Michael Wyschogrod's Bold Challenge by Leora Batnitzky JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS Volume 7, Number 1 Spring 2016 $10.45 Shai Secunda Tracks Through the Wilderness with Avivah Zornberg Zack Gold Chaos in the Sinai Mitchell Cohen Moses & Aaron in Berlin and Paris Philip Getz Joseph Epstein A Monk’s How Funny Was Haggadah Groucho? Editor Abraham Socher “MIRIAM’S SONG will NEW Senior Contributing Editor RELEASE inspire those who read it, Allan Arkush as it has inspired me.” Art Director W IRIAM S ONG Betsy Klarfeld NE “M ’ S will inspire those who read it, BENJAMIN NETANYAHU Managing Editor SE Amy Newman Smith RELEA as it has inspired me.” BENJAMIN NETANYAHU Editorial Assistant Kate Elinsky Editorial Board 1st Lieutenant Uriel Peretz, Robert Alter Shlomo Avineri Golani Brigade Special Leora Batnitzky Ruth Gavison Forces unit commander, Moshe Halbertal Jon D. Levenson dreamed of becoming the Anita Shapira Michael Walzer first Moroccan chief of staff J. H.H. Weiler Leon Wieseltier of the IDF. 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Review copies should be sent to the attention of www.gefenpublishing.com www.gefenpublishing.com the associate editor at our editorial office. 11 Edison Place, Springfield, NJ 07081 11 Edison Place, Springfield, NJ 07081 Tel: 1-516-593-1234 | Fax: 1-516-295-2739 Tel: 1-516-593-1234 | Fax: 1-516-295-2739 Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, JEWISH REVIEW and Jewish bookstores everywhere Gefen – it’s not just good wine and Jewish bookstores everywhere Gefen – it’s not just good wine OF BOOKS JEWISH REVIEW Volume 7, Number 1 Spring 2016 OF BOOKS www.jewishreviewofbooks.com LETTERS 4 Reform from Within, God-Intoxicated Plenitude, A Bukh Missing in Boisk FEATURE 5 Leora Batnitzky Michael Wyschogrod and the Challenge of God’s Scandalous Love The late Michael Wyschogrod may have been the boldest Jewish theologian of the 20th century. REVIEWS 8 Sarah Rindner Lost in Translation The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible by Aviya Kushner 11 Shai Secunda Desert Wild Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg 13 Erica Brown Inconceivable Reconceiving Infertility: Biblical Perspectives on Procreation and Childlessness by Candida R. Moss and Joel S. Baden • The Pater: My Father, My Judaism, My Childlessness by Elliot Jager 16 Philip Getz Pour Out Your Fury The Monk’s Haggadah: A Fifteenth-Century Illuminated Codex from the Monastery of Tegernsee, with a Prologue by Friar Erhard von Pappenheim edited by David Stern, Christoph Markschies, and Sarit Shalev-Eyni 18 Abigail Green One Nation, Two Disraelis Disraeli: The Novel Politician by David Cesarani 21 Allan Arkush A Mechitza, the Mufti, and the Beginnings of the Arab-Israeli Conflict Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1929 by Hillel Cohen 23 Elias Sacks Saving the World Franz Rosenzweig’s Conversions: World Denial and World Redemption by Benjamin Pollock 26 Joseph Epstein Jews on the Loose Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence by Lee Siegel 29 Neta Stahl As Though the Power of Speech Were an Ordinary Matter Moods by Yoel Hoffmann, translated by Peter Cole 31 Stuart Schoffman The Quality of Rachmones Shylock Is My Name by Howard Jacobson 35 Zack Gold Chaos in the Wilderness Sinai: Egypt’s Linchpin, Gaza’s Lifeline, Israel’s Nightmare by Mohannad Sabry READINGS & REFLECTIONS 38 James Reiss A Fraternal Note Letters to America: Selected Poems of Reuven Ben-Yosef edited and translated by Michael Weingrad THE ARTS 40 Mitchell Cohen A Dissonant Moses in Berlin and Paris Schoenberg’s challenging opera is re-staged in 21st-century Europe. 45 Nathan Alterman The Kid from the Haggadah A 1944 poem, translated by Dan Ben-Amos. EXCHANGE 46 David Ellenson, Netty Halakha and State: An Exchange In our Winter 2016 issue, Elli Fischer explained why he defies the Israeli C. Gross-Horowitz, Chief Rabbinate and argued for radical reform. Four responses and his rejoinder. Alexander Kaye, Kalman Neuman, Elli Fischer LAST WORD 50 Abraham Socher It's Spring Again On the cover: Nomads by Mark Anderson. LETTERS Reform from Within God-Intoxicated Plenitude Melamed is certainly correct when he writes, “The In his article on the failings of the Israeli Chief Rab- When I read the headline “Re-Intoxicated by God” price we pay for making Spinoza like us is that it is no binate and what ought to come next, Elli Fischer goes (Winter 2016), my heart leapt up. And yet it still longer clear why we should have an interest in Spino- too far (“Why I Defy the Israeli Chief Rabbinate,” seems to me that Melamed (and Gottlieb) are miss- za.” But then how should we approach him? I believe Winter 2016). All government bodies, including law ing something. We may have been given intellect that Spinoza had profound experiences of God, and enforcement, judiciary, and so on, have bureaucratic to help us find God, but that very intellect can turn he tried to evoke that experience in his readers. The and political issues. However, an Israel without rab- Ethics is structured to allow those entering into his binic power would be an Israel that was no longer a system not merely to agree with him but to have the Jewish state. The Law of Return, for example, requires experience themselves. I tell my students to read the that someone decide who is Jewish—and this is so Ethics Book I Axiom 1: “Everything that is, is either in fundamental to the Jewish future that it cannot be itself or in another.” I tell them to live with that axiom left up to politicians. Having said that, the Chief Rab- in their hearts and minds for a week. Let it germinate binate could become a regulatory agency and license and then experience what it blossoms into. As Goethe rabbinic courts, kashrut agencies, etc. However, the and other poets recognized, Spinoza bequeathed us a way to bring about reform is by working within the magnificent gift. system. This, according to Megillat Taanit, is precisely Carol Ochs what Shimon ben Shetach did when the Sadducees Professor Emerita of Philosophy took over the Sanhedrin. Simmons College, Boston Avi Keslinger via jewishreviewofbooks.com In his review of Yitzhak Melamed’s new book on Spinoza, Micah Gottlieb writes that “Every schol- Elli Fischer Responds: ar, it seems, must strike a balance between textual Suffice it to say that I disagree with Mr. Keslinger evidence, conceptual clarity, and logical consis- that the Chief Rabbinate merely has a few predict- tency. These will always, and necessarily, be mat- able “bureaucratic and political issues,” or that an into an obstacle to our seeing God. David Ives’s ters of judgment.” As is well known, both Spinoza Israel without a politically empowered rabbinic ap- play New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de and Leibniz endorsed what A.O.