Cynthia Ozick, Critic
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Joseph Epstein When Jews Boxed JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS Volume 7, Number 3 Fall 2016 $10.45 Dara Horn Cynthia Ozick, Critic Shoshana Olidort Jonathan Safran Foer’s Midlife Doorstop Plus Elliott Horowitz Caffeinated Mysticism Alvin H. Rosenfeld Primo Levi’s Achievement Allan Arkush Kirsch’s Canon Rafael Medoff Zion and the American Election, 1944 Jonathan Sacks and Shlomo Riskin On Jewish Power: An Exchange Editor JEWISH REVIEW BOOKS Abraham Socher Senior Contributing Editor Allan Arkush Art Director Betsy Klarfeld Please join us Managing Editor Amy Newman Smith Editorial Assistant Sunday, November 6, 2016 Kate Elinsky Editorial Board Our 2nd Annual Conference Speakers Robert Alter Shlomo Avineri Leora Batnitzky Ruth Gavison Moshe Halbertal Jon D. Levenson Anita Shapira Michael Walzer J. H.H. Weiler Leon Wieseltier Ruth R. Wisse Steven J. 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JEWISH REVIEW www.jewishreviewofbooks.com/event OF BOOKS JEWISH REVIEW Volume 7, Number 3 Fall 2016 OF BOOKS www.jewishreviewofbooks.com LETTERS 4 Frozen DNA, Brandeis's Puritan Sabbaths, Free the Rapoport Mermaids FEATURE 5 Dara Horn Cynthia Ozick: Or, Immortality Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, & Other Literary Essays by Cynthia Ozick REVIEWS 8 Shoshana Olidort There He Goes Again Here I Am: A Novel by Jonathan Safran Foer 10 Allan Arkush From Moses to Moses to Sholem Aleichem The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature by Adam Kirsch 12 Joseph Epstein Jewish Pugs Stars in the Ring: Jewish Champions in the Golden Age of Boxing by Mike Silver 16 Jenna Weissman Joselit Harlem on His Mind The Jews of Harlem: The Rise, Decline, and Revival of a Jewish Community by Jeffrey S. Gurock 18 Ziva Sternhell Jerusalem Reconstructed Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City by Adina Hoffman 21 Yitzhak Y. Melamed The Angel and the Covenant A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era: The Book of the Covenant of Pinhas Hurwitz and Its Remarkable Legacy by David B. Ruderman • Sefer ha-Brit ha-Shalem by Pinhas Eliyahu Hurwitz, expanded edition by Yitzhak Lax 24 Amy Newman Smith A Cedar of Lebanon Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story by Matti Friedman 26 Aaron Rothstein Psychology at Nuremberg Anatomy of Malice: The Enigma of the Nazi War Criminals by Joel E. Dimsdale 29 Alvin H. Rosenfeld If This Is a Man The Complete Works of Primo Levi edited by Ann Goldstein, with an introduction by Toni Morrison READINGS 32 Elliott Horowitz A Tale of Two Night Vigils The tradition to stay up all night studying on Shavuot is far more well-known than the tradition to do so on Hoshana Rabbah. Neither would have been possible without Kabbalah and caffeine. 35 Rafael Medoff Zion and Party Politics, 1944 In the summer of 1944 support for Zionism was transformed from a low-risk political gesture to a bona fide election issue. FDR was not pleased. THE ARTS 38 Esther Schor Inventing American Judaism By Dawn’s Early Light: Jewish Contributions to American Culture from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War curated by Adam D. Mendelsohn and Dale Rosengarten for Princeton University Library • By Dawn’s Early Light: Jewish Contributions to American Culture from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War (Exhibition Companion Guide) edited by Adam D. Mendelsohn 42 Gavriel D. Rosenfeld Denial and the Defense of Truth Denial directed by Mick Jackson, produced by Gary Foster and Russ Krasnoff • The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial by Robert Jan van Pelt EXCHANGE 45 Jonathan Sacks Religion and Politics: A Response to Shlomo Riskin 46 Shlomo Riskin Necessary Power: A Rejoinder to Jonathan Sacks LAST WORD 47 Abraham Socher Marmorshers! On the cover: The Critic by Mark Anderson. LETTERS Frozen DNA Some 45 percent of the world’s population is relationship with his mother’s brother Lewis Naphtali Rabbi Shlomo Riskin’s review of Jonathan Sacks’s non-Abrahamic. Their major traditions do not see Dembitz and changed his middle name from David latest book, Not in God’s Name: Confronting Re- humanity as consisting, theologically, of Us versus to Dembitz. Dembitz was a founder of the Union of ligious Violence (“Religion and Power,” Summer Them. Any rethinking of the role of religion in hu- Orthodox Jewish Congregations. He also wrote a 2016), points to some problems in Sacks’s eloquent man violence should take this into account. classic book Jewish Services in Synagogue and Home, exposition. I find other troubling arguments. Robert J. Muscat where he displayed great erudition in Talmud, codes, Rabbi Sacks begins by bluntly facing the facts of Sarasota, FL and many disciplines. Brandeis describes his uncle’s Abrahamic religions’ complicity in violence over the behavior on the Sabbath, where he prayed and stud- Rabbi Sacks responds to our review, followed by centuries. His exculpatory argument, based on nu- ied Torah all day, and how it was an other-worldly Rabbi Riskin’s rejoinder, beginning on page 45. anced exegesis, is similar to that of other defenders experience. It is difficult to understand how Brandeis of religion: The evildoers and the blamers of reli- was not influenced to become more observant due to gion have selectively misread the texts. What holy Brandeis's Puritan Sabbaths his attachment to his beloved uncle. texts (properly understood) call on us to do is to be David D. Dalin’s rather adulatory review of Jeffrey Eliyahu Cohen benign and peace-loving. Rosen’s new book about Louis D. Brandeis (“Old By continuing to sanction the texts as revealed Isaiah,” Summer 2016) requires some qualifications. David G. Dalin Responds and holy, any religious interpreter or cleric, no mat- A most problematic aspect is the author’s claim that While I’ve always admired Allon Gal’s writings ter how well-meaning, reinforces the authority and from 1905 to 1910 Brandeis was “a committed as- about Brandeis, I must question his suggestion that sacredness of the text as a whole, leaving the door similationist” and thus ignores his Jewish develop- Brandeis’s “First Public Jewish Address,” proves that he open to those championing the sacredness of the ment during those years; consequently, he also part- was not an assimilationist. Indeed, in this November violence-condoning passages. Sacks captures the ly errs in judging the nature of his Zionism. With 1905 address, as Allon himself writes in his 1980 book difficulty: violence-condoning passages (in Juda- all due respect, as my Brandeis of Boston expounds, Brandeis of Boston, Brandeis affirmed that “There is ism and Christianity), now mostly inactive, remain Brandeis was never a full assimilationist; at the very no place for what President Roosevelt has called hy- “dormant like frozen DNA,” available for revival to least, he consistently paid meaningful dues to the phenated Americans. There is room here for men of justify evildoing. The argument based on reaffirm- local Jewish pre-federation organization. As delin- any race, of any creed, of any condition in life, but not ing scriptural authority is self-defeating; it keeps eated in my article “The Enigma of Louis Brandeis’s for Protestant-Americans, or Catholic-Americans, or this DNA alive in the realm of revealed truth. ‘Zionization’: His First Public Jewish Address” Jewish-Americans.” Customs that tend to perpetuate In addition, in his stirring conclusion, Rabbi Sacks (American Public Life and the Historical Imagina- differences in origin or religious beliefs, Gal quotes summarizes the “absolute values that make Abrahamic tion), he tried to mobilize the local Jewish vote on Brandeis as saying, “are inconsistent with the Ameri- monotheism the humanizing force it has been at its behalf of the Protestant candidates who ran for the can ideal of brotherhood, and are disloyal.” More- best.” He lists the sanctity of life, the dignity of the indi- mayoralty of Boston, a city he deeply cherished.