supporters until Herzl died in 1904. Zangwill I myself have explored a considerable number of left Zionism the following year, in protest against them. I have, in fact, done little else in my life, whose the movement’s principled rejection of any terri- way stations have included Camp Ramah, the Jew- tory other than Palestine as a destination for Jewish ish Theological Seminary, the Department of Near settlement, but he remained a nationalist activist. For Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis, positions in 20 years he led the Jewish Territorial Organization, Program from a performance of Israel Zangwill’s Judaic studies at several American universities, teach- which scoured the world, from Australia to North The Melting Pot, 1916. (Courtesy of the University ing in Meah and other adult education programs, Africa to southern Africa, in search of an alternative of Iowa Libraries Special Collections Department.) and working with various Jewish educational foun- site for a homeland for his people. dations. I’ve also translated a couple of Jewish clas- Zangwill’s politics might seem inconsistent, but sics and produced a fair amount of scholarly work he was not really of two minds. He mostly felt that Therefore, instead of looking forward to the con- on Jewish thought and history, edited the magazine the anomalous, vulnerable existence of the Jews as a solidation of a single identity within what he called of the Association for Jewish Studies, and helped to scorned minority had to be brought to an end, one the American “commonwealth,” Kallen advocated edit the publication you’re now reading. My role in way or another. Dissolve them among others or col- the creation of conditions that would facilitate “the the Jewish section of Kallen’s American orchestra has lect them together and grant them some measure realization of the distinctive individuality of each not by any means been a major one, but I have found of autonomy in one of the world’s underpopulated natio that composes it.” Each people should be able it fulfilling. Far from having any regrets, I’d do it all places—whatever worked, whatever could put an to express “its emotional and voluntary life in its over again (and I’m not yet ready to stop). end to anti-Semitism, was worth doing. For Zang- own language, in its own inevitable aesthetic and Yet I have to say, too, that I’ve never been able will, the preservation of the Jewish people as such intellectual forms.” Even as they underwent Ameri- to escape, from the very beginning, a sense that I was not a priority. canization, the Poles would do this in Polish, the was fighting a losing battle. I can remember, for in- One Zionist of the same era who saw things Italians in Italian, and the Jews, ideally, in Hebrew or stance, a serious talk about the future that another very differently was Horace Kallen, a professor of Yiddish, in innovative ways. The New World would camper and I had with a counselor named Rafi in a philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, who in succeed where the old one had failed. rowboat on the lake belonging to Camp Ramah in 1915 published in The Nation a famous retort to Connecticut in 1964. Rafi told us something that we Zangwill (and others) entitled “Democracy Versus The “American civilization” may come to mean had both heard before, but earnestly and compel- the Melting Pot.” The wayward son of an immi- the perfection of the cooperative harmonies of lingly enough for me to remember the tone of it, if grant Austro-Hungarian Orthodox rabbi, Kallen “European civilization,” the waste, the squalor, not the exact words, more than a half-century later. for a time welcomed the dissolution of the Jews, and the distress of Europe being eliminated—a We had to go back home, he told us, and remake our but he eventually concluded that people “may multiplicity in a unity, an orchestration of communities in the image of the camp. We had to change their clothes, their politics, their wives, mankind. make our camp Hebrew the communities’ Hebrew,

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 5 our Shabbat their Shabbat, our ruach (spirit) their t doesn’t look especially bleak to some people who as Biale knows, always a possibility. And even after ruach. Our job was to build a future in which it was Isee no binary opposition between the ideals of the the disappearance of the ancient Jewish Christian not just the rabbi and a small coterie of his support- melting pot and cultural pluralism. The distinguished sects individual Jews have occasionally insisted that ers who lived genuinely Conservative Jewish lives historian David Biale, for one, in an essay that he pub- in becoming Christians, they have not abandoned but the whole congregation. lished 20 years ago entitled “American Symphony or but only completed their Jewish identities (Father I didn’t argue with Rafi, but as he spoke I thought Melting Pot?,” argued that there was no reason why Daniel, for instance, the Jewish-born hero of the of all of my classmates who had dropped out of He- one couldn’t uphold both at the same time. “After Holocaust era who made aliyah from Poland in the brew school right after their bar and bat mitzvahs. nearly a century of counterarguments,” he tren- 1950s as a Catholic priest). A century ago, viewing What could we, the remnant still enrolled and more chantly wrote, “Zangwill’s melting pot continues to things from a different perspective, the secular Jew- or less inspired, possibly do to turn them around? simmer.” But “postethnic theory” offered grounds for ish intellectual Chaim Zhitlovsky came to a similar How could we ever induce them to prefer Friday night hoping that it would not dissolve everything that is conclusion, insisting that there was no reason why a services to movies and Saturday morning services to Jewish into something new and unrecognizable. Jew couldn’t profess the Christian faith (preferably, playing golf or skiing? It seemed far more likely that in Yiddish!), since one’s Jewish identity was not a we would slip away, one by one, to join them. [I]nstead of simply asserting a new amalgam religious matter. But these quibbles aside, it is clear Since that day on the boat, I’ve heard a lot of identity, it is possible for a multiracial or that Biale’s examples were designed to shock—and other pep talks. I’ve even given some. And I’ve been multiethnic person to identify at one and the to suggest that just about any identity at all could be part of a number of Jewish programs and projects same time as both Irish and Italian, or both fruitfully combined with a Jewish one and still fall that have fared quite well. But I’ve never felt like I black and white, or even Jew and Christian. under some Jewish rubric. was on the winning team. Even when I have taken That is, in place of a new, monolithic identity to Biale was not unrestrained, however, in his en- pride in the real accomplishments of the various as- take the place of the ethnic or racial identities thusiasm for this brave new world. “Whether these sociations and institutions in which I have been in- that make it up, one could imagine multiple new forms of identity spell the end of the Jewish volved, I have never lost sight of the large and ever- identities held simultaneously and chosen as people or its continuation in some new guise,” he increasing distance between people more or less like concluded, “cannot be easily predicted since there is me and the great majority of Jews in America. no true historical precedent for this development.” According to the Pew Research Center, there are Another prominent professor of Jewish studies, now in the United States 4.2 million people who Shaul Magid, writing 15 years after Biale, welcomed profess the Jewish religion and another 1.2 million the emergence of a postethnic America without who do not but still identify as Jews (not to mention fretting much about whether it would undermine the 2.4 million who acknowledge some Jewish back- the existence of the Jewish people, an entity whose ground but affirm no Jewish identity at all). Every survival is evidently of less concern to him than reader of this essay has no doubt already seen the the evolution of the religion he dubiously describes discouraging statistics that chart the disaffiliation as Judaism. I won’t repeat here my reservations of very large numbers of those who still identify as about Magid’s case for what I called “cosmotheism Jews from organized Jewish life, the steep rise in in- with a post-Jewish face” (see “All-American, Post- termarriage over the past half-century, and the low Everything,” Fall 2013, Jewish Review of Books), but percentage of children of intermarried Jews who are I do want to take a cue from him. He usefully point- being raised as Jews, so I won’t dwell on them. ed out a few locations on the Internet where one Rather, I will note that according to the Pew sur- can find these inventive new forms of Jewish iden- vey only half of the Jews in this country can read the tity that are coming into being. “One of the largest,” Hebrew alphabet, and of them only a small fraction he wrote, “www.half-jewish.net, is more than a sup- (one-quarter, supposedly, but I find it hard to believe port group. It is an advocacy organization that seeks it’s that high) say that they can read Hebrew texts with to be a voice for the inclusion of multiethnic Jews comprehension. Unfortunately, the survey doesn’t in the Jewish community. On this website we read, tally how many people know, for instance, what the ‘Some of us are contented Christians, Muslims, Mishnah is, who the Gaon of Vilna was, or when the Israel Zangwill in an undated photo. (Hulton Archive/ Hindus, and Buddhists, but we’d like to learn more Kishinev pogrom took place, but I’m sure that if it did Culture Club/Getty Images.) about our Jewish “half” in ways that don’t involve we would see evidence of massive ignorance. This, at leaving our current faith or culture.’” least, is what my own experience leads me to believe. much as inherited. To put it in Horace Kallen’s I recently went back to this website in search of Outside of my usual Jewish haunts, I less and less of- terms, we may not be able to choose our revealing statements by new kinds of Jews, but what ten meet Jews who know or care very much about grandparents, but we can choose the extent to I found, for the most part, was evidence of divided Jewish culture or religion. While there are exceptions which we affirm our connection to this or that souls groping for greater clarity about their personal to the rule, the typical Jews I meet are evidence not grandparent. Freed of its early essentialism, situations and some helpful information about the of a thriving cultural pluralism but of the widespread Kallen’s cultural pluralism can be resurrected by attitudes of different sectors of the Jewish commu- disappearance of the selfhood Kallen thought to be communities of choice. nity toward people of partly Jewish origin who were intrinsic and inalienable. It turns out that it doesn’t not halakhically Jewish. But there were also “Chris- really matter that much whom your grandparents Seen in this light, the extremely high intermar- tian resources” that directed “half-Jews” to Lauren were. Glazer and Moynihan notwithstanding, we riage rate (the figure Biale cited in 1998 was 30 per- Winner’s Girl Meets God, a patrilineal half-Jewish never really got beyond the melting pot. cent; it’s now double that) need not be a cause for woman’s description of “her long journey from Re- It is possible to remain undaunted by the sight of alarm. “Far from siphoning off the Jewish gene pool, form Judaism to Orthodox Judaism to the Episcopal massive defections from the Jewish people and the perhaps intermarriage needs to be seen instead as Church and evangelical Christian views” and to “a widespread dissolution of Jewish consciousness. There creating new forms of identity, including multiple long-distance Messianic Jewish teaching institute.” are, after all, still millions of Jews in America, and as identities, that will reshape what it means to be Jew- Despite the lack of positive evidence at www. Rabbi Tarfon reminded us a long time ago, our inability ish in ways we can only begin to imagine. For the half-jewish.net, it may very well be the case that to complete a task doesn’t leave us free to desist from it. first time in Jewish history, there are children of here and there new idiosyncratic forms of mixed The American Jewish world is full of leaders, scholars, mixed marriages who violate the ‘law of excluded Jewish identity are coming into being. But I doubt and activists who know that the odds are against them middle’ by asserting that they are simultaneously there are any that will have anything more than a but nevertheless continue to fight to hold onto what Jewish and Christian or Jewish and Italian.” short half-life. What I do perceive—everywhere— has not been lost and even to make gains. Who knows, Biale went perhaps a bit too far here. That one are last gasps. I hear them, for instance, when ac- after all, what’s going to happen? The Jewish future has could be Jewish and Italian at the same time, even quaintances tell me, radiating a little bit of nachas, often looked bleaker than it does in this country today. if one wasn’t the product of a mixed marriage, was, that their grandchildren, who are hard to classify as

6 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 either Jews or non-Jews, have something of a lik- themes of the day: inclusiveness, spirituality, mu- ism in America, except among the Orthodox. ing for latkes. At the same time, they tell me that sical creativity, shorter services, nonjudgmental- Several years ago, I gave a talk to a group of stu- the kids also celebrate Christmas (only at home and ism, personalized attention, caring communities, dents at Yeshiva University on cultural Zionism, in with no trace of Jesus!). relational Judaism, and Judaism beyond the walls the course of which I expressed my doubts about the Melting pot blends of this sort, and not innova- of the synagogue.” In the “more cohesive, partici- internal coherence of the project launched by Ahad tive syntheses, are what’s really happening on the patory and spirited communities” they are forging, Ha-Am (one of Horace Kallen’s sources of inspira- ground, all over America. While I do not mean to “the elite meet the folk where they are” (instead of tion) at the turn of the 20th century. After our meet- be dismissive of the integrity and goodwill of those the other way around, as my old counselor Rafi, ing was over, around 9 p.m. on a week night, my who are piecing together such composite identities, and the old Conservative movement, had wished). hosts walked me across the street from the building I fully expect that in the long run their experiments Wertheimer also provides a long list of trans- in which we had met to show me a little bit more will lead, with a few individual exceptions, to non- denominational educational enterprises of various of their institution. I don’t recall what I had been Jewish grandchildren for whom the fact that they sorts that have undoubtedly enjoyed great success, expecting, but I do remember my sense of aston- had some Jewish (or half-Jewish) grandparents is from Birthright Israel to Mechon Hadar to Limmud ishment when we entered a large, very crowded beit not much more than a genealogical curiosity. and others. His book’s conclusion sketches the out- midrash (study hall). Unlike Moses, who was bewil- lines of “a large nationwide movement” consisting dered when God propelled him into the future to here are, however, much less radical experi- of “many hundreds of local synagogues, outreach see the beit midrash of Rabbi Akiva, I knew what Tments taking place within the American Jew- centers, and start-ups engaged in the effort to remix was going on. But I was nonetheless surprised to ish community that are at least somewhat more Judaism for the current age.” see hundreds of young men robustly and loudly en- promising. Jack Wertheimer provides a panoramic Wertheimer is ambivalent about much of what he gaged, in pairs, in the study of rabbinic texts when overview of them in his soon-to-be-published and has seen, but his very serious misgivings do not pre- I myself was just about ready to go to bed. While thought-provoking book The New American Ju- vent him from being hopeful about the “next itera- I had been in batei midrash before, in the United daism. A professor of American Jewish history at tion of a new/old Judaism” in the United States. Hav- States and in Israel, I had never witnessed a scene the Jewish Theological Seminary, and formerly the ing circulated very much less than he has (he lists the like this. Here, I thought (though I didn’t say it, per- provost of that institution, Wertheimer has over 160 rabbis to whom he spoke in preparation for this haps because I felt that my hosts wanted to hear it), the years written many penetrating studies of the book and mentions the hundreds of synagogues he if anywhere, is a force capable of resisting the pres- American Jewish condition, all of which reflect a has visited over the years), I can’t really gainsay him. sures of assimilation. I can think of nothing like it keen, deeply informed understanding of the disin- I can even hope that he is right. But when I weigh outside of the precincts of Orthodoxy. tegration that has taken place as well as a persis- everything that I myself have witnessed together with Wertheimer both confirms my impressions tent refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. There all of the statistics signaling decline—Conservative and warns against drawing overhasty conclusions. is plenty in his new book, too, to reinforce the fears Judaism has gone from representing more than 40 “Thus far,” he writes, “the Modern Orthodox world of pessimists like me. But he also sees many signs percent of American Jewry to less than 20 percent in has managed to flourish and persist by creating a of vitality. Within the admittedly ailing Conserva- a generation, 28 percent of those raised Reform have community of practice and by focusing most of its tive movement, for instance, a considerable num- left the Jewish religion altogether, and so on—I can’t intellectual energy on intensified Talmud study. This ber of rabbis are now ambitiously “playing to the muster any comparable hope for the future of Juda- is not to be minimized. The movement’s vibrant

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Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 7 communal life, high levels of observance, and seri- eminent left-wing political theorist, answer this ques- to us. What it produces, the rhetoric of contempo- ous engagement with traditional texts are monu- tion affirmatively. In his recent and much discussed rary identity politics notwithstanding, is good, more mental achievements.” But these achievements may Commentary article “The Rise of Social Orthodoxy,” or less culturally homogeneous Americans. not be as stable as they look. Roiled by challenges Lefkowitz reconciles his theological uncertainty with Wertheimer’s account of current experiments ranging from the heresies of modern biblical criti- his daily donning of tefillin, his kashrut, and his with a “new/old Judaism” in liberal synagogues and cism to the appeal of ultra-Orthodoxy, Modern weekly synagogue attendance on the grounds that elsewhere throughout the country is harder to dis- Orthodoxy is losing adherents to the left and to the right. Despite having a very low rate of intermar- Here, I thought (though I didn’t say it, perhaps because riage and a higher than average fertility rate, Mod- ern Orthodoxy’s demographic growth just barely I felt that my hosts wanted to hear it), if anywhere, is a force makes up for its losses. Haredi Jews now outnum- ber them two to one. Among school-aged children, capable of resisting the pressures of assimilation. the ratio in favor of the ultra-Orthodox has climbed to something more like four to one. “the key to Jewish living is not our religious beliefs miss, especially since he retains a keen awareness of The ultra-Orthodox have their problems, too, but but our commitment to a set of practices and values their shortcomings even as he takes heart in their they’ve got the momentum, and they know it. There that foster community and continuity.” Walzer, for existence. Whether these are signs of a true revival are now some six thousand to seven thousand haredi his part, is no mere doubter but “a fully secular per- of religious but non-Orthodox Judaism remains to outreach workers in the field (mostly affiliated with son,” one who is “theologically tone deaf” yet goes to be seen. If I’m skeptical about that, it’s not only on Chabad but more than two thousand who aren’t). his non-Orthodox “shul every Shabbos.” the basis of my own experience but because I can’t This is, Wertheimer informs us, “more than double the number of active Conservative, Reform, and all other permutations of liberal rabbis combined.” We , and especially the leaders of the liberal denominations, ought to let this extraordinary fact sink in, when thinking about the future of American Jewry. These outreach workers are not garnering many full-fledged recruits (the ba’al teshuvah phenomenon remains a countercultural trickle in comparison to the wave of assimilation). However, Wertheimer contends on the basis of extensive interviews, this is not their main goal. They would just like the rest of us to be, somehow, better Jews, and they’re largely succeeding at that. “Kiruv [outreach] has become a powerful vehicle for re-engaging Jews with the non-Orthodox sectors of the community.” Here too the elite meet the folk more or less where they are, but they also unabash- edly represent a form of Judaism that demands much more than the Judaism of their liberal colleagues. This is no doubt good for the Jews, but it doesn’t answer the question of how much of a future there is, in the long run, for nonharedi Judaism in the United States. On this matter, I can’t pretend to be among the A beit midrash at Yeshiva University, New York City. (Courtesy of Yeshiva University.) optimists. I don’t want to admit that the game is over, though, even if the guys in the black uniforms do You don’t have a Jewish life in Princeton, New believe in the long-term survivability of any form look like the team that will eventually win. Jersey, if you aren’t part of a synagogue. You of Judaism in our modern liberal democracy that They certainly look a lot stronger than the team don’t meet people that you want to talk to, isn’t rooted in solid convictions and consolidated by with which I have come to feel the greatest affinity: the people that you can talk easily to about a disciplined and more or less segregated commu- Jewish scholars who study their ancestors’ culture whatever awful thing has happened in the nal life. and history intensively but lack the faith that held Middle East in the past week. I feel that’s a The Modern Orthodox possess both of these them together. That’s in part because we’re not re- necessary part of my life, but it doesn’t make things in good measure, and the ultra-Orthodox do so ally a team at all but a relatively small and scattered me a religious Jew. I cannot imagine a future for to an even larger degree, and will go on, for the most bunch of people who tend to be more concerned American Jews outside of the synagogue, and part, doing what they do. Some Jews who are much with research agendas than our collective destiny as that means that secular Jews have got to find a less rigorously religious may yet manage to sustain a minority. We might be closer than anybody else way of connecting to the tradition. a strong presence on the scene, but it is undeniable on the scene to what Horace Kallen hoped to see, that their overall numbers are shrinking. Those Jews but even if you add us together with all the ethni- It would be easy to admonish readers who want to who cannot quite say yes to God but cannot say no to cally conscious Jewish creative artists in this coun- help secure a Jewish future in the United States to fol- Jewish peoplehood will fit, a little uncomfortably, into try, I don’t think we’re making much progress in, to low in the footsteps of Lefkowitz, or at least of Walzer. some of these communities, perhaps coming to shul put things in Kallen’s terms again, “the realization of I’m afraid, however, that I can’t preach what I can’t infrequently and late, but, like Walzer, participating the distinctive individuality” of our people. For the promise to practice (consistently, anyhow). But that enthusiastically in the Jewish conversations at the kid- most part, we haven’t even tried. doesn’t mean that I can’t try to clarify things. In my dush. And the large majority of the rest of America’s As the more or less secular Jew I now am, I never- attempt to do so, I have drawn on the usual statistics Jews will in all likelihood (although not inevitably, as I theless agree with Jack Wertheimer that “aside from that reflect the extent of defection from Judaism and must remind myself), like millions of their predeces- anti-Semitic persecution, nothing is likely to play a Jewish life but also on the analyses of scholars like Bi- sors, disappear in the great American melting pot that larger role in determining the future of Jewish life in ale and Magid who highlight the fact that the Ameri- continues to bubble away. this country than the lived religion of ordinary Jews.” can melting pot is on the boil. What I do not share But can one take one’s place alongside religious Jews with my colleagues is the expectation that Zangwill’s just for this reason? People as different as Jay Lefkow- “crucible” will somehow produce new human alloys Allan Arkush is the senior contributing editor of the itz, who was a senior policy adviser in the adminis- who will be genuine and lasting heirs of the Jewish Jewish Review of Books and professor of Judaic studies tration of George W. Bush, and Michael Walzer, the past, even if they might seem shockingly un-Jewish at Binghamton University.

8 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 REVIEWS Sacrificial Speech

BY SHAI SECUNDA

nightmare of a slaughterhouse.” This is a polemical maybe they were stubbornly, heroically, denying Blood for Thought: The Reinvention of version of a common view, uttered often and with reality by studying sacrificial law as if the Temple Sacrifice in Early Rabbinic Literature conviction among polite company, and it is, to some continued to exist. Each of these arguments denies by Mira Balberg extent, historically accurate. The destruction of the the immensity and intensity of the Rabbis’ commit- University of California Press, 304 pp., $95 Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E. was a watershed moment to animal sacrifice and also the unvexed mood of their writings on the topic. The Rabbis of late antiquity Balberg’s solution to this problem is so elegant and subtle that, like Poe’s purloined letter, it was distilled the sacrificial act into a missed by generations of scholars. In her account, rofessor Andrew P. Cohen, the protago- the Rabbis continued to focus on animal sacrifice nist of Ruby Namdar’s recently translated sparse, almost modernist ritual. long after the Temple’s destruction since, cultur- novel The Ruined House, is a dapper chap ally speaking, there never was a complete rupture with the perfect daily ritual: He exercises ment in Jewish history that shifted the balance of requiring a reconstruction. Practically, of course, a consistently,P eats healthfully, and leads a seamless life power from the priests toward the Rabbis, so that believer could no longer pick herself up, ascend the of intellectual and material pleasure. Socially Jew- a public, priestly religion gave way to the more Temple Mount, and offer a turtle dove on the altar. ish and crowned with a priestly last name, Cohen is interior forms of worship and study that now char- But even when the Temple stood in all its glory, sac- unlettered in Hebrew and so unreligious he barely acterize Judaism. Guy Stroumsa has gone so far as rifice within its precincts was at best experienced makes it to synagogue on Yom Kippur. The only tem- sporadically, as many ple the good professor frequents is his own gleaming Jews lived at consid- Manhattan apartment, where he showily prepares erable distance from slabs of filet mignon for fancy dinner parties—a shad- Jerusalem. Both be- owy ancestral memory of sacrificial ritual. In time, fore—and after—its de- however, strange, primitive visions shock Andrew, struction, the Temple like a bolt out of the blue. Vexed from 20 centuries and animal sacrifice of stony sleep, the ancient Jerusalem Temple and held a commanding its messy sacrificial rite threaten the clean, modern presence in Jewish life edifice that Andrew—and modern Judaism—worked and imagination, and so hard to build. Then again, maybe the past is not as were ceaselessly invoked primitive as we think. in prayer, art, and reli- Just a few years after the publication of her gious study. If decades Purity, Body, and Self in Early Rabbinic Literature, Mira after the ruin of Jerusa- Balberg has somehow managed to write another lem the ancient Jewish path-breaking work on another formidable and ar- historian Flavius Jose- cane section of rabbinic literature—sacrificial law. phus could still write in Like her first monograph, which redescribed and the present tense “our reclaimed the complex and seemingly irrelevant rab- slaughter of tame ani- binic rules of purity, Blood for Thought: The Reinven- mals for sacrifices . . . is tion of Sacrifice in Early Rabbinic Literature shows common to us and to all how an ancient Jewish Temple rite persevered—nay, A sacrifice of two heifers. Detail from a fresco in the Crypt of St. Magnus, St. other men,” then rabbis flourished—for centuries after the Second Temple Mary Cathedral, Anagni, Italy, 13th century. (Courtesy of De Agostini Picture living a few decades lat- lay in ruins, its cultic theater shuttered. This was Library/A. Dagli Orti/Bridgeman Images.) er could legitimately lay again thanks to the Rabbis of late antiquity, who cut down the “order of the away the melodrama and distilled the sacrificial act to describe the Temple’s destruction as the singular sacrifice” in real time. Moreover, the distinction be- into a sparse, almost modernist ritual. In her recon- moment “that activated the slow—overly slow— tween ritual sacrifice to the Deity and kosher slaugh- struction of the rabbinic conception of sacrifice, Bal- transformation of religion to which we owe, among ter for regular meals was not always clear. Professor berg challenges the equation of sacrifice with heady other things, European culture.” Cohen’s dinner guests were onto something when romantic cultism and the idea that Judaism as we The problem with this theory is that the Rabbis they perceived “his single-minded intensity” as he know it—rabbinic Judaism—is an inherently post- cannot be classified as anti- or postsacrifice. Aside carved a roast, like “an avatar of an ancient hunter or sacrificial religion. Along the way,Blood for Thought from stray talmudic maxims elevating Torah study tribal shaman charged with sacrificing to the gods.” provokes much thought about the distinction be- over Temple service, the ancient Rabbis devoted an tween religious and secular rituals and ancient and enormous amount of their literary output to the acrifice held the interest of not only the late an- contemporary “high priests,” be they Second Temple careful study of sacrificial law. Modern scholars Scient Rabbis. It has also beguiled well-known Jerusalemites or 21st-century New Yorkers. have tried to argue away or reinterpret the impor- modern anthropologists, historians of religion, The book opens with a discussion of another tance of the evidence, insisting, for example, that the and Jewish studies scholars from Marcel Mauss modern Hebrew novel troubled by the tenacity of Rabbis were merely trying to appropriate priestly and René Girard to Moshe Halbertal. In trying to the Jewish sacrificial rite: “I don’t need a temple,” power by teaching the priestly rite or that their goal get to the core of the sacrificial act, these theorists opines a soldier in Haim Be’er’s The Time of Trim- was to transform physical offerings into prayer-like of sacrifice understand it as communication, pre- ming: “If the minister of education had appoint- recitations through study. Alternatively, some have meditated violence, or pious devotion. In so doing, ed me as a judge of the Israel Prize, I would give argued that the Rabbis were antiquarians preserving they have tended to focus on specific ritual actions the prize . . . to Titus Vespasian who with the aid a lost rite before it faded away in the mists of time, to support their theses, such as entering and exiting of Heaven liberated us once and for all from this or—and this is really an argument of last resort— sacred space (communication), the slaughter of the

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 9 animal (violence), or its dedication (devotion), while physical offerings moot. For their part, the Rabbis haredi rosh yeshiva Eliezer Menachem Shach liked ignoring other parts of the sacrificial process. responded that sacrifices remained consequential, to quote Pharaoh’s criticism of the Israelites in this Blood for Thought’s main contribution is to show not in order to fulfill a divine appetite for flesh, but connection: “You are weak, weak! That is why you how despite the Rabbis’ preservation of animal sacri- rather to communicate a central halakhic value— say, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the LORD’” (Ex. 5:17). fice as an ongoing cultural paradigm, there was also a that fulfilling mitzvot fastidiously is, as Ecclesiastes Although it goes against the standards of shift away from the past. The Rabbis may not have re- put it, “the sum of Man.” academic dispassion, it would have been interesting vived sacrifice, but they did thoroughly reinvent it by if Blood for Thought had included some reflection excising anything “sacrificial”—that is, giving some- on the potential meaning of sacrifice for contempo- thing up for a higher entity—from Jewish sacrifice. A believer could no longer pick rary Judaism, including its non-Orthodox varieties. They consistently downplayed the roles of human herself up, ascend the Temple One of the most interesting characters in Namdar’s giver and divine recipient by rendering emotion- The Ruined House is Rabbi Abby Rosenthal, who ally charged moments like the laying of hands on the Mount, and offer a turtle dove devotes the Yom Kippur sermon in her Reform animal and the sacred consumption of the flesh on congregation to the day’s sacrifices—the “theat- the altar as ritually inconsequential. Even the violent on the altar. rical performance staged every year” in ancient spectacle of the sacred butchery was de-emphasized. Jerusalem. Rather than reacting with drooping What remained was a stark, entirely procedural act, Balberg is astoundingly erudite and unfailingly eyelids and stolen snores, the congregation is en- termed “the work of blood,” consisting of precise interesting, but, like most contemporary works thralled as Rabbi Rosenthal relates her excitement movements and the perfect concentration of name- of academic Jewish studies, Blood for Thought upon rediscovering the details of the sacrificial rite, less priests, wherein the chief “drama”—if we can call does not address contemporary Jews as much as which her rationalist predecessors had rejected: it such—was the flawless fulfillment of ritual obliga- it could, nor does it engage with traditional rab- tions which almost miraculously transformed parts binic scholarship. Had Balberg written a longer, “Our text for today was deleted from the prayer of the slayed animal from forbidden to permitted. different book, she might have traced more recent books that you and I grew up with by the Balberg shows how the Rabbis addressed issues reinventions of rabbinic sacrifice. One prominent nineteenth century. This year I rediscovered it. that had been raised earlier but took on a new im- example is the role this highly abstract discourse Its aesthetics, structure, texture are as fascinating portance during late antiquity, the period stretching played in the development of the Lithuanian ana- as are its contents. It’s old, strange, fascinating, roughly from Rome’s crisis of empire until the Mus- lytical school—a trend studied by the Lithuanian- inspiring. It moves me greatly to share it with lim conquests, which saw many religious transfor- born Israeli Supreme Court judge Moshe Zilberg, you. It’s called”— she pronounced the words mations, including the “end of sacrifice” throughout who argued that it provided a valuable prov- in Hebrew, in a deep, musical, guttural voice— the Mediterranean world. In response to the age-old ing ground for a form of Jewish legal reasoning “Seder ha-Avodah, Order of the Ritual.” challenge of why an omnipotent god would require that could be adapted to modern legal discourse. sacrifices to begin with, some pagan writers enthu- Opposing Eastern European schools of Talmud study siastically embraced the abandonment of sacrifices. rejected this focus and considered the Lithuanian Shai Secunda is the Jacob Neusner Associate Professor of Others, like the Church Father Clement, developed lamdanim lazy in their preference for the abstract, Judaism at Bard College, where he teaches in the religion an old allegorical understanding that rendered the impractical discourse of sacrifice. The late, leading department.

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10 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 Maimonides, Stonehenge, and Newton’s Obsessions

BY MATT GOLDISH

Indeed, in the early 19th century it was explained famous essay published a decade after the purchase, Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of away as being the result of some kind of mental Keynes wrote: Isaac Newton breakdown. This attitude didn’t really change until by Rob Iliffe historians began to systematically read Newton’s pa- In the eighteenth century and since, Newton th Oxford University Press, 536 pp., $34.95 pers in the 20 century. came to be thought of as the first and greatest of Newton had left these papers to his niece, Cath- the modern age of scientists, a rationalist, one erine Conduitt, but they sat in the family home all who taught us to think on the lines of cold and but unread until the end of the 19th century, when untinctured reason. hilosophers and theologians during the It takes a bit of a genius to successfully study a genius; in this age of the scientific revolution commonly believed that God reveals himself through case one must first master the millions of words Newton wrote both the Book of Scripture and the Book Pof Nature. Both books are coy with their secrets, about natural theology, doctrine, prophecy, and church history. but they can be coaxed out by the truly wise. These secrets can never really conflict because they were the mathematical papers were donated to Cam- I do not see him in this light. I do not think that written by the same author. What many take as the bridge, and the papers from his tenure at the Royal any one who has pored over the contents of that conflict between religion and science during that Mint went to the Public Record Office. No one, box which he packed up . . . in 1696 . . . can see age is a later invention of the Enlightenment. In the however, was interested in the voluminous collec- him like that. Newton was not the first of the 16th and 17th centuries the issue was more about who tion of theological, historical, and alchemical manu- age of reason. He was the last of the magicians. had the authority to reconcile scripture with nature. Although Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist Keynes was also the first to propose an influence of of the age, spent as much time and intellectual en- Judaism on Newton’s theology, suggesting that New- ergy on scripture as he did on nature, he kept this ton was really “a Judaic monotheist of the school of work a closely guarded secret. Indeed, Rob Iliffe Maimonides” rather than a Socinian or any other begins his comprehensive new book on Newton’s kind of radical antitrinitarian Protestant. religious thought, Priest of Nature: The Religious When the Yahuda papers were first made avail- Worlds of Isaac Newton, with an exchange of letters able at the Jewish National and University Library between Newton and Robert Hooke, the secretary in Jerusalem in the late 1960s, David Castillejo, a of the Royal Society. Hooke asked Newton about his Cambridge scholar who had carefully studied the views on recent scientific work, and Newton replied Keynes collection at Cambridge, came to Israel and that he had become disillusioned with such work wrote up a rough typescript catalog of the Yahuda and was concentrating on his “other studies.” material. This document, kept in a back room of the library, was for decades the best guide to New- What . . . was the content of these “other ton’s theological and historical manuscripts. When studies”? Most of his colleagues at Trinity my teacher Richard H. Popkin came to Jerusalem College, Cambridge, were aware that he was to investigate the collection, Castillejo’s catalog led devoted to his “chymical” (i.e., chemical and him to Newton’s notes on Maimonides. Ultimately, I alchemical) investigations, but they also knew think Popkin somewhat misstated Maimonides’s in- that he was an exceptionally serious student of fluence on Newton (a matter to which I will return), religion. His outward behavior indicated that he but their work, together with Frank Manuel’s little was an “intire”—that is, a devout—Christian, a 1974 classic on Newton’s religion (The Religion of fine and upstanding member of the Church of Portrait of Isaac Newton by Sir Godfrey Kneller, Isaac Newton) and Richard Westfall’s massive 1980 England . . . However, by the time Hooke’s letter 1689. (Courtesy of Uckfield House, Uckfield, biography (Never at Rest), inspired a generation of arrived, Newton was harboring a terrible secret. GB. Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library/ scholars. He believed that the central Christian doctrine Alamy Photo.) In 1991, the Chadwyck-Healey publishing of the Trinity was a diabolical fraud. company put out a microfilm collection of all the scripts—not Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, or the Brit- known Newton manuscripts, a staggering 43 reels As Iliffe emphasizes, these views were not lightly ish Library. In 1936 Viscount Lymington, who had of microfilm. Less than a decade later the Newton held, nor were they idiosyncratic opinions that inherited the remaining papers, sold them at public Project began the enormous enterprise of scanning Newton only developed late in life (he was 36 when auction. A number of these papers were scattered and transcribing all of Newton’s known works. Iliffe, Hooke wrote to him). Rather, “they lay at the heart among private individuals or institutions, but the a professor of history at Oxford University, headed of a massive research programme on prophecy and great economist Lord John Maynard Keynes and a the project, which means that for at least two de- church history” that was “in his eyes, at least as ‘ra- quirky, contentious Bible scholar named Abraham cades he spent hours every day reading Newton. It tional’ as his work on physics and mathematics.” Shalom Yahuda bought major lots, thus preserving takes a bit of a genius to successfully study a genius, Although something was always known of New- much of the material in two collections. and in this case one must first master the millions of ton’s theology (he discussed it, albeit obscurely, in Keynes was a perceptive reader, and he quickly words the great man wrote about natural theology, the essay called the “General Scholium” attached to saw that Newton was more complicated than the doctrine, prophecy, and church history. the second and third editions of the Principia), and Enlightenment hero of Alexander Pope’s famous Iliffe does a great deal more than that. He places more of it became clear after his death, it was ig- couplet (“Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: these writings in illuminating historical context, nored or minimized for more than two centuries. / God said, ‘Let Newton be!’ and all was light”). In a creating order out of a dizzying mass of primary and

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 11 secondary literature. The result is an entirely new traced the symbols of Revelation—trumpets, seas, ewton also studied Kabbalah in translation perspective on several areas of Newton’s thought, seals, books, priests, and so on—to motifs inspired Nand has occasionally—and erroneously— including his scientific work, as well as a beauti- by what the prophet saw as he walked around the been described as a kind of Christian kabbalist, but fully ordered trek through Newton’s religious ideas. Temple. This Temple was also a model for the true his interest in Kabbalah is an odder and more char- His study is eye-opening for Newton scholars, but Church and would be rebuilt at the End of Days. He acteristically Newtonian story than that. Certain it also introduces nonspecialists to the intellectual left several drawings of the Temple (with his own Christians had found Kabbalah to be congenial to and religious world of perhaps the greatest scientist idiosyncratic Newtonian layout) as well as numer- their own theologies since the days of the Renais- in history. ous written passages concerning its importance. sance humanist Count Giovanni Pico della Miran- dola. Newton’s teacher and n the early 1990s I wrote a doctoral disserta- friend, the Cambridge Pla- Ition about Newton and Judaism at the Hebrew tonist Henry More, wrote a University of Jerusalem. The great American Jew- fair amount about “Cabala” ish physicist Herbert Goldstein was living in Jeru- in this general vein, but it salem at the time and somehow heard about my turned out that he knew work. After reading it he said, “I was expecting next to nothing about the more about how Newton learned his principles thing itself. His version of from Maimonides or about his researches on the the esoteric Jewish tradi- mathematics of the sacred cubit. I wasn’t expecting tion derived mainly from so much Christian theology!” Newton had studied his own imagination. Then, Jewish texts with great care in the construction of between 1677 and 1685, an his massive religious works. He consulted Josephus enormous compendium of Flavius, Maimonides, the Mishnah and Talmud, genuine kabbalistic writ- and even works of the Kabbalah, but he really was ings in Latin translation, a radical Christian who acknowledged Jesus as the the Kabbala Denudata, Son of God. He just insisted that the son could not was published by Christian be conflated with the father. In fact, he thought Je- Isaac Newton’s diagram of part of the Temple of Solomon, from The Chronology Knorr von Rosenroth. Sud- of Ancient Kingdoms, published in London, 1728. sus had been sent into the world to cleanse it of pre- denly European scholars cisely such idolatrous suggestions, and he turned from John Locke to Lady Anne Conway were inter- to the Hebrew Bible and Jewish sources, in part, ested in Jewish mysticism. to reconstruct the original monotheism of Noah The critical moment for Newton occurred when and the Israelite religion which succeeded it—and his arch-rival Leibniz began incorporating Kabbal- to understand the conceptual errors that led to ah into his thought. It was, in fact, Leibniz’s under- idolatry. standing of God’s influence on the world through Newton’s obsession with the corruption of the the medium of the sephirot that set Newton off. This early church by pagan metaphysics led him in- was part of Leibniz’s belief in a plenum (no vacuum exorably to the historical question of the origin of in physical space) and his attack on Newton’s gravi- idolatry. Here it was Maimonides’s Hilkhot avodah tational theory. Newton got a copy of the Kabbala zara (Laws of Idolatry), in the 1641 translation of Denudata, read it voraciously, dog-earing the pages Dionysius Vossius, that provided Newton and many as he went, and launched his counterattack. Kab- others with a useful historical schema. Maimonides balah, he argued, was precisely one of those pagan famously described how early people slipped from theories that had first infected Judaism with idola- worship of the one true God to worship of his reti- trous ideas, and then, through converted Jews, in- nue—the sun, moon, and stars—which led to the troduced these corruptions into Christianity. occlusion of the divine and the corruption of wor- Some of Newton’s Jewish reading makes its way ship. Newton also found this view in contempo- into Iliffe’s book, but not much. Perhaps it was a rary authors, such as John Spencer, John Selden, smaller corner of Newton’s vast theological and and Robert Boyle, who themselves drew upon Abraham Shalom Yahuda. (Courtesy of the historical enterprise than many of us, from Keynes Maimonides (Iliffe only glancingly mentions their Abraham Shalom Yahuda Archive, The to Popkin and his students, have been tempted to Maimonidean source). National Library of Israel, Jerusalem.) think. Then again, during my years working on Newton held that before the corruption of the these manuscripts, Jewish sources and ideas seemed original pristine religion, a scientific priesthood Indeed, despite Keynes’s clever hunch and Pop- to be constantly turning up. Another reason may be maintained both theological and natural truths, kin’s interesting hypotheses, Newton’s notes on that Iliffe tends to focus on Newton’s religious writ- though these were largely hidden from the masses. In Maimonides mainly concern the laws of the Temple ings from the 1670s through the 1690s, while more particular, the priests knew that the sun and not the (hilkhot beit ha-behirah) rather than theology (he material about Jews and Judaism appears in later earth was the center of their universe; hence, ancient didn’t even own the Latin translation of The Guide manuscripts, particularly those from around 1710. temples from Stonehenge to the Temple in Jerusalem of the Perplexed). As Iliffe remarks a number of Whatever the level of Newton’s interest in Judaica, were organized around perpetual fires that represent- times, Newton went shopping for facts or informa- he was never interested in actual Jews, who had been ed the sun. These temples themselves stood for the tion he needed to fill out his own historical theories. tacitly readmitted to England after almost four hun- solar system, a kind of “symbol of the world.” Here, Thus, Mishnah Middot, Josephus, and Maimonides, dred years of exile during his youth. A learned Jew too, Newton drew upon many sources which regard- which he read in recent Latin translations, were all named Isaac Abendana taught Hebrew at Cambridge ed so-called vestal worship as central to ancient reli- grist for the mill of his unique Temple researches. and knew many of Newton’s contemporaries, in- gion. (Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth, was There were, to be sure, other areas in which New- cluding John Locke, Henry More, and Robert Boyle. personified by fire.) However, as Iliffe writes, “New- ton consulted Jewish sources. When he was asked Although Newton read his books, he never strolled ton fully Copernicanised the notion and claimed that to carry out investigations on the history of the across the campus to meet him. it was through the vestal religion that the Ancients calendar during early considerations of its reform worshipped the Temple of the true God.” around the turn of the 18th century, Newton con- The tabernacle and the two Jerusalem Temples sulted Maimonides’s Hilkhot kiddush ha-chodesh Matt Goldish holds the Samuel M. and Esther Melton were of deep interest to Newton for another reason. (Laws of the Sanctification of the New Moon). The Chair in Jewish History at the Ohio State University. He read the mysterious Revelation of St. John as be- Maimonides references remained in the drafts up He is the author of Judaism in the Theology of Sir Isaac ing physically set in the Temple precinct. Newton to, but not including, the final version. Newton (Kluwer) and several other works.

12 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 No Empty Place

BY YITZHAK Y. MELAMED

shortly before his death. In the letter, the Gaon com- Indeed, when the philosopher Salomon Maimon Nefesh HaTzimtzum: Rabbi Chaim Volozhin’s pared the Hasidic leaders to the worshipers of the wrote his famous autobiography some 20 years after Nefesh HaChaim with Translation and golden calf and described the movement as a cult of having visited the early Hasidic court of the Mag- Commentary (Volume 1) gid of Mezheritch, he coined the term “acosmism” translation and commentary by Avinoam Fraenkel Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin to describe the Maggid’s teaching that only God Urim Publications, 811 pp., $34.95 truly exists, while the world we experience is mere famously argued for the supreme appearance—and ascribed it to Spinoza as well. Nefesh HaTzimtzum: Understanding Nefesh Following Rabbi Avidgor’s complaint, several HaChaim through the Key Concept of value of “Torah lishmah,” or Hasidic leaders in the Russian Empire, including Tzimtzum and Related Writings (Volume 2) Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of translation and commentary by Avinoam Fraenkel Torah study for its own sake. Chabad Hasidism, were arrested and interrogated. Urim Publications, 757 pp., $31 The Russian authorities concluded that the com- “every tree and every stone,” through their misread- plaint was part of an intra-Jewish dispute of little ing of Ezekiel 3:12: “Blessed be the Glory of God from interest to them and of no legal merit. His Place,” and their radical understanding of the n May 11, 1772, when the rabbinic and notion that God is the place of the world. he most substantial theoretical response to lay leaders of Vilna announced the first The rift between the Hasidim and their THasidism from a leader of the mitnagdic— major ban (herem) against the so-called opponents was further exacerbated in the spring literally, opposition—movement did not appear new Hasidim, they were charged with of 1800 when Rabbi Avigdor of Pinsk, a disciple of until 1824, three years after the passing of its Odisrespect toward talmidei hakhamim (rabbinic scholars), laxity about the proper times of prayer, and bizarre ecstatic prayer practices, including somer- saults. The herem described the Hasidim as wicked, and their odd ritual behavior as typical of “abominable heretics [ke-to’evot ha-apikorsim].” Indeed, the movement was, according to its accusers, virtually an attempt to found a new religion, but, strikingly, no strictly theological accusations were made. In particular, the mitnagdim, or rabbinic opposition, did not object to the Hasidic view of God’s relation to the universe. Though the Hasidim were panthe- ists (or panentheists) through and through, raising this accusation was of little potency, since variants of pantheism had been openly and enthusiastically endorsed, not only by numerous kabbalists, but also by other major medieval Jewish authorities, such as Solomon ibn Gabirol and Abraham ibn Ezra. While in Western Christendom the Church establishment repeatedly and harshly condemned pantheism as either heresy or idolatry, things were very different in the Jewish sphere. Relying on the equality of the numeric values (gematria) of the Hebrew words for God (Elokim) and nature (teva), medieval and early modern kabbalists often asserted their shared iden- The Volozhin Yeshiva by Anatoly Nalivaev, 1964. tity. Remarks such as “He is everything, and in Him is Everything [Hu ha-kol, u’vo ha-kol]” or “God fills all the Gaon, filed a complaint against the Hasidim to author, Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin. Nefesh Ha- the worlds and encompasses all the worlds [memale the Russian tsar, Paul I, which alleged theological as Chaim, which plays on the author’s name in char- kol almin ve-sovev kol almin]” are commonplace in well as political impropriety among Hasidic lead- acteristic rabbinic fashion and means “The Life’s medieval and early modern rabbinic literature. ers. In the complaint, Rabbi Avigdor cited a passage Soul,” is a masterpiece of the Lithuanian-mitnagdic While pantheism was certainly not a Hasidic from the writings of Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef, according outlook. Rabbi Chaim, who was widely consid- innovation, some early Hasidic writers were to which man should aspire to merge himself com- ered the Gaon’s closest disciple, established the il- extremely daring in stating their views. Thus, Rabbi pletely with God during prayer. If this were possible, lustrious Volozhin Yeshiva, which would become Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye, one of the closest disciples Rabbi Avigdor quipped, the Hasidim “should have the model for most other modern Lithuanian ye- of Hasidism’s founder, the Ba’al Shem Tov, rather become immortal.” Unlike in the 1772 condemna- shivot, in 1802. His book famously argued for the shockingly asserted that since God completely tion of Hasidism, the issue of pantheism took on a supreme value of “Torah lishmah,” or Torah study fills all the worlds, every idol must too be divine. significant role in Rabbi Avigdor’s complaint. In- for its own sake, and remains a key text in modern Nonetheless, the accusation that Hasidic panthe- terestingly the theological absurdities he found in yeshivot even if, as Avinoam Fraenkel notes in the ism amounted to nothing short of gross idolatry this position were strikingly reminiscent of early introduction to his massive new annotated bilin- did not appear until 1796, in a public letter written 18th-century condemnations of Spinoza’s equa- gual edition, it is often read rather selectively, with by Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna, the famous Vilna Gaon, tion of God and nature by Pierre Bayle and others. little emphasis on its kabbalistic theology.

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 13 Rabbi Chaim had a mild disposition, and the attitude of Nefesh HaChaim toward the Hasidim was very different from the harsh late 18th-century attacks of his great teacher and colleagues. In fact, BRANDEIS there is no explicit mention of Hasidism or Hasid- ic texts in Nefesh HaChaim. Nonetheless, it is clear that he is working through the same set of theolog- UNIVERSITY PRESS ical issues, nor can one mistake the object of Rabbi Pennies for Black Power, Chaim’s critique when, for instance, he criticizes Heaven Jewish those whose spiritual preparations for prayer lead them to pray long after the halakhically set time. The History Politics One may even discern a not inconsiderable sense of American Reinventing of irony in his comparison of this practice to the Synagogues the Alliance behavior of a person “who blows Shofar with tre- and Money in the 1960s mendous fervor on Seder Night . . . or one who eats Daniel Judson Marc Dollinger the olive quantity of matzah on Rosh Hashana.” Still, the tone of Rabbi Chaim’s critique is far from personal, and although his main polemical target has been taken by many to be Rabbi Schneur Zal- man of Liadi and his book Likutei Amarim, popu- larly known as the Tanya, neither he nor any other Hasidic leader or text are ever mentioned directly. “Judson has a superb sense for when to let the “This book will significantly change how we Rabbi Chaim’s stance toward the relationship financial figures speak and when to let the view the American Jewish 1960s and their between God and the world in Nefesh HaChaim people speak, with their anxieties, assumptions, aftermath.” is intriguing, and it is of central concern to Fraen- joys, and hopes. He casts a whole new light on Shaul Magid, Indiana University, kel. In one passage, Rabbi Chaim comes close to American Jewish religious history.” Bloomington and Shalom Hartman the Hasidic assertion that only God exists and that James Hudnut-Beumler, Institute of North America the finite things of the universe are nullified with- Vanderbilt Divinity School in it, but at the very last moment, he seems to pull back: “God is the Soul and the Ultimate Source Modern Jewish Legal of the power and life force which [all the worlds] French Theories receive from Him . . . just like a soul is distribut- Jewish Writings on ed within a person’s body—for even though it is Thought State, Religion, distributed within each specific part of him, it and Morality nevertheless cannot be said that the body is nullified Writings to it in a way that it appears not to exist at all.” on Religion Edited by Leora Yet, just a few pages later, Rabbi Chaim writes and Politics Batnitzky and in a manner that is almost indistinguishable from a Yonatan Brafman Edited by Sarah Hasidic approach while discussing God as the place Hammerschlag (makom) of the universe. (Here, incidentally, I will reproduce Fraenkel’s unusual bullet-point approach to making the Nefesh HaChaim’s often run-on, sometimes digressive sentences accessible to Eng- “The well-chosen texts in this carefully edited “This rich, fascinating volume shows Jewish lish readers.) volume highlight the uniqueness of the legal thought in dialogue with modernity, French Jewish experience.” from the nation-state to reproductive • but it is also appropriate and fitting that with his technology, feminism, and beyond.” will [a person] should completely nullify all the Maurice Samuels, author of The Right to powers of the supernal and lower worlds, and Difference: French Universalism and the Jews Noah Feldman, Harvard Law School also his own powers/abilities, to the extent that it appears [to him] that they do not exist . . . The Road to Haifa September City of Steps • and that he should concentrate his heart in prayer 1939 Nili Scharf Gold only on the Makom [place] of the Universe alone, that He is the Unified One, the Infinite One, Who Polish Jews, fills All of this world, and all of the worlds, and Zionists, and the that there is no place devoid of Him. Yishuv on the Eve of World War II This sounds very much like the Hasidic approach Jehuda Reinharz to prayer, but in a parenthetical passage I have elid- and Yaacov ed, Rabbi Chaim characteristically adds that one Shavit should aspire to this state of consciousness during study as well as prayer. In doing so he quotes a talmudic passage that says, “Words of Torah are only “Well-researched and pathbreaking.” “Haifa symbolizes Israeli normalcy at its best, and sustained with one who considers himself to not Antony Polonsky, Museum of the History this important book proves it convincingly.” exist.” The talmudic sage Rabbi Yochanan was play- of Polish Jews in Warsaw A. B. Yehoshua ing on a verse of Job to make a psychological point about humility rather than a metaphysical one about the illusion of worldly existence, but Fraenkel is www.upne.com/brandeis.html | 800-421-1561 | @UPNEBooks right to translate it this way in the context of Nefesh HaChaim. Indeed, for Rabbi Chaim, it is this loss

14 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 of self in the act of Torah study, rather than prayer- the same process. In particular, according to Fraen- In an interesting author’s note, Fraenkel writes that ful rapture, which is the highest and most sublime kel, the Hasidic masters, including Rabbi Schneur he began the book in general agreement with this human activity. Zalman of Liadi, on the one hand, and the Gaon and approach, until he met a prominent Jerusalem kab- Rabbi Chaim, on the other, all agreed that the cor- balist named Rabbi Moshe Schatz: or both Rabbi Chaim and his Hasidic oppo- rect understanding of divine self-limitation was tzim- Fnents, the mystery of how an infinite divine tzum she-lo ke-pshuto. That is, God entirely filled the The highlight of my interactions with R. Schatz being created a finite physical world is answered universe both before and after creation. Fraenkel’s was a marathon private study session about by the 16th-century kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria’s argument for harmony among authorities on these one year after starting to write this section, in doctrine of tzimtzum, or divine self-limitation. As matters is too intricate to examine in detail here, but which I sat in amazement, witnessing him being Fraenkel writes near the beginning of his 757-page he also quotes the great 20th-century rabbinic ethicist inspired by a new understanding that finally second volume, which is almost entirely given over Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler that “in this generation fully and very clearly explained that no real to explicating the place of this idea in Nefesh Ha- in which there is a need to unite . . . it is fitting to pub- underlying difference on this topic ever existed. Chaim and documenting its sources, the concept of licize the fact that there are no differences of opinion tzimtzum “explains how it can be that the existence in the essence” of the concept of tzimtzum. The first of the eight traditional rabbinic approba- of an All Permeating and Infinite God is totally As it happens, I do not share this desire for theo- tions which preface Fraenkel’s edition of Nefesh concealed from us in this physical world.” logical consensus, nor do I think that such unity is HaChaim is from Rabbi Schatz, the next six are from In the celebrated formulation of Luria’s student required by the rabbinic world view. If on simple well-known Orthodox rabbis, and the last is from Rabbi Chaim Vital, before the creation of the world and trivial matters of fact, unanimity is a reason Professor Jonathan Garb, a distinguished scholar of “the sublime and simple light filled all of reality.” for disqualifying a ruling in rabbinic court, I see no Kabbalah at the Hebrew University. It is a work of reason to require it on issues that may well tran- both real piety and ingenious scholarship. There was no empty place or vacant space, but scend our cognitive capacities. (Both the Tower of Fraenkel is a computer scientist by training and everything was filled by that simple light . . . Babel and the cult of the golden calf were the out- profession as well as an independent scholar, and then, the Ein-Sof [the Infinite] contracted itself comes of unity.) it would be hard to overestimate the amount of in- at the very central point, and contracted that Nonetheless Fraenkel’s attempt to harmonize tellectual effort, courage, precision, and diligence light to surround the central point, and left an the apparently conflicting views on the tzimtzum is invested in these two volumes. Books such as this empty place and a vacant space . . . in which all highly valuable. In the first place, Fraenkel’s claim are rare, but if I may quote the words of another the worlds were emanated, created, and formed. is well argued and meticulously grounded in the God-seeking Jew: “All things excellent are as diffi- sources, and thus deserves serious consideration. cult as they are rare.” The precise meaning of this striking description Second, Fraenkel’s reading goes against the main was the subject of learned and subtle controversy trend of interpretation in both the academic world among early modern kabbalists. Some conceived it of Kabbalah studies and that of Chabad historiog- Yitzhak Y. Melamed holds the Charlotte Bloomberg as a more or less literal description, affirming that raphy, which follows the last Lubavitcher Rebbe in Chair in Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He the creation of space truly vacant from God, a kind of stressing the opposition between Rabbi Schneur is the author of Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and spiritual vacuum, was a necessary condition for the Zalman of Liadi and Rabbi Chaim on tzimtzum. Thought (Oxford University Press). creation of the world. Among this school of literal interpretation of the doctrine (“tzimtzum ke-pshuto”) one finds Rabbi Immanuel Hai Ricchi, Rabbi Jona- than Eybeschutz, Rabbi Jacob Emden, and, according to some, even Rabbi Chaim’s master, the Vilna Gaon. In contrast to this school, Rabbi Joseph Irgas, Rabbi Abraham Cohen Herrera, and virtually every Ha- sidic master adopted a nonliteral reading of the doctrine (“tzimtzum she-lo ke-pshuto”), arguing that the divine contraction before creation was only apparent and that truly God never withdrew from any part art of reality. photogr aphy In situating Nefesh HaChaim within this kab- architecture balistic discussion, Fraenkel has already done his modernism judaica & bibles primary audience—who are likely to be, like him, holocaust members of the modern-day, English-speaking ye- yiddish & hebrew shiva world—a great service. For, as noted, these foreign language readers and others have tended to read Rabbi olympic games Chaim’s treatise so selectively and with so little appraisal services understanding of its kabbalistic terms of art that JACOB STEINHARDT: WOODCUTS they have generally taken it to be a work of pious Steinhardt, Jacob; F. Schiff (introduction). Jerusalem: Jerusalem Art Publishing exhortations to study more Talmud, rather than a Company, ca 1952. Bound folio reproducing 57 woodcuts subtle work of mystical theology. (It is almost as (some printed on tinted paper), 16 in color. if an entire modern intellectual culture were to All from 1911–1952, a period which encompasses the end of Steinhardt’s grow up around, say, Pico della Mirandola’s Ora- student days (with Secessionist teachers Lovis Corinth and Hermann Struck, also tion on the Dignity of Man, without ever bother- Matisse), cofounding the German ing to learn anything about Plato or Renaissance Expressionist group Die Pathetiker (with its emphasis on pathos), sketching in Lithuania Neoplatonists.) during WWI as a German soldier, establishing a successful school of painting Fraenkel’s main thesis in the second volume is in Jerusalem, and the six years he served as chairman of the graphics department at quite bold. He argues that “the main protagonists Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts (before in the Tzimtzum debate all actually agreed on the becoming its director in 1953). Renowned for strong, expressive woodcuts and his underlying concept.” What have come to be seen as use of color (applied by hand before printing), Steinhardt’s themes are bible rival and opposed interpretations of tzimtzum are stories, Judaism, portraiture, grotesque merely a result of the misunderstanding of certain monsters, nature and the landscape. (39093) $950 crucial terms and a lack of appreciation of the merely Jonah cast out of the whale. (horizontal) perspectival diversity of descriptions of one and

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 15 The Founder of Jewish Studies

BY MICHAH GOTTLIEB

“the human as the agent of history.” Second, while consequences or to be a disinterested “academic” Leopold Zunz: Creativity in Adversity rabbinic literature regularly interprets the Bible pursuit studied purely for its own sake? The histo- by Ismar Schorsch anachronistically, the approach Zunz founded puts rian Isaak Markus Jost, Zunz’s childhood friend, University of Pennsylvania Press, 344 pp., $65 “chronology at its crux,” stressing the need to place claimed that Zunz’s scholarship was free from prac- historical events in a careful temporal sequence. tical concerns, and this claim has been repeated While traditional scholarship focused on a small number of n December 2018 more than a thousand authoritative texts, Zunz insisted upon regarding philosophical Jewish studies scholars will gather in Boston to attend the 50th annual conference of the texts, Hebrew grammars, fables, wills, and memoirs as primary Association for Jewish Studies (AJS). At the gathering it will surely be noted that 2018 marks sources of Jewish knowledge. I th not just the 50 anniversary of AJS but also the 200th anniversary of the field. In 1818, a 23-year- Third, while most Jewish writers of the past relied by many writers, most famously the philosopher old university student named Leopold Zunz pub- nearly exclusively on Jewish texts for knowledge Hermann Cohen, who quipped that Zunz “could lished a 30-page essay with the modest title “On about Jewish law, ideas, and history, Zunz’s Jew- have been a great historian, but was alas only an Rabbinic Literature.” ish studies “emphasizes the validity of non-Jewish antiquarian.” Ismar Schorsch, himself a great his- Zunz could never have dreamed of his impact. sources.” Finally, while traditional scholarship torian, aims to overturn that judgment. In fact, of A year after publishing “On Rabbinic Literature” focused on a relatively small number of authoritative the three volumes of Zunz’s Gesammelte Schriften he cofounded the Society for the Culture and Sci- (Collected Writings), published 1875–1876, only entific Study of the Jews (Verein für Cultur und one volume is devoted to “hard-core scholarship.” Wissenschaft der Juden), establishing the first Jewish The other two contain writings directed to the Ger- studies research institute and the first Jewish studies man public advocating Jewish emancipation and journal. Although only three issues of the journal speeches and sermons to the Jewish community. were published, and within four and a half years As Schorsch persuasively argues, “for Zunz the life the society had disbanded, Zunz always regarded of the mind and his frequent forays into the public it as a great, almost messianic project. In 1839, he arena were inseparable.” wrote a friend that “the Verein survived 39X40 days, and those days in which Gans, Moser, Heine, Zunz eopold Zunz was born on August 10, 1794, and Rubo, ignoring their own welfare, devoted Lin the “tiny German earldom” of Lippe. His themselves wholly to the interests of their people— father died in 1802, and the young boy was sent were they not more comely than our own day with to board at a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish yeshiva its heartless self-centeredness?” Part of the “self- in Wolfenbüttel, whose curriculum, like that of centeredness” to which he referred was the oppor- virtually all such schools, focused almost entirely tunistic conversion to Christianity of his erstwhile on intensive Talmud study. Zunz later described comrades-in-arms the poet Heinrich Heine and the school as chaotic and filthy and the teachers Eduard Gans. Gans, who had been president of as cruel and ignorant. But in 1807 Samuel Meyer the society and a leading student of Hegel, was Ehrenberg was appointed as the school inspector appointed associate professor of law at the Univer- and modernized the school in line with the educa- sity of Berlin promptly after his conversion. tional principles of the Jewish Enlightenment (Has- Zunz himself repeatedly lobbied for a professor- kalah). Schorsch quotes Zunz’s exuberant reaction ship in Jewish studies at a German university but to this change: “We literally went in a single day had no success. The first such professorship was only from the Middle Ages to a new day, and likewise created after the Holocaust, yet today virtually ev- Portrait of Leopold Zunz, age 49, by Gustav from a state of Jewish slavery to civil freedom.” Heidenreich. (Courtesy of the National Library ery major American, German, and Israeli university In 1815 Zunz enrolled at the recently established of Israel and Professor Haggai Ben Shammai, has a Jewish studies program. Jewish studies faculty University of Berlin, where he studied history and Academic Director of the National Library of can be found at universities around the world, from philology. His teachers included the leading Greco- Israel.) Tokyo to Tuscaloosa. So, it is fortunate that at this his- Roman historian of the day, Friedrich August Wolf, toric moment Ismar Schorsch, the chancellor emeri- preeminent Bible critic W. M. L. De Wette, and “me- tus of the Jewish Theological Seminary, has given us texts, primarily the Bible, rabbinic literature, and dievalist and student of Nordic myths” Friedrich the first English-language biography of Zunz. The legal codes, Zunz insisted upon regarding philo- Rühs. But Zunz stopped studying with Rühs when product of painstaking archival research, meticulous sophical texts, Hebrew grammars, fables, wills, and the latter published On the Demands by Jews for analysis, and illuminating synthesis, Schorsch’s book memoirs—whether published or in manuscript—as German Citizenship. Rühs argued that Jews could is a staggering scholarly achievement. primary sources of Jewish knowledge. not be citizens due to their moral corruption and Schorsch identifies four main assumptions that Traditional Jewish study was never a purely theo- self-segregation. He blamed Judaism for these mor- guided Zunz’s revolutionary approach to Jewish retical pursuit. It was always meant to shape and al failings, concluding that Jews could be eligible for knowledge. First, while traditional texts often as- suffuse Jewish life. What of the new Jewish studies? citizenship only after converting. cribe events in Jewish history to God’s miraculous This question has been raised since the inception of Schorsch has unearthed a first draft of “On will, Zunz bracketed divine influence regarding the field. Is Jewish studies supposed to have practical Rabbinic Literature” in which Zunz sarcastically

16 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 attacked Rühs’s veneration of the Middle Ages and Jewish teachers’ seminary in Berlin, where he of all German Jewish Wissenschaft scholars but also his sense of Christian moral superiority: served for a decade. In this period, he turned from the most radical in his political views.” Following advocating Jewish reforms to a conservative defense the failure of the 1848 revolutions, he retreated from Where may one find more splendid laws than of key Jewish rituals. In an 1844 pamphlet Zunz public life and from 1855 to 1865 published a tril- in Würzburg which in the fifteenth century used history to defend circumcision against charges ogy on the synagogue liturgy. Schorsch shows that a allowed Jews to take with them 50 per cent [of their money]? . . . Where more fairness than in Augsburg in 1440 where the expelled Jews Zunz argued that the Reformers’ introduction of an inspiring could take along their belongings and sell their sermon delivered in German was not an innovation but a houses within two years? revival of an ancient tradition. Schorsch observes that in the published version Zunz dropped the sarcasm. Instead, he provided a by some radical reformers that it was barbaric and primary aim of these books was to illustrate Jewish subtler defense of Jewish civil rights, arguing that immoral. He argued that the distinction between creativity and literary virtuosity in the face of Chris- historical scholarship would prove that Jews nev- moral and ceremonial laws was a relatively late in- tian persecution. er lived fully segregated lives, but rather created vention only emerging in “exile where Jews became The Zunzes were married for 52 years, and vibrant cultures that drew upon and contributed to aware of their otherness.” Zunz also surveyed the Schorsch movingly evokes Leopold’s companion- the Gentile societies in which they lived. history of how Jews interpreted circumcision, from ship with his Adelheid (they never had children), As a young man, Zunz also sought a role in Jew- Maimonides, who saw it as a symbol of “God’s love and the extremity of his grief following her death ish communal religious leadership. In 1821, shortly in 1874. “With my Adelheid,” he wrote, “I have lost before he married, Zunz was appointed preacher at everything, even myself. . . . I have no heart that the Reform Beer Temple in Berlin, but he was fired supports me and no one needs mine.” Nonetheless, less than a year later. Schorsch tells us that the break- he lived for another 12 years and developed a close ing point came when the congregation charged that friendship with David Kaufmann, a historian of Zunz had “improperly departed from the syna- Jewish thought who was nearly 60 years his junior. gogue” on Tisha b’Av. But he also cites a letter from Schorsch’s biography ends with the touching image Zunz to his friend Isaak Noa Mannheimer in which of an elder statesman of Jewish scholarship passing Zunz maintains that he was dismissed because of the baton to a younger scholar before his death on a sermon he gave on “the downfall of the Temple” March 17, 1886, at age 91. (which the Ninth of Av, of course, commemorates) in which he “did not spare the board and set forth unz’s conviction that Jewish studies scholar- irreligion, vanity, arrogance and love of money as Zship was meant to impact life was borne out the reasons for the downfall.” Clearly, he was not cut by the fact that within his lifetime Reform, Con- out for the rabbinate. servative, and Modern Orthodox seminaries in With the collapse of the Verein and his dismissal Germany and America made Jewish studies an from the Beer Temple, Zunz found work as a po- important component in the training of modern litical editor at Berlin’s prestigious daily Haude- und rabbis. This remains true, but the place of Jewish Spenersche Zeitung. Previous scholars have written Portrait of Eduard Gans, 1828, by L. Sebbers. studies in modern Jewish life is by no means se- virtually nothing about this period, and Schorsch (Courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute.) cure. Ultra-Orthodoxy, which largely rejects aca- provides the reader with valuable details about demic Jewish studies, is the fastest-growing Jewish Zunz’s work at the newspaper, linking it to his later group worldwide, while Reform, Conservative, involvement in politics. He also served as the direc- for Israel and of the love Jews have for one another,” and, arguably, Modern Orthodox Judaism remain tor of the Berlin Jewish community public school to medieval poets, who saw the blood of circum- demographically stagnant or in decline, and the from 1825 until 1829, while continuing his histori- cision as foreshadowing Jewish martyrdom. Zunz prospects for Jewish secularism in America are, cal research. concluded that circumcision served an important to say no more, unclear. Does the work of those In 1832 Zunz published The Sermons of the Jews national purpose of creating a bond uniting Jews. one thousand scholars, Zunz’s heirs, at the Asso- which the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia called “the most In 1845 Zunz published his second masterpiece, ciation for Jewish Studies matter to contemporary important Jewish work published in the nineteenth On History and Literature. This work has been little Judaism and Jewish life? century.” The book centers on a masterful historical studied, and Schorsch offers a fascinating, original Concerns about Jewish studies are not new. In analysis of classical midrash, which Zunz applied to analysis of it. He shows that a central aim of the Zunz’s own lifetime the neo-Orthodox ideologue current religious debates. One of the major reforms book is to defend medieval Ashkenaz from Ger- Samson Raphael Hirsch argued that historicizing enacted by early Reform temples had been the in- man Reformers who regularly contrasted back- Jewish texts, ideas, or rituals alienated contem- troduction of an inspiring sermon in the vernacular ward, superstitious Ashkenazi culture with enlight- porary Jews from them by making them seem language. The previous practice in German Jewish ened, rational Sephardi culture, casting themselves foreign, outdated, and all too human. When congregations had been for the rabbi only to speak as modern heirs of classical Sepharad and their modern Jewish denominations sought to estab- on the Sabbaths before Passover and Yom Kippur, opponents as epigones of medieval Ashkenaz. Re- lish themselves in the shadow of tradition-bound when he would deliver a learned talmudic discourse sisting this stereotype, Zunz illustrates the richness Judaism, scholarship’s capacity to legitimate reli- in Yiddish. In The Sermons of the Jews, Zunz ar- of medieval Ashkenazi literature, which included gious reform clearly served an important function. gues that the original midrashim were, in fact, the “theology, history, poetry, astronomy, medicine But what of today, when few Jews outside Ortho- vernacular sermons of the ancient rabbis. And he and science,” and stresses the moral elevation of doxy feel a robust sense of obligation to Torah demonstrates that this tradition continued through- its mussar literature, whose “ethical standards and law? It is far from clear that historical scholarship out the medieval and early modern periods, espe- pronouncements exceeded those of their Christian addresses the key issues confronting the liberal cially among Sephardim and Italian Jews. Thus, neighbors.” Zunz’s book provoked a furious re- denominations of Judaism. In Zunz’s time Jew- Zunz argues, the Reformers’ introduction of an sponse from the leading Reform scholar and think- ish studies was also an important tool for refuting inspiring sermon delivered in German was not an er of the day, Abraham Geiger. anti-Judaism and legitimating Jewish civil rights. innovation, but a revival of an ancient tradition. A vocal democrat, Zunz was an active partici- But this no longer seems relevant in America or Indeed, it was the lack of a vernacular sermon pant in the March Revolution of 1848, delivering Europe where, whatever prejudice may still exist, within German and Polish communities that was a fiery speeches and even serving as an elector to the Jewish civil equality is largely taken for granted. deviation from rabbinic tradition. Prussian National Assembly. Schorsch writes that (The place of Jewish studies in Israel is very differ- In 1840 Zunz was appointed director of a “Zunz was … not only the most politically engaged ent, though no less problematic.)

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 17 Leopold Zunz insisted that scholarship should serve not just an intellectual function, but also a moral and political one. Is that true today and ought it to be? The leading Jewish political issue on today’s college campuses is, of course, Israel. But professors of what is now called “Israel studies” are far from unanimous in their approach to the sub- WHY LISTEN TO THE ject. Should they strive to strengthen Zionism as a bulwark against anti-Jewish hatred by demonstrat- COMMENTARY ing the historical connection of Jews to the Land It is far from clear that MAGAZINE PODCAST? historical scholarship addresses the key issues confronting the BECAUSE OUR LISTENERS liberal denominations of ARE RIGHT. Judaism. of Israel? Or should they unmask the colonialist elements of the Zionist project? Or are such po- liticized approaches the way scholarship should ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ be pursued at all? Israel studies may become an increasingly contentious flashpoint among Jews. “Podhoretz and company are Meanwhile, the heirs to Zunz’s historical proj- excellent. Come for the insight. ect among scholars of Jewish studies may seem increasingly irrelevant. Stay for the excellent analysis To be sure, Jewish studies will continue to be and the joke of the week.” of interest to those seeking to understand their roots and culture. But for the past half-century, the strongest driving interest has been understanding ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ the Holocaust and the Jewish worlds destroyed by it. As memory of the Holocaust recedes, this interest “It’s free! They’re nice! appears to be diminishing. What resources will Jews You’ll find out what the hell be willing to devote to funding research into less dramatic aspects of their history and culture? is going on!” In his original 1818 essay Zunz criticized those who overemphasized scholarship’s practical utility:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Let not philosophical inferiors hinder the flight “A bit of solace and sanity in the midst to the Kingdom of Hope by their questions of utility. We have nothing to say to whomever of such political madness. fails to grasp the highest relations of science, its Podhoretz and Rothman offer perceptive and most estimable greatness, and every detail as an sharp commentary on the day’s topics. integral part of spiritual creation. A must-listen podcast for all conservatives.” Zunz was arguing that Jewish studies was legiti- mated not by considerations of contemporary utility but by the fact that reality forms a whole and studying every manifestation of human civilization contributes to illuminating the complex mosaic of human culture. It was part of what we would call Commentary Magazine’s twice the humanities. As the Jewish community changes and its weekly podcast is hosted by priorities shift, academic Jewish studies and the Jewish community may eventually go their separate John Podhoretz, Noah Rothman, ways. If this happens, the centenary meeting of the Association of Jewish Studies may be significantly Abe Greenwald and Sohrab Ahmari. smaller than the 50th anniversary meeting. But though diminished, Jewish studies would not disappear. Instead, it would find its modest place as the study THE COMMENTARY MAGAZINE PODCAST of a small expression of human culture that has exer- cised an outsized impact on world civilization.

Michah Gottlieb is associate professor of Hebrew and www.commentarymagazine.com/podcast Judaic studies at NYU. His forthcoming book, The Jewish Reformation: Bible Translation and the Fracture of German Jewry, will appear next year.

18 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 To Spy Out the Land

BY AMY NEWMAN SMITH

in 2005, to which I will return, clarifies the matter: the mission. (Both authors, however, discount the Spies in Palestine: Love, Betrayal, and the Those early First Aliyah pioneers fell victim to both persistent speculation of a dalliance between Sarah Heroic Life of Sarah Aaronsohn diseases.) They are most at odds about Sarah Aar- and T. E. Lawrence, “Lawrence of Arabia,” based on by James Srodes onsohn’s character and love life. Srodes describes his enigmatic dedication of Seven Pillars of Wisdom Counterpoint, 224 pp., $16.95 her marriage to Chaim Abraham, a Constantinople to “S.A.”) The Woman Who Fought an Empire: Sarah Sarah kept her secrets, even as she drifted in and out of Aaronsohn and Her Nili Spy Ring by Gregory J. Wallance consciousness, and even when her innocent relatives were Potomac Books, 328 pp., $32.95 tortured in front of her.

merchant who never followed her to Palestine, as fter a brief prologue set in early 1917, when the one of convenience and links her romantically to fel- Ashadow of the Great War fell fully on Zikhron e won’t need to die . . . and low spies Avshalom Feinberg and Yosef Lishansky. Yaakov, Srodes backtracks to tell the story of the when the day comes, the boys Wallance calls her marriage loving and acknowl- founding of the town by members of the First Ali- will turn into green crowned edges an affair only with Lifshansky. He depicts her yah, including Sarah’s father, Ephraim, and the date palms and next to them as a singularly cool-headed operative, who, unlike genesis of the nearby Atlit agricultural station in “Wtheir girls will petrify into statues of white marble,” her excitable male colleagues, remained focused on the pioneering work of her world-famous agrono- wrote the young spy Avshalom Feinberg. While the mist brother, Aaron. In addition to Sarah and letter’s recipient, Rivka Aaronsohn, would live un- Aaron, their brother Alexander was also cen- til 1981, Feinberg, along with Rivka’s sister Sarah, tral to Nili. The little network of spies used would die violently within a few years. Some 100 their access to local Ottoman troop positions years after the destruction of the Nili spy ring, to and intimate knowledge of the region to help which they belonged, two new books tell their story. the British war effort. In doing so, they were (Nili was a password taken from Samuel I 15:29, correctly betting on the British, but not ev- “Netzach Yisrael lo y’shaker,” roughly translatable as eryone in Zikhron Yaakov or the Old Yishuv, “The Eternal One of Israel does not lie.”) more generally, agreed. Srodes usefully situ- Published shortly before his death, James Srodes’s ates their actions within the context of com- Spies in Palestine: Love, Betrayal, and the Heroic Life peting national identities in the region and of Sarah Aaronsohn grew out of a misfiled document the global race for petroleum that focused the the author happened across in the British National entire world on the Middle East. Archives while researching a biography of CIA di- Because Srodes starts his tale near the end rector Allen W. Dulles. Alongside the initials of of the Nili affair, readers know its terrible out- dozens of civil servants who read the document ap- come in advance. On the eve of Sukkot, 1917, propriating 10,000 British pounds (about $600,000 Avshalom Feinberg and Sarah Aaronsohn, 1916. the residents of Zikhron Yaakov suffered along today) for an experimental agricultural site at Atlit, with 27-year-old Sarah Aaronsohn, unable outside the town of Zikhron Yaakov, was a scrawled to escape her screams as she was tortured by note, “Considering our moral responsibility for the Turkish operatives. On Srodes’s telling, it was unhappy fate of the ‘A Organization,’ this is the least vital that she hold out because, unlike the other we could do.” Like that mislaid government form, spies, not to speak of those friends and family the history of the Aaronsohns and the Nili spy members who were not part of the clandes- ring, which aided the British in their fight against tine circle, “she alone . . . held a great secret”: the Ottoman Empire during World War I, has gone British forces under General Edmund Allenby through many hands. As Srodes himself observes, were poised to strike from Egypt with the goal “It is an important caution for the reader that not of capturing Jerusalem. all histories, and certainly not all biographies, on Srodes, a prolific biographer whose prose this topic are in agreement. Contradictions of fact, tends to the florid, can hardly be blamed for his disagreements over interpretation, and individual description of Sarah as a “hardened warrior,” in motives of the historians themselves can confuse.” these circumstances. In this matter, Wallance af- The more recent publication ofThe Woman Who firms him: “The Turks were students of torture Fought an Empire: Sarah Aaronsohn and Her Nili Spy who applauded the discovery of a new method Ring by Gregory J. Wallance shows how right Srodes as though it was a scientific breakthrough; some was. The two writers disagree on matters both large had studied the records of the Spanish Inquisi- and small, from the foundational question of whose tion to refine their skills.” The practice of beat- influence was strongest in the spy ring to intimate ing the soles of a victim’s feet with rods or tubes, matters of the heart. Almost from the beginning, known as faluka, was one of the mildest forms Srodes and Wallance diverge: One names malaria as of torment that was inflicted upon her. But she the cause of the high mortality rate among the early kept her secrets, even as she drifted in and out pioneers that almost doomed the settlement; the Sarah Aaronsohn tending to carrier pigeons, 1917. of consciousness, and even when her innocent other points to dysentery. (A third book, published (Courtesy of Beit Aaronsohn Nili Museum Archive.) relatives were tortured in front of her.

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 19 Spies in Palestine is an excellent resource, but it Armenians, a fate she feared would befall the Jews, ligence, but also, simply put, he was not a good spy.” is hampered by Srodes’s unwillingness to trim de- she wrote in tiny handwriting covered with large Where Aaron could be excitable and rush into tails and dramatis personae. While it is important postage stamps. To get the recipients to look under decisions, Sarah was stoic. She continued to collect to know how Aaron’s American and British contacts those stamps, “she wrote a letter to Rivka urging her intelligence even when communications with—and opened doors to American benefactors and Brit- to admire ‘the boule’; using the French word for tree- much-needed funds from—the British failed to ar- ish military intelligence that would have remained closed even to a “self-taught prodigy in botany, ge- Nili operatives, going about their work as doctors, farmers, ology, and hydrology” credited with the rediscovery of the “mother of all wheat,” Srodes’s exhaustive list and merchants, mapped the location of Turkish forces, as well of his important contacts burdens an already far- ranging narrative. Nor is he willing to truncate or as the state of their training and equipment. elide any of Nili’s breakthroughs and accomplishments or its challenges and setbacks. lined boulevard, but really a pun on the Hebrew word rive. Frustrated with British bureaucracy in Cairo, What largely rescues Srodes’s account is the drama bul, or stamp.” It was Aaron who established contact Aaron wrote in his diary: of Sarah’s life and death itself. As Srodes weaves the with the British and convinced them that he was nei- tale of her last days of freedom, the lost possibilities ther a double agent nor a crank, but it was Sarah who More than twenty times I felt like throwing up for her escape are painful to contemplate. And there did the hands-on work of recruiting sources and re- to their face what I thought of their complete are the words she left behind. After one has read what activating those who had fallen silent. She even took and irremediable inability to understand the she was subjected to, it is almost unbelievable that she risky trips to Damascus to eavesdrop on the German situation. A hundred times daily I curse the was able to threaten her captors, saying, “Your end is officers aiding the Ottoman war effort. moment when we decided to work with them nigh, you will fall into the pit I have dug for you.” Unlike mercurial colleagues Avshalom Feinberg, . . . better [to] commit suicide than to continue whose rashness led to his death at the hands of Bed- under such conditions with people whom we f Srodes is a popularizer, Wallance is more of a ouins in the Sinai, or Na’aman Belkind, whose drink- thought were our friends. Ischolar. His carefully footnoted The Woman Who Fought an Empire draws more closely on the archival Suicide is one thing to threaten and material, primarily from that of the Beit Aaronsohn another to do. Facing transport to Nili Museum in Zikhron Yaakov. Where Srodes de- Damascus where further torture clares the importance of Nili intelligence, Wallance and certain death awaited her, Sar- demonstrates with specifics. Nili operatives, going ah managed to convince her Turk- about their work as doctors, farmers, and merchants, ish guards to give her a few minutes mapped the location of Turkish forces, as well as alone in Aaron’s house to change the state of their training and equipment. They also before the journey. In that time, she mapped the bridges, roads, and fortifications built by wrote out her final instructions to the the Turks’ German engineers. Wallance tells us that a Nili network, located a hidden gun, Turkish army engineer Sarah recruited as a spy pro- and shot herself. duced a map of Jerusalem “on which he had marked the location of Turkish fortifications.” Another Nili n the early 1900s, Zikhron Yaa- intelligence coup described by Wallance provided Ikov was still very much a small both the number and capability—including flying town where rivalries and grudges speeds and machine gun capacities—of the airplanes grew abundantly. The Aaronsohns— that were being brought in to reinforce the Gaza– people said—thought they were bet- Beersheva front. That information gave the British ter than their neighbors. Aaron, in time to move in additional planes and ensure British particular, drew resentment for the air superiority. Information from the Nili was so reli- imperious way he directed the Atlit able, he explains, it was used to verify other sources. station and, perhaps, simply for his Ottoman ruler Djemal Pasha certainly believed Nili spectacular successes. This common- tipped the balance against him, railing, “All my friends ly held opinion was not helped when warned me, don’t trust the Jews, and I treated them he convinced his younger brother well. . . . See how Aaronsohn showed me his honesty Alexander to go to the United States, and his trustworthiness. I allowed him to travel to where Alex filed papers to become a Berlin for his alleged scientific purpose—and he es- citizen and went to work at the De- caped to the British and organized spying against me.” partment of Agriculture. Alex’s arti- Wallance’s narrative allows Sarah to step out of the cles in The Atlantic Monthly extolling shadow of her famous brother and her headstrong the virtues of Palestine were not rel- colleagues, showcasing her intense focus and sense ished in Zikhron Yaakov. As Srodes of duty to her fellow Jews. On Wallance’s telling, Nili puts it, “Sentiment held that one Ottoman Turkish leader Djemal Pasha, left, with a German officer was not only the scientist-diplomat Aaron’s project. Aaronsohn celebrity swanking about of the Asia Korps during World War I. (Courtesy of the Bain He describes Sarah’s horrified eyewitness reports Collection, Library of Congress.) abroad was enough, two was too on the Armenian genocide as just as central to Nili’s much.” Had they been more steeped founding as Aaron, Alexander, and Avshalom’s hatch- in the traditions of their Romanian ing plans to aid the British for Zionist ends. Where ing habits led him to reveal the existence of Nili and Jewish ancestors, the two might have given a thought Aaron paid bribes to and joked with Djemal Pasha, the names of its members, she spent the day before her to the ayin hara. As it was, they were visitors at the Sarah was convinced that Djemal “would match, if arrest burning incriminating documents. In contrast mansions of Secretary of State Robert Lansing, his not exceed, the brutality of the dozens of sultans who to her silence under torture, Aaron’s misgivings about nephews John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, and had ruled the Ottoman Empire over six centuries.” using the agricultural station for espionage led him to Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt and Although she did not, like many spies, “thirst for confess the ring’s activity to his American benefactors, hobnobbed with luminaries such as Supreme Court danger as a means of self-fulfillment,” Sarah seems to an admission that put everyone’s life in danger. Wal- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Herbert Croly (the have been born for the world of clandestine opera- lance does not mince words: Aaron’s departure from editor of the then-influentialThe New Republic), and tions. When she sent warnings from Constantinople the Yishuv was for the best, “not only because his stat- multimillionaire Herbert Hoover. to her family in the Yishuv of the massacre of the ure might finally gain the cooperation of British intel- Nor was that the only source of conflict. First Aliyah

20 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 families like the Aaronsohns were scorned by Second Alexander and Rivka. It is a book for young readers, British—the right to risk lives that hadn’t asked Aliyah newcomers who wanted to work the land in and Halkin dismisses it until he reaches an absolute- to be risked: These were not the keys that fit the place of Arab laborers and institute communal prop- ly stunning passage: doors on [Zikhron Yaakov’s] Founders Street. To erty ownership and decision-making. Second Aliyah open those, you had to know other things. Who self-defense groups like Ha-Shomer simply refused The people of Zichron felt they would go mad was related to whom. Who was the neighbor to protect First Aliyah towns such as Zikhron Yaa- if they had to hear the screams of the tortured of whom. Who was friendly or had quarreled prisoners any longer. But there were also four with whom. Who was more brave, prudent, women who ran through the streets of the town, adventurous, selfish, caring, or timid than whom. laughing and jeering at each scream. And though we may leave their eternal damnation to others, The grave of one of the four women who was al- let it be known that each was requited in her way. leged to have jeered as Sarah Aaronsohn was tortured sits alone, away from her family members. Halkin’s book was written out of an attempt to un- Her “mitah meshunah,” her strange death, ended derstand not Sarah’s bravery, but the laughing and her life at age 50, five years after Aaronsohn’s death. jeering of such “Gorgons and Furies.” Sarah’s grave is there too, not outside the cemetery Where Wallance and Srodes both place their proper, as is customary in the case of suicide, but trust in the established archives, Halkin shows us next to her mother and surrounded by a fence that memorial books from small settlements, township instead of setting her apart as shamed appears to council notes, pictures found in abandoned build- give her a place of honor. ings, and the memories of those who lived through There had long been rumors that Yosef Lishan- Nili and the aftermath, as malleable and unreliable sky and Avshalom Feinberg had not been attacked as those memories might be. The established nar- by Bedouins while attempting to cross into Egypt rative is that fear of the Turks motivated those Jews to reestablish communications with the British. In- who opposed Nili, even to the point of betraying it. stead, the town gossip went, Yosef killed Avshalom As Wallance puts it, “The perspective of Jews in this in a rivalrous argument over Sarah. The falsity of region was that espionage was dangerous and that this rumor “was proven after the 1967 war,” Halkin relations with the Turks could be managed. Why tells us, “when Feinberg’s remains were dug up by revolt against an empire when it can be bribed?” Israeli soldiers in Sinai with the help of an old Bed- Halkin bids us to look deeper: ouin who corroborated Lishansky’s story.” Over the site grew a lone date tree. If you wanted to know who did what—joined the spy ring, was for it, against it, took no stand—you The grave of Avshalom Feinberg after it was relocated had to put the big things aside. The course of the Amy Newman Smith is the managing editor of the to Mount Herzl. (Courtesy of Lisanna Wallance.) war—the hopes of the Jews—the plans of the Jewish Review of Books. kov and Hadera. In 1913, Alexander Aaronsohn and

Avshalom Feinberg, the fiancé of Rivka Aaronsohn, formed a rival group called the Gideonites. Young men with horses and guns “joined as a brother- JEWISH REVIEW BOOKS hood, with a sworn oath of secrecy and a pledge to match violence done to them with greater retalia- tion.” Their frequent and violent skirmishes with Arabs in nearby villages over destroyed crops and stolen livestock gave them confidence. Many Nili spies—including the hotheads who would play a We’re more than role in the network’s discovery by the Turks—came from the ranks of the Gideonites. Wallance points us to another book about the ink and paper! Nili spy ring, A Strange Death by Hillel Halkin (the death of the title is not, incidentally, Sarah Aar- onsohn’s). Halkin’s 2005 book is, despite the dark subject matter, a pleasure to read, showing how Add a visit to www.jewishreviewofbooks.com small-town feuds and rivalries, past hurts, and in- sults intersect with historical events. Halkin under- to your weekly to-do list. From curated scores how, by defining a life as “historic,” histori- reading lists and book reviews to ans elide much that makes a life. His Sarah is not fascinating interviews and glimpses an untouchable heroine, but rather a woman whose “heroism and passion” are “perfectly human.” into the Jewish past, we bring you Begun after Halkin moved to Zikhron Yaakov, web-exclusive content that illuminates, the writing turned him into a kind of spy, cultivat- ing sources, digging out secrets, and surreptitiously informs, and entertains. entering deserted buildings. Halkin’s tale is full of historical rhymes, echoes between past and modern www.jewishreviewofbooks.comCynthia Ozick from Fall 2016 events, which afford the reader literary pleasure and or follow us on Facebook and Twitter. historical insight that ordinary biography cannot Cynthia Ozick provide. from Fall 2016 Halkin tells us of an older book, a “thin, paper- bound volume . . . barely a hundred pages long.” It was Sarah, Flame of The Nili, found in the desert- Jewish Culture. Cover to Cover. ed home of Tzvi Aaronsohn and signed by both

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 21 Free Radicals

BY ALLIS RADOSH AND RONALD RADOSH

States . . . language intended to incite, provoke, and worked out a deal: The defendants would be re- The J. Abrams Book: The Life and Work of an encourage resistance to the United States in the war leased with the stipulation that they leave for Rus- Exceptional Personality with Germany.” The trial was held in October, in an sia—their birthplace—at their own expense and by Jacob Abrams, edited by the Jewish Cultural Center in atmosphere permeated by patriotic bond drives and never return to the United States. On November 24, Mexico, translated by Ruth Murphy Liberty Loan rallies. Judge Henry DeLamar Clayton 1921, Abrams, his wife Mary, and his fellow defen- privately published by Rebecca Nestle, 301 pp., $20 Jr., a former senator, betrayed his feelings during a dants set sail for the USSR. Left of the Left: My Memories of Sam Dolgoff Like the proverbial canaries in a coal mine, the American by Anatole Dolgoff AK Press, 400 pp., $22 anarchists became the first critics on the Left to expose the horrors of Bolshevism.

cross-examination of Abrams. Speaking in a soft hile there are scores of books on the history of he history of American anarchists, and of voice with a Yiddish accent, Abrams tried his best WAmerican communism, students of American Jewish anarchists in particular, has been to defend what he meant by his anarchist beliefs: politics tend to forget that, as the historian Kenyon forgotten, largely overshadowed by the “This government was built on a revolution. When Zimmer pointed out in his book Immigrants Against history of the more well known (and far the State, anarchists once out- lessT defensible) American communist movement. numbered Marxists, and by Two recent books—neither of them is a conven- 1910 there were a few hun- tional biography—reintroduce us to two fascinat- dred thousand of them in this ing 20th-century Jewish anarchists. The volumes country. Indeed, up to World are almost as quirky and unconventional as their War II, Zimmer wrote, they subjects. The J. Abrams Book: The Life and Work of “remained a significant— an Exceptional Personality is a kind of scrapbook- though largely forgotten—el- memoir published by friends and coworkers of ement of the American Left.” the subject after his death in 1953; Left of the Left: Unlike today’s masked rock- My Memories of Sam Dolgoff is by the subject’s son throwers, they stood for the Anatole, who keeps up a running dialogue with his creation of a peaceful, state- long-dead father. less, antiauthoritarian society The J. Abrams Book contains fragments of the sub- where people would freely ject’s autobiography. The most compelling is his ac- join together to govern them- count of the five years he spent in the Soviet Union, selves. In America, anarchist which takes up half of the book. Surprisingly, nothing groups were largely organized that Jacob (“Jack”) Abrams put in writing deals di- by their members’ countries rectly with the famous Supreme Court case that bears of origin: German, Italian, his name: Abrams v. United States. It’s the free speech Spanish, and so on. Howev- case with which every law school graduate must be at Defendants in Abrams v. United States departing for Russia, November 24, er, it was Jewish immigrants least vaguely familiar, without necessarily remember- 1921. From left, Samuel Lipman, Hyman Lachowsky, Mollie Steimer, and from Eastern Europe who ing anything about the man it immortalized. Jacob Abrams. settled in New York City that In July 1918, when the United States sent 15,000 became the movement’s most troops to intervene in revolutionary Russia, Jack our forefathers of the American Revolution . . .”— influential and enthusiastic adherents. Abrams and some of his fellow anarchists organized which was as far as he managed to get. “Your what?” Many immigrants from poor working-class a protest. They rented a six-room apartment in East Judge Clayton asked. The jurors got his point. Two families, sent out to work at an early age and af- Harlem as their headquarters and installed a printing weeks later the defendants were found guilty. Three forded only a limited education, were drawn to press in the basement, where they produced two leaf- of them, Abrams, Samuel Lipman, and Hyman La- anarcho-syndicalism, which held out the promise lets, one written in English and the other in Yiddish, chowsky, were given the maximum sentence of 20 that revolutionary industrial unionism would ulti- to be distributed on New York City’s Lower East Side. years in prison. The fourth, Mollie Steimer, received mately result in the workers’ control of the econo- “Workers,” it proclaimed, “our reply to barbaric inter- 15 years, probably because she was a young woman. my and transform society into an anarchist utopia. vention has to be a general strike! An open challenge The defendants appealed the case, which went Jewish anarchists pursued their arguments in New only will let the government know that not only the to the Supreme Court and was filed as Abrams v. York’s lively radical Yiddish-language subculture. Russian Worker fights for freedom, but also here in United States. The majority of the court affirmed the Although they were not ashamed of their Jew- America lives the spirit of Revolution. . . . We must sentence, but it led to one of Justice Oliver Wendell ish heritage, as atheists they rejected Judaism and not and will not betray the splendid fighters of Russia.” Holmes Jr.’s most famous dissents (in which Justice famously held an annual Yom Kippur Ball, mocking On August 22, 1918, they dropped five thousand Louis Brandeis joined him). Holmes’s argument the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. of these leaflets from a tenement rooftop on the Low- that only the “clear and present danger” of immedi- The J. Abrams Book contains Abrams’s account of er East Side. They were quickly arrested and charged ate evil could justify restricting speech was a mile- his childhood in Russia, where he was born in 1886, with conspiracy “to unlawfully utter, print, write stone in the defense of freedom of speech. and continues with his arrival in the United States and publish . . . disloyal, scurrilous, and abusive lan- Abrams and his fellow defendants spent two in 1908; his deportation back to what had become guage about the form of government of the United years in jail while their attorney Harry Weinberger the Soviet Union in 1921; his flight from the Soviet

22 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 Union five years later; and his arrival in Mexico, by Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and other “happy is the believer, for whom even bad things be- where he spent the last 30 years of his life. anarchists. Abrams, who was already a revolution- come transformed into good ones.” In 1926, Abrams To call his childhood painful is an understate- ary but not yet an anarchist, was persuaded. told the commissars that he and Mary would be of ment. After his mother died when he was four and A decade later, he was back in Russia and even more value to the revolution in other countries, a his stepmother rejected him, he had to sleep on the more miserable than he had been as a child. After fable he told them in the hope he would get official floor between doorways, was often hungry, and his first experiences with the Cheka, the early Soviet permission to leave. Much to his surprise, after an dressed in ragged hand-me-downs. His older sister secret police, “it became clearer” to Abrams “that interrogation at the infamous Lubyanka prison, he Manya took care of him, and eventually apprenticed the people in America who had criticized the lead- and Mary received two passports. They gladly left him to a bookbinder and printer whose workers ership of Soviet Russia were not completely wrong.” Russia for good (albeit with the GPU on their trail). Indeed, everything was the op- Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman had ear- posite of what he had expected. lier learned a similar lesson during their Russian ex- He and Mary were assigned ile. Like the proverbial canaries in a coal mine, the to one small room with three American anarchists became the first critics on the other people, hunger was en- Left to expose the horrors of Bolshevism. demic, people were dressed in The next year, Abrams and Mary arrived in rags, and the Bolshevik claim Mexico, where the National Revolutionary Party to have eliminated prostitu- had come to power. There weren’t many anarchists tion was patently false. At the in Mexico, but they were welcomed by the small time, the Bolsheviks were try- but growing Jewish community. “In Jewish Mexi- ing to destroy those with other co,” one of his friends wrote in tribute, “it was the radical tendencies, including community activists of the younger [Jewish] gen- socialists and anarchists who eration who were his audiences and his adherents.” had fought alongside them to Eventually Abrams became a director of the Jewish overthrow the tsar, but Abrams Cultural Center. He found work as a photographer had defended the revolution and then set up a printing shop where he printed and had paid for it. He was in- Yiddish books and newspapers. He also chaired formed that his status was that Mexico’s International Committee Against Fascism, of a “non-party member with a which supported the Republican forces in the Span- Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, ca. 1917. (War Department of Soviet lining,” but, as he soon ish Civil War. When refugees began arriving after the United States Government.) found out, it did not protect Franco’s victory, Abrams organized to help them him from Soviet repression. and other antifascist exiles. When he spoke up at meetings In 1937, Leon Trotsky arrived in Mexico. Know- he was admonished and told ing that he was short of funds, his host, the then- “the collective is the boss and Trotskyist painter Diego Rivera, introduced him to the individual is his servant.” Abrams, who was able to arrange a loan. The two When asked what kind of became unlikely friends, and Abrams often visited work he would like to do, he him at his home in Coyoacán just outside of Mexico suggested that he set up and run City. On one occasion, when they were having lunch, an automatic laundry, which he Trotsky began denouncing Stalin and his other foes. had learned how to do in prison. Abrams, who always spoke his mind, responded: He was immediately given permission to set up the first mod- I’m only fifty-percent in agreement with you. ern laundry in Russia, which I agree with what you say about your former operated out of the basement of comrades when you condemn them. However, the Foreign Ministry. However, here’s where we part ways. I don’t agree that if when he protested inefficiencies you were in Stalin’s place, you would be better. and graft he was ignored, and Dictatorship has its own logic; perhaps you eventually charges of anti-Soviet would be even worse. activity were brought against When Trotsky told him that he took pride in him. Disenchanted, he conclud- his order to have the Red Army put down the ed that it was time to “abandon attempted rebellion of the Kronstadt sailors this land of one’s hopes.” during the civil war Abrams condemned him to Realizing that if he and which Trotsky responded, “I would have done Mary wanted to leave he would the same if it took place now,” thereby verifying Leon Trotsky and his wife, Natalia, arrive in exile in the city of Tampico, have to find employment in Abrams’ critique. Mexico, January 9, 1937. The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, left of Natalia, an enterprise that was not run came to greet them. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via directly by the Soviet state, he A friend in the Jewish community later commented, Getty Images.) quit his job. Since their housing after witnessing this exchange, that “not everyone was tied to government em- could do this,” and yet Abrams did and remained introduced him to the revolutionary antitsarist ployment, they were immediately evicted. They had “good friends with Trotsky.” underground. Manya left for America in 1906 and to live in the corridor for six weeks, until a friend In 1945 Abrams was diagnosed with throat can- sent for Jack two years later. He settled on the Lower took them into his apartment, which was meant for cer. Through the intercession of the International East Side, got a job as a bookbinder, joined the In- one person but now housed six. As it happened, two Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, he was allowed to ternational Brotherhood of Bookbinders, and was of the spaces were taken by political tourists, Ron- seek medical care in the United States, where he was elected president of the local. His future wife, Mary ald Radosh’s parents. Abrams asked if when they re- guarded by a federal marshal day and night. After Domsky, was active in the Amalgamated Cloth- turned to New York, they would tell the truth about several treatments at Temple University’s hospital ing Workers union (she narrowly escaped dying how people really lived in the workers’ paradise. Jacob Abrams died in Mexico in 1953. Mary, who in the tragic and famous Triangle Shirtwaist Com- Reuben Radosh told him that he would not, since did not want a religious service, wrote the inscrip- pany fire). Abrams had met her before the fire on he had to defend the idea of the Soviet revolution, tion for his tombstone: “J. Abrams who fought pas- picket lines and at forums where they heard talks not depict its reality, to which Abrams responded, sionately for freedom, justice and tolerance.”

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 23 n Left of the Left: My Memories of Sam Dolgoff, of Italian anarchists, helped found the Vanguard Left. In 1976, he published The Cuban Revolution: A IAnatole Dolgoff sets out to tell not only his fam- Group, an anarcho-communist group that largely Critical Perspective. The critic Paul Berman has best ily’s story but also “the history of a culture, and of propagated “the ideas of Bakunin and Kropotkin.” summed up what Dolgoff meant to so many: a chapter of American radicalism that few people Sam edited and wrote a column for its publication, know about.” Dolgoff strives to give an emotion- Vanguard: A Libertarian Communist Journal, focus- Sam Dolgoff had many great traits, but the ally honest and impartial look at his parents and ing on the American labor movement. greatest of all was a nobility of character—a himself, warts and all, although he seems to be But a cause that consumed his time and energy, human sympathy that made him side with harder on himself. Looking back, he writes that as it did in Mexico for Abrams, was the Spanish the downtrodden . . . He taught me how to except for his parents, “I doubt there is much to Revolution, during which anarchists had temporarily look at the world through eyes that are not the my life you would find interesting.” His academic same as the official eyes of the state and the big career at the New York City College of Technology establishment and the ideologues. teaching physics paled in comparison. At the end of his career, he found that his father was more and As the child of anarchists, Anatole Dolgoff has more on his mind, and students complained that developed an untraditional and rather disorganized “I talk about my parents too much, proof to them format to present the story of his father. He tells us that I am over the hill and growing senile.” He was that during his childhood there were two Anatoles: neither and wrote the book after he retired. the one who lived in his parents’ world of radical Sam Dolgoff belonged to a slightly later genera- ideologues and lost causes, which he kept secret and tion of Jewish anarchists than Jack Abrams. His fa- was often embarrassed by, and the one who lived on ther, Max, had been a rebel back in Russia, where he the streets and at school with his friends. Then there enraged his own rabbi father “by renouncing religion was his father’s alcoholism, which almost destroyed altogether.” When Max was about to be conscripted the family. While Anatole’s love for his parents is into the army, he left for America and in 1905 sent apparent, the process of writing his book clearly for his wife Anna and their three-year-old son Sam. helped him to accept and admire them. He does Sam was a socialist by the age of 14, but he soon con- not, however, let his father off the hook on several cluded that the socialists were mere reformers who issues. For example, Sam criticized Emma Goldman were not really interested in uprooting the capitalist for not being “very enthusiastic about the IWW” system or transforming society. When he started ex- and for “not really asking for much more than what pressing these views at meetings and publishing his today would be considered a liberal program.” His ideas in a mimeographed paper he called Friends of son disagrees, writing, “Emma and her group sup- Freedom, he was put on trial and expelled from the ported the Wobblies and the class struggle ‘a-plenty,’ Socialist Party for insubordination. Afterwards, one in my opinion.” While Sam was infuriated by the of the party judges came up to him and said, “I am Sam Dolgoff’s 1983 self-published critique of Marx’s pro-Castro Left, his son takes a more charitable going to give you a tip. You are not a socialist. You theory of economic determinism and the state, as view of them, writing: “Clearly they were mistaken. well as Marxist views on the early socialist labor are an anarchist.” Dolgoff promptly asked him for an But their mistakes were motivated by enthusiasm movement, peasantry, and the Paris Commune. address. When he made his way to a dingy loft near for what they thought was a genuine revolution of Union Square, the anarchists welcomed him with the poor and downtrodden. They fell in love and open arms, but he was soon dissatisfied with what felt established a functioning anarchist society in north- love can be blind.” more like a debating society for misfits than a politi- east Spain, including Barcelona, until the cause was Jack Abrams and Sam Dolgoff shared more than cal movement. One member told him that he “was defeated by the Communists. Dolgoff was ready to their identities as anarcho-syndicalists. They were not a Road to Freedom type. ‘You are an anarcho- join the fight but was told that what the anarchists both idealistic, courageous, single-minded, and syndicalist. You are an IWW, a Wobbly!’” needed more than anything was not fighters but passionate in fighting for their cause and for free- He joined the Industrial Workers of the World arms, money, and international support. Looking dom not only in America but internationally. Like (IWW) in 1922 and became a migratory worker back on it Dolgoff wrote that “about eight million many of their fellow Jewish immigrants they were riding the rails, propagating anarcho-syndicalist people directly or indirectly participated” in the self-taught and eager to learn; they were working- ideas, and participating in strikes. On a trip to Spanish Revolution, which “came closer to realizing class intellectuals and charismatic orators—a lost Cleveland he met Esther Miller, a delegate from the the ideal of the free stateless society on a vast scale Jewish type. They were also fortunate to marry Anarchist Forum who had agreed to meet a speak- than any other revolution in history.” women (who in anarchist fashion were referred to er from the IWW on the steps of the library. After In 1954, he and others formed the Libertarian as “life companions”) who were devoted to their an hour of waiting, she started to leave when she League, which held forums every Friday night fea- shared cause. looked more closely at a hobo who had been pacing turing nonanarchist speakers such as Michael Har- What then did these Jewish anarchists accom- back and forth there for the whole time. Of course, rington, Bayard Rustin, and Dorothy Day. Dolgoff plish? After all, they not only failed to achieve their it was Sam. Anatole Dolgoff describes his father also developed relationships with Paul Goodman lifelong dream of a free cooperative society with- during this period as having “a strong face, a rug- and Dave Van Ronk, the sometimes Trotskyist/an- out a state to rule over them; they failed to attract ged Russian Jewish face, wild black hair swept back, archist blues and folk singer who regarded him as a enough believers in that dream to keep the move- acute black eyes behind the glasses, a prominent mentor and surrogate father figure. When the 1960s ment alive. Perhaps their biggest mistake was the nose,” and he quotes an acquaintance as saying that arrived, Sam and Esther found the behavior of what belief that humankind was basically good despite all Sam looked like he combed his hair with an egg- might be called “lifestyle” anarchists infuriating. “I they had experienced to the contrary. On the other beater. Esther, by contrast, was a “proper young lady am sick and tired,” Sam told Paul Avrich, the fore- hand, they were clear-eyed, even prophetic, in their from a striving, high-achieving, first-generation im- most historian of the anarchist movement, “of these early disillusionment with communism. They were migrant family—well mannered, well spoken, and half-assed artists and poets who reject organiza- dreamers, but their dream was a noble one and wor- immaculately dressed” who had earned an MA in tion and want only to play with their belly buttons.” thy of being remembered. English literature. Her family thought it was per- But he was not ready to give up on them and men- verse of her to “run off with a Wobbly, a filthy hobo tored such figures as Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs, a house painter,” but they were married for 58 years. counterculture folk-rock band. What upset Dolgoff Allis Radosh and Ronald Radosh are coauthors of In 1933, Sam and Esther moved to Stelton, New the most was the young radicals’ embrace of Fidel A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Jersey, a “largely anarchistic colony,” but concluded Castro, whom he quickly recognized as a Stalinist Israel (HarperCollins). Allis is an independent historian, that such places were “essentially self-isolationist dictator. He campaigned on behalf of the Cuban and Ronald is a contributing opinion columnist for forms of escapism.” They settled in New York City anarchists whom Castro had attacked and exiled, the Daily Beast and an adjunct fellow at the Hudson where Sam, together with Carlo Tresca and his circle and waged a 15-year battle against the pro-Castro Institute.

24 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 A Book and a Sword in the Vilna Ghetto

BY CECILE E. KUZNITZ

1930s, Kaczerginski and Sutzkever organized what institut (Yiddish Scientific Institute, known by its The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and came to be known as the paper brigade. acronym YIVO), the first center for Yiddish schol- the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the An aesthete with a belief that literature pos- arship, which was rooted in a secular vision of the Nazis sessed an almost supernatural power, Sutzkever Jewish people as a modern nation. Since that nation by David E. Fishman composed powerful poems in the midst of the Ho- lacked a state of its own, the YIVO headquarters be- ForeEdge/University Press of New England, 312 pp., $29.95 locaust in the faith that he could cheat death as long came an international symbol for Yiddish-speaking The rescue of books, manuscripts, and Torahs was almost as

hen Jewish inmates of the Vilna much a form of resistance as the preservation of life itself. Ghetto returned home after a day of slave labor in the city, they had to as he continued to create. Yet it is not the refined Jews, the equivalent of a national language academy, pass inspection at the ghetto gate, a Sutzkever who is Fishman’s hero but the colorful, university, and library rolled into one. frighteningW prospect for those smuggling food for earthy Kaczerginski. A true folksmentsh (man of the When the Nazi archivist-looters of the ERR re- their starving families and even more dangerous for people), Kaczerginski was a communist who had turned to Vilna in early 1942 they set up several members of the Fareynikte partizaner organizatsye led a hardscrabble existence, but his lively, outgoing sorting centers, including one in the YIVO build- (United Partisan Organization, known as the FPO), personality won him friends from all walks of life. ing itself. There they assembled a team of slave la- the armed resistance movement, who often smug- borers who were forced to comb gled weapons and ammunition. One day in July through the YIVO collections 1943, the poet Shmerke Kaczerginski, hid another as well as books, documents, type of contraband: rare rabbinic books strapped to and art and ritual objects looted his body inside a Torah cover. Manning the watch from local libraries, museums, was not a member of the Jewish police, which often and synagogues. The most valu- looked the other way, but an SS officer known for able were shipped to Germany his sadism. As David E. Fishman recounts the inci- to be used for “Jewish research dent in The Book Smugglers: without Jews,” once the work of extermination had been com- From a block away you could hear the shrieks pleted. As it became clear that of inmates being beaten for hiding food. The what was not shipped away workers around Shmerke reached into their would be destroyed, the workers clothing. Potatoes, bread, vegetables, and pieces faced a heartrending predica- of firewood rolled into the street. They hissed at ment. Fishman describes the Shmerke, his puffed-up body obvious. . . . “Dump enslaved Jews’ anguished real- it. Dump it!” But Shmerke wouldn’t unload. ization that they themselves be- “In the Strashun Library,” a postcard from the “Vilner yidishe geto” (Vilna Jewish Ghetto) series by Ber Zalkind, ca. 1923. came “responsible for life-and- Just as he reached the head of the line, the SS offi- death decisions about the fate cer left the gate and Kaczerginski accomplished his of cultural treasures.” He quotes mission: His poems, less innovative and more tuneful than Kruk, whose diary is the single most complete ac- Sutzkever’s, were often set to music. Many became count of the Vilna Ghetto: In a secret bunker deep beneath the ghetto, a popular in the Vilna Ghetto and are still sung today. stone-floored cavern excavated from the damp Kruk, the librarian, shuddered as he recorded the soil, metal canisters were stuffed with books, t the outbreak of World War II Vilna had en- moment when the book dumping began, in early manuscripts, documents, theater memorabilia, Ajoyed a period of relative calm under Lithu- June 1942: “The Jewish laborers who are engaged and religious artifacts. Later that night, Shmerke anian and then Soviet rule, so many residents hoped in this work are literally in tears. Your heart added his treasures to the desperate depository. that Vilna could ride out the war unscathed. But breaks just looking at the scene.” As someone Before resealing the hidden doorway into the within six months of the arrival of the German army who had built libraries, first in Warsaw and treasure room, he bade farewell to the Torah on June 22, 1941, over half of the city’s Jews had been then in the Vilna ghetto, he recognized the full covers and old rarities with a loving caress, as if shot and buried in mass graves at Ponar on Vilna’s magnitude of the crime that was unfolding. they were his children. outskirts. Living Jews were not the Nazis’ only target. A mere week after the initial Nazi foray into Vilna Zelig Kalmanovitch was similarly tormented: Kaczerginski was one of a group of ghetto resi- a member of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg dents who risked their lives to save the legacy of Jew- (ERR), the Nazi agency in charge of looting cultural His emotions once burst forth at a literary ish culture from Nazi plunder. It also included the property in occupied territory, arrived to survey lo- program in the ghetto where he was the linguist Zelig Kalmanovitch, who underwent a reli- cal libraries, museums, and art collections. featured speaker. When the chairman gious awakening during the war and became known Vilna, which was known as “the Jerusalem of introduced him as “the guardian of YIVO in the as “the prophet of the Vilna ghetto”; Herman Kruk, Lithuania,” was a special prize. Its legendary status Vilna ghetto,” Kalmanovitch jumped out of his who arrived as a refugee fleeing Warsaw and headed as a center of Jewish learning was symbolized by two seat and cut him off: “No, I’m not a guardian; the ghetto library; the high school teacher Rachela great institutions. The Strashun Library stood in the I’m a gravedigger!” Krinsky, who became Kaczerginki’s lover; and the heart of the traditional Jewish quarter and was fa- great Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever. Close friends mous for its collection of rabbinic works. In a newer As they came to this agonized conclusion, a and members of the literary group Young Vilna in the part of the city stood the Yidisher visnshaftlekher group led by Kaczerginski and Sutzkever decided to

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 25 organize the paper brigade. In addition to smug- Nazi persecution as a punishment from God for the Sutzkever made a similar point powerfully in his fa- gling material under their clothes when they re- sin of assimilation, yet even he came to see the work mous poem “The Lead Plates of the Romm Press,” turned from YIVO to the ghetto, they created hid- of the paper brigade as necessary: in which he imagined melting the plates of the ing places in the YIVO building itself. Sympathetic famous Jewish printing house for bullets: Lithuanian contacts also played a crucial role by [H]e blessed the book smugglers as a pious taking items to conceal in other locations in the rabbi: “The workers are rescuing whatever they Liquid lead brightly shining in bullets so fine, city. Among the many treasures they saved was the can from oblivion. May they be blessed for Ancient thoughts—in the letters that melted hot. 18th-century pinkas (register) of the Vilna Gaon’s risking their lives, and may they be protected A line from Babylonia, from Poland a line, elite study group, or kloyz; the diary of Theodor under the wings of the Divine Presence. May Boiled, flooded together, in the foundry pot. Herzl, which YIVO had purchased from his son; the Lord . . . have mercy on the saving remnant Jewish valor, hidden in word and in sign, and letters and manuscripts from leading Jewish and grant us to see the buried letters in peace.” Must now explode the whole world with a shot! writers such as Sholem Aleichem and I. L. Peretz. They even found a way to transport large artworks First Sutzkever and more slowly the communist-leaning by Mark Antokolsky, Ilya Repin, and others. Some questioned the decision to risk so much for mere Kaczerginski came to realize that they had to rescue the treasures artifacts. As Fishman quotes Kaczerginski: of Jewish Vilna once again, this time from the Soviet regime. “Ghetto inmates looked at us as if we were lunatics. They were smuggling foodstuffs into Facing the jeers of fellow Jews desperate for food ishman writes in a lively, accessible style, es- the ghetto, in their clothes and boots. We were and firewood, the members of the paper brigade re- Fchewing academic jargon and emphasizing the smuggling books, pieces of paper, occasionally jected the dichotomy between physical and cultural suspense and colorful personalities of his story. In a Sefer Torah or mezuzahs.” Some members of survival. Thus, it is not surprising that Kaczerginski, an author’s note, he writes that he has “taken the the paper brigade faced a real moral dilemma Sutzkever, and fellow ghetto inmate Abba Kovner liberty of imagining the feeling and thoughts of my whether to smuggle in books or foodstuffs for were at the same time poets and partisans. Fishman protagonists at various moments,” and his account their family. There were inmates who criticized the work brigade for occupying itself with the fate of papers in a time of a life-and-death crisis. But Kalmanovitch replied emphatically that books were irreplaceable; “they don’t grow on trees.”

ore than just a dramatic tale, Fishman’s story Mof “the Auschwitz of Jewish culture” seeks to reframe our understanding of the Holocaust itself:

Most of us are aware of the Holocaust as the greatest genocide in history. . . . But few of us think of the Holocaust as an act of cultural plunder and destruction. The Nazis sought not only to murder the Jews but also to obliterate their culture. They sent millions of Jewish books, manuscripts, and works of art to incinerators and garbage dumps. And they transported hundreds of thousands of cultural treasures to specialized libraries and institutes in Germany, in order to study the race they hoped to exterminate.

If the eradication of Jewish books was as important to the Nazis as the extermination of Jewish bodies, then the fate of libraries, archives, and art collections is central to understanding the Holocaust. In Workers sort through piles of confiscated books and papers at the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO). Vilna, insisting upon this, Fishman draws upon the insight Poland, April 1943. (Courtesy of Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Jerusalem, 1495/9.) of his subjects:

He [Kruk] also noticed the parallel between the writes that Kaczerginski was as proud to smuggle sometimes reads like a spy novel, but it is based on fate of Vilna’s Jews and their books. “The death books for the paper brigade as he was to smuggle meticulous historical detective work in six coun- throes of the Yiddish Scientific Institute are not arms for the FPO: tries and as many languages. Occasionally, one only long and slow, but like everything here, it wonders whether this or that literary embellish- dies in a mass-grave.” In his memoirs, he recounted a folktale: When ment was necessary. The doomed romance between the Lord created the first Jew, the biblical Kaczerginski and Rachela Krinsky, for instance, Over 40 years later Abraham Sutzkever recalled how patriarch Abraham, the Almighty gave him would be affecting even without allusions to their “the evil ones undertook to transform [the YIVO two presents for his life journey—a book, “erotic energies” and passionate trysts. Less sala- headquarters at] Wiwulskiego 18 into a Ponar for which Abraham held in one hand, and a ciously, the emotional recovery of salvaged materi- Jewish culture, and they ordered a few dozen Jews sword, which he held in the other. But the als in the 1980s might have been a stronger scene from the Vilna ghetto to dig graves for our soul.” patriarch became so fascinated reading the without the remark that “Never before was the If the destruction of Jewish culture and Jewish book that he didn’t notice how the sword cataloging work of librarians and archivists accom- life were intertwined, then the reverse was also true: slipped out of his hand. Ever since that panied by so many smiles and tears.” But these are The rescue of books, manuscripts, Torahs, and so moment, the Jews have been the people of minor criticisms of a gripping work with broader on was almost as much a form of resistance as the the book. It was left to the ghetto fighters and implications. Generally, these are left for the reader preservation of life itself. In the ghetto, the newly partisans to discover the lost sword and pick to infer, but, at one point, Fishman addresses the religious YIVO leader Zelig Kalmanovitch viewed it up. question of why these men and women risked their

26 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 lives for books and papers, writing that it was both had been submitted by a victim of Nazi crimes. uncooperative at best. On one occasion the Trash an existential statement and an act of faith: As Vilna’s small Jewish community struggled to Administration sent 30 tons of recovered Jewish pa- reestablish itself, the limits of Soviet support for Jew- pers to be recycled as Sutzkever and Kaczerginski The existential statement was that literature and ish culture soon became all too clear. Here Fishman frantically ran from office to office, seeking to have culture were ultimate values . . . Since they were sheds new light on Soviet Jewish policy, in particular the order rescinded. As Kovner wrote, sure they would soon die, they chose to connect their remaining lives, and Across the city, precious Venice imprints, if necessary their deaths, with the manuscripts, and unique items are being ripped things that truly mattered. . . . The apart, trampled upon, and used to heat ovens, and book smugglers were also expressing we are not given the opportunity to save these their faith that there would be a Jewish treasures. For two years, we risked our lives to hide people after the war, which would them from the Germans, and now, in the Soviet need to repossess its cultural treasures. Union, they are being destroyed. . . . Sutzkever and . . . Finally, as proud citizens of Jewish I have had dozens of meetings with ministers, the Vilna, the members of the paper Central Committee of the Communist Party, and brigade believed that the very essence other important persons. They all promise, but of their community lay in its books no one helps. and documents. If volumes from the Strashun Library, documents from First Sutzkever and more slowly the communist- YIVO, and manuscripts from the An- leaning Kaczerginski came to realize that they ski Museum were saved, the spirit of had to rescue these materials once again, this the Jerusalem of Lithuania would live time from the Soviet regime. They began clan- on, even if its Jews would perish. destinely handing over packages to various em- issaries headed to New York, where YIVO had Caught in the Nazi death trap, these indi- relocated in 1940. When they themselves finally viduals dedicated themselves to a source Shmerke Kaczerginski and Abraham Sutzkever on the porch of emigrated they smuggled along what they could of transcendent meaning as human be- their apartment in the Vilna Ghetto, July 20, 1943. The poets led via Poland, Prague, and Paris. Now guilty of the ings, as Jews, and as natives of Vilna: the the smuggling operation from the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter theft of Soviet property, they did their best to cover written word. Rosenberg work site. (Courtesy of ForeEdge Press.) their tracks. Here Fishman’s research particularly There was hope that however many shines, though the tangled tale of how these pack- Jewish souls were exterminated, the Jewish people the dynamic between Moscow and local bureaucrats. ages made it out from behind the Iron Curtain will would endure and that this sheyres-hapleyte (sur- The museum’s associates worked in rooms of the for- never be fully unraveled. viving remnant) would take up the preserved frag- mer ghetto prison while fighting to secure permits, The smuggled documents joined another rem- ments of its culture. It was this hope that accompa- space, and staff. They found Lithuanian officials nant of the Vilna YIVO; what the ERR selected for nied the surviving members of the paper brigade as they returned to Vilna after liberation, Sutzkever from Moscow (his literary talents were so renowned Posen Foundation קרן that Soviet authorities sent a military aircraft to פוזן -transport him and his wife from the forests of Lithu ania to safety in Moscow in 1944) and Kaczerginski from a Soviet partisan unit in the nearby forests.

n July 26, 1944, a mere 13 days after Vilna’s Congratulations to the Oliberation, Kaczerginski, Sutzkever, and Posen Society of Fellows 2018-2020 Cohort Kovner established a Jewish museum to house the recovered remnants of the city’s Jewish heritage (the YIVO building and all the material hidden within it had been destroyed). They also set out to collect documents generated in the ghetto by its Jewish inmates and German rulers, as well as some of the very first survivor testimonies. This work arose from yet another goal: to now hold the Nazi tormentors accountable for their actions. Aviv Catherine Danny Angelina Daria Rephael Derri Greer Luzon Palmén Starikashkina Stern Shmerke, Sutzkever, and Kovner conceived of the museum as a continuation of both the paper > Aviv Derri, New York University > Angelina Palmén, Oxford University brigade and the FPO. . . . [They] intended to use Credit, Debt, and the Politics of Favor: Non-Muslim Holding the Fort: Jewish women in the German different types of material (the ghetto archive, Merchant-Banking Families in Ottoman Damascus War Economy 1914–1918 Gestapo archive, and survivor testimony) to and its Hinterland, 1840-1890 ensure that murderers would be brought to > Daria Starikashkina, Giessen University > Catherine Greer, University of Tennessee, Knoxville Broken Rings: Leningrad Jews in the Siege justice and punished. They saw the Jewish Singing in the Anteroom to Hell: Memorializing Music Museum as a framework for continuing the in Theresienstadt > Rephael Stern, Harvard University battle against the German murderers and their The Making of a Postcolony: Legal and Economic > Danny Luzon, University of California, Berkeley local collaborators, with trials and evidence Technocracy in Late British Mandate Palestine and Translational Encounters with Modernism: the State of Israel, 1939-1967 instead of guns and landmines. Jewish-American Multilingual Literature in the Age of Mass Migration When Sutzkever was invited to testify at the Nurem- burg trials as a witness of Jewish persecution, he read Details and information about applications for the 2019-2021 cohort at: a German document found in the Vilna Ghetto into www.posenfoundation.co.il the court record. It was the first time such evidence

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 27 shipment to Germany had remained intact and was Book Chamber in the 1990s, addressing a YIVO discovered by the Allies near Frankfurt after libera- staff meeting in her genuine Lithuanian Yiddish, tion. Thanks to the energetic efforts of Max Wein- bringing the first eyewitness account of collec- reich, YIVO’s only surviving leader, 420 crates tions believed destroyed decades ago. I remember of material arrived in New York in July 1947. The examining these documents myself, crumpled, museum in Vilna that Kaczerginski, Sutzkever, and dirty, and in total disarray. But perhaps my most Kovner had established was closed, along with other memorable experience was the day I was assigned Jewish institutions, in 1949. Its holdings were trans- to make photocopies for a visitor to the archives. ferred to other repositories and disappeared from His aristocratic bearing and the deference he was sight for the next 40 years. shown left me too intimidated to speak to him. It With the advent of perestroika in 1988 startling was Abraham Sutzkever, examining items in the news reached New York: Jewish materials had sur- Sutzkever Kaczerginski Collection that he and vived in Vilna. Kaczerginski’s best-case scenario had his comrade had hidden, rescued, and smuggled come true, for while these items had been hidden in to safety. the Lithuanian Book Chamber its director, Antanas The final chapter of this story is still being writ- Ulpis, had resisted pressure to destroy them. Now ten. In 2015 YIVO reached an agreement with the YIVO staff—including Fishman himself—traveled Lithuanian Central State Archives and the Na- to Lithuania to view the discoveries. As YIVO Ex- tional Library of Lithuania to catalog and digitize ecutive Director Samuel Norich and Chief Archivist the surviving Jewish materials in Vilna. As work Marek Web greeted Ulpis, proceeded new caches were discovered, revealing that more prewar documents remained intact than a staff member brought in a handcart with five anyone had previously imagined. New resources brown paper bags wrapped with string. The are now available online, ensuring that the Vilna staff member unwrapped them and took out Some of the six hundred Torah scrolls that were treasures will be preserved, made accessible, and documents written in Hebrew letters. Norich confiscated by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. reunited virtually with YIVO’s New York collec- and his archivist were speechless. . . . Many of In 1946, the U.S. Army established the Offenbach tions. The heroes of The Book Smugglers deserve them bore YIVO’s stamp. Archival Depot (OAD) to collect and classify the no less. books and written material taken by the Germans. This, they realized, was a portion of YIVO’s prewar Vil- (Courtesy of Yad Vashem Photo Archive, Jerusalem, na archive. Negotiations commenced with Lithuanian 1495/9.) Cecile E. Kuznitz is the director of Jewish studies at authorities to regain possession of the materials, but Bard College, where she is a professor of history. She they were ultimately unsuccessful. Instead, beginning As a young archivist at YIVO, I too was pres- is the author of YIVO and the Making of Modern in 1995, the archival documents were brought to New ent as some of these events unfolded. I remember Jewish Culture: Scholarship for the Yiddish Nation York, where they were duplicated and then returned. Fira Bramson, who cataloged the Jewish finds in the (Cambridge University Press).

28 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 33 Days and Four Years

BY CATHERINE C. BOCK-WEISS

day-by-day account puts a human face on these David Ball’s new translation is a generous selec- 33 Days numbers. tion from Werth’s original journal, but Ball’s chosen by Léon Werth, translated by Austin D. Johnston Saint-Exupéry wrote an introduction to the extracts are concerned primarily with the data of his- Melville House Publishing, 224 pp., $16 smuggled text and negotiated a contract with the tory: events, documents, actions, dialogues. He has Brentano’s publishing company to publish it in Eng- pared away many, if not most, of the reflective entries Deposition 1940–1944: A Secret Diary of Life lish. But the book never appeared and the manu- that reveal “l’homme interieur” that Werth’s isolation in Vichy France by Léon Werth, edited and translated by David Ball Wryly, perceptively, despairingly, Werth deciphered the Oxford University Press, 368 pp., $34.95 truth behind the German and Vichy propaganda that was on offer in the village and the neighboring market towns.

n the dedication page of The Little script disappeared. It was rediscovered in 1992 and brought to the fore. The most recent French editions Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry apol- published in France to great acclaim, but a copy of of the journal give us more of Werth’s loneliness, ogized to his young readers: Saint-Exupéry’s introduction did not come to light doubts, and self-questioning, and his conflicted feel- O until 2014. This elegant English-language edition, ings about France and the future of Europe. I ask children to forgive me for dedicating this ably translated by Austin Johnston, is the first to in- “There is no trace of Judeocentrism in this book to a grown-up. I have a serious excuse: clude the introduction of Werth’s best friend. diary,” observed Jean-Pierre Azéma in his 1992 this grown-up is the best friend I have in the introduction, which has been translated (and con- world. I have another excuse: this grown-up can densed) for this volume. But, of course, it is more understand everything, even books for children. complicated than that. Werth had been largely I have a third excuse: he lives in France where he indifferent to his Jewish heritage for most of his is hungry and cold. He needs to be comforted. life, but his existential situation was permeated with the fact of his Jewishness: He was in virtual His friend was the Jewish writer Léon Werth, who solitary confinement in a remote village, forbid- was indeed hungry and cold in France in 1943. den to publish and earn his livelihood, cut off from After the Nazi invasion, Werth had gone into hiding his friends and his intellectual milieu, a hostage to in the Jura countryside. Saint-Exupéry wrote the anti-Semitism. Though southeastern France did dedication in New York, where he was preparing to not have a heavy German troop presence, Werth’s leave for North Africa as a pilot for the Free French safety depended on whether or not his local neigh- Air Force. The Little Prince was published later that bors denounced him. In his first weeks of hiding, year, but Werth was not to see a copy until after the he described himself as a “captive in our summer war, by which time Saint-Exupéry was dead, having house . . . I take refuge in my room, like zoo ani- disappeared while flying a reconnaissance mission Léon Werth in an undated photo. (Editions Viviane mals in their little den.” It was as a Jew, penned in Hamy.) from Corsica in 1944. by Vichy’s anti-Semitic decrees, that Léon Werth The friendship between Saint-Exupéry, the discovered his identity as a Jew. scion of a conservative aristocratic French family, lthough the publication of 33 Days was long Like many assimilated French Jews, Werth had and Werth, a leftist novelist-critic and the son of a Adelayed, Werth’s Deposition 1940–1944 ap- defined himself as a Frenchman. He embraced the Jewish clothing merchant, who spoke out forcefully peared in France immediately after the war, in liberal, secular culture of the French Republic that against French colonialism, fascism, and Stalinism, 1946. In this diary, Werth recorded the fixed or provided and protected his civil rights. His Jewish was an unlikely one. They met in 1931 and, despite a fluctuating sentiments of peasants, farmers, shop- education was minimal at best. After Werth’s father 22-year age difference, forged a friendship remark- keepers, and landowners in his isolated free-zone died when Léon was seven, his intellectual develop- able in its intimacy and sympathetic exchange of French village. Wryly, perceptively, despairingly, ment was taken in hand by his mother’s brother, the views. Saint-Exupéry had arrived in New York in he deciphered the truth behind the German and young Sorbonne philosopher Frédéric Rauh, who 1940 armed with a precious manuscript, Werth’s Vichy propaganda that was on offer in the village was known as “Rauh the moralist” by his univer- 33 Days, planning to use it to win American sympa- and the neighboring market towns, and he sifted sity students. Rauh was a positivist and pragmatist thy for France in its hour of defeat. through rumors, anecdotes, and village stories whose books dealt with the question of morality The text was Werth’s first-hand chronicle of about local incidents. without religious sanctions. the chaotic exodus of French civilians who, on In the last year of the war, Werth made his way to Werth’s first journal entry about Jews is a re- order from the government, fled from the north Paris, hiding in the apartment that his wife Suzanne sponse to the issuing of the Statut des Juifs, on Octo- of the country, joining refugees from across the had established as a safe house for English and Ca- ber 3, 1940, the day of its promulgation: Belgian border in advance of the German army. It nadian parachutists, Resistance leaders, and Jews in had taken him 33 days to travel to Saint-Amour, a hiding. Not Jewish herself, Suzanne Werth worked Vichy is preparing a statute regulating Jews. village near the Swiss border, ordinarily an eight- with the Resistance network, passing 13 times be- A Polish Jew at least felt Jewish. People in the hour trip from Paris. German planes strafed and tween Saint-Amour in the free zone and occupied Nalewki neighborhood of Warsaw did not bombed the roads, which were clogged with every- Paris at great risk to herself, her son, and her hus- conceive of themselves as Polish. But French thing from tanks to pushcarts, from horse-drawn band. Together the family witnessed the Paris street Jews no longer felt Jewish. Those who felt most wagons to automobiles without gas. An estimated battles that accompanied the arrival of Allied tanks Jewish in their hearts were only Jewish through eight million people were on the road, and Werth’s in August 1944. the memory of a few family traditions.

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 29 Here, we see Werth holding Jews at arm’s length. I feel humiliated. It’s the first time that society Jewish one, even though he knew little else about Five days later, he describes two kinds of Jews he has humiliated me. I feel humiliated, not the religion for which he suffered. seems to know, the contemptible materialistic as- because I’m Jewish, but because I am presumed In his late journal entries of 1944, Werth won- similated Jew and the pious observant Jew. He has to be of inferior quality because I’m Jewish. It’s dered skeptically about what kind of Europe would only contempt for the former: “They’ve lost—and absurd; it may be the fault of my pride, but that’s be possible after the war. “Is there a Europe?” he they’re proud of it—all contact with Judaism, not to the way it is. asks. “Founded on what? on Christianity? on rea- say with anything resembling religion. They didn’t son? on experimental science? Europe seems very feel Jewish, they felt rich.” But in the same entry he [I’m being forced] to claim that I’m from a far away to me.” Hearing General De Gaulle’s radio describes the pious Jews of a past generation, pos- Jewish nation to which I felt no connection. broadcasts from London, Werth wanted to believe sibly a remembrance of his grandparents: . . . But if a foreigner means to humiliate me that there was another France, a “spiritual nation,” through this nation, I am hurt, and I don’t that could be restored after the war. But he also In Alsace in the middle of the nineteenth know if it’s this nation or myself I must feared that under fascist brutality it had lost the abil- century, there was a certain Jewish purity, as defend. But simple dignity obliges me to ity to conceive of itself as an idea, an ideal of liberty there was a Protestant purity. These austere identify myself with it. . . . It would be just too and justice. religions offered only demanding things to lean cowardly to deliberate whether or not I feel When the Allies marched into Paris, Werth ex- on. Those who practiced them were a suspect Jewish! If you insult the name of Jew in me, perienced the giddy excitement of victory, of de- group, in the opposition. That led to pride more then I am Jewish, totally Jewish, Jewish to the liverance. But at this moment of triumph, he also than to facility. tips of my toes, Jewish to my very guts. After saw Frenchwomen accused of having German that, we’ll see. lovers being marched with shaved heads through These distanced observations seem to have been a kind of preparation for acknowledging himself as a Jew. But even as France disowned him, he clung des- perately to his French identity. He wrote on October 21, “I care about a civilization, about France. I have no other way of dressing. I can’t go out completely na- ked.” He is not quite ready to don his Jewish identity. It is not until the entry of December 9, 1940, that we find Werth clearly identifying himself as a Jew, though he worried about a narrowing of his world view: “I’m a Jew, but am I going to reduce the world to the comforts Jews will have in the Europe of tomorrow?” Seven months later, on July 9, 1941, he wrote, “I am going to Lons to declare that according to the terms of the law of June 2, 1941, I am Jewish.”

Exodus of French Jews upon the arrival of the German army, June 1940. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma- Keystone via Getty Images.)

Werth went to the market town to register as a Jew, the Paris streets. Even the public abasement of cap- as farmers milled about with their animals to regis- tured German soldiers unsettled him: ter their weights: But the humiliation of those men makes me As others go to declare their cattle and the suffer. It is necessary, it is even justice itself. I weight of their pigs, I went to the prefecture to approve of it, it satisfies me, it soothes me, and declare I was Jewish. . . . I made my declaration I cannot rejoice at it. . . . I’m forgetting nothing at the prefecture. I threw out the word “Jew,” as [i.e., the massacres, deportations, and tortures]. if I was about to sing the Marseillaise. But when a human being is humiliated, his humiliation is in me. From this point on he begins to record meticulously everything he learns about the deportations and The full humiliation of the Jews was in Werth dur- massacres of the Jews. ing the war years. But it was as a proud French- On March 27, 1944, he wrote, “Now and then man that he joined the crowd that welcomed De I wish—oh, I’m well aware it’s a very faint wish— Gaulle. that I were deported to the depths of Poland, to be with the people who are suffering, with those suffering the most.” But he self-consciously adds Catherine C. Bock-Weiss is professor emerita at the (though Ball does not translate this): “Heritage of School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the author Christianity. Christianity by osmosis.” Werth knew of Henri Matisse: Modernist Against the Grain (Penn that the idea of suffering as redemptive was not a State University Press).

30 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 You Shall Appoint for Yourself Judges

BY TOM GINSBURG

danger” standard for justifying restrictions on rights. Account affair led to the resignation of Rabin, who The Purse and the Sword: The Trials of Israel’s More generally, in laying down a general approach prematurely called it “a sad ending to my public ca- Legal Revolution to rights adjudication in Israel, Agranat also estab- reer.” When Rabin was assassinated in 1995, lingering by Daniel Friedmann, translated by Haim Watzman lished a pattern whereby foreign law citations would bitterness over the scandal led Leah Rabin to point- Oxford University Press, 416 pp., $100 play a prominent role in Israeli jurisprudence. edly ignore Barak at the funeral. A few months after Rabin’s resignation and the Was he a robust defender subsequent electoral victory of Menachem Begin in 1977, Barak joined the Supreme Court as its young- of human rights or a runaway est judge. He became its president in 1995. Although owering over Israeli law of the past several Friedmann dates the activist phase of the court as decades is the singular figure of Aharon judge who imposed his beginning in 1993 under Barak’s predecessor Meir Barak. A former dean of the law faculty of Shamgar, it was led by Barak, and it ended when he the Hebrew University, he was appointed political preferences on a stepped down in 2006. attorneyT general in 1975, became a justice on the Supreme Court three years later, and headed the nation? rom the outset, Barak had an expansive view court from 1995 to 2006. Combining the raw intel- Fof the judicial role. In both his jurisprudence lectual firepower of Oliver Wendell Holmes with the Judges tended to defer to the government and and in his academic work, he argued that there was activism of Earl Warren, Barak remade the court, legislature in the following decades. Following the in principle no limit to the role of law and courts and to some extent the country, with his bold asser- British tradition, judges were on occasion called in adjudicating social and political disputes. Doc- tions of judicial power. His sheer range and depth upon to lead commissions of inquiry into govern- trinally, this meant that the court should expand led Richard Posner, the prolific former judge on ment malfeasance; for example, Agranat headed a standing in public interest cases beyond those who the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh had suffered immediate injuries. It also meant that Circuit (and a trenchant critic of Barak’s approach), the court should reject arguments that certain to suggest that Barak would deserve a Nobel Prize disputes were incapable of being decided in the for law, if such a thing existed. It is not much of an courts, or, to use the technical term, nonjusticiable. exaggeration to say that legal and judicial politics in Furthermore, the judge could not, in Barak’s view, Israel since his retirement have pivoted on compet- avoid some kind of quasi-legislative role, as it was ing views of Barak and his court: Was he a robust inherent in the very process of legal interpretation. defender of human rights or a runaway judge who No statute is complete, and so, in the exercise of imposed his political preferences on a nation? In filling gaps and giving meaning to the terms, judg- The Purse and the Sword, one of Barak’s chief intel- es would have to play a creative role. In his phrase, lectual antagonists, former minister of justice Dan- judges were “junior partners” in the creation of iel Friedmann, lays out the case against him. statutory law; when it came to common law, judges As is well known, Israel’s founding fathers could were “senior partners.” not agree on a constitutional text, in large part Perhaps the most radical step was taken when because of disputes between religious leaders and par- Barak and his colleagues formally imbued the Ba- ties and the secular political establishment. Instead, sic Laws with a constitutional character. In particu- the country has gradually adopted a series of “Basic lar, the 1992 Basic Laws on Freedom of Occupation Laws” (chukei ha-yesod) to define the fundamental and on Human Dignity and Liberty contained some institutions of the state. As a result of this piecemeal fundamental rights, with the possibility of judicial approach, the country has no formal constitution to oversight. Barak and his colleagues read these laws as interpret, and in this Israel is much like its former empowering the court to strike down contrary legis- overseer, the United Kingdom. As in the UK, Israeli lation of the Knesset. Barak called this achievement legislators could do pretty much what they liked, free Justice Aharon Barak in an undated photo. a “constitutional revolution,” but Friedmann prefers of the fundamental constraints that might be found in (Courtesy of Yossi Zamir/Flash90.) “legal revolution,” since he does not regard it as in any a formal bill of rights or a written constitution. To be sense constitutional. Regardless of the label, the doc- sure, there were common law traditions and principles trine was used expansively. The notion of human dig- of “natural justice” that might constrain policymakers, commission that investigated the military’s failures nity, in particular, was described by Barak as a kind particularly in the administrative realm. But these in the run-up to the Yom Kippur War. Still, the of umbrella right, into which could be read many were minimal, and judges interpreted them narrowly. country’s politics largely took place at the ballot box subsidiary rights, including a principle of equality In the early decades after the founding, Israel’s and in the Knesset. Friedmann dubs this the “classi- that is nowhere mentioned in the text of the Basic judges made modest contributions to develop a cal era” of a restrained court. Law and was explicitly rejected by the legislature in rights jurisprudence. A critical juncture was the Kol Enter Aharon Barak. Appointed as attorney gen- its compromise to enact the 1992 laws. It was then Ha’Am case in 1953, in which the minister of inte- eral after a stellar academic career, he quickly es- used to forbid the establishment of privately run pris- rior shut down a newspaper owned by the Commu- tablished a reputation as a vigorous anticorruption ons; to force adjustment of a legislative compensation nist Party. In interpreting whether this constituted crusader. One of his most prominent cases targeted scheme for settlers evacuated from Gaza; and, in a a violation of fundamental rights, Justice Shimon then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, along with his minority opinion, to argue for a principle of family Agranat (who had been born in Louisville, Ken- wife Leah, for having maintained two foreign bank reunification to allow Palestinians in the West Bank tucky, and attended the University of Chicago Law accounts in violation of Israeli law. (The accounts to move to Israel. More broadly, the court found itself School) cited classic American cases and imported were opened legally while Rabin was serving as am- ruling on topics from the use of torture to taxes to a modified version of Holmes’s “clear and present bassador to the United States.) The so-called Dollar immigration policy. In Federalist No. 78, Alexander

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 31 Hamilton famously described the court as lacking predecessors, two had been prosecuted and one an outsized influence on the law, but, if we see the the legislative power of the purse and the executive had resigned under serious police investigation. In same basic forces at work in many other legal sys- branch’s power of the sword. Friedmann’s title point- this he saw the conspiracy of a deep-state legal sys- tems, one has to wonder about the counterfactual. edly summarizes his argument that, under Barak, the tem reluctant to limit its own power and to allow Would the Israeli Supreme Court have remained a Israeli Supreme Court grabbed both. Israeli constitutional decisions became an un- Judicial power expands, producing calls for restraint and expected export. The country’s decisions have been cited in courts from Canada to Colombia to Poland, accountability, then judicial power contracts until new and they play an outsized role in the field of comparative constitutional law. This is largely because of demands on the system draw the courts back into politics. the force of Barak’s opinions. He is a strong advo- cate of the doctrine of proportionality, a technique necessary reforms. Nevertheless, he succeeded in “classic court” if Aharon Barak had just stayed at the that guides courts to weigh whether infringements getting the Knesset to limit the term of the Supreme Hebrew University (or moved to New Haven)? on rights are justified. Proportionality review, which Court president to seven years. (Barak had served in The fact is that, in many countries, judicial power involves a series of inquiries taken in a particular or- that position for more than a decade, until reaching expands, producing calls for restraint and account- der, promises rigor in what is, by definition, a value- the mandatory retirement age of 70.) Friedmann ability, then judicial power contracts until new de- laden exercise, allowing courts to argue that their also attacked the system of judicial appointments, mands on the system draw the courts back into decisions are methodologically grounded. politics. At the end of the book, Friedmann Barak was not only an exporter of opinions but celebrates the Supreme Court’s return to also an active participant in what is sometimes partial restraint under Justice Asher Gru- called the “global conversation among courts,” in nis and his successor Miriam Naor, both which judges compare approaches and cite each of whom have moderated judicial activ- other’s opinions across national borders. This kind ism and fended off attempts to restructure of legal globalization, like the actual thing, gener- the system of judicial appointments. But it ated inevitable backlash and criticism. Friedmann is hard to believe the last chapter has been pithily captures the sentiment when he asks just written on judicial activism in Israel. In- who Barak’s primary audience was: the Israeli public deed, at the time of this writing, the Knes- or a bunch of professors at Yale Law School, where set is debating a bill to allow it to override, Barak teaches each year. with a simple majority of 61 votes, Supreme Friedmann’s book is most delicious in its inside- Court decisions of unconstitutionality. baseball account of judicial appointments. Judges in One sees in Friedmann’s account a sense Israel are appointed by the Judicial Selection Com- of particular frustration with the judiciary’s mittee, on which three Supreme Court justices serve, role in various scandals that have ruined along with representatives of the Bar Association, the political careers (including those of some Knesset, and the government. While formally this Former minister of justice Daniel Friedman at the Knesset, of his friends and allies). Some of the scan- should serve to prevent any single institution from Jerusalem, 2012. (Coutesy of Yoav Ari Dudkevitch/FLASH90.) dals seem to have involved violations of the dominating, Friedmann has long argued that it tends law that were merely technical, while oth- to reproduce the composition of the Supreme Court encouraging more political involvement in the ers turn on disputed facts. But even if one disagrees over time. During Barak’s era, the court played the appointment process. In addition, he sought to with particular judgements rendered by particular dominant role in appointing its own members, over- limit the expansive standing doctrine, which had prosecutors and judges, it is not clear that this is a whelmingly favoring candidates from the state’s attor- allowed a plethora of nongovernmental organiza- systemic problem for which there is an easy remedy. ney and prosecution offices, at the expense of other tions access to the court. Soon, however, Olmert As yet another Israeli prime minister is faced with legal constituencies. Friedmann had pushed for more went down in a corruption scandal, and Friedmann a corruption scandal, one must ask, if not the legal political accountability in appointments and greater was out. system, then who can hold politicians accountable? involvement of district court judges and defense law- So, who is right? Did Barak engage in a power In country after country, public frustration with yers, as well as input from academics holding different grab, willfully insinuating the court into every aspect legislatures is at dangerously high levels. Even if it views concerning judicial interpretation and activ- of Israeli life and exposing the law as a political en- renounces the powers of both the purse and the ism. He pulls no punches with his criticisms, giving a terprise? Or was he simply stepping into the void left sword, the judiciary cannot avoid making decisions blow-by-blow account of the appointment of justices by a corrupt and gridlocked political system unable to with political consequences. he considers to be mediocrities. provide sufficient protection for human rights? This is a wholly extraordinary book by one lead- The animus between the two men is also personal Friedmann’s critique is a powerful one, and his ing figure in the Israeli legal establishment about the and extends to the justice who in 2006 became Barak’s book is also a valuable resource that critically sum- revolution wrought by another. Friedmann’s narra- successor, Dorit Beinisch. In 2002 she blocked the marizes much of the history of the Supreme Court. tive is one of a fall from grace from the period of appointment to the court of Friedmann’s friend and Yet one wonders if the prosecution has really proven the classic court, to which he longs to return. But protégé Nili Cohen, a well-regarded academic who its case. This is, after all, just an Israeli version of a viewed from a broader perspective, it seems unlike- had served as rector of Tel Aviv University. Barak story that has taken place in many countries in recent ly that there is any going back. Judicial power may initially supported her as the main alternative to his decades. From South Korea to Brazil to Italy, courts be curtailed temporarily, but it is now one of the leading intellectual opponent, Professor Ruth Gavi- have assumed a more prominent place in their coun- established modalities of democratic government. son, who had long been a prominent critic of the try’s politics. Many of these courts have relaxed con- Barak pushed judicial power past the conventional constitutional revolution. However, Cohen’s candi- straints on standing and justiciability, while greatly limits; he is thus one of a kind, but he is also one of dacy was jeopardized by an unfounded allegation expanding the range of issues on which they rule. The a type. Barak was, in the end, like all other judges, of financial improprieties that was soon discredited. causes of this phenomenon are complicated: a grow- only more so. Friedmann blames Barak for subsequently failing ing demand for rights, the inability of the traditional to push her through, arguing that a leader with his political machinery to fully deliver the protection force of personality could have done so. that citizens demand, and the growing legitimacy of Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of International claims to technocratic authority. Law and Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar at oon after Barak’s retirement, Friedmann be- This broader global context of judicialization the University of Chicago Law School. He directs the Scame minister of justice in the Olmert govern- leads one to wonder if the great-man theory of Comparative Constitutions Project and is the author of ment, with a mandate to shake up the clubby ju- judicial power is entirely accurate. Surely a man Judicial Reputation: A Comparative Theory with Nuno dicial appointments pattern. Of Friedmann’s three with as formidable an intellect as Barak would have Garoupa (University of Chicago Press).

32 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 Containing God’s Presence

BY ILANA KURSHAN

used to refer to seeking out God’s will, whereas in plans. The narrative is also not placed where The Heart of Torah, Essays on the Weekly later books, such as Ezra, the object of this inquiry is it is in the Torah in order to explain the vast Torah Portion: Genesis and Exodus not God but the Torah: “Instead of inquiring of God multiplicity of human languages. Nor is it a by Rabbi Shai Held, foreword by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg directly, people now seek guidance through study- lament about some lost primeval unity. The Jewish Publication Society, 400 pp., $24.95 ing God’s Torah.” This is essentially Held’s project, seeking guidance—especially moral instruction— Having toppled these readings, Held then proceeds The Heart of Torah, Essays on the Weekly by inquiring of the text in order to get at its heart. to construct his own. Torah Portion: Leviticus, Numbers, and The “heart of Torah,” for Held, is chesed, which Through a close reading of the nine biblical Deuteronomy he translates as “love and kindness.” As he writes, verses that comprise the Tower of Babel story, Held by Rabbi Shai Held, foreword by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg The Jewish Publication Society, 496 pp., $24.95 Wells and wombs give way to politics and persuasion, and sometime around the start of the secular new year we begin Exodus. ver the course of a year, the Jewish calendar bends to the arc of the Torah “[w]hen all is said and done, religion is, in large part, demonstrates that it is really the city and not the reading cycle and assumes its shades. about softening our hearts and learning to care.” Most tower as such that is the focus of biblical condemna- With the end of summer and the start of his essays begin with a close reading of the biblical tion. This is why it is the city which is described as ofO the Jewish new year, the world is created anew in text, which in turn leads him to a claim about God being punished at the end of the story. (Held might Genesis and nearly destroyed by flood in the story and then to an ethical message for his contemporary have added that whenever both city and tower are of Noah, a parsha (portion) which coincides with readers. In “People Have Names: The Torah’s Take- mentioned, the city is always mentioned first.) In the start of the rainy season in Israel. As the autumn chill sets in and the nights grow longer, we follow the story of the patriarchs and matriarchs, who look up at the stars and journey through the desert guided by divine promise and by visions of God in the darkness of night. On the coldest and darkest days of the year, we read of Joseph’s descent into the pit, cast down by his jealous brothers, only to rise to prominence in Egypt as the winter days begin to grow longer and more hopeful. Wells and wombs give way to politics and persuasion, and sometime around the start of the secular new year we begin Exodus, the narrative of our deliverance from Egyp- tian bondage, as part of our spiritual preparation in the months before Passover. Then we immerse ourselves in the details of sacrificial worship as spring sets in, reading of sin and purification as the first flowers break through the softening soil. Just when it starts to get warmer after Passover we trek with the Israelites through the desert, and then, when it’s too hot to move forward anymore, we stop to hear Moses recount it all over again in Deuteronomy during the dog days of summer. The Torah reading cycle provides the structure not just for the Jewish year but also for countless volumes of commentary on the biblical text, including Rabbi Shai Held’s brilliant new two-volume collection The Heart of Torah, Essays on the Weekly Torah The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1563. (Courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.) Portion. Held offers two discussions of each parsha, perhaps a reminder that there is never just one way to interpret Torah. He describes these discussions down of Totalitarianism,” he rejects the conventional short, something is rotten in Babel, and the tower as essays rather than sermons, which is the more interpretations of the Tower of Babel story: is merely an expression of this deeper ethical taint. common rendering of the Hebrew term “drashot.” Held considers the punishment that God metes This is apt, since both “essays” and “drashot” have Genesis 11 is not a simple morality tale about out to the builders—scattering them “over the face the sense of a search or attempt rather than the a human attempt to storm the heavens and of the whole earth” (Gen. 11:8)—in light of the statement of a settled position; Held is deeply seri- displace God. Nor, conversely, is it a primitive blessing He gives to Adam and Eve and then to ous but never sermonic. Interestingly, Held notes allegory about an insecure deity who is so Noah to “Be fertile and increase, and fill the earth” that the meaning of the term “drash” evolves over threatened by human achievement that God (Gen. 1:28, 9:1). How, Held asks, can the Bible de- the course of the Bible: In Genesis and Exodus, it is needs to wreak havoc on the best-laid human scribe human dispersion as both a blessing and a

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 33 curse? His elegant solution is that the builders are Leah manages to turn her unfulfilled longing into interpreters (including Israelis, such as Shmuel being punished because what they most fervently gratitude. Faust and Rav Shagar, who are largely unknown to desire—to build a city and tower lest they be scat- American readers). He is receptive both to tradi- tered—is the opposite of what God most desires for Leah has somehow found the courage to accept tional exegesis and to modern scholarship, often humanity. “God’s ‘punishment,’ then, may not ulti- that her life is not going to turn out as she had showing how the Torah’s theological and ethical mately be a punishment at all, but a reaffirmation hoped. She has spent years aching for the love claims are all the more radical given the contrast with of the initial divine blessing in the face of human of her husband . . . But now, suddenly, she sees the ancient Near Eastern context from which they refusal and obstruction.” that this constant yearning will only generate emerged. Moreover, he incorporates non-Jewish But why is God so intent that people disperse? more fantasy and illusion. insights and contributions from early Christian Here, Held turns to a classic 19th-century commentator known by the acronym Netziv (Naftali Zvi Held draws on a talmudic passage in which Leah Central to Held’s theology is Yehuda Berlin) for a suggestive reading. The Netziv is identified as the first person in the world to express reads the Bible’s description of the people as having gratitude to God. He is quick to note that this is clearly the notion that God’s had “the same language and the same words” (Gen. not the case. Rather, what sets Leah apart is her ability 11:1) as meaning that “their words . . . were all the to be grateful in the midst of sorrow. Given that Ye- actions are a model for ours. same.” Held takes this one step further, explaining hudah’s name becomes the name for the entire Jewish that “total uniformity is necessarily a sign of totali- people, Held writes that “a Jew is, ideally, a human sources to works by contemporary Protestant tarian control.” The problem with the Babel builders, being who, like Leah, can find her way to gratitude scholars. then, was their intolerance of independent thought. without having everything she wants or even needs.” Of course, the majority of commentators Held “If everyone says the same words and thinks the same draws upon are from within the rabbinic tradition. thoughts, then a society emerges in which there is no n his essay on the first parsha in Deuteronomy, Occasionally we hear women’s voices, particularly room for individual tastes, thoughts, and aspirations, IHeld argues that God’s love for Israel is not on Nechama Leibowitz or contributors to the anthology or for individual projects and creativity.” account of Israel’s merits but is “pure grace,” as he The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, but Held’s egali- Held grounds this reading in both the text and proves from the story of God’s choice of Abraham. tarianism is most pronounced when he discusses the its context: No names are mentioned in the verses Drawing on the prophet Amos’s criticism of Israel- lives of biblical women as human actors on the scrip- about Babel, and the story follows on the heels of ite complacency, he shows how biblical chosenness tural stage, each with her own feelings and dreams. a long genealogy of Noah’s children. He buttresses requires a higher degree of accountability and moral For instance, he considers Sarah’s barrenness from this claim by invoking the contemporary Israeli her perspective—how she American commentator Judy Klitsner, who points must have felt when Abra- out that the Babel story is followed by a story about ham prayed for Avimel- a man literally named Name—Noah’s son Shem— ech to have children but as if to emphasize the namelessness that precedes not for his own wife, his mention. Held goes on to cite a midrash from and what it would have Pirke d’Rabbi Eliezer which describes the builders as been like when Abraham caring more about bricks than people; the collective laughed at God’s promise project was more important than the individuals of a child for her and re- making up the collective. And so uniformity entails sponded with a prayer for anonymity, and anonymity implies insignificance. Ishmael, Hagar’s son. What of Babel’s assault on heaven as an attack on For Held, biblical God? Though he had previously rejected this read- women and men are ing as too simplistic, he now returns to it through judged by the same ethi- the back door. Yes, Babel is an attack on God, but it cal standards. He regards is an attack on God because it is an attack on human Jacob’s lack of compassion uniqueness. and hospitality in Parshat Vayishlach as standing An attempt to root out human individuality in stark contrast not just is an assault on God. Jewish theology affirms to that of his grandfather that each and every human being is created Abraham but also to that in the image of God, and that our uniqueness of his mother, Rebekah. and individuality are a large part of what God In his essay on Miketz, he treasures about us. traces the moral evolution of what it means to The story of Babel is mythic in its universalism, be one’s brother’s keeper, describing a time before the world was divided into a lesson that Cain spurns, languages, religions, or nationalities, so it is not Three Strangers by Richard McBee, 1995. (Courtesy of Richard McBee.) Yehudah struggles to surprising that the message Held draws from this learn, and Miriam seems story is also universal. But this is true of the ma- responsibility. Held reads the verses in Deuteronomy intuitively to grasp. For Held, gender is not a barrier jority of the essays in this collection. Held explores that describe the provision of land to Israel and God’s to comparison; these characters are far more united how the Bible calls upon us to conduct ourselves in instructions concerning how the Israelites should by their common humanity than they are divided the world, beyond, or perhaps even prior to, Jewish pass through the land of other nations as showing along gender lines. In this sense, Held’s commentary law. Even his essays that are ostensibly about what that God cares about the welfare of other nations is more radically egalitarian than any book expressly it means to be Jewish are also about what it means and charges Israel to do so as well. He insists that “[a] about biblical women could ever be. to excel at being human. In his essay on Vayetze, careful reading of Tanakh thus demonstrates that for instance, Held explores the meaning of the term election, or chosenness, is not a function of merit; it n his most sanguine essays, on the second half “Yehudi” (Jew), which comes from Leah and Jacob’s does not give the people a moral blank check; nor Iof Exodus and on Leviticus, Held argues that the son Yehudah. Held traces the evolution of Leah’s does it suggest that Israel is God’s only concern.” Mishkan, the portable sanctuary which the Israelites emotional state over the course of their marriage, Held’s ecumenicism is also evident in the range carried with them in the desert, was, like Shabbat, paying close attention to the names she chooses for of sources he cites. He quotes liberally from the Tal- modeled after Eden. The Torah’s description of its each of her first four children. He notes that in nam- mud and midrash, as well as from medieval com- construction offers a picture of what the ideal coming her fourth child Yehudah, from “I will praise,” mentators, Hasidic masters, and contemporary munal project would be like—motivated by genuine

34 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 generosity and a respect for the sanctity of the cause. binic and Lurianic notions of tzimtzum convey the lation.” Buber argued that what he called a “primal As Held contends in his essay on Parshat Teruma, importance of being present while making space.” setting at a distance,” a recognition that the other is the Mishkan offers a glimpse of a reality in which the Central to Held’s theology is the notion that independent of oneself, must precede any “entering world is a temple for God’s presence and in which God’s actions are a model for ours. To follow the into relation.” As Held writes, translating this in- God’s presence serves as a model for how we can ethical charges of the Torah—to visit the sick; to be sight into everyday human terms: best be present for one another. This conception of kind to the widow, the orphan, and the stranger; to the Mishkan emerges from his analysis of tzimtzum, One of the core challenges of loving a friend or a notion that is understood in opposite ways by the a spouse is to learn to be completely present . . . talmudic sages and by the kabbalists. As the essay while also making space for our partner to be unfolds, Held provides an ingenious synthesis of who he or she is, independent of us. . . . Too these two understandings which he characteristically much presence suffocates our partner . . . Too transposes from the theological to the ethical plane. little presence constitutes abandonment. The great 16th-century kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria taught that God made space for the world to Held’s commentary ends where the Torah ends, exist by contracting or withdrawing the divine pres- leaving us all still in the wilderness—but also sending ence into itself, a process he referred to as tzimtzum. us back to creation to begin the Torah reading cycle And yet, as Held notes, tzimtzum was originally a anew each fall, trying once again to draw out the To- rabbinic term, and “for the Talmudic sages it means rah’s enduring meaning. Perhaps not surprisingly, something very different . . . than it meant for Lu- then, what lingers and resonates most upon reading ria.” To explain this meaning of the term, Held cites through these volumes is the message Held was of- a midrash from Pesikta d’Rav Kahana, a collection fered as a teenager, at the beginning of his own spiri- of homilies that predates Luria by about a millen- tual journey. In one of the rare personal moments in nium. The midrash relates that Moses was incredu- these essays, he writes that he spent his teens preoccu- lous when God instructed him to build a tabernacle pied with questions of faith and once wrote a 15-page for God. How could any structure possibly contain Rabbi Shai Held. handwritten letter—“[a]s only an angst-ridden adoles- the omnipresent? God responded to Moses that cent could”—confessing his struggles to the late Rabbi He would “descend and contract” His presence on judge poor and rich alike; to cherish human unique- Louis Jacobs, whose open-minded traditionalism had earth. Thus, the kabbalistic tzimtzum is about a di- ness—is to walk in God’s ways. Held’s synthesis of inspired him. Jacobs wrote back to Held: “Remember vine withdrawal to make space, whereas the rab- both meanings of tzimtzum—Lurianic withdrawal always . . . that the search for Torah is itself Torah and binic tzimtzum is about “intensified presence.” Held and rabbinic intensified presence—is not just about that in the very search you have already found.” quotes Gershom Scholem’s remark that Luria inher- how God is present in the world but also about how ited the rabbinic term and “stood it on its head,” but we should be present for one another in our human Held is really interested in how these two meanings relationships. Held finds intimations of this idea in Ilana Kurshan is the author of If All the Seas Were Ink: of the term can coexist: “Taken together these Rab- an essay by Martin Buber called “Distance and Re- A Memoir (St. Martin’s Press).

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Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 35 Dress British, Think Yiddish

BY EITAN KENSKY

little magazines: Neurotica (the first Beat journal), closest to making a version of that movie in the early Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual Partisan Review, Commentary, Encounter (which 1990s, when he was working on adapting Begley’s by Nathan Abrams published Trilling’s review of Lolita, a strong in- Wartime Lies, but he abandoned the project, either Rutgers University Press, 340 pp., $34.95 fluence on Kubrick’s adaptation),Dissent. (In The because of the success of Schindler’s List or because Shining, Jack Torrance reads the New York Review of the enormity of the subject, the impossibility of capturing everything he had learned about the Ho- locaust in a single film. These were not merely pro- Kubrick’s Jewish humor fessional or purely artistic concerns. In a remarkable tanley Kubrick was a Jew from Jewland. unquestionably reached its interview from the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Raised in the Bronx, he was surrounded Life in Pictures, Christiane Kubrick, his third wife and by Jewish friends and neighbors, some of apogee during his collaborations the love of his life, expressed relief that Kubrick gave whom became early artistic collaborators. up the project: “He became very depressed during BornS in 1928, he lived his adult life in the shadow with Peter Sellers. the preparations, and I was glad when he gave up on of the Holocaust, and, although he never realized it because it was really taking its toll.” The documen- his plan to adapt Louis Begley’s novel Wartime Lies, of Books.) Kubrick read the most important works tary omits the fact that Christiane had been inducted Holocaust imagery was surprisingly central to his of Holocaust history and studies of totalitarianism into the Hitler Youth during her childhood, and that films. Allegorical enemies wear Nazi-inspired uni- as they were published. In a scathing review of Eyes her uncle, Veit Harlan, was the director of Jud Süss. forms; partially formed mannequins stand in for Wide Shut, Midge Decter recounted Kubrick’s biog- It’s not hard to suppose that the preparations were disfigured bodies; and the state as a source of vio- raphy and called him “a familiar figure.” She knew also taking their toll on her. Kubrick even managed lence is a master theme that recurs throughout his what she was talking about. He truly was one of to extend his fascination with the Holocaust beyond pictures. He self-consciously cast Jewish stars in them, Abrams argues, a New York Jewish intellec- the grave: The posthumously released A.I.: Artificial key roles: Peter Sellers, Tony Curtis, Sydney Pol- tual. “And while he was never a writer or a literary Intelligence, produced by Kubrick and directed by lack, Shelley Winters, and, iconically, Kirk Douglas. critic, he read their magazines. He had a fondness Steven Spielberg, contains horrific shots of violence Indeed, the movies he made with Douglas, Paths for ideological speculation, he was Jewish by birth, against humanoid robots—those with the capacity to of Glory and Spartacus, were critical in cementing and he strived self-consciously to be brilliant.” pass, which are therefore intolerable. Douglas’s image as the muscular, moral Jew. Abrams suggests that we un- Kubrick even cast himself in the same biographi- derstand Kubrick’s moral world cal role long played by Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, through the contrast between “men- and Max Ophüls: Jewish émigré director. He left schlikayt,” the distinctive Jewish America for England in the 1960s, and his most ideal of human decency, and “goyim English movie, Barry Lyndon, is also his most obvi- naches,” the things Jews supposedly ously Jewish: Barry, the Irish outsider, tries to ingra- don’t value. This framework would tiate himself into high society, only to be tripped up seem, as we say in Yiddish, far- by his incomprehension of a moral code that gives fetched, if Barry Lyndon didn’t hinge sanction to some forms of violence (and greed) but on a textbook definition of “goyim not others. In Eyes Wide Shut, his final film, the pro- naches”: the rules of dueling. Barry tagonist sleepwalks through highly stylized, fantasy is made and unmade in a duel, his versions of the landscape of Kubrick’s early years as one ethical act leading not to recon- a photographer and filmmaker: Greenwich Village ciliation but to ruin. and Central Park West. So how is it that we’ve come Abrams combines close readings to see Kubrick only as a controlling, austere, manip- of the films with intensive, archival ulative, reclusive genius from England? research into the source material— In Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual, scripts, production documents, and Nathan Abrams answers this question with a single Kubrick’s personal papers and arti- word: misdirection. Abrams’s essential argument is Director Stanley Kubrick and actor Peter Sellers on the set of Dr. facts—which collectively tell a Jewish that Kubrick buried his Jewish preoccupations and Strangelove, 1963. (Courtesy of Hawk Films Production/Columbia story. Kubrick nearly always adapted thematic concerns, distracting viewers with superfi- Pictures/Kobal Collection.) pre-existing material, and he nearly cially Gentile alternatives. Dr. Strangelove is obviously always removed explicitly Jewish an ex-Nazi, a Wernher von Braun figure. Yet an early More importantly, the substance of Kubrick’s characters and subplots from the original sources. character sketch, preserved in Kubrick’s archive, de- work reflects many of the same preoccupations as his Curiously, Kubrick would add Jewish elements scribes him as “a Herman Kahn type.” The grotesque fellow midcentury Jewish intellectuals. He was end- (Dr. Strangelove originally featured the “rightwing- absurdity of Strangelove’s autonomous Nazi arm mis- lessly fascinated by man’s capacity for evil and “ultra- er—half-Jewish” senator, John Applekuegel) only to directs us from the Jewish nuclear strategist, who, along violence.” The disturbance of A Clockwork Orange’s cut them close to production. What Kubrick kept with others, served as Kubrick’s proximate target. second act derives from the state-sanctioned torture were, according to Abrams, coded “Jewish mo- Abrams understands Kubrick not as a root- that poses as rehabilitation, a technique that explicitly ments.” Abrams writes approvingly that “nonexplic- less cosmopolitan, but as a rooted one. This was a recalls Nazi experimentation. Paths of Glory and Full itness” provides “the key to understanding Kubrick’s New York Jew, fascinated with photography, jazz, Metal Jacket both explored the dehumanization of ambivalent, ambiguous, and seemingly paradoxical and chess. He took evening classes at City College war and the transformation of the moral individual attitude toward Judaism.” We could somewhat less and studied at Columbia with Lionel Trilling. Lat- into a killer. For decades Kubrick thought about film- charitably think of this as a formula: Think Jewish, er, he moved to the Village and got to know Beat ing a Holocaust movie, and he even asked Isaac Ba- omit the name, ostensibly achieve the universal. poets. He assiduously read intellectual journals and shevis Singer about writing the screenplay. He came Another recurring theme of Abrams’s work is

36 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 Kubrick’s Jewish humor. Again, there are tells: A were themselves too attenuated as Jews—for protagonist with an empty vessel (Tom Cruise), but placard advertising a Lenny Bruce performance at the reading to be fully persuasive. 2001: A Space add new Jewish figures, a Jewish mise en scène (“Jo- a burlesque show prominently appears in the back- Odyssey, for instance, is too other-worldly to sus- sef Kreibich’s Knish Bakery” prominently appears ground of Kubrick’s early film The Killing (1956). tain the New York Jewish frame. during Bill’s walks through Greenwich Village), Barry Lyndon is characterized by an extremely dry At other times, the gravity of reading Kubrick as and tackle Jewish preoccupations. Sydney Pollack’s wit in which high is always undercut by low. (The a Jew from New York is liberating. Abrams’s open- Victor Ziegler, the film’s hairy antagonist, is an anti- ing chapter on Kubrick’s early films—Fear and Desire, Semite’s dream: a lecher and a manipulator whose Killer’s Kiss, and The Killing—is an exciting reintro- wealth enables him to abandon the rules of conven- duction to the young director. While the taut crime tional morality. The film’s orgy sequence is disturb- story The Killing has developed a cult following over ing precisely because it is an unerotic abstraction of the years (the opening heist in The Dark Knight bor- sex performed for the powerful. Cruise’s Harford, rows from it liberally), Killer’s Kiss remains a lost gem. like Barry Lyndon, may know the password, but he Shot in a rush on location, the movie radiates with does not belong, and everyone knows it. There are the energy of getting to make something in and about always gates, restrictions, a level the Jew who obeys the place that you love. New York shapes the charac- the rules cannot attain. ters and sparks the action. The male and female leads Kubrick’s body of work is haunted by the mov- are connected and separated by an air shaft; they ies he never made. He worked meticulously and watch each other (though they pretend not to watch) deliberately, developing projects for decades but through their close windows. Their actions are mir- not completing them. Had he made his Holocaust rors, the apartment building pushing them into a movie with Isaac Bashevis Singer; had he adapted dance of observing and being observed. Later scenes Traumnovelle with Woody Allen as the lead in the trade this claustrophobia for the particular dread of a 1970s instead of Tom Cruise in the 1990s; had he city at its most empty: the industrial waterfront after filmed Aryan Papers—there would be no debate hours, loft factories, the cavern of Penn Station. about Kubrick’s identity as a Jewish director. But Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick’s last film, is the unlikely the movies he did make nonetheless bear the traces reprisal and opposite of Killer’s Kiss. Killer’s Kiss re- of the Jewish preoccupations, which Abrams bril- veals the city in its natural state. Eyes Wide Shut’s city liantly uncovers. was constructed on a backlot, a New York imagined in exile. Abrams calls it the “summation of Kubrick’s career as a New York Jewish intellectual,” and he’s Eitan Kensky founded In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish An Italian poster advertising Spartacus, 1960. right to do so. An unfaithful adaptation of Arthur Studies and was the director of collections initiatives at (Courtesy of SilverScreen/Alamy Stock Photo.) Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle (Dream Story), the movie the Yiddish Book Center. He is the incoming Reinhard serves as exhibit A of Kubrick’s method: Start with Family Curator of Judaica and Hebraica at Stanford an explicitly Jewish source text, replace the Jewish University Library. film opens with one of its beautiful, painterly shots of men on a bluff in the Irish countryside: “Gentle- men, cock your pistols!”) But Kubrick’s Jewish humor unquestionably reached its apogee during his collaborations with Pe- THE ISRAEL JOURNAL ter Sellers. “How did they ever make a movie of . . . of Foreign Affairs Lolita?” the original trailer asks. Well, by not making a movie of Lolita. Kubrick’s version is a brilliant-if- frustrating amalgamation of Nabokov’s story and Founded in 2006 by the late Dr. David Kimche, The Israel a slapsticky, shticky cat-and-mouse game. Kubrick Journal of Foreign Affairs is the flagship publication of the and Sellers transformed Humbert Humbert’s alter Israel Council on Foreign Relations (ICFR), which is an ego Quilty from a spectral presence to true antag- independent and non-partisan body that operates under the auspices of the World Jewish Congress. Through onist. The nervy atmosphere of its opening scene the publication of its interdisciplinary journal, the ICFR comes from treating the showdown between Hum- aspires to stimulate high-level analysis and debate of bert and Quilty like a Marx Brothers routine: The international affairs, particularly, though not exclusively, straight man meets the wacko. “Hey, you’re a sort of regarding Israel, the Middle East and Jewish affairs. bad loser,” Quilty tells Humbert as they “play” ping pong; “I’m just dying for a drink,” he says drolly as In a short time, the Journal has succeeded in developing a strong reputation, attracting the writings of many leading a gun is pointed at him. The film, through Quilty, authorities in various aspects of foreign affairs. The masks its exploration of evil through the semitrans- Journal is geared toward practitioners and scholars of parent shade of the comic. “It’s hard not to read the international affairs, as well as informed observers. In an characterizations as intentional, an inside joke, or a attempt to engage and encourage tomorrow’s diplomats series of jokes, about Jews as Jews and stereotypes of and scholars, it also publishes articles by outstanding Jews,” Abrams writes. Sometimes the joke is hardly graduate students. inside. Quilty attempts to ward off Humbert’s advance by saying, “This is a Gentile’s house. You’d better run along.” And then there is the suggestion that Sellers modeled his own performance on Senior Editor Lionel Trilling, after watching Trilling’s discussion Prof. Aharon Klieman rifa of Lolita with Nabokov on a talk show. Chief Editor www.tandfonline.com/ Dr. Laurence Weinbaum he chapter on Lolita is the most surprising Managing Editor Tand the most revisionary, but Abrams’s book Ms. Yvette Shumacher is nearly always compelling. Nonetheless, some of Abrams’s readings of Kubrick’s protagonists as Jew- ish are too attenuated—or perhaps the protagonists

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 37 READINGS Maimonides in Ma’ale Adumim

BY ALLAN NADLER

n 1977, I received a slender volume of com- his first rabbinical post, Rabinovitch was the lead- As a rabbi, he cedes his judgment and author- mentary on Moses Maimonides’s codification er of the small Orthodox community in Charles- ity to no religious organization, political party, of Hilkhot Teshuvah (Laws of Repentance) in ton, South Carolina, where he established its first or venerated Orthodox rabbinical tribunal, regard- his Mishneh Torah. It was by a former teacher Hebrew day school. In 1963, he returned to Cana- less of how many “Torah giants” fill its mass meetings’ ofI mine, Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch, who was then da to lead the Clanton Park Synagogue in Toronto. massive daises. He also has shown a brave indiffer- the principal of Jews’ College in London, and it was While there, he completed a doctorate in the history ence to the single most powerful religious institution called Yad Peshutah. The title, which means “Out- of science at the University of Toronto. In 1971, he in the Jewish State, Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. Three stretched Hand,” is a clever play on the alternative accepted the stunning offer to become principal of years ago, together with Rabbis Shlomo Riskin and name sometimes used for Maimonides’s 14-volume Jews’ College in London. Ten years later, in a move David Stav, Rabinovitch established an independent code of Jewish law, Yad ha-Hazakah, or “Strong that shocked his colleagues and students, he ac- beit din to handle the cases of the thousands of Israeli Hand” (the two Hebrew letters composing the word cepted another unlikely offer, to become the rosh candidates for conversion to Judaism with greater “yad,” or hand, also stand for the number 14). Thus, yeshiva of Birkat Moshe, a small yeshiva in Ma’ale compassion, efficiency, and leniency than had been the title implied, Rabinovitch’s commentary was Adumim, a settlement a few miles outside of Jeru- shown by state-sanctioned rabbinic courts. an attempt to reach back across the generations to salem, on the other side of the Green Line. At the Maimonides in the 12th century and out to contem- time, Birkat Moshe was little more than a trailer s it happens, when I received that first volume porary students of the code—and that it aimed to Aof Rabinovitch’s Yad Peshutah, I was in gradu- do so by elucidating the peshat, or most straight- ate school, studying under the foremost academic forward meaning, of the text. scholar of Maimonides’s legal code, Harvard’s In its preface, Rabinovitch announced his auda- Isadore Twersky. Ten years earlier, Twersky cious plan to extend this approach to the entire Mish- had published an article called “Some Non- neh Torah. What struck me most then—and strikes Halachic Aspects of the Mishneh-Torah,” in which me all the more powerfully these 40 years later, as he argued, against a scholarly consensus stretching that initial 148-page volume has blossomed into back to the 19th century, that Mamonides’s philo- the most systematic, comprehensive commentary sophical and legal writings were not only compat- on Maimonides’s code ever produced—was not the ible but complementary. The Mishneh Torah was work’s ambition. Rather, it was its systematic clar- not simply the public, communal work of a radical ity and methodological precision, combined with philosopher, whose Guide of the Perplexed secretly the author’s extraordinary mastery of all of Mai- undermined many of its religious certainties, as monides’s works, from the book on logic he wrote as many scholars (most famously Leo Strauss and a young man to his final masterpiece, The Guide of the Shlomo Pines) had argued. Rather, Maimonides was Perplexed. Rabinovitch’s guiding principle, which a philosopher-theologian who (more or less) con- he repeats several times, is that “Maimonides must sistently taught the same rational religion, though be interpreted through Maimonides.” The 23 mas- he wrote differently for different audiences. In 1977, sive volumes of the now almost complete Yad Twersky was in the midst of finishing his master- Peshutah bear out the fruitfulness of this approach. piece, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides, which As Rabinovitch shows, Maimonides was a remark- argued for this reading in extensive detail. Thus, ably consistent thinker whose halakhic positions in Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch, 2011. two great scholars, working independently of one the Mishneh Torah were meticulously coordinated another, crafted a formidable set of arguments for with his philosophical reasoning. the unity of Maimonides’s work, one in a 600-page Although Rabinovitch is, in many respects, a tra- with a few students, but it had been founded by two hibbur, the other in a 12,000-page (!) perush (to bor- ditional rosh yeshiva—his prose integrates elements brilliant young scholars: Chaim Sabato, who would row the master’s own terminology in distinguishing of “yeshivish” Hebrew with a mélange of classical go on to become a prize-winning novelist, and his works of codification from those of commentary). and modern styles—he is surely the most thorough- Yitzhak Sheilat, who would later edit and translate In choosing to write a commentary rather than ly Maimonidean thinker of our age, not only in this the most meticulous and widely consulted edition a book, Rabinovitch boldly inscribed himself in massive commentary, but also in his consummately of Maimonides’s letters. Over the last four decades, an almost 800-year tradition, from the cryptic rationalist works on Jewish law, theology, and Zion- Birkat Moshe has become one of the leading Zionist animadversions of Maimonides’s contemporary ism. He is, to put the point piously, perhaps the most yeshivot in Israel, with an important press. Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquières (known impressive and the least well known of our sages. His extraordinary career and accomplishments as Rabad) through the early 20th-century clas- Born in Sainte-Sophie, Quebec, a farming town notwithstanding, Rabbi Rabinovitch is hardly known sic Ohr Sameach by Rabbi Meir Simcha ha-Kohen at the foothills of the Laurentian Mountains north to diaspora Jews, even those steeped in the rabbinic of Dvinsk. And yet, while Yad Peshutah is largely of Montreal, in 1928, Rabinovitch was sent as a tradition. His approach is simply too modern, hal- exegetical, working line by line through the text of teenager to study at that city’s only yeshiva, Merkaz akhically lenient, and philosophically sophisticated the Mishneh Torah, it also contains many brilliant Hatorah, where he was discovered by Montreal’s for most of the Orthodox world, let alone the haredi self-contained essays. The first is Rabinovitch’s essay then chief rabbi, the late Pinchas Hirschprung, who one. Moreover, his regular references to the all-but- on Maimonides’s own introduction to his code, an ordained him at the age of 20. From Montreal, Rabi- banned Guide of the Perplexed certainly place him immensely important history of halakhic jurispru- novitch went on to study with Rabbi Yaakov Yitz- beyond most pales of Orthodox settlement—I know dence. In this introduction, Maimonides lists the chok Ruderman at Baltimore’s Ner Yisrael yeshiva, of no other rosh yeshiva who regularly lectures on the Torah’s 613 commandments, as he had done more from which he received a second ordination, while Guide. Nor, despite perennial academic interest in expansively in his earlier Sefer ha-Mitzvot (Book of at the same time completing an advanced degree Maimonides, is Rabinovitch particularly well known the Commandments). These lists correspond, but in mathematics at Johns Hopkins University. In among university-based scholars of Jewish studies. not perfectly, as has long been obvious to historians

38 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 of halakha. Rabinovitch reconciles them and then mastered an entire tradition. (It also must be said that example of the destruction of family structure, goes on to coordinate them with the classification of this partisanship clearly differentiates his approach one must first also explicate the obligations and the commandments in the third part of the Guide, from that of his academic contemporaries.) imperatives to honor and fear parents, for only where Maimonides introduces his famous Ta’amei thus will the home [and the nation] be built ha-Mitzvot (Reasons for the Commandments). upon the most durable foundations. Here, Rabinovitch does what others had only Rabinovitch extends gestured at; he carefully works through all 613 mitz- Maimonides’s concessions to In this preface, Rabinovitch also handily and vot demonstrating that there are no contradictions characteristically defends Maimonides against his between Maimonides’s three accounts. later courts and opinions to great critic Nachmanides. Nachmanides wonders Nonetheless, given the long and rich literary his- how Maimonides can classify the violation of the tory of Maimonidean scholarship one may wonder their logical end (and, Rabbis’ interpretations and decrees as a violation of what could possibly be added to such an embar- a biblical commandment. Rabinovitch retorts by not- rassment of exegetical riches on a line-by-line basis. arguably, even beyond it). ing that Maimonides has already implicitly answered Based on a more than two-year-long reading of Yad this question in his precise framing of these laws: Peshutah, my answer is to pose another question f the many hundreds of passages that might (bordering on a kvetch), “Oy, where even to begin?” Obe analyzed to illustrate precisely how Yad The High Court in Jerusalem is the foundation Well, probably with Rabinovitch’s establishment of the Peshutah “works” let us turn to the first two chap- of the Oral Torah, and they are the pillars of most accurate possible version of the text of the Mish- ters of Rabinovitch’s commentary to Maimonides’s instruction from whom laws and statutes go neh Torah, based on decades of assiduous research on Hilkhot Mamrim (Laws Concerning Rebels). This out to all of Israel. Concerning them, the Torah manuscripts from Cambridge and Oxford to Jerusa- new legal category is a particularly strong example promises “You shall do according to the laws lem and Cairo. Having established to his satisfaction of Maimonides’s daringly original reclassification which they shall instruct you. . . .” (Deuteronomy the ideal text, Rabinovitch explains the logic or ratio- of halakha. There was simply no precedent for the 17:11) This is a positive commandment. nale behind Maimonides’s ordering of each halakha existence of a distinct category of laws about “reb- (or roughly speaking, in this context, paragraph) in els.” The term mamrim“ ” is of biblical origin: “You Consequently, we are biblically commanded to obey the code’s 14 books; second, he compares each rul- [the generation of the desert] were rebels against rabbinic rulings. ing to every analogous discussion in Maimonides’s the Lord your God” (Deut. 9:24), but its use as a ru- Having established the biblical basis for the earlier halakhic works; third, he turns to explicate bric to bring together nine biblical commandments authority of rabbinic courts, in the second chapter of the text itself, while cross-referencing and harmoniz- whose talmudic elaborations are scattered across Mamrim Maimonides provides an expository list of ing it with all related sections elsewhere within the some 11 tractates is Maimonides’s invention. Ar- what we might call chinks in the Sanhedrin’s armor. Mishneh Torah; finally, he does much the same with guably its most original feature is placing laws per- Here, Rabinovitch plunges into a deeply learned regard to all of Maimonides’s other writings, includ- taining to the judicial authority of the ancient San- discussion of the general issue of legal precedent. ing his responsa, epistles, Indeed, these 25 dense pages could be published philosophical and even as a separate monograph, perhaps called On Stare medical works. Decisis in Rabbinical Law. Although Rabinovitch Over the years, Rabi- rarely cites the work of modern scholars, in these novitch has tended to pages he shows his mastery not only of traditional add more and more of 19th- and 20th-century commentary on Maimonides his conversations with but also of academic work on Maimonides, includ- the traditional rabbini- ing that of Shlomo Zalman Havlin and Gerald cal commentators who (Yaakov) Blidstein. Such a mixed array of citations surround the text in the is simply not to be found in any earlier commentary classical editions of the to Maimonides’s code. Mishneh Torah, including As I read Rabinovitch, he systematically high- the Mishnah la-Melekh, lights the cases in which later courts may legiti- the Kesef Mishnah, the mately overturn the decisions of their predecessors, Hagahot Maimoniyot, even by “resurrecting” long-ago rejected minor- and many others. Reveal- ity court—or even individual—opinions. On every ingly, Rabinovitch never occasion that presents itself, Rabinovitch extends once mentions the Lithu- Maimonides’s concessions to later courts and opin- anian yeshiva world’s Mishneh Torah by Maimonides, ca. 1457–1465. (Courtesy of the Israel Museum.) ions to their logical end (and, arguably, even beyond most cherished glosses it). This tendency to limit the authority of precedent to the Mishneh Torah, namely the celebrated Hiddu- hedrin in Jerusalem together with the laws of filial is at one with his overall, scientifically oriented shei Rabenu Haim Halevi, by the legendary “Brisker responsibility, from the obligation to honor one’s philosophy of Judaism, which is deeply rooted in Gaon,” Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik. The conceptually parents to the draconian punishment of “the devi- the idea of historical progress. innovative, but famously forced, Brisker methodol- ant and rebellious son.” A detailed analysis of Rabinovitch’s doctrine of ogy could hardly be farther from Yad Peshutah’s goal Maimonides never stated his reasons for reclas- precedent would be impossible in the present con- of clarifying the plain meaning—the peshat—of Mai- sifying the entire corpus of Jewish law as it had text. Instead, I will conclude with a more familiar monides’s text. been ordered since mishnaic times, and neither subject: the prohibition of cooking, or eating, meat Indeed, Rabinovitch is scarcely less bold than did his commentators, at least not in any system- and milk together. The source of the prohibition as Maimonides himself in challenging his great rab- atic, comprehensive way. In his preface to Hilkhot we know it lies in the rabbinic interpretations of binic predecessors. Thus, when he disagrees with Mamrim, Rabinovitch cites several selections from each of the three appearances in the Torah of the Maimonides’s formidable 13th-century mystical critic The Guide of the Perplexed where Maimonides verse “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” Nachmanides, known by his Hebrew acronym Ram- explicates the laws of the judiciary and appends (Ex. 23:19, Ex. 34:26, Deut. 14:21) All of these ex- ban (just as Maimonides is known as Rambam), he the capital offense of the “rebellious son” to the pansions of that literal prohibition are considered will typically write, “Although I am but dust under prohibition of rebelling against rulings of the High to carry the weight of biblical law—with one very the feet of the great Ramban . . .”—and then proceed Court. Then, Rabinovitch succinctly explicates the notable exception, namely the inclusion of chicken to demolish his argument. In such places, one feels political reasoning of the Guide: (and other fowl) in the category of “meat.” This goes the calm intellectual confidence exuded by Rabino- back to a ruling of the 2nd-century sage Rabbi Akiva, vitch, which may be the natural result of being mod- Clearly, however, before introducing the case of but, as Rabbi Yossi the Galilean remarked, birds estly aware—but aware nonetheless—that he has the rebellious son, which is the most extreme don’t produce milk. Consequently, Rabbi Akiva

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 39 should be understood as “building a fence around tiles, regardless of their religion (barring ancient Rabinovitch’s works as a practicing halakhist have the Torah”—to prevent a slide down the slippery idolatry) or the degree of their hatred of Jews and always aimed to make traditional life as livable as slope from chicken parmesan to a cheeseburger, Israel, as fellow human beings with all the rights possible for his fellow Jews. Although the range of and so on. that implies. In this regard, he is fond of quoting a the topics he has covered is encyclopedic, a con- What does this have to do with the laws dealt with verse from Psalms 145:9: “God’s mercy extends to sideration of a handful of his teshuvot (responsa) in Chapter Two of Mamrim? After dealing with the all His creations.” This view also leads Rabinovitch will round out his portrait. In these decisions, scope of rabbinic authority, Maimonides applies the to rule that it is incumbent on medics in the IDF he has consistently discouraged the trend among prohibition of neither adding nor subtracting from and Israeli doctors, as well as any bystanders who religious Jews to add customs and stringencies the Torah to the Sanhedrin and all subsequent rabbis. In particular, they may not present a purely rabbinic Rabinovitch discourages the trend among religious Jews to law as having biblical authority. After Rabinovitch es- tablishes the precise text of these passages (he relies add customs and stringencies that their parents and ancestors on the variant manuscript of Maimonides’s descen- dent Rabbi Yehoshua ha-Naggid), he notes a strange did not observe, which he regards as pious showboating. consequence of Maimonides’s ruling: A court or rabbi who claims that the prohibition against eating can assist, to treat and save the lives of Arab combat- that their parents and ancestors did not observe, chicken and dairy together is biblical violates the bib- ants, even those of terrorists wounded in the course which he generally regards as pious showboating lical prohibition of adding to the laws of the Torah. of attacking Israelis (and even on the Sabbath). (a phenomenon, he notes, that the Talmud called (One imagines a wayward student enjoying a chicken This same universalist liberalism is evident in “yuhara”). And he is brutally dismissive of rab- parmesan sub when his rabbi appears and rebukes Rabinovitch’s general assessment of both Christian- binic peers who inevitably lean toward stringency, him for violating the famous commandment not to ity and Islam as movements that spread the origi- citing an epigram that a rabbi who is always blind- “boil a kid in its mother’s milk,” thus committing a nally Judaic principles of monotheism, morality, ly stringent will in the end merit followers who biblical felony, whereas his student would be guilty and even messianic hope to the entire world. He blindly violate the Torah. In another responsum of only a rabbinic misdemeanor—the irony would be has praised the Catholic Church’s Second Vatican (this one about family law) he expresses similar ex- more delicious than the sandwich.) Council, even citing the text of Nostra Aetate as cor- asperation, condemning those rabbis who, relying recting what he regards as the historical perversions solely and without any historical perspective on o the extent that Rabinovitch has a public of Paul’s true attitude toward the Jews, which was in precedents, rule stringently, when a recognition of Treputation, it is as a liberal on the one hand the end one of love. recent scientific progress would require far more and a hardline ultrarightist on the other. The Rabinovitch actually rejects the messianic ideol- leniency. And then there is one responsum where first reputation is due to his principled break ogy of many of his fellow Religious Zionists, which Rabinovitch flies into a true rage. When some of with Israel’s Chief Rabbinate on their intolerant he decries as halakhically unfounded and danger- Toronto’s Orthodox rabbis restricted access to the approach to conversion. By contrast, based on a few ously close to racism. This is consistent with his formerly ecumenical community mikvah that he rather shocking political statements, Rabinovitch general—and classically Maimonidean—derision had been central in establishing, he sarcastically has become erroneously labeled as a messianic of all mystical and actively messianic theologies of described them as “little foxes desecrating Zionist extremist. Although Rabinovitch is on the Judaism. Relatedly, he has condemned the arrogance the vineyard of the Lord” (a play on Song of political right in Israel, this is a terrible distortion. of those who attempt to explain the Holocaust, in Songs 2:15). In fact, one of the most striking aspects of Rabi- particular those of his fellow Zionists who see the Throughout his impressive body of halakhic deci- novitch’s philosophy of Judaism is its universalist Shoah as the necessary precursor to the gevurah em- sions, Rabinovitch consistently applies Maimonidean humanism. He has, it must be acknowledged, said bodied in the heroic rise of the modern Jewish State. philosophical and historicist principles. His responsa some incendiary things. In a private, secretly taped Indeed, Rabinovitch advises deleting the phrase on matters of women’s modesty, for instance, all con- conversation, he reacted to the Israeli government’s “reishit tzmichat ge’ulateinu” (the first flowering of clude with an almost identical formulation: No single 2005 decision to forcibly evict the Jews living in our redemption) from the standard Prayer for the standard applies to each and every woman in all times Gaza by suggesting that they should booby-trap Welfare of Israel, chanted every Shabbat morning and places, so each must base her decision in these their homes with explosives and warn the evict- in most synagogues. Rather, he cautiously compares deeply personal matters on the standards and norms ing soldiers that they were doing so. This, to put the still relatively young Jewish State to the early of the particular community in which she lives. Simi- it mildly, was not such a good idea. More recently, years of the Second Jewish Commonwealth, asking, larly, in allowing men in shorts and T-shirts to don he inexcusably compared members of the Knesset “would the [initial] victory of the Maccabees have tefillin and lead public prayers, Rabinovitch recog- to members of the notorious Judenrat councils in justified dubbing the Hasmonean Empire as the nizes the modern Zionist reality of Orthodox Jews the Nazi ghettos. Such extreme remarks are the re- ‘beginning of the final redemption’?” toiling in the Israeli heat on kibbutzim and moshavim sult of his passionate but thoroughly unmessianic I have left the most damning allegation against and in cities, again always insisting that the norms of conviction that territorial compromise is a mortal Rabbi Rabinovitch for last, because it is unfounded. each community determine such matters. danger to Israel and its citizens. Rabinovitch, who Shortly after the assassination of Prime Minister Throughout his long, distinguished career Rabi- is by nature a lenient halakhist, tolerates no com- Rabin in 1995, it was widely reported that Rabino- novitch has stood firmly against the legal application promise, seeing it in the context of the obligation vitch was among those who had applied the “laws of of the romantic doctrine of the “decline of the gen- to save human lives (pikuach nefesh). In short, on the rodef” (a lethal pursuer whom one is permitted erations” (yeridat ha-dorot), which insists that with this one issue, his passionate humanism buttresses to kill in self-defense) to Rabin, thus helping to cre- each new generation, knowledge is diminished as we his extremism. ate the poisonous ideological climate that made his grow ever distant from the revelation at Sinai. He is At the same time, Rabinovitch’s profound con- murder possible. But the crazed assassin Yigal Amir a guardian of tradition who believes in progress—in cern for the sanctity of human life has led him to never set foot in Rabinovitch’s yeshiva, and when short, a Maimonidean. In the year of his 90th birth- take what might be termed “liberal” views that are Rabinovitch was publicly asked whether he regarded day, and a little more than 40 years since he began not shared by the large majority of Religious Zionist Rabin as a rodef, his consistent and curt response his monumental Yad Peshutah, Rabbi Rabinovitch rabbis. For example, in a highly unusual, if gentle, was a passionate “chas ve-shalom” (roughly, heaven is perhaps unique in meriting a slight spin on the rebuke of the famed Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, forbid). Neither the governmental Shamgar report famous old saying applied to Maimonides: Rabinovitch firmly rejected the notion that all mor- on Rabin’s assassination nor journalist Dan Ephron’s “from Moses to Moses, may there arise more like tal enemies of the Jewish nation throughout its his- excellent book Killing a King so much as mention Nachum.” tory are to be classified as Amalekites, condemning Rabinovitch, and yet the calumny—“fake news” if this as a dangerous idea with no basis whatsoever anything is—persists. in halakha. Throughout his work, including a 2006 Allan Nadler recently retired from Drew University, volume of responsa to queries from IDF soldiers, hile Yad Peshutah will almost certainly where he was a professor of comparative religion and Rabinovitch insists on treating Gentiles, all Gen- Wend up being studied mainly by scholars, director of the Program in Jewish Studies.

40 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 On Literary Brilliance and Moral Rot

BY ROBERT ZARETSKY

ast December, the prestigious French pub- to think about it, at least a hundred people must want nectar! Verily, an ascension into Heaven!” Consid- lishing house Gallimard revealed plans to you dead in the course of an average day.” “Nothing er, Ferdinand prattles, the case of Communist Rus- republish three so-called pamphlets first can be explained. The world only knows how to do sia: “As soon as they were in command, the Hymies penned more than 70 years ago. The an- one thing, to roll over and kill you, as a sleeper kills didn’t waste time in setting about to the decimation nouncementL provoked an earthquake in French lit- his fleas.” “Philosophizing is simply one way of be- of the Aryans . . . Over the past seventeen years, erary and political circles, exposing ideological and ing afraid, a cowardly pretense that doesn’t get you they have had the impure destroyed by the millions artistic fault lines more than a century old. Its after- anywhere.” “This body of ours, this disguise put on . . . The Jews don’t like to see the color of blood? Not shocks are still reverberating. This is not surprising, by common jumping molecules, is in constant revolt their own of course! . . . But that of others, they give given the identity of the author—Louis-Ferdinand themselves a generous view . . . as soon as the occa- Céline—and nature of the works: Bagatelles pour Céline tosses off dozens of sion presents itself.” un massacre (Bagatelles for a Massacre), Les beaux Unless France acted, declares Ferdinand, her draps (A Fine Mess), and L’École des cadavres (The aphorisms, as bleak as they fate would be the same. “You must remember School of Cadavers). that for a Jew . . . every non-Jew is nothing but an As almost anyone who has studied French litera- are brilliant. animal! . . . Never anything more . . . The chosen ture knows, Céline is the author of Voyage au bout people haven’t yet proceeded to carry out mass de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night), one of against the abominable farce of having to endure.” executions in our precincts, only the occasional the 20th century’s darkest and most dazzling works Veering from the philosophical to the scatological, murder. But these matters will not be left to wait of fiction. The novel traces the life of Ferdinand Céline reads like a modern mash-up of Rabelais and much longer.” Time was of the essence: “Once they Bardamu, a semiautobiographical character whose La Rochefoucauld. get a sure grip on our bones, once they’ve softened bleak itinerary includes stops at the no-man’s-land There is yet one more reason Céline cannot be our good hearts, once they are quite sure they of wartime France, a Ford factory in America, a co- ignored—a reason that brings us to the recent con- possess us down to our very last leucoplasts, they lonial outpost in French-ruled Africa, and the sub- troversy in Paris. He was, quite simply, a virulent will transform themselves into despots, the most urban slums of Paris. Céline’s prose strips the reader anti-Semite whose three pamphlets—something arrogant and brazen that have ever been seen in of the illusions bequeathed by the Enlightenment of of a misnomer, since Bagatelles pour un massacre all of history.” For this reason, those peoples who the invincibility of reason and ineluctability of prog- alone falls just shy of 400 pages—are shocking even “have hung a few of those Jews had good reason ress. “Truth,” concludes the narrator, “is an endless by the standards of other anti-Semites. With Baga- . . . Those kikes had best be on their guards. Pa- death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: telles, Céline promises an “anti-Semitic pedagogy,” tience wears out, then disappears . . . pogroms do death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.” presented by the book’s narrator Ferdinand that not come about for nothing!” We have never been able, in turn, to ignore Cé- line’s writing. In part, it is a question of his extraordinary life. Céline was an interloper in France’s literary world; like Bardamu, he did not graduate from an elite lycée in Paris but instead from the trenches of World War I; he did not write his works in a Left Bank café but instead in a miserable apartment in the squalid suburb of Clichy; his audience was not, at least at first, bourgeois readers but instead the working poor that, as a doctor, he treated. As a result, Céline may have earned a right to a kind of humane cynicism:

When the grave lies open before us, let’s not try to be witty, but on the other hand, let’s not forget, but make it our business to record the worst of the human viciousness we’ve seen without changing one word. When we’ve done that, we can curl up our toes and sink into the pit. That’s work enough for a lifetime.

Céline’s style is yet another reason he cannot be ignored. In Voyage, Céline’s language remains as dizzying as when the book first appeared in 1932. (The Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Meudon, France, ca. 1955. (Photo by Lipnitzki/Roger Viollet/Getty Images.) book nearly won the country’s most prestigious literary award, the Prix Goncourt, but those committee members horrified by the writing slightly outnum- will reveal how the “Jewish race” controls French éline’s ravings were so relentless that many of bered those hypnotized by it.) Pocked by hundreds finance and politics and has corrupted French cul- Chis contemporaries dismissed them as a joke. of ellipses, Céline’s sentences pulsate with a jazz-like ture. In one of Céline’s favorite phrases, France’s Shortly after the Bagatelles’ publication in 1937, rhythm, riffing in a slang as foreign as Basque to many proud literary and artistic traditions were becom- the Nobel Prize laureate (and polite anti-Semite) of his readers. He tosses off dozens of aphorisms, as ing fatally “enjuivé,” or “Judaized”—made Jewish. André Gide insisted that Céline “does his best not bleak as they are brilliant: “One way or another, kiss- So much so, he exclaims, that “to the French palate to be taken seriously.” Of course, when one notes ing is as indispensable as scratching.” “When you stop . . . Jewish shit is a taste without equal! An ineffable that Céline includes Racine, Stendhal, the Pope,

Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 41 and Picasso in his list of Jews, Gide’s claim may man declared that “each phrase, each word [in justify anti-Jewish actions.” The irony of Gollnisch’s seem credible. Except, that is, when one recalls the pamphlets] is a call for murder.” In a context defense of French Jewry was thicker than a slab of the historical context. As the great Catholic phi- where “anti-Semitism and racism are considered an pâté. Ten years ago, Gollnisch was slapped with a losopher Jacques Maritain warned soon after the opinion like any other, where the ‘Jew’ and ‘money’ three-month suspended sentence and fine of 55,000 book’s publication, “Today in Europe, there are are again joined, and Jews are accused of manipulat- euros for questioning the number of Jews killed in people who seek the extermination of the Jews. the concentration camps, all the while casting doubt It is this, is it not, that we are discussing?” While upon the existence of the gas chambers. this “massacre remains a dream, the germs of ha- With his name appearing on Weighing in as well was former president tred filling the air are real.” Maritain’s prediction the cover, Assouline would lend Nicolas Sarkozy. In 2011, he had gone on record that needed just a half-dozen years—a period span- “one could like Céline without being an anti-Semite ning Céline’s completion of two more anti-Semitic Gallimard cover from the just as one could like Proust without being a ho- pamphlets and Hitler’s attempted completion of mosexual.” Since realizing that Proust never called the Final Solution—to come true. predictable storm of criticism. for the extermination of heterosexuals, Sarkozy Just days after the Allies landed at Normandy, now showed greater prudence. After hemming and Céline joined the exodus of French collaborators ing the world, it is nothing less than sheer dishon- hawing, he concluded that given the current rash of streaming to Germany. After the war, he fled to Den- esty to declare that these works can be read without anti-Semitic sentiment, he “didn’t see the purpose” mark, where he remained for six years. In 1951, he re- consequences.” Upping the ante, the literary schol- in reissuing the pamphlets. turned to France upon learning that he had been am- ar Tiphaine Samoyault argued that Céline’s anti- The government, it turned out, was equally nestied for his acts of collaboration. He died 10 years Semitism is not an unfortunate literary quirk but skeptical. Shortly after the news leak, Frédéric Po- later, leaving behind a widow, Lucette, and a literary sincere and systemic. In a Le Monde editorial, she tier, director of the cabinet-level office charged with legacy that remains the third rail of French intellectual and political discourse. Increasingly preoccupied during his last years by what the future would say of his past, Céline and his new publisher, Gallimard— his previous publisher, the collaborationist Robert Denoël, was assassinated, perhaps by the Resistance, in 1945—were opposed to republishing the “pamphlets.” It was a decision that Lucette, now 105 years old, and the management of Gallimard—determined to sanitize, if not sanctify Céline—long maintained. That is, until last year. In December, the radical right-wing magazine L’Incorrect leaked the news that Antoine Gallimard—grandson of Gaston Gal- limard, the company’s legendary founder, and current CEO—planned to reissue the pamphlets in 2018. The new edition, it appeared, would also include a preface by Pierre Assouline. It was a canny move by Gallimard: Assouline is a well-known and respected literary journalist who has written several biographies (including one of, yes, Gaston Gallimard). With his name appearing on the cover, Assouline would in turn lend Gallimard cover from the predictable storm of criticism. No doubt Gal- limard would be as shocked—shocked!—were he asked if Assouline’s Jewish background played a role Demonstration by the far-right Front National (FN) party against migrants due to arrive in the city of in his choice, as he would be if asked whether he Grambois, La Tour d’Aigues, France, October 23, 2016. The banner reads “No migrants in our villages.” was motivated by the strong likelihood that Céline’s (Reuters/Jean-Paul Pelissier, stock.adobe.com.) anti-Semitic pamphlets would do a brisk business in contemporary France with both ultranationalist and radical Islamist readers. The ostensible reason, declared that she and other scholars have chosen not tracking racist and anti-Semitic activities, invited instead, is that Lucette, who is under continuous to teach Céline’s works because “his hateful words Antoine Gallimard to his office. In the meeting Po- care and rarely conscious, had a change of heart. are found not just in his pamphlets, and because his tier sought guarantees that the book would include The leak led to a flood of criticism that even As- anti-Semitism, far from an exception, represents a a critical apparatus “casting light on the ideologi- souline’s good name could not staunch. Most no- serious engagement on his part.” cal context of these pamphlets” and that historians tably, Serge Klarsfeld, the famous Nazi-hunter and would be part of this effort. Assouline’s preface, no founder of the association Sons and Daughters of n a nation where, ever since Louis XIV created matter how perceptive, would be inadequate. As for Jewish Deportees from France, appealed to Gal- Ithe Académie française, politics and literature the critical apparatus written for a 2012 Canadian limard to reconsider the project. While this book have been so tightly entwined, politicians inevitably edition of the pamphlets that Gallimard planned to belonged in libraries, Klarsfeld found it “insupport- piled into the fray. Alexis Corbière, the spokesper- use, it was worse than inadequate. Not only was this able” to think that one could find it stocked in book- son for the extreme-left party La France Insoumise edition pallidly titled Ecrits polémiques, but the Ca- stores. To those who insisted that enough time has (Defiant France), denounced Gallimard’s plans nadian publisher, Rémi Ferland, had described the passed, Klarsfeld agreed that “times have changed, and noted that hate speech, which includes anti- Front National’s Marine Le Pen during last year’s but in a very unfavorable way.” Noting the alarm- Semitic utterances, is outlawed. As a result, should presidential election as “France’s last chance.” Gal- ing rise of anti-Semitic activity in France, he insisted these “deliriously anti-Semitic texts” be published, limard thanked Potier for his time and told him the that the pamphlets, precisely because Céline penned how could the courts forbid the publication of pamphlets would be published as planned. them, are “deadly” and constitute “an act of aggres- other anti-Semitic declarations? On the far right, But Gallimard’s plans proved as airtight as those sion against us and against French Jews.” Bruno Gollnisch, a pillar of the National Front, was of the French army in 1940. In an open letter pub- Klarsfeld’s condemnation of Gallimard’s plans apoplectic. It is hard to imagine, he sneered, that the lished in the magazine Le Nouvel Obs, more than a was echoed by other prominent voices. In the “scum who fill the Islamic-mafia battalions of ‘our’ dozen internationally recognized specialists in 20th- newspaper Libération, the essayist Gisèle Berk- suburbs would bother to read French authors to century history—including Annette Becker, Pierre-

42 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 André Taguieff, Laurent Joly, Michel Winock, and Jay It is easy to see that Gallimard’s statement lacks footnotes. Why, in fact, do we need a critical edition Winter—declared that this project “cannot be done the critical reasoning he pretends to defend. First, of Céline’s murderously anti-Semitic ravings at all? in haste.” They compared the gravity of the task to it has never been a question of censorship. The As the historian Tal Bruttmann remarked, Céline’s the recent publication in Germany of Hitler’s Mein pamphlets can be found not just in libraries and pamphlets, unlike Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which is his- Kampf, noting that more than two-thirds of the lat- used bookstores—including the bouquiniste stalls torically unavoidable, hardly deserves such attention. ter text was filled with critical annotations and notes. along the Seine—but also on the Internet, where His writings were not a blueprint for a totalitarian In effect, a scholarly cordon sanitaire had been built one can download a PDF in seconds. Besides, the state’s war aims, but instead a collage of rancid claims around Hitler’s ravings in the implicit hope of attract- work of examining the literary roots and mea- thrown together by a vile man who happened to be ing only other scholars. In any case, to do anything suring the ideological reach of these pamphlets a great novelist. What do they tell us—apart, that is, less with Céline’s pamphlets, the French historians has been underway for decades. From Alice Ka- that Céline was an anti-Semite? This is hardly, Brutt- warned, would be unprofessional. Trenchantly, they plan’s path-breaking work on Céline’s sources for mann drily concludes, “a great discovery.” added it would be unethical for a publisher to earn a Bagatelles pour un massacre, in which she traced In the end, it may well be that the claims made profit from the book’s publication. his borrowings from the Protocols of the Elders of by historians no less than Gallimard are beside the In early March, President Emmanuel Macron Zion and a variety of other anti-Semitic works, point, if the only point is that Céline was, as Brutt- finally addressed the controversy. At the annual to Pierre-André Taguieff and Annick Durafour’s mann notes, an anti-Semite. It is a dreary point, a dinner sponsored by the Representative Council recent study Céline, le race, le juif, there has been miserable point, but also an uncontroversial point. of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), Macron no shortage of scholarly works. (Or for that mat- In fact—and herein lies the rub—Céline’s anti- reminded his audience, which included nearly all ter, damning ones: Taguieff and Durafour reveal Semitism can no more be denied than the bril- of his cabinet ministers, that it was not his role to that Céline denounced a number of French Jews to liance and originality of his fiction. In one of the “judge” the controversy over the pamphlets. But, he the Vichy authorities.) Finally, Gallimard’s refusal passages from Bagatelles, where Céline states that continued, he nevertheless had a personal opinion. to issue the pamphlets à la Mein Kampf—namely, the Jews can be found gathered at each of France’s While he was encouraged by the “adult debate” over with the texts buffered by a solid critical appara- catastrophes, roosting like a thousand ravens from the question of publication, Macron declared: “I do tus—would more likely encourage rather than dis- Hell, he exclaims: “Cela ne s’invente pas.” You cannot believe we need these pamphlets.” courage “an unhealthy curiosity.” not make this stuff up. Of course, Céline and his By then, though, Gallimard had already retreat- But this last point nevertheless raises a number sources made it all up. Does this mean we, in turn, ed. A few weeks before Macron’s speech, the pub- of questions. How reasonable is the assumption that should continue to make up reasons, no matter lisher, with majestic understatement, acknowledged a full-blown scholarly edition of Céline’s pamphlets how disinterested or austere, for republishing such that “the methodological and memorial conditions would protect innocent readers against its radioac- writings? are presently not reunited to calmly envisage pub- tive qualities? After all, 100,000 copies of the new lication” of the pamphlets. As a result, he was sus- German edition of Mein Kampf, which submerges pending plans to reissue the texts. At the same time, Hitler’s words in an ocean of commentary, recently Robert Zaretsky is a professor in the Honors College he insisted that “condemning them to censorship rolled off the printing press. It is likely that more at the University of Houston. His book Catherine and hinders efforts to reveal their roots and ideological than a few of the buyers offered a rationale similar Diderot: An Empress, A Philosophe and the Fate of the reach and cultivates an unhealthy curiosity instead to literary young men in the 1970s justifying their Enlightenment will be published next year by Harvard of critical reasoning.” subscriptions to Playboy: They bought it for the University Press.

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Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 43 Du Bois, the Warsaw Ghetto, and a Priestly Blessing

BY JENNA WEISSMAN JOSELIT

ike many of their readers, American have what to say. In a letter to his friend and pa- Young Folk Singers, a brand new, interracial cho- Jewish magazines changed their names: tron, Anita McCormick Blaine, penned shortly after rus whose “youthful verve” and “delightful joyous- The periodical known as Jewish Currents, returning to the States, he gave voice to both despair ness of spirit” enlivened the proceedings. Du Bois’s for example, first came into the world in and hope at what he had encountered in postwar remarks, which were subsequently published in the theL 1940s as Jewish Life. Styling itself a “progres- Poland. “I never thought it possible that human be- May 1952 issue of Jewish Life under the title “The sive” magazine, often a byword in postwar America ings could do to each other in modern days what Negro and the Warsaw Ghetto,” deepened them. for an avowedly communist enterprise, it shared its At once a personal account and a history lesson, innocuous-seeming title for a spell with the house Jewish Life was right to think his presentation built on the impressions he had publication of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Con- committed to paper several years earlier, enlarging gregations of America, confounding subsequent that W. E. B. Du Bois would their circumference. generations of historians. Throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, have what to say. I have seen something of human upheaval in this Jewish Life published detailed and impassioned arti- world: the scream and shots of a race riot in Atlan- cles about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, whose fight- the Germans did to Warsaw,” Du Bois wrote in ta; the marching of the Ku Klux Klan; the threat ing spirit inspired its own, and the “Negro question” September 1949, adding, “In some cases, there was of courts and police; the neglect and destruction in the United States, often linking the two. In an on- nothing but dust left.” He was equally taken with its of human habitation; but nothing in my wildest going effort to deepen its readers’ understanding of residents’ commitment to renewal, observing that imagination was equal to what I saw in Warsaw the dire conditions of African American life and to the “city is rising again and anew and the spirit of in 1949. I would have said before seeing it that it inspire them to make common cause with the Af- the people is extraordinary.” was impossible for a civilized nation with deep rican American community, the magazine’s editors religious convictions and outstanding religious repeatedly invited Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois to contribute institutions; with literature and art; to treat fel- to its pages. low human beings as Warsaw had been treated. “We are anxious to include an article on the rela- There had been complete, planned and utter tionship between the struggle against anti-Semitism destruction. and all forms of anti-Negroism,” Samuel Barron, the magazine’s managing editor, wrote to the promi- “[O]ne afternoon,” Du Bois told his audience, “I nent African American leader and elder statesman was taken out to the former ghetto. I knew all in November 1947, hoping he would accept the too little of its story although I had visited ghet- assignment. Du Bois declined, citing too many tos in parts of Europe, particularly in Frank- demands on his time. furt, Germany. Here there was not much to see. Two years later, Louis Harap, Barron’s successor as There was complete and to- managing editor, tried again to persuade Du Bois to tal waste and a monument. write for the magazine. “You are no doubt acquainted And the monument brought with Jewish Life and the work it is doing on the op- back again the problem of pression of Negroes and national groups in the Unit- race and religion, which so ed States in addition to the Jewish question. However, long had been my own par- we feel that we have not yet done enough, either on ticular and separate prob- the Negro problem or on Negro-Jewish relations. I lem.” (Du Bois had in mind know you are probably deluged with requests of this Nathan Rapoport’s then re- kind,” Harap continued, “but I hope very much that Letter from Jewish Life to cently dedicated sculptural you will respond favorably to this one in view of the W. E. B. Du Bois, February 13, salute to the Warsaw Ghetto need for closer liaison between the Negro and Jewish 1952. (W. E. B. Du Bois uprising, which, in James movements.” Once again, Du Bois declined. Papers, Special Collections and Young’s words, stood amidst Jewish Life persisted. Having learned of a trip Du University Archives, University and drew its power from the Bois had taken to Warsaw in the aftermath of World of Massachusetts Amherst adjacent “landscape of de-

War II, the magazine’s editorial board thought he Libraries.) Right: W. E. B. bris,” its “moonscape of rub- might offer a deeply informed and personal per- Du Bois, 1918. (Courtesy of the ble, piled sixteen feet high.”) Library of Congress Prints spective on the contemporary relevance of the War- “Gradually, from looking and Photographs Division.) saw Ghetto. In February 1952, it invited the Afri- and reading,” Du Bois contin- can American civil rights crusader to participate in ued, “I rebuilt the story of this a “Tribute to the Warsaw Ghetto fighters,” which This time around, in 1952, the right occasion extraordinary resistance to oppression and wrong . . . was scheduled for April 16, on the ninth anniver- and the right subject neatly came together, prompt- a resistance which involved death and destruction for sary of the uprising, at Manhattan’s Hotel Diplomat ing Du Bois to accept the magazine’s invitation. “He hundreds and hundreds of human beings; a deliberate on West 43rd Street. “We should be honored if you asks me to say that if he can speak plainly with his sacrifice in life for a great ideal in the face of the fact would consent to speak – perhaps for fifteen min- new teeth, he will talk 15 minutes for your organi- that the sacrifice might be completely in vain.” utes – on the significance of the ghetto fight for the zation on April 16,” responded Lillian Hyman, his The result of his visits, he ringingly concluded, Negro people in the United States today in relation secretary, on behalf of her boss. “was not so much clearer understanding of the Jew- to cooperation with their allies, the Jewish people ish problem in the world as it was a real and more and the common people of America,” read the invi- nd so he did, taking his place on the stage of complete understanding of the Negro problem . . . the tation, somewhat lumberingly. Athe Hotel Diplomat’s ballroom alongside the ghetto of Warsaw helped me to emerge from a cer- Jewish Life was right to think that Du Bois would Edith Segal Mitlschul Dance Group and the Jewish tain social provincialism into a broader conception of

44 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 what the fight against race segregation, reli- volume of his Black Flame trilogy. At once a sweep- gious discrimination and the oppression by ing work of historical fiction and a rueful self-portrait, wealth had to become if civilization was go- it follows the life and times of Manual Mansart, the ing to triumph and broaden in the world.” president of a historically black college in Georgia. In the 1961 novel’s last dramatic set piece, an ag- n the years that followed, the editors of ing Mansart is unceremoniously expelled from a IJewish Life continued to keep in touch conference of “Negro leadership in Africa and Amer- with Dr. Du Bois, inviting him to partici- ica” for his radicalism. “Black Brothers, let us never pate in a 1953 “mass rally” and 10th anni- sell our high heritage for a mess of such White Folks’ versary commemoration of the Warsaw pottage!,” he tells the assembly, among them a Jewish Ghetto uprising in New York, proposing clergyman named Rabbi Blumenschweig, who turns he write for the magazine on “Negro- out to be the character Du Bois had first mentioned Jewish relations” and on school segrega- to Harap. In the novel, the rabbi met Mansart in Nazi tion, and sending him a telegram on his Berlin in 1936 and, years later, encouraged him to at- 85th birthday: “We do you most honor by tend this international gathering. The two men exit continued common struggle with Negro together. Just as the ailing Mansart is about to get people and all progressives and equality.” into a cab, the clergyman, “his head uncovered and In every instance, Jewish Life initiated his white hair blowing in the frosty night,” places his these exchanges. But in 1954, Du Bois hands on his old friend’s shoulders and blesses him: himself began a conversation by turning to Harap for guidance. He tells him about Yevorechecho Adonoi veyishmerecho; a character in a novel that he is writing— Yoer Adonoi ponov eilecho vichuneko; a German rabbi who survived the “Hitler Yiso Adonoi ponov eilecho veyosem lecho sholom. massacre”—who, by chance, encounters an African American college president whom Mansart dies several pages later, his legacy—and that he had met years before. The survivor of his creator—hallowed by an age-old Jewish prayer. would like to pronounce a Hebrew blessing on his long-lost friend. “What would he Permission to publish correspondence was granted by say?” asks Du Bois of his dyed-in-the-wool- Jewish Currents, The David Graham Du Bois Trust, and left-wing-secularist colleague at the helm of the W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, Special Collections and Uni- Jewish Life. “Please give me a quotation.” Memorial to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, by versity Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Harap was eager to oblige but didn’t Nathan Rapoport, Warsaw, Poland. know how, so he turned to Joshua Bloch, the distinguished bibliographer, longtime head of Amherst, Harap furnished Du Bois with the text of Jenna Weissman Joselit is the Charles E. Smith Professor the New York Public Library’s Jewish Division, and the traditional priestly benediction—in both Eng- of Judaic Studies and Professor of History at the George an ordained rabbi, for a liturgical assist. On Christ- lish and in Hebrew transliteration. Washington University. Her latest book is Set in Stone: mas Eve 1954, in a letter preserved in the W. E. B. Du Du Bois would go on to make use of the blessing America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments (Oxford Bois collection at the University of Massachusetts- in the concluding pages of Worlds of Color, the last University Press).

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Summer 2018 • JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS 45 LAST WORD Says Who?

BY ABRAHAM SOCHER

n 1990, just back from studying in Jerusalem to effectively compete in the modern world. ization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World for a year, I talked my way into a miserable These points were not all original to Berger. But Politics, his reconsideration of his old theory crys- job in the Los Angeles office of a major Jew- he brought them together in a persuasive intellec- tallized when a massive volume called Fundamen- ish organization. I was called an assistant tual package that, unlike the accounts of some of his talisms Observed landed on his desk: directorI of something or other, but my actual du- fellow postwar “secularization theorists,” fully rec- ties, such as they were, seemed to consist in help- ognized the depth of religion. In fact, in a move he The Fundamentalism Project was very ing my boss raise funds to cover his salary and the owed to Max Weber, he argued that the seeds of this generously funded by the MacArthur overhead, and writing a superfluous newsletter, secularization lay not only in the modern reorgani- Foundation . . . The book was very big . . . in which I struggled to find the nonexistent sweet zation of society but in religion itself—or at least the the kind that could do serious injury. So I spot between synagogue announcements and cor- Bible’s original uncompromising rejection of Near asked myself, why would the MacArthur porate press releases. We worked in a dingy office on Fairfax that might have been previously oc- I thought I saw Berger on the Green Line, looking more or less cupied by Philip Marlowe (I could have used his drawer flask). There was a modeling agency, or so as he had on the back of Facing Up to Modernity: bald with it claimed, on the first floor, a kosher pizza par- lor down the street, and a sweet old barber named a brown cigarillo, like a bookie lost in thought. Nathan Newman around the corner who had grown up in the famous town of Mezheritch and Eastern polytheism and, closer to home, the Prot- Foundation shell out several million dollars survived more than one camp. estant disenchantment of medieval Christianity. to support an international study of religious One of the things about having a truly bad job is Moreover, as he periodically made clear, while this fundamentalists? that you find yourself not just bored but needing to was his value-free sociological analysis, Berger was Two answers came to mind. The first was remind yourself of whom you are. I had picked up himself a serious Protestant who still found what he obvious and not very interesting. The a little green paperback copy of Peter Berger’s The called “signals of transcendence” in our doubly dis- MacArthur Foundation is a very progressive Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory enchanted world. outfit; it understands fundamentalists to be of Religion somewhere, and I read dense, nourish- anti-progressive; the Project, then, was a matter ing bits of it on my lunch hour, puzzling over Ger- hen I got to Harvard for graduate school, I of knowing one’s enemies. But there was also manic formulations such as “Man, as we know him Wcalled up Berger at his Boston University of- a more interesting answer. “Fundamentalism” empirically, cannot be conceived of apart from the fice. Eagerly, I told him that I had read his work is considered a strange, hard-to-understand continuous outpouring of himself into the world in closely and that I was planning to write a disserta- phenomenon; the purpose of the Project was which he finds himself. . . . Human being is exter- tion on the Jewish Enlightenment, which I wanted to . . . make it more understandable. But to nalizing in its essence and from the beginning.” (In to discuss with him. “Well,” he said, “you do know whom? Who finds this world strange? Well, the margins, I scribbled, “Read Hegel!”—probably that I am not Jewish . . .” I was a bit nonplussed. the answer to that question was easy: people still a good idea.) But Berger could also hit you with Here was this giant of social theory, who some- to whom the officials of the MacArthur an epigrammatic little dart: “[R]eligion,” he wrote, times used Jewish examples to illustrate his points, Foundation normally talk, such as professors at “is the audacious attempt to conceive of the entire and yet he seemed to be suggesting that the fact elite American universities. And with this came universe as being humanly significant.” that he wasn’t Jewish disqualified him from dis- the aha! experience. The . . . Project was based In The Sacred Canopy Berger argues that the cussing a topic in Jewish studies. I scrambled for an on an upside-down perception of the world, modern state and economy require social spaces and answer by delivering a presumptuous little lecture according to which “fundamentalism” (which, institutions that are free, or mostly free, from the on how his theory of secularization applied to the when all is said and done, usually refers to any domination of religion and its symbols. In this con- Jewish case, but of course he knew this. After all, sort of passionate religious movement) is a nection, he liked to quote the 17th-century Dutch ju- hadn’t he written at the very conclusion of The Sa- rare, hard-to-explain thing. But . . . [t]he rist Hugo Grotius, who said that if international law cred Canopy that “the fundamental option between difficult-to-understand phenomenon is not was to be effective between states with different es- resistance and accommodation must be faced by Iranian mullahs but American university tablished religions, it must be framed “as if God did Judaism, particularly in America, in terms that are professors—it might be worth a multi-million- not exist.” And as between states, eventually, so too not too drastically different from those in which it dollar project to try to explain that! within them; thus, modern workers had to leave their is faced by the Christian churches”? religion at the factory gates. Or, to quote the famous Berger listened patiently, and then he said, “You Berger had often remarked that sociology asks advice from the poet Yehudah Leib Gordon to his fel- can come to see me, but”—and here he spoke with the nervy little question “Says who?” and now he low 19th-century Jews: “Be a man in the streets and heavy emphasis—“it sounds like you have read my asked it of his colleagues and himself. Not only a Jew at home.” But—and this returns us to Berger’s books . . . and I haven’t thought of anything new.” hadn’t the world secularized in the way that he Hegelian point—if you get used to leaving your reli- That remark did its work. I never forgot it, and I had thought it would, but the religions that were gion at home, you end up thinking secular thoughts, didn’t call Berger for another 20 years, though I resurgent weren’t the kind that had made peace which leads to the further decline of religion. did think that I saw him once on the Green Line with modernity. Instead, “movements with beliefs This process of secularization inevitably forces at the Copley station, looking more or less as he and practices dripping with reactionary supernat- religions to enter the marketplace to compete for had on the back cover of Facing Up to Modernity: uralism (the kind utterly beyond the pale at self- adherents, but the experience of different options bald with a brown cigarillo, like a bookie lost in respecting faculty parties) have widely succeeded.” on the consumer side necessarily relativizes the thought. Modernity, Berger went on to argue, does lead to absolute claims of religion. Meanwhile, on the pro- As it happens, just a few years later Berger actu- pluralism, and pluralism does tend to relativize ducer side, religious institutions must rationalize ally did think of something new. As he charmingly religious belief, but it hasn’t led to a thoroughly themselves along modern, corporate lines in order tells the story in his introduction to The Desecular- secular world, nor will it. As soon as one stepped

46 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS • Summer 2018 out of the faculty lounge, Berger said, one saw that Several months later, I visited him at his apart- realized that they wouldn’t be able to stay in Mus- people moved much more easily from the enchant- ment in Brookline. It had been a hard year. His solini’s Italy. A sympathetic official at the English ed groves of tradition to the iron cage of modern beloved wife and intellectual collaborator Brigitte consulate finally relented when his mother burst rationality and back again than Max Weber, or in- Berger had passed away, and he himself was wheel- into tears, and offered to give them papers to either deed he, had ever thought possible. chair ridden and not well. But he did want to talk. Kenya or Palestine. We continued our conversations about religion, They chose Palestine, because, his mother said, it n 2012, I finally got back in touch with Berg- doubt, and moderation and about books on which seemed “less alien,” but when they arrived in Haifa Ier. By then, I was editing this magazine, and I we agreed and disagreed (including his), and he told they remained Christians, sending Peter—Ya’akov wanted him to write for me. His email back was me the story of his early life. on the Hebrew-speaking street—to a Swiss mis- not quite as discouraging as our phone call 20 His parents were both assimilated Viennese sionary school. When he was old enough for high years earlier, but it was not dissimilar: “I’m not Jews. In 1938, they had gone with a nine-year-old school, his schoolteacher took him and two other “Hebrew Christians” to the famous Beit Sefer ha- “The difficult-to-understand phenomenon,” Berger wrote, Reali, but they were rejected by the headmaster as being potentially subversive (“ein zersetzendes Ele- “is not Iranian mullahs but American university professors— ment”), which, Peter said, was the second time he had heard himself being rejected on such grounds it might be worth a multi-million-dollar project to try to by a representative of the majority. Instead, he went to St. Luke’s Anglican School, where most of explain that!” his teachers were former Jews. At St. Luke’s, he was given free rein of the theological library left by a cer- looking for new places to publish (having, as you Peter and some other family members to an An- tain Pastor Berg who had returned to Germany. In know, already contributed greatly to the deforesta- glican cleric who was converting Jews in order to these years he became a fervent, if, as he later rec- tion of the planet)—also, I’m over-burdened with help them flee Austria for a small fee. The conver- ognized, very idiosyncratic, Lutheran “without ever work—also (though this may not be relevant, since sion was perfunctory. In his memoir Im Morgenlicht having met one.” After the war, the Bergers left for you describe the publication as ‘catholic, as it were, America as soon as they could. At one point in our in its interests and approaches’), I’m not Jewish.” conversation, he remarked with some wonder, but Eventually, I prevailed upon him to review no regret, that had things gone slightly differently Michael Walzer’s latest book The Paradox of he might have become an Israeli Jew rather than an Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Coun- American Protestant. His English-language mem- terrevolutions (“Paradox or Pluralism?,” Summer oir, Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist: How to 2015). It was obviously right up his alley, Explain the World Without Becoming a Bore, picks since Walzer’s paradox was that religion up with his arrival in America and never mentions had returned with a vengeance to coun- any of this, though it does have a Jewish joke on the tries, like Israel, that had been founded first page. by radical secularists. By this time, I I thought about my conversation with Peter of- also understood his sensitivity about ten in the months that followed, and I sometimes not being Jewish, because I now wondered whether I could get him to write about his knew that he was—or rather that he years in Haifa and their bearing on his later thought, had been born to Jewish parents in but I never quite got up the nerve. He passed away Vienna, in 1929. A recent book called last June at the age of 88, having done as much to The New Sociology of Knowledge: The illuminate the place of religion in the modern Life and Work of Peter L. Berger by world as anyone in the last century. Although Michaela Pfadenhauer had crossed none of the obituaries I read seemed aware of my desk, and, in her introduction, Berger’s Jewish background, I wasn’t the only she briefly sketched Berger’s early years, one who had noticed. based upon a German memoir he had pub- This spring, the Committee for the Study lished in 2008. From Pfadenhauer, I learned of Religion at the CUNY Graduate Center held that Berger and his parents had converted just a memorial conference for him. Its organizer, the before fleeing the Nazis in 1938, eventually end- distinguished sociologist Samuel Heilman, had ing up in British Mandate Palestine. She also studied with Berger at the New School for Social wrote that Berger had been hesitant to publish Research in the late 1960s, but he hadn’t known his the memoir, even in German, because some teacher’s history until Professor Alan Brill told him of his “Jewish friends might feel snubbed by about it after Berger’s death. In Heilman’s percep- . . . a decision against a Jewish identity on tive talk, he described the central theme of Berger’s his part.” work as the way in which fate becomes choice in Peter and I bantered on the phone and the modern world and persuasively interpreted his through email while we worked on the Walzer German memoir in that light. In Brill’s equally fas- review. I didn’t ask him how his life experience cinating lecture, he told us that Rabbi Alexander related to his sociological theory of religion, Schindler, the long-time president of the Union of though I couldn’t help but wonder. Twice, I came American Hebrew Congregations, had once con- close. The first time was when he included a joke Illustration by Mark Anderson. sulted Berger about whether the Reform move- about speaking Yiddish in Israel in his piece. The ment should seek converts. The great sociologist second was when he excitedly told me that he had replied that it might as well, since all denomina- been invited to address the German Protestant As- der Erinnerung: Eine Kindheit in turbulenter Zeit (In tions must compete in a pluralist world. Needless sembly, and I almost told him the one about the the Dawn of Memory: A Childhood in a Turbulent to say, Schindler did not ask the nervy follow-up Jewish convert who is invited to give the Sunday Time), he wrote that his uncle leaned over “and question: Says who? sermon and begins, “My fellow goyim . . .” It would said with a cynical grin, ‘So now you are baptized!’ have been presumptuous (again), but he probably I remember how terribly embarrassed I was and I would have laughed. He enjoyed telling Jewish felt somehow humiliated.” From there, they went Abraham Socher is the editor of the Jewish Review of jokes more than most Lutherans I have known. to family in Monfacone, near Trieste, but they soon Books.

Summer 2018 • 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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The Invention of Religion The Age of Questions Faith and Covenant in the Book Or, A First Attempt at an Aggregate History of Exodus of the Eastern, Social, Woman, American, Jan Assmann Jewish, Polish, Bullion, Tuberculosis, and Translated by Robert Savage Many Other Questions over the Nineteenth “ Jan Assmann’s latest book is a blockbuster— Century, and Beyond beautifully written, capacious, learned, and Holly Case endlessly creative. It is sure to become a touchstone for scholars and readers interested “ The Age of Questions presents a whole new in the Bible, the ancient world, and the history framework for thinking about social and of monotheism, past and present.” political thought in the nineteenth century. . . . — Jonathan Sheehan, University of With exceptional erudition concerning Eastern California, Berkeley Europe as well as Western Europe, Case offers a Cloth $35.00 comprehensive continental recovery of a crucial agenda in the European history of ideas.” —Larry Wolff, New York University Cloth $35.00

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