Allan Arkush Zion & Other Places Noah Efron Idealism in Tel Aviv JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS Volume 2, Number 2 Summer 2011 $6.95

Eitan Kensky Hank Greenberg’s Swing

Jerome E. Copulsky Moses Mendelssohn’s Enlightenment

Robert Alter Amichai: The Poet at Play Dara Horn Glatstein: The Poet at Prophecy Shaul Magid The Hasidim: An Underground History Meir Soloveichik Irving Kristol’s “Neo-Orthodoxy” PLUS Nadia Kalman, Shoshana Olidort & Anne Trubek on Super Sad Curably Romantic Sort-of-True New Fiction CENTRAL CONFERENCE OF AMERICAN RABBIS Editor Abraham Socher Publisher Founded In Eric Cohen 1889 Senior Contributing Editor Food for  ought from CCAR Press Allan Arkush THE THE Creating a Jewish Food Ethic Editorial Board This volume is exactly what the Jewish community needs. The Sacred Table takes on the big questions about what it means to eat in a way consistent with our e Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic values in the age of the factory farm and industrial food. Especially impressive is the way it brings Jewish insights to bear on animal protection, ecological issues, and SACRE THE dietary choices like going vegetarian or being a selective omnivore. There is no better Robert Alter resource on Judaism and food available today. — Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals and Everything is Illuminated Edited by Mary L. Zamore Shlomo Avineri This important and beautifully written book of essays encouraging liberal Jews to develop a values-based dietary practice is in the best Reform tradition of mining TABLE SACRED Jewish rituals for their spiritual potential. It reminds us that what we put in our mouths Foreword by Eric H. Yoffi e has a lot to say about who we are and what we value—a conversation on everyone’s lips today. Leora Batnitzky —Sue Fishkoff, author of Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority Preface by Nigel Savage of Hazon Reform Jews have been evolving their own, unique American form of kashrut for TABLE Ruth Gavison generations. Zamore’s The Sacred Table is, effectively, its proto-Talmud. These essays do not justify what we’ve left out, they focus, instead, on what Reform Jews are respectfully adding to Jewish legal tradition. They testify to both Reform Judaism’s growing Creating a Jewish Food Ethic maturity and tradition’s continued vitality. This is the right book, by all the right people, at the right time. Moshe Halbertal —Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, Edit The Emanu-El Scholar at Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco and the author  is groundbreaking new volume explores a diversity of of several books on Jewish spirituality and mysticism, including, I’m God; You’re Not: Foreword by Eric H. H. Eric by Foreword E

Observations on Organized Religion & Other Disguises of the Ego Savage Nigel by Preface d by Mary L. Za L. Mary by d Hillel Halkin There is something for everyone to read and reflect on in the essays compiled inThe Sacred approaches to Jewish intentional eating. Table. We are such an interesting, diverse people, running the gamut from vegetarian to kashrut-observing Jews. Now Reform rabbis and thinkers share their own thoughts on how to better set our own sacred tables so that we will be more conscious of ethical eating as Jon D. Levenson we dip our forks into our food. —Joan Nathan, author of 10 cookbooks, including

Quiches, Kugels and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France y offie offie  ere is no better resource on Judaism and food available today Anita Shapira

M “ .” Rabbi Mary L. Zamore currently serves as the Associate Rabbi of Temple B’nai Or of Morristown, NJ. Rabbi Zamore was considered to be the first Reformmashgichah when she or

oversaw a New Jersey bakery from 1997-2001. A member of Hazon’s Jewish Food Educator E Network, she frequently writes and teaches on a variety of topics, including kashrut. —Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals and Michael Walzer

ISBN 978-0-88123-170-0 Central Conference of American Rabbis EditEd by Mary L. ZaMorE J. H.H. Weiler 355 Lexington Avenue, Everything is Illuminated Foreword by Eric H. yoffie New York, NY 10017 (212) 972-3636 Preface by Nigel Savage [email protected] www.ccarpress.org 9 780881 231700 > • CCAR Challenge and Change Series • Leon Wieseltier “ ere is something for everyone to read and refl ect on in these Ruth R. Wisse essays. Now Reform rabbis and thinkers share their own thoughts on how to better set our own Steven J. Zipperstein sacred tables so that we will be more conscious of ethical eating as we dip our forks into our food.” —Joan Nathan, author of 10 cookbooks, including Quiches, Kugels and Couscous Assistant Editor Philip Getz Art Director About the Editors ISBN 978-0-88123-043-7

was the Senior Rabbi of ,ז״ל ,Chaim Stern Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester. On the Doorposts Betsy Klarfeld Donna Berman, Ph.D., served Port Jewish Center in Port Washington, NY, from 1981-1993 of Your House at which time she was named rabbi emerita, the REVISED EDITION Prayers and Ceremonies for the Jewish Home ON THE DOORPOSTS OF YOUR HOUSE fi rst woman rabbi to earn that distinction. Rabbi Berman is now the executive director of the  ere are times when we want to celebrate the joys Charter Oak Cultural Center, a multi-cultural and achievements of our lives and mourn our losses arts center in Hartford, CT. and disappointments in the privacy of our own homes. A comfortable, intimate atmosphere surrounded by was Senior Rabbi at loved ones can ease the struggles of daily life and ,ז״ל ,H. Leonard Poller Larchmont Temple in Larchmont, NY. heighten those joyous occasions to new levels. Reform Judaism’s most Business Manager ,ז״ל ,Rabbi Chaim Stern was the Cantor ,ז״ל ,Dr. Edward Graham prolifi c liturgist, has provided us with On the Doorposts Emeritus at Larchmont Temple in Larchmont, of Your House, an extensive volume of liturgies to be NY and was Associate Professor of English at used by individuals and families for all those occasions SUNY Maritime College. of joy, loss, festivity and remembrance that occur throughout our lives. Lori Dorr Together, this editorial committee produced numerous prayer books including Gates of Prayer ON THE Included in this volume are prayers and readings for Shabbat and Gates of Prayer for Weekdays. for pregnancy, birthdays, anniversaries, festivals DigiCode Data File Created on 7-15-10 at 9:12:23 NOTICE: and achievements, and for the more painful events by in life: times of anxiety, the death of a child, illness About the CCAR ACCOUNT : 8451301 CENTRAL CONFERENCE OF AMERICAN RABBIS This DigiCode file is considered original artwork. SYMBOLOGY,D INC.OORPOSTS and disappointments. ORDERED BY : DEBBIE SMILOW Maple Grove, Minnesota, 55369 It must be inspected and approved by the purchaser. Founded in 1889, the Central Conference of American Rabbi Stern’s knowledge and appreciation for Jewish Editorial Fellow 763-315-8080 Rabbis is the professional association of Reform rabbis P.O. NUMBER : DOORPOSTS Use of this file confirms acceptance. rituals and traditions as well as his understanding of in the United States, Canada and abroad.  rough INVOICE NO. : 1306517 0% 5% 25% 50% 75% OF95% 100% OURSee the back of the Symbology invoice for Limitation ofthe Warranty. many meaningful events facing people throughout the CCAR Press, the Central Conference of American Y their lives give this volume a broad-based appeal. It Rabbis publishes congregational prayer books as well (PC Illust v3.0 via EMAIL) encompasseas such a wide variety of life’s experiences as scholarly and professional works for rabbis, guides that people of all ages and religions will resonate to Michael Moss to Jewish practice, and other resources for the Jewish OUSE these timeless prayers. community and congregations. CCAR Press now also H has electronic books available in multiple formats.  is revised edition of On the Doorposts of Your House includes updated translations and transliterations CENTRAL CONFE 1306517/1-751-1 Prayers and Ceremonies for the Jewish Home based on the new Reform siddur, Mishkan T’fi lah. MAG 100 NBAR .0130 BWA -0.0025 DOOR POSTS Anyone seeking to gain greater knowledge and a better understanding of Jewish religion and practice will be drawn to this book. As a reference or for guidance for oneself or to give as an attractive gift, On the Doorposts of Your House is sure to help further Central Conference of American Rabbis the development of spiritual life and bring peace and 355 Lexington Avenue ISBN 978-0-88123-043-7 strength into one’s surroundings. New York, NY 10017 (212) 972-3636 [email protected] | www.ccarpress.org CENTRAL CONFERENCE OF AMERICAN RABBIS Jacket design by Monk Design Group, Inc. 9 780881 230437 > The Jewish Review of Books (Print ISSN 2153-1978, Reform Responsa for the On the Doorposts Online ISSN 2153-1994) is a quarterly publication Twenty-First Century of Your House, Revised Edition of ideas and criticism published in Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, by Bee.Ideas, LLC., Two volume set Prayers and Meditations for the Jewish Home 745 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1400, New York, NY 10151. For all subscriptions, please visit www.jewishreviewofbooks.com or send $19.95

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LETTERS 4 Springtime for Arabia?, Hailing to the Chief, Straw Men . . . and more

FEATURES

5 Jerome E. Copulsky The Martyr of Reason Moses Mendelssohn was a symbol of enlightenment and tolerance in the 18th century. Two new books remind us that his life and philosophy are still relevant. 10 Allan Arkush State and Counterstate Debates about Zion and its relation to the diaspora are not new. Historians David Myers and Noam Pianko have recovered the forgotten ideas of several key figures, foremost among them Simon Rawidowicz. Do they speak to us now?

Reviews

15 Shaul Magid The Hasidim: An Underground History Untold Tales of the Hasidim: Crisis and Discontent in the History of Hasidism by David Assaf 17 Eitan Kensky The Rise of Hank Greenberg Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want To Be One by Mark Kurlansky

19 Meir Soloveichik Irving Kristol, Edmund Burke, and the Rabbis The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942-2009 by Irving Kristol 21 Nadia Kalman Brother Daniel, Sister Ulitskaya Daniel Stein, Interpreter by Ludmila Ulitskaya 23 Jordan Chandler Railroads and Dragon’s Teeth The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for Hirsch World Power by Sean McMeekin • The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Jonathan Schneer 29 Anne Trubek Missed Connections A Curable Romantic by Joseph Skibell

30 Shoshana Olidort Words, Words, Words Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart 31 Dara Horn Jacob Glatstein’s Prophecy The Glatstein Chroniclesby Jacob Glatstein, edited with an introduction by Ruth R. Wisse, translated by Maier Deshell and Norbert Guterman 34 Margot Lurie The Poet Goes to War Hear O Lord: Poems from the Disturbances of 2000-2009 by Eliaz Cohen, translated by Larry Barak 36 Allan Nadler The Great Non-Miracle Rabbi of Prague The Kabbalistic Culture of Eighteenth-Century Prague: Ezekiel Landau (The “Noda Biyehudah”) and His Contemporaries by Sharon Flatto

Readings 39 Robert Alter Yehuda Amichai: At Play in the Fields of Verse Israel's great poet had an impish sense of humor that also came through in the linguistic brilliance of his wordplay.

Lost and Found 44 Matt Goldish Loaves in the Ark

Last Word 46 Noah Efron Hope, Beauty, and Bus Lanes in Tel Aviv

On the cover: “Moses and Hank at Play” by Mark Anderson. LETTERS

Springtime for Arabia? Free School (of which he is the religious authority), David Wolpe Responds: and which involved (inter alia) his refusal to sanc- hile I agree completely with Mr. Sharansky tion the admission to the school of a pupil accepted Both of these letters reflect the inevitable tension Wthat it has been a great mistake to over iden- as Jewish by the Assembly of Masorti Synagogues. described in the review, and in Rabbi Sacks’ work. tify with the autocratic regimes in the Middle East Sacks’ decision was famously condemned by the Pace Liat Cohen, drawing some boundary is not in the interest of the bleak goal of “stability,” I can- British Supreme Court as a breach of UK race-rela- the same as insisting on a single boundary. As Pro- not share his optimism that a genuine Arab Spring tions legislation. fessor Alderman points out, the recognition that has occurred or is in the offing. Further, it is difficult to disagree with Shmuley other religious approaches have truth (not a good Nonie Darwish, an ex-Muslim woman from Boteach’s observation that “with the notable excep- technique, or an effective lesson, but genuine re- Egypt, recently noted that none of the demonstra- tion of Limmud, which started as an independent, ligious truth) from which we might learn, is one tions in Tahrir Square featured calls for separation grassroots initiative, not a single new idea for Jewry ideologically opposed to Orthodoxy. Rabbi Sacks of church and state, or equal rights for women. has come out of Britain in the twenty-plus years that found himself caught (perhaps, impaled) on the I would also note that while Mr. Sharansky made Sacks has presided over it.” horns of this dilemma more than once, since his his own epochal contribution to the fall of the So- Professor Geoffrey Alderman instincts appear to battle within him. One might viet Empire, the biggest “remnant” of that empire— University of Buckingham, England say that his intentions were upended both by his Russia—has so far failed to complete a transition constituents and the demands of traditional ide- to freedom or democracy, and shows no near-term ology. Again, it will be interesting to learn his signs of doing so. thoughts once he is no longer in the position of Ron Thompson Chief Rabbi. Fairfax, VA Hillel Halkin Law in the Desert: A Commentary • Vanessa L. Ochs Passover in DC This is perhaps the brightest dividing line between EWISH EVIEW pluralism and inclusion. Conservative Judaism does J R not permit everything, but it is also not imperialistic OF BOOKS Volume 2, Number 1 Spring 2011 $6.95 Hailing to the Chief in its claims: It recognizes that other denominations What Comes Next? and other traditions have genuine religious truth. n his review, Rabbi David J. Wolpe makes The open acceptance of historical change even in Natan Sharansky Efraim Inbar Ithe astonishing claim that Lord Rabbi Jon- The Democratic The Strategic fundamental matters and the willingness to incorpo- athan Sacks has “constantly endeavored to Case for Case for rate the religious ideas of other traditions mark a plu- Optimism Pessimism breach the walls separating Jews from one ralism that is not anarchy. The slippery slope is where another.” we all live; ideological purity is an illusion. Those It is certainly true that he began his tenure with who maintain the illusion reject change even as they this intention. His 1993 book One People? urged the unwittingly embody it. Those who slide on the slope promotion of a Judaism that was inclusive rather sometimes grasp for footing, but for all their prob- than exclusive, and which spoke of other Jews in lems, they know where they are. no language except “the language of love and re- spect.” What actually happened was that by 1995, his educational initiative entitled “Jewish Continu- How to Think About Revolutions in the Middle East ity” dissolved due to its rabbinical chief’s hasty re- Shlomo Avineri • Amr Bargisi • Eva Bellin • Daniel Kurtzer Straw Man? treat from the promise to fund projects irrespective Menahem Milson • Itamar Rabinovich • Michael Walzer of their precise denominational origins. In January David J. Wolpe: The Chief Rabbi’s Achievement PLUS Jewish Parenting, erek Penslar’s review of Gilbert Achcar’s The of that year, Sacks used the columns of the sectarian Joan Nathan’s French Cholent, and the Life & Fate of Lucky Grossman DArabs and the Holocaust invites readers to Jewish Tribune to launch a spite-laden attack on ad- respectfully consider a book that, as Penslar de- herents of the Masorti movement, whom he public- scribes it, attempts to defeat the Zionist argument ly condemned for having “severed their links with by demonstrating that the Arabs were not respon- the faith of their ancestors”. sible for the Holocaust, and so should therefore not Rabbi Wolpe does briefly deal with the national n his review of what must be close to Chief be asked to remedy that great sin by having their furor that followed publication of Sacks’ infamous IRabbi Sacks’ entire chef d’oeuvre, Rabbi Da- land taken away and given to the Jews who had letter in early 1997 to the Haredi leader Dayan vid J. Wolpe says, “What Orthodoxy requires is been wronged. Chanoch Padwa, excusing his intention to speak precisely what Conservative and Reform Judaism But who has ever claimed otherwise? If the ar- at a public memorial meeting for the late Reform reject. Unity for the Orthodox can mean noth- gument for Zionism had really been predicated on rabbi and Auschwitz survivor Hugo Gryn. It needs ing more than inclusion: The non-Orthodox are the Holocaust, what were all those Zionists doing to be stressed that in that letter, Sacks denigrated wrong, but still Jewish. Unity for liberal Jews, in Palestine before World War II? Further, what is not merely the Reform movement but Hugo Gryn however, means pluralism, even allowing for one to make of the entire Jewish prayer book as it personally, whom he described as oso ha-ish— significant differences between the Conservative has existed, largely unchanged, for tens of centu- the phrase used in the Talmud to refer to Jesus of and Reform movements.” ries, and which puts the memory of Jerusalem in Nazareth. Is this true? Doesn’t Wolpe’s Conservative Juda- our mouths at each of our three daily prayers; at As Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks entered upon his ism hold that there are halakhic lines that ought not every meal; at the end of every seder; whenever we ministry as a modernist, intent on promoting an be crossed (about the Sabbath or conversion, say) comfort a mourner, just to mention a few examples. Orthodoxy that embraced modernity as a divine and theological propositions that cannot be true Arguing that because the Arabs did not operate the gift. He even went so far as to publish a volume, (for instance that there are three gods, or no god at ovens at Auschwitz Israel has no right to exist as a The Dignity of Difference, in which he argued that all)? And if so, doesn’t Wolpe think that Rabbi Sacks Jewish state is not only to invoke a non sequitur; it is Judaism—his Orthodox Judaism—did not have a and his fellow Orthodox Jews are demonstrably also to ignore why Israel actually exists. monopoly on truth, and could learn from other wrong to ignore the results of biblical scholarship As summarized (respectfully) by Penslar, Ach- faiths. In his encomium, Rabbi Wolpe does not and the full import of feminism? Doesn’t his plural- car’s argument about the Mufti is both internally make it clear that there are in fact two different ism look a lot like Sacks’ tolerant inclusion? inconsistent and an aggressive and unsuccessful versions of the book because, in order to placate There is, of course, the alternative: that liberal effort at whitewashing—not the man, but his fol- the ultras, Lord Sacks simply rewrote it, con- Jews don’t really hold to any absolute truth claims lowers. When many other Jewish and Arab leaders signing as heresy dogma what he had previously or inviolable principles, but it is hard to see how that were struggling to find ways for Jews and Arabs promoted. would count as a virtue. to co-exist, the Mufti was the man who—success- Most surprisingly, Sacks’ central involvement in Liat Cohen a succession of costly disputes at London’s Jewish Toronto, Canada (Continued on page 43)

4 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 FEATURES The Martyr of Reason

BY Jerome E. Copulsky

On the face of it, what Jacobi had initiated was a closed; newspaper articles and letters eulogized the MOSES MENDELSSOHN: SAGE OF quarrel over the intelligibility and desirability of the man who stood as a symbol of the new age and a MODERNITY moderate Enlightenment. Yet Mendelssohn under- casualty of the fight against the forces of reaction, fa- by Shmuel Feiner, translated by Anthony Berris stood that Jacobi’s challenge was not just directed at naticism, and intolerance. As Shmuel Feiner writes Yale University Press, 248 pp., $25 his circle’s intellectual project but also at what their towards the end of his newly-translated biography, confidence in reason and rational theism endorsed— “In the eyes of his admirers he was depicted as a FAITH AND FREEDOM: MOSES religious toleration and increased sociability be- martyr of the Enlightenment who gave his life for MENDELSSOHN’S THEOLOGICAL- tween Christians and Jews. Mendelssohn perceived its principles, and as a victim of the plot laid against POLITICAL THOUGHT in Jacobi’s challenge a not-so-hidden agenda—it was him by his enemies.” by Michah Gottlieb Oxford University Press, 224 pp., $55 Mendelssohn perceived in Jacobi’s challenge a not-so-hidden agenda—it was yet another attempt to push him into the n Saturday evening, December 31, 1785, the eminent Enlightenment phi- bosom of Christianity. losopher Moses Mendelssohn left his house to deliver a manuscript. He had yet another attempt to push him into the bosom of Indeed, Mendelssohn’s public image as the mod- finishedO it on Friday afternoon but, as an observant Christianity. By publicly exposing Lessing’s professed el of the cultured, accomplished Jew and a martyr to Jew, Mendelssohn waited until the Sabbath con- “Spinozism,” Jacobi was, in truth, undertaking an as- the Enlightenment vision of reason, tolerance, and cluded to bring it to his publisher. So, at nightfall, he sault upon Mendelssohn’s “Judaism.” humanitarian politics was arguably more important rushed out into the cold Berlin air without waiting Mendelssohn returned from his publisher feel- than his contributions to German philosophy or for a carriage or stopping to put on a coat, though ing ill, and never recovered. He died a few days later the renaissance of Hebrew literature. Mendelssohn’s his wife Fromet begged him to do so. The manu- on January 4, 1786, at the age of 56. His funeral “Jewish and Christian contemporaries alike,” Feiner script he held was entitled To Lessing’s Friends, and it was attended by hundreds of mourners, Jewish and reminds us, “earmarked [sic] him as the man who was a pained yet characteristically elegant response Christian; shops and businesses in the city were could lead the Jewish transition from the old world to a critic named Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. of the ‘ghetto’—of cultural Mendelssohn himself was the most famous of and social isolation—to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s friends, since their the new world of Europe.” close relationship was widely taken to symbolize Yet, within a century of the religious tolerance and social possibilities of the his death, counter-images German Enlightenment. Lessing had died in 1781, emerged to challenge this and Mendelssohn had intended to write a biogra- heroic myth. In conserva- phy or memoir of his friend. But before he could tive quarters, Mendelssohn do so, Jacobi had written to him with a shocking was denounced for unleash- revelation: A few months before he had died, the ing the destructive forces great Enlightenment dramatist, critic, and man of of modernity: challenges to letters had confessed to him that he knew no phi- rabbinic authority, the dis- losophy to be true but Spinoza’s hen kai pan (“all is integration of traditional one”). This was, if true, scandalous. The “accursed community, social permis- Spinoza” was still an anathema in the 18th century. siveness, assimilation, and His denial of a transcendent deity and his teaching conversion. (It did not go of the unity of God and the world (Deus sive Na- unnoticed by his detrac- tura) was held to be the philosophical expression tors that four out of his six of a thoroughgoing atheism. For Jacobi, Lessing’s surviving children eventu- Spinozism showed that the moderate Enlighten- ally converted to Christi- ment endorsed by Mendelssohn and his circle was anity, and that his grand- philosophically superficial and both politically and son, the famous musician theologically dangerous. When carefully thought Felix Mendelssohn Bar- through, the rational religion of Mendelssohn, Ja- tholdy, was brought up Lu- cobi alleged, collapses into nihilism (a term that theran.) On the other side of Jacobi himself coined). the religious spectrum, lib- Mendelssohn and Jacobi corresponded with eral Jews claimed that Men- increasing heat and then in 1785—in what Men- delssohn’s reforms failed to delssohn regarded as an unforgivable breach of eti- go far enough, charging him quette—Jacobi published their exchange with his with sentimentally cling- own commentary under the title Concerning the ing to tradition rather than Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Mr. Moses Mendels- articulating a real reform sohn. With the public disclosure of Lessing’s confes- of Judaism. Later, Jewish sion, Jacobi launched what has come to be known as Lavater and Lessing Visit Moses Mendelssohn by Daniel Oppenheim nationalists such as Peretz the Pantheismusstreit (the Pantheism Controversy). Moritz, 1856. (Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley, California.) Smolenskin castigated Men-

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 5 delssohn for undermining Jewish national con- sciousness.

n addition to Shmuel Feiner’s readable volume Iin Yale’s “Jewish Lives” series, we now have Michah Gottlieb’s challenging new study, Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn’s Theological- Political Thought. Both books provide material for rethinking the German philosopher and Jewish enlightener. Though it neither breaks new ground nor incor- porates the most recent scholarship, Feiner’s Moses Mendelssohn serves as a useful introduction to this complex figure, and fills a longstanding need for a short, accessible biography. (In his nearly 900 pages magnum opus, Alexander Altmann filled the need for a definitive biography for the foreseeable future.) A scholar of early modern Jewish history and au- thor of several seminal works on the subject includ- ing Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Mod- ern Jewish Historical Consciousness and The Jewish Enlightenment, Feiner seeks to recover “the histori- cal Mendelssohn” by considering the philosopher’s achievements and limitations within the social, eco- nomic, and political situation of the Jews of Berlin in the mid-18th century. “To scrutinize Mendels- sohn’s soul,” Feiner writes, “is to discover a tragic tension between, on the one hand, the Enlighten- ment’s liberal fighter, who took aim against religious fanaticism, political oppression, and superstition in the name of reason, morality, and humanism, and, on the other hand, the sensitive, vulnerable man who felt helpless in the face of invincible forces of what he called ‘the specters of the dead.’” In Feiner’s telling, Mendelssohn’s life vividly demonstrates the possibilities and limitations that Jews encountered at the dawn of the age of Emancipation. The son of Menachem (Mendel) Heymann, a Torah scribe, synagogue treasurer, and teacher, Moses Mendelssohn was born in Dessau on Sep- tember 6, 1729. His mother, Bella Rachel Sarah, was a descendent of Rabbi Moses Isserles of Cra- kow, author of the great Ashkenazi supplement to Rabbi Joseph Karo’s Shulchan Arukh. She was also related to Moses Benjamin Wulff, one of Dessau’s most illustrious Jews, and her son was most likely named after these two prestigious relatives. In Des- sau, the young Moses received a traditional Jewish education, studying under Rabbi David Fränkel. He might have grown up to become an eminent rabbi himself, but in 1743, at the age of 14, the talented pupil followed his teacher to Berlin, where Fränkel had been appointed Chief Rabbi. In Berlin, Mendelssohn would be exposed to vis- tas of culture unheard of in Dessau. Under the en- lightened rule of Frederick II (“the Great”) of Prussia, Berlin was fast becoming a leading center of European culture. But “enlightenment” first came to Mendels- sohn in a distinctly Jewish form. Mendelssohn fell un- der the tutelage of Israel Samoscz, a Galician scholar who was engaged in the recovery of the medieval Jew- ish philosophical tradition, penning commentaries on such works as Yehuda Halevi’s Kuzari and Bahya ibn Paquada’s Duties of the Heart. Samoscz introduced the young savant to Maimonides, whose monumen- tal philosophical work, The Guide for the Perplexed, had recently been republished. (Mendelssohn would later claim that his hunchback was a legacy of his long hours bent over studying The Guide). His mind now attuned toward speculative top-

6 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 ics, Mendelssohn began to associate with a group in support of the Christian revelation, Lavater chal- Israel” charged Mendelssohn with clandestinely of young Jewish intellectuals who fed his interest in lenged Mendelssohn to accept or refute Christianity. abandoning Judaism. According to its anonymous philosophy and helped introduce him to the study In his response, Mendelssohn stressed the need author, Judaism is “ecclesiastical law” backed by of classical and modern languages. Soon, the son of a member of a religious minority to act prudently coercive force. If Mendelssohn rejects Judaism’s of Dessau’s Torah scribe was immersing himself in in such matters, while insisting that his philosophi- “ecclesiastical power,” the author inquired, is he the works of Newton, Locke, Leibniz, and Wolff. Though largely self-taught in these subjects—he Mendelssohn was elected to the Prussian Royal Academy never attended a university—the young Torah scholar turned early maskil was on his way to be- of Sciences, but the Academy’s decision to award a Jew its coming a leading light in German letters. Mendelssohn’s nascent philosophical career was highest honor was vetoed by King Frederick the Great. helped along by his growing friendship with Less- ing, to whom he was introduced in 1753, at the age cal studies had not led him away from his belief in not rejecting Judaism’s very foundation? And if he of 24. In 1755, he published his Philosophical Dia- the truth of his religion. Mendelssohn declined to is rejecting this foundation, how can he still con- logues and On the Sentiments, and, in 1763, his es- engage Bonnet’s arguments in favor of Christianity, sider himself a faithful Jew? In short, if Judaism is say “On Evidence in Metaphysical Sciences” was writing simply that he did not find them compel- law, did this not entail that the Jews could only en- awarded first prize in the Prussian Royal Academy ling. Moreover, he argued that the religious truths ter into modern society by relinquishing Judaism? of Sciences competition (beating the submission proclaimed by Judaism—the existence of God, Mendelssohn took up the challenge of “the of a young Immanuel Kant). His philosophical providence, reward and punishment—were iden- Searcher” to stake his position on the theological- dialogue Phädon, or on the Immortality of the Soul tical to those of natural religion, truths accessible political problem, the tension between claims of the was published in 1767 to international acclaim and to the unassisted human reason of all people at all state and the claims of religious belief. Jerusalem is became a bestseller. In it, Mendelssohn updated times in all places, and demonstrated by modern both a manifesto for religious toleration and a bold Socrates’ (or rather Plato’s) arguments for the im- philosophy. In Judaism, as opposed to Christianity, articulation of Mendelssohn’s unique understand- mortality of the soul, earning himself the moniker revelation was of law, practices to follow rather than ing of the Jewish religion. The treatise opens with a “the German Socrates.” In 1771, Mendelssohn was dogmas to be believed. And, since it restricted the discussion of the relationship between the state and elected a fellow of the Royal Academy (although the ceremonial law to those of the Jewish faith and did religious authority in conversation with Hobbes and Academy’s decision to award a Jew its highest honor not seek out proselytes, Judaism was fundamentally Locke (and Spinoza, who, though not engaged di- was ultimately vetoed by King Frederick the Great). a religion of tolerance. rectly, haunts Mendelssohn’s treatise.) The conflict Yet, to many, the man between the two, Mendelssohn maintained, was himself remained a per- more illusory than real. Rather than subordinating plexity. To the astonish- the church to the state (as in Hobbes and Spinoza) ment and consternation or attempting an (impossible) separation of realms of many of his enlightened (as in Locke), Mendelssohn argued that if the na- interlocutors, Mendels- ture of the state and the church are correctly under- sohn maintained his com- stood, there is no tension, that the two institutions mitment to the faith of his would work in concert to promote the temporal fathers and strove to lead and eternal happiness of human beings. his fellow Jews out of su- In the second part of Jerusalem, Mendelssohn perstition and civic exclu- pivoted to develop his conception of Judaism. Ju- sion into a fruitful engage- daism, Mendelssohn maintained, proclaimed no ment with modern cul- metaphysical truths other than those of natural ture. Working in concert religion. What distinguished it from other posi- with other members of the tive religions was its revealed law and the histori- emerging Haskalah, he cal truths taught by the Torah. And, although Ju- cautiously sought to pro- daism was a religion of law, since the destruction mote a Jewish renaissance, of the Hebrew commonwealth this law was no advocating the revival of longer political (that is, coercive) in nature. The Hebrew, translating the rituals prescribed by the law, however, retained Pentateuch into German, the unique ability to promote and preserve the and editing a commen- metaphysical truths of natural religion. In Men- tary on it, the Bi’ur. On delssohn’s view, Judaism was therefore the most account of his standing in reasonable of religions, distinctly suited to the the European Republic of Second edition of Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Mr. modern, enlightened era. Letters, Mendelssohn was Moses Mendelssohn, 1789. Jerusalem had two audiences: Mendelssohn’s fel- frequently asked to inter- low Enlightenment intellectuals and his fellow Jews. cede by Jewish communities of Berlin and beyond, endelssohn’s most famous and enduring Mendelssohn had hoped that his conception of Ju- which he did often and effectively. Nonetheless, he Mwork, Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and daism would be embraced by his co-religionists. But came under suspicion of rabbinic authorities for his Judaism, was also composed in response to a pub- his depiction of Judaism as a non-coercive religion seemingly heterodox opinions and activities. lic challenge. In 1782, publicly joining the move- of law found few takers. In subsequent years, Jews Mendelssohn’s activities made him the target of ment for the granting of civil rights to the Jews, interested in forging a synthesis between Juda- a number of public challenges, the Jacobi affair be- Mendelssohn published a preface to a translation ism and modern culture did so in doctrinal terms. ing just the last and most tragic. It was in the course of the 17th-century Dutch rabbi Menasseh ben Is- Ironically, while it had little effect on future Jewish of these controversies that Mendelssohn clarified his rael’s work Vindiciae Judaeorum advocating for reformations, Jerusalem had a significant influence conception of Judaism and its place in modern soci- the Jews’ readmittance into England. In this text, on philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. ety. In 1769, Johann Caspar Lavater, a young Swiss Mendelssohn argued, among other things, that Hegel in their assessments of Judaism as a one- Lutheran pastor inspired by millennial hopes, trans- Jewish authorities ought to relinquish their power sidedly legalistic and political religion. lated a section of Charles Bonnet’s work, La palingé- of excommunication. Soon, an anonymously writ- nésie philosophique, ou idées sur l’état passé futur des ten pamphlet entitled “The Searching for Light and einer is especially good at positioning the de- êtres vivants, and published it with a dedicatory epistle Right in a Letter to Mr. Moses Mendelssohn Occa- Fvelopment of Mendelssohn’s thought within to Mendelssohn. Encouraged by Bonnet’s arguments sioned by his Remarkable Preface to Menasseh ben the contours and challenges of his times: an emerg-

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 7 ing Jewish bourgeoisie, with its attendant interest not imagine a contradiction between them,” and Gottlieb’s Mendelssohn thus stands at the begin- in salons, modern education, fashion, and the arts; is able to achieve such a synthesis because he ap- ning of a tradition in modern Jewish thought that a rabbinic establishment still reeling from the af- proaches Judaism with the selective attitude of a continues through Solomon Maimon, Hermann tereffects of the Sabbatean debacle, suspicious of theologian, rather than with the objective, critical Cohen, and Leo Strauss. change, and jealous of its waning authority; the in- eye of an historian. The center of gravity of Gottlieb’s book, however, creasing prestige of liberal ideas that would spon- The first two chapters of Gottlieb’s rich study is his restaging of the debate between Mendelssohn sor the extension of new opportunities to Jews. focus on Mendelssohn’s effort to demonstrate “the Throughout, Feiner also provides a fascinating harmony between Judaism and Enlightenment Unassisted human reason glimpse of Mendelssohn’s private life—his close philosophy” and to accommodate Judaism to the friendships with fellow intellectuals such as Lessing, emerging political situation. Like Feiner, Gottlieb could not, in Jacobi’s view, his courtship of Fromet Gugenheim, the births and regards Mendelssohn’s youthful encounter with deaths of his children, and the long illness that side- Maimonides as decisive in shaping his intellect; the achieve real knowledge tracked his philosophical career. Feiner is keenly at- medieval sage provided an entryway into the world tuned to the tragic dimension of Mendelssohn’s life: of God, Who is ultimately despite the great renown that he achieved during his lifetime, Mendelssohn was always subject to preju- mysterious to us. dice and humiliation, which he endured publicly with an almost superhuman poise, and privately, in and Jacobi. Following Leo Strauss’ suggestion that letters to his confidants, with a disappointment and the Pantheismusstreit should be seen as a “theolog- frustration that sometimes bordered on despair. As ical-political debate,” Gottlieb contends that what if to underscore this sad aspect of Mendelssohn’s was at stake was not simply a conflict between “rea- life, Feiner frames his biography with an incident in son” and “faith” but an ardent quarrel about the na- which his family was taunted by a gang of youths ture of religious faith and the good life in the mod- with cries of “Juden! Juden!” and a hail of stones. ern world. Distressed and helpless, the philosopher renowned Jacobi’s strategy was to heighten the contradic- across Europe could only mutter to himself, “Peo- tions within the Enlightenment project, to demon- ple, people, when will you stop this?” strate that, rather than bringing about a new era of Although Mendelssohn was regarded as an humanism and freedom, the reign of reason results icon by a younger generation of Jewish enlighten- in political despotism and spiritual nihilism. Inter- ers, Feiner judges that his role in “the cultural proj- estingly, Jacobi’s critique was cast not in the name ect of modernization of the Jews” was in the end a of fidelity to tradition, but in the name of freedom marginal one. The author ofJerusalem neither led a and humanism, the very watchwords of Mendels- movement nor founded a lasting ideology. He did sohn’s Enlightenment hopes. His attack had two not stand at the vanguard of the struggle for eman- prongs. The first was political. Jacobi alleged that cipation. Nor did he advocate for any significant Mendelssohn endorsed happiness at the expense modifications in Jewish law or practice. (Even as he of human freedom, a position illuminated by his was suspicious of rabbinic authority, Mendelssohn acquiescence to political despotism (such as that lived according to the strictures of halakha.) “The of the authoritarian Prussian state). The second story of his life,” Feiner concludes, Portrait of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi by Johann prong of the attack was aimed at Mendelssohn’s Friedrich Eich, 1780. rationalism. Jacobi maintained that Spinoza had gives expression to the dilemmas posed formulated the only rigorously consistent rational- to the Jews by the ‘modern condition’ . . . of philosophy, serving not only as an introduction ist philosophy: human reason leads to atheism and he exemplifies the rise of a modern Jewish to philosophical thinking but also as a way to le- fatalism, a conception of the world without divine intellectual elite no longer identical to the gitimate the study of “secular” topics. But taking transcendence or human freedom. Spinoza, the rabbinical elite, and not restricted in its Maimonides as a model had its limitations. Gott- philosopher par excellence, at least had the cour- knowledge to traditional Jewish sources. His lieb powerfully shows how Mendelssohn, engaged age to push his logic to its ultimate conclusions, thought marks the beginning of a liberal Jewish by the optimistic, world-affirming spirit of Leib- as Lessing did to eventually accept them. Mendels- philosophy seeking to promote such values niz’s system, rebelled against the ascetic and elitist sohn, however, did not dare to travel down Spino- as the love of man, religious tolerance, and a strains and Aristotelian doctrines of Maimonidean za’s path. As Gottlieb writes, Jacobi argued that “by multicultural society that interprets Judaism thought. Mendelssohn came to believe that Leibniz- legitimating rationalism for the faithful, Mendels- according to rationalistic and moral criteria.” ian-Wolffian metaphysics, in particular its stress on sohn prepares the ground for overthrowing theism divine benevolence, provided a firmer grounding since rationalism applied consistently culminates In the end, Feiner regards and celebrates Mendels- for biblical faith. in Spinozism,” which is to say atheism. In short, sohn as “the first real Jewish humanist.” Gottlieb also stresses the importance of Mendels- Mendelssohn’s metaphysics were a muddled, half- sohn’s engagement with Spinoza in his philosophi- way house to nihilism. Rather than securing reli- n Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn’s cal development. In his first German philosophical gious faith by placing it on a rational foundation, ITheological-Political Thought, Michah Gottlieb work, The Philosophical Dialogues, Mendelssohn Mendelssohn unwittingly weakens it. delves deeply into the philosopher’s complex re- attempted to recuperate Spinoza’s image. His errors Unassisted human reason could not, in Jacobi’s lationships with his predecessors (Maimonides were, in Mendelssohn’s account, a necessary step in view, achieve real knowledge of God, Who is ulti- and Spinoza) and into the nature of his quarrel the transition from Cartesianism to Leibnizianism. mately mysterious to us. The alternative to the pre- with Jacobi. Rather than observing a contradictory Spinozism was, he wrote, “a sacrifice for the human tensions of the Enlightenment was to recognize the thinker—a German Mendelssohn and a Jewish intellect, but one that deserves to be decorated with fundamental limitations of human reason and take Moshe ben Mendel; an Enlightenment philoso- flowers.” Mendelssohn’s defense of Spinoza, his de- a “mortal leap” (salto mortale) into a personal faith. pher in public and an observant Jew in private— piction of the Sage of Amsterdam as a martyr and Such a faith—a Christian faith— suggested Jacobi, Gottlieb makes the case for the essential unity of virtuous seeker after truth, Gottlieb suggests, was was based on a “sixth sense,” a faculty that bestowed Mendelssohn’s thought and, more daringly, for strategic. He sought to co-opt the symbol of Spinoza within us a “mystical perception” of a mysterious the plausibility of the humanistic religion he ad- as a Jew and as a philosopher in order to counter God and of our own souls. As such, Christianity, vocated. Mendelssohn, Gottlieb suggests, “is so longstanding prejudices and “demonstrate the Jews’ with its irrational faith in God as a vital and lov- firmly convinced of the truth of both Judaism and capacity for participating in the collaborative effort ing Being was superior to Mendelssohn’s Judaism, of the German Enlightenment that he simply can- of developing scientific and cultural knowledge.” which grasps God only abstractly, through the fac-

8 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 ulty of reason and in the trappings of our all-too- he takes both sides of the conflict seriously (though bi, and theologian Abraham Geiger celebrated Spi- human language. It is a faith beyond the confines of his heart is with Mendelssohn). Yet Gottlieb’s pre- noza as “the pioneer of a new mental and spiritual mere reason that provides the very foundation for sentation sometimes feels too tightly focused and age.” Despite his hostility to the Jewish religion (or human individuality, dignity, and real freedom, as his more provocative claims underdeveloped. For perhaps in some sense on account of this hostility), well as for the (limited) authority of reason. A life Spinoza came to be regarded as a herald of Jewish infused with such a faith and lived committed to it, national revival. For the socialist and proto-Zionist Jacobi maintained, was deeper and richer and ulti- Moses Hess, Spinoza was the true prophet of mod- mately more meaningful than the so-called happy ern messianism, whose philosophy represented the one promoted by Berlin’s Enlightenment thinkers. “unity of the creative spirit.” Variations of Hess’ sen- As Gottlieb succinctly sums up Jacobi’s complaint timents were echoed by 20th-century Jewish figures against Mendelssohn: from Buber to Ben-Gurion. Mendelssohn’s philosophy, on the other hand, In privileging personal comfort and happiness, faded into obscurity. His conception of Judaism Mendelssohn’s bourgeois philosophy effectively fared no better. Subsequent Jewish thinkers did not reduces our humanity and makes us small, adopt Mendelssohn’s solution to the theological- petty, ignoble men. At best we can live political problem of Judaism in the modern world. interesting lives with a multitude of pleasures Younger generations of Jewish reformers rejected and amusements, but we no longer live great his depiction of Judaism, and, influenced by con- lives, which involves the willingness to sacrifice temporary philosophical trends, sought different our lives for the sake of duty. ways to express the “essence of Judaism,” to identify its teachings, to locate the enduring particularity of Unsurprisingly, Mendelssohn was not con- the Jewish people, and to ease their integration into vinced. On the contrary, he believed that Jacobi’s the state and society. disparagement of reason and devotion to a person- In recent years, Jewish thinkers have directed al, mystical faith would itself result in religious and more attention to modern philosophers such as Franz political despotism. It would also undermine the at- Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas, whose lives fea- tempt to bridge the divide between Christians and tured a “return to Judaism” rather than a Mendels- Jews, a bridge built on their mutual recognition of sohnian attempt to reconcile Athens and Jerusalem. the truths of natural religion. Portrait of Moses Mendelssohn by Anton Graff, Yet, as these two new books remind us, the funda- In his responses to Jacobi, then, Mendelssohn had 1771. (The University of Leipzig, Jewish Museum, mental questions with which Mendelssohn struggled to juggle a number of tasks. He sought to preserve Berlin.) still haunt us, albeit in a somewhat different key. Lessing’s reputation (by explaining—or explaining Gottlieb reminds us that a concern about the pre- away—the nature of his “Spinozism”). But he also sumptions of reason, the modern bourgeois subject, needed to defend the Enlightenment and its ratio- example, Gottlieb detects in Mendelssohn’s appeal and the soft comforts of liberalism was voiced a cen- nal theism against Jacobi’s critique, and to challenge to common sense a turn to a “pragmatic religious tury and a half later by critics of Weimar Germany Jacobi’s religious enthusiasm while contrasting it to idealism,” a concept that warrants more discussion. such as Carl Schmitt and the young Leo Strauss. And the rationality of Judaism. But, as Gottlieb elegantly And, while Gottlieb desires that his book “contrib- we are today still faced with the alternatives of com- demonstrates, Mendelssohn’s quarrel with Jacobi ute to a renewed consideration of humanistic re- mitment to a particular (and constraining) tradition was really a struggle against Spinoza, whom Men- ligion as a serious option today,” it is unclear if he (be it a faith, a political ideology, a cause), and a liber- delssohn had defended in Philosophical Dialogues regards Mendelssohn’s own conception of religion alism that allows for the cultivation of a multiplicity and with whom he had shadowboxed in Jerusalem. in general or Judaism in particular as plausible. of human pursuits and open to competing visions of In short, Jacobi’s challenge forced Mendelssohn to One wishes that Gottlieb had allowed his book the good life. Although his philosophical teachings grapple with Spinoza’s philosophy directly. Since to breathe more, devoting more space to evaluate and conception of Judaism may no longer be com- Mendelssohn agreed with Jacobi that Spinoza’s doc- Mendelssohn’s and Jacobi’s arguments, to discuss pelling, there is still much to learn from Moses Men- trine was inimical to human freedom, he had to dis- the broader context of the contest, and to offer delssohn’s noble life and philosophical texts, as these tance his rationalism from Spinoza’s and to demon- more direct judgments regarding its outcome, re- two new books demonstrate. strate the latter’s philosophical flaws. Intriguingly, in ception, and significance. While Gottlieb claims the course of these arguments, Mendelssohn, citing that “the heart of the debate is about ethical and Jerome E. Copulsky is director of Judaic Studies at Johann Georg Wachter’s idiosyncratic 1699 book political issues concerning the best means of Goucher College. Spinozism in Judaism or Contemporary Judaism and promoting human dignity and freedom in mod- Its Secret Kabbalistic, Deified World, suggested that ern society,” his own presentation demonstrates Spinoza built his philosophy from the Jewish mysti- how deeply intertwined these issues are with cal tradition. In a sense, the problem with Spinoza’s metaphysical and epistemological problems—the metaphysics originated from what Mendelssohn limits of reason, the legitimacy of religious belief, considered the irrational tendencies in the Jewish the grounding for freedom, and the proper aim of tradition itself. human life. Gottlieb’s analysis of Mendelssohn’s critique of Spinozism in To Lessing’s Friends and his other late he Pantheismusstreit had a consequence un- text, Morning Hours, is the most dense and techni- Tintended by Jacobi or Mendelssohn (and un- cal section of his book. Assuming a working knowl- mentioned by Gottlieb and Feiner): in a sense, it edge of early modern philosophy, it will likely frus- created more Lessings, reviving an interest in Spi- trate non-specialists. (It may, at times, try experts as noza’s work and an intelligentsia more sympathetic well: the volume is very densely referenced; the end- to pantheism. Thinkers such as Herder, Schelling, notes take up nearly sixty pages, about a full third and Hegel found inspiration in Spinoza, even as of the entire text. A difficulty of the format is that they took his thought into vastly different direc- references to Mendelssohn’s work are tagged to the tions. In 1835, Heinrich Heine, surveying the scene German collected edition, which makes it difficult of philosophy and theology, would write, “Panthe- to track exactly which text is under consideration at ism is the secret religion of Germany.” any given moment.) Gottlieb is a fair-minded and Jews, too, began to reassess the legacy of the Sage prudent guide through these philosophical shoals; of Amsterdam. The renowned historian, liberal rab-

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 9 State and Counterstate

BY Allan Arkush

Why not, she does not immediately explain, thus the European Graduate School in Switzerland. After The Question of Zion leaving the impression that the fault lay entirely with having reiterated on a number of different occasions by Jacqueline Rose the deluded and power-hungry political Zionists she her annoyance at the equation of Jewishness with Princeton University Press, 208 pp., $19.95 devotes most of her book to psychoanalyzing. Rose Zionism, she has now written a short piece entitled makes no mention in this context of the complete “Is Judaism Zionism?” Recently published in a book The Power of Religion in the Public lack of interest on the part of the Palestinian Arabs entitled The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, Sphere in anything that her heroes had to offer. Only once, the essay arrives at a predictably negative answer. edited by Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen toward the very end of the book, does she briefly Butler has not become an exponent of some fa- Columbia University Press, 137 pp., $19.95 note that the Arabs too played a part in rendering miliar strain of anti-Zionist Judaism, such as classi- binational coexistence impossible. cal Reform or, needless to say, Satmar theology, but Between Jew and Arab: The Lost When she is not writing about Zion or actively has instead rummaged through the writings of some Voice of Simon Rawidowicz lobbying against it, Rose earns her living as a pro- of the very same thinkers disparaged by Hazony to by David N. Myers fessor of literature, not a historian, and therefore patch together an innovative anti-Zionist creed. In Brandeis University Press, 320 pp., $27.95 doing so, she displays a little more erudition than Rose. She gets people’s names right, though she still Zionism and the Roads Not Taken: has some trouble with dates. She refers, for instance, Rawidowicz, Kaplan, Kohn to a “famous debate between Hermann Cohen, by Noam Pianko the neo-Kantian Jewish philosopher and Gershom Indiana University Press, 292 pp., $25.95 Scholem” on Jewish nationalism. Only someone who is unaware that Scholem was merely 21 when Cohen died at the age of 76 could imagine that such a debate ever took place. Her reference to Scholem’s little more than a decade ago, Yoram famous challenge to Hannah Arendt isn’t incorrect, Hazony caused something of a stir with but one must object to her statement that “Scholem the publication of The Jewish State: The quickly embraced a conception of political Zionism, Struggle for Israel’s Soul. Hazony, founder whereas Martin Buber in the teens and twenties ac- ofA the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center, denounced tively and publicly defended a spiritual and cultural the post-Zionists in the Israeli academic world for Zionism that, in his early view, would become ‘per- conducting a “systematic struggle . . . against the idea verted’ if it assumed the form of a political state.” In of the Jewish state, its historic narrative, institution, fact, throughout the twenties and even into the thir- and symbols.” He also controversially traced this ties, as is well known (just check Hazony), Scholem trend back to Martin Buber and a number of other was an outspoken defender of spiritual and cultural Central European-born Jewish intellectuals associat- Zionism and an opponent of the idea of a Jewish ed with the Hebrew University and Brit Shalom who state. It took Scholem decades to come to the con- advocated for a binational Arab-Jewish state from the clusion that Nazi persecution and Arab rejection- 1920s through the 1940s. Hazony neither portrayed ism left the Zionists with no choice but to establish these people very accurately nor proved that they had Martin Buber, 1940s. (The David B. Keidan a state of their own. As he wrote to Arendt in 1946, the influence that he attributed to them. But whatever Collection of Digital Images from the Central “The Arabs have not agreed to one solution, be it its failings as intellectual history, his book seems to Zionist Archives.) federal, statist, or binational.” have had an influence on at least some post-Zion- Why can’t they learn? Why do these post-mod- ists. In the years since Hazony’s book was published, ern academic worthies who step beyond the bound- there has been a noticeable increase in the number of cannot be faulted too much for such errors as de- aries of their disciplines (if this term is at all appro- people celebrating Buber and similar figures for their scribing the Jewish Labor Bund as “the group of priate here) to discuss their people’s affairs always prescient criticisms of political Zionism, and their socialist Jews virulently opposed to Jewish nation- fail to have their manuscripts vetted by people more dreams of something better. alism” (they were, in fact, nationalists), claiming in control of the facts? Why are they in such a hurry The latest professorial antagonists of Zionism that in 1893 Herzl actually put before the Pope a to move beyond the petty details into grand ideas do not, to be sure, give full credit where Hazony plan to convert all the Jews (he only daydreamed and utopian preaching? thought blame was due, but they often see Buber about doing so), and transforming the 18th-centu- When she does go to work on more theoreti- and the others as being in some sense forerun- ry Sabbatean leader surnamed Frank from a Jacob cal terrain, Butler takes as her point of departure a ners of their own line of thinking. In The Question into a Joseph (like the biographer of Dostoevsky). teaching of the Lurianic Kabbalah, or, I should say, of Zion, for instance, the British scholar Jacqueline Hannah Arendt’s 1946 review of Gershom Scho- Rose prefaces a brief treatment of some contempo- t least Rose makes no pretense of being a con- lem’s treatment of this subject in his Major Trends in rary Israeli adherents of the binational idea with an Atributor to Jewish thought in her own right. Jewish Mysticism. Isaac Luria, remarks Arendt, con- expansive and sympathetic account of Martin Bu- The same cannot be said of another professor of ceived of the Jews as having a mission of uplifting ber, Hannah Arendt, Hans Kohn, and Ahad Ha’am literature who has also become an anti-Zionist po- “the fallen sparks from all their various locations.” as the proponents of a Zionism that “had the chance lemicist, Judith Butler. The renowned author of According to Butler, what interests Arendt here is of molding a nation that would be not an ‘expanded many works of critical and feminist theory, Butler “not only the irreversibility of ‘emanation’ or dis- ego’ but something else.” Rose maintains that their is, among other things, the Maxine Elliot Professor persal but the revalorization of exile that it implies.” associates in the Zionist movement had the oppor- in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative That, in any case, is what Butler likes about this idea. tunity to adopt this model and laments the fact that Literature at the University of California, Berkeley If the Jews have to be all over the place to uplift the they “did not take it.” and the Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy at scattered sparks, it is clearly better that they be dis-

10 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 persed among non-Jews than concentrated in their they appear in a volume from Columbia University where he helped to establish its Department of Near own territory. Press that also includes pieces by such luminaries as Eastern and Judaic Studies. Toward the end of his Following the clues provided by Arendt and Scho- Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornel West. rather lonely intellectual life (he frequently used the lem, Butler pounces on what she thinks is a solid, These essays are expanded versions of talks that Hebrew pen-name “Ish Boded,” a solitary man) Ra- traditional foundation for diasporism. And once she were given at a public event in New York City on widowicz composed his never-translated nine-hun- has it, neither the Kabbalah nor its interpreters are of any further use to her. They couldn’t be. For the es- Butler pounces on what she thinks is a solid, traditional chatology of Lurianic Kabbalah, its vision of the ulti- mate collection of all the scattered sparks and the end foundation for diasporism. And once she has it, neither the of exile is utterly at odds with the lesson she wants her sources to supply. Relying on other figures, therefore, Kabbalah nor its interpreters are of any further use to her. especially Walter Benjamin, she veers in the direction of “messianism, perhaps secularized, that affirms the October 22, 2009. The Power of Religion in the Public dred-page magnum opus, Babylon and Jerusalem in scattering of light, the exilic condition, as the nonte- Sphere also includes “edited transcripts of dialogues a rather arcane Hebrew. This book, as Myers puts leological form that redemption now takes.” between the authors” that took place in the course it, “combined a re-narration of Jewish history, espe- What does all of this imply for those Jews who of almost five hours of conversation on that day. I cially a revaluation of the First and Second Temples, aren’t dispersed but already—and regrettably— would like to believe that at some point in those long with an extended ideological meditation on Jewish concentrated in their own state in the land of their discussions someone on the stage or in the audience life in his day.” Without ever ceasing to be a Zionist, forefathers? Pursuing a tortuous path of ethical re- called into question Butler’s ill-informed, facile, and Rawidowicz affirmed the existence and the cultural cold-hearted repudiation of the Jewish state. I am importance of a vital Jewish diaspora alongside the sorry to have to report that no one does so in the Jewish state. For him, the Jews were and ought to published volume. remain, in Myers’ words, “a dual-centered” nation. Rawidowicz has for decades exerted “a kind of n his book Between Jew and Arab, the promi- hypnotic hold” over Myers, who has in the past con- Inent Jewish historian David N. Myers has no oc- templated writing a full-fledged biography. Here, he casion to refer to Butler, but he does at one point confines himself to a study of one chapter in Baby- take Jacqueline Rose to task for her demonstration lon and Jerusalem, the chapter dealing with relations between Jews and Arabs in British Mandate Pales- tine and Israel. For reasons that can no longer be as- certained, this chapter was not included in Rawido- wicz’s book when it was published in 1957, the year of his death. It appears in print for the first time, in any language, in Myers’ book. The chapter, entitled “Between Jew and Arab,” is a lament over Zionism’s loss of innocence in 1948 and a formula for regaining it. The inexcusable of- fense against morality was not, in Rawidowicz’s eyes, the creation of a Jewish state (which he supported) but the removal of hundreds of thousands of Pales- tinian Arabs from its territory, or rather, the refusal to re-admit the 1948 refugees to what became Israel after the War of Independence ended. On the basis of what Myers calls a “mix of moral and pragmatic Portrait of Simon Rawidowicz, ca. 1920. considerations,” Rawidowicz passionately pleaded (Courtesy of Benjamin Ravid for the Simon for Israel’s Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Rawidowicz Archives.) the leaders of Israel to allow every single Arab refu- gee who had formerly resided in what had become Right: Announcement of a series of lectures the State of Israel (with the exception of those who on Jewish nationalism. (Courtesy of the Simon constituted obvious security risks) to return home. Rawidowicz Archives and used with permission “Is it not,” Rawidowicz declared, “the first nega- by Brandeis University Press.) tive commandment incumbent on any Chosen People: Do not uproot a man from his possessions, flections focused on the virtues of “dispossession of “inadequate historical nuance and knowledge” whether he is a member of your people or not? Ev- from national modes of belonging,” Butler arrives in The Question of Zion, even as he commends her eryone (Jew or not) is called ‘man.’ Do not build at the conclusion that “the ongoing and violent for advancing criticisms of Zionism that “cannot yourself up from the destruction of one who is project of settler colonialism that constitutes politi- be summarily swept away.” Observing that her weaker than you. Conquer your impulse to domi- cal Zionism” has to give way to “a new concept of book, like his own, returns to the outlooks of Ahad nate, as well as all lesser impulses, and perhaps you citizenship,” and “a rethinking of binationalism in Ha’am, Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, and Judah can become a Chosen People.” Those who fear that light of the racial and religious complexity of both Magnes, he both notes and excuses her omission of obedience to such a commandment would jeopar- Jewish and Palestinian populations.” Butler is per- the little-known Simon Rawidowicz from her ros- dize the security of Israel ought to consider the al- spicacious enough to acknowledge the possibility ter. Myers himself devotes prodigious efforts to re- ternative. The readmitted refugees might constitute that this might entail “too much risk” for the Jews in covering the “lost voice” of this man who “poured a danger inside the state, “but they are also a danger question and might even “threaten Jewish life with out his soul over, but ultimately published nary a outside of the state: and this latter danger is many destruction.” But since it is what justice and secular- word about, the Arab Question.” times more serious than that within the state.” Noth- ized non-teleological redemption requires, it must A Polish-born scholar and thinker, Rawidowicz ing, Ravidowicz argued, could be as bad as the men- be undertaken, whatever the consequences. might perhaps have shown up on Yoram Hazony’s ace posed by “hundreds of thousands of refugees Such puerile reflections are, of course, far from list of rogues had he obtained the professorship in who dream night and day, by virtue of their stateless unusual in the realm of radical discourse in which Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University that he existence, of the possibility of creating a state right Butler is a celebrity. They would not be at all wor- sought during the interwar years. Instead, he went now, of realizing this goal in the immediate future.” thy of sustained criticism were it not for the fact that to England and, eventually, to Brandeis University, The danger in which Israel’s refugee policy places

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 11 its inhabitants was accentuated, according to Ra- ter, to reject unequivocally its key demand. In lan- awidowicz’s favorable evaluation of the Jewish widowicz, by the one in which it placed Jews living guage that echoes his introduction, Myers repeats Rdiaspora and, to a much lesser extent, his views in other countries. If the State of Israel was as re- in his epilogue that “Rawidowicz’s proposal for the on the Israel-Arab conflict, are among the subjects sponsible for the well-being of Jews outside its bor- repatriation of hundreds of thousands of refugees is discussed in a book that has grown out of a doctor- ders as David Ben-Gurion maintained, then didn’t not practicable in the present context.” Two para- al dissertation that Myers enthusiastically praises this responsibility “compel it to regard the plight graphs later, however, he reopens this twice-shut in his introduction, Noam Pianko’s Zionism and of the refugees from the standpoint of the Jews in window at least a crack when he restores to tomor- the Roads Not Taken: Rawidowicz, Kaplan, Kohn. Similarly to Myers, Pianko speaks of Rawidowicz’s On encountering numerous references to God, the Holy One, “rather speculative and unsystematic treatment of Jewish political thought.” But he digs deeper into it, and the Guardian of Israel, Rawidowicz’s reader must showing that beneath the veneer of traditional Jew- ish references it has its roots in a complex mixture wonder whether these words are to be taken literally or of Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment ideas. On the one hand, Rawidowicz is a defender of “the amount to nothing more than a Hebraic humanist’s basic universal principles of equality and individ- ual rights that had been championed by 18th- and rhetorical flourishes. 19th-century idealism.” On the other hand, he relies heavily on “myth as a source of truth,” even if it is the diaspora, of their struggle for rights in Gentile row’s negotiating table “the gamut of options rang- connected with a narrative, like the traditional ac- countries, whether the rights be those of a citizen or ing from compensation and property restitution to count of Jewish history, one knows to be historical- of a national minority?” partial or full return (to the State of Israel or, more ly inaccurate. “Rawidowicz’s effort to maintain the For Rawidowicz, the moral question clearly out- likely, to a future state of Palestine).” myth and an awareness of its historically construct- weighed such pragmatic concerns, and this appears David Myers characterizes Rawidowicz’s call for ed nature,” according to Pianko, helps us to under- to be the case also for Myers, who acknowledges Israel to repatriate virtually all of the Palestinian ref- stand “his decision to present his political theory that his book stems largely from his moral uneasi- ugees a “bold” one, even though he refrained from through symbols and metaphors, rather than di- ness over the state of Jewish-Arab relations. In the rectly importing Western philosophical terms.” introduction, Myers shares his own reservations This helps explain what is happening when about some of Rawidowicz’s pragmatic arguments Rawidowicz utters (or should one say mutters?) his as well as his doubts about whether his “call for the prophetic-style admonitions to the leaders of the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Palestin- Jewish state, even though it is not Pianko’s main ian refugees is practicable in the current political interest in Rawidowicz. What primarily disturbs climate.” But Myers never raises any doubts about Pianko is the Jewish state’s exercise of a kind of the correctness of Rawidowicz’s moral judgment. eminent domain over the concept of Jewish nation- Nor does he say as much as he might have said hood. His aim is “to rehabilitate and revive,” for the to elucidate its foundations. On encountering sake of diaspora Jewry, “dissenting streams of Zion- numerous references to God, the Holy One, and ist thought that offer models of Jewish nationality as the Guardian of Israel, Rawidowicz’s reader must distinct from, and even defined in opposition to, the wonder whether these words are to be taken lit- nation-state model.” erally or amount to nothing more than a Hebraic Rawidowicz, we learn, developed his model of humanist’s rhetorical flourishes. Rawidowicz, My- what Pianko dubs “global Hebraism” in an effort ers informs us, received an Orthodox upbring- to salvage the Jews’ future. In opposition to “state- ing, but by the 1920s had “moved away from the seeking” Zionists who called for the concentration personal ritual practice of his father’s home.” But of all the world’s Jews in a nation-state of their own where did he land? Myers never comes closer to or even argued that the Jewish state should be the an answer than when to tell us that Rawidowicz, center of the Jewish world, he “advocated for build- unlike Buber, was “not especially interested in the ing Jewish national centers in the diaspora as well as task of rejuvenating the Jewish religion.” He was, in Palestine.” His reasons for doing so were primarily after all, a man whose “distinctive version of Jewish cultural and had to do with keeping open the con- nationalism” constituted an “effort to negotiate be- duits by which non-Jewish ideas could, in the proper tween . . . Ahad Ha’am and Simon Dubnow,” two Hans Kohn at his desk in Jerusalem. (Courtesy of measure, enter Jewish national consciousness. In undoubted freethinkers. It seems, then, that his the Leo Baeck Institute.) addition, by demonstrating how it was possible to morality lacked any real religious support and has maintain both cultural distinctiveness and openness its ultimate source in what Rawidowicz saw as the in different centers in many polities, Jewish commu- essential or historical superiority of Jacob’s moral issuing it in public. He himself never casts any doubt nities throughout the world would be able not only sense over that of Esau. on Rawidowicz’s contention that Jewish morality re- to flourish but to constitute, in Rawidowicz’s own Myers does in fact betray a hint of discomfort quires such action. He does dismiss, more than once, words, “a blessing” to the “non-Jewish environment.” with Rawidowicz’s ethnocentric brand of morality the possibility that mass repatriation is feasible, in The second “counterstate” thinker Pianko dis- when he refers to his “unreconstructed vision of the “current political climate” or “in the present con- cusses is Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Recon- Jewish exceptionalism.” But he is not eager to call text,” at any rate. But he also seems to hint at the pos- structionist Judaism. Arguing that Arthur Hertzberg into question its underpinnings. Nor does it both- sibility that existing impediments to Rawidowicz’s did him something of a disservice when he called er him unduly that his “broader political thought” just solution may yet dissolve. While one can, in the him the man who epitomized American Zionism, does not represent “a fully developed or systematic end, credit Myers with more boldness than his hero, Pianko points to his “far more complex relationship” political theory,” or that Babylon and Jerusalem “of- in that he published his ideas, one cannot help but with the movement, which entailed “deep reluctance ten has a haphazard feel to it, mixing the historical wonder whether he is showing himself to be a bit less about, and even opposition to, statehood.” To il- and the contemporary, the philosophical and the bold by muffling them. It seems much more likely, lustrate this point he quotes Kaplan’s declaration in impressionistic, the familiar and the novel.” He is, however, that Myers is placing all his cards on the 1948 that the proper objectives of Zionism “do not it seems, too grateful for Rawidowicz’s “uncommon table when he proclaims that the point of his book and need not require the sort of irresponsible and moral voice” to say anything that might diminish its “has not been to square the circle with a Solomonic obsolete national sovereignty that modern nations authority. Yet he is not exactly prepared to reiterate policy recommendation” but simply to let Simon Ra- claim for themselves.” Pianko ought to have made it what it demands in his own name—or, for that mat- widowicz’s voice be heard.” clearer than he does that Kaplan later acknowledged

12 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 that events “have compelled us Jews to establish a in Palestine, Kohn moved to Jerusalem in 1925 and account of how Americans, on the eve of World War state.” But his failure to do so is nothing more than a served for years as the director of propaganda for I, “awoke to the strange reality that in spite of all the reflection of the fact that his main interest in Kaplan Keren Hayesod, the fundraising arm of the World visible and invisible agencies of ‘assimilation,’ their lies elsewhere, in his conception of Jewish life in the Zionist Organization. In the aftermath of the anti- country was not one nation but a congeries of na- modern diaspora. Jewish riots of 1929, however, he became convinced tions such as the world has never seen before within A realist and a pragmatist, Kaplan knew that he that Zionism could overcome Arab resistance and the limits of a self-governing state.” had to “kowtow” to “the American Jewish synthe- secure its future only by pursuing a militant course Congeries! The use of this word, Pianko tells us, sis” and restrict the “more radical claims of nation- that he as “a Jewish human being” and a pacifist could would have reminded “anyone familiar with Zim- ality . . . by juxtaposing religion with civilization.” not follow. He eventually moved to the United States, mern’s writings on nationalism” of “his broader vi- In the framework of “his larger agenda” religion where he earned, as Pianko puts it, a well-deserved sion of creating commonwealths of federations of “served the functional purpose of providing the “reputation as the founder of a civic nationalism nationalities that would recognize collective groups philosophical, and even theological, justification that stands in direct opposition to ethnic or cultural and secure individual rights as the basis for interna- for the existence of particular national communities varieties.” Indeed, among students of nationalism, tional cooperation.” But so what? Could Kohn ex- that operated outside nation-state categories.” What Kohn’s name has become virtually synonymous with pect there to be more than a handful of such people is especially useful to Pianko in Kaplan’s work is his this distinction, one that contrasts liberal, western in his mid-century American audience? And as Pi- depiction of a “civilizational model of nationalism,” and supposedly supra-ethnic variants of nationalism anko himself admits, far from endorsing anything which is based upon “land; language and literature; with illiberal, eastern ones, and thereby stigmatizes like Zimmern’s ideas, Kohn continues shortly af- mores and laws; and folkways, folk sanctions, and Zionism as essentially retrograde. terwards to reject Horace Kallen’s related vision of folk arts,” but not necessarily “statehood, spirit or Pianko nevertheless maintains that Kohn re- America as a nation of nationalities. culture, and descent.” Pianko welcomes this diluted mained a Zionist and that his later “formulations of Pianko’s effort to keep Kohn in the Jewish na- form of nationalism as a means of replacing a state- Jewish nationalism are more closely linked to other tionalist camp is no more convincing than his at- centered vision with one focused on a “patchwork counterstate theories of Zionism than it initially ap- tempt to identify him as a surreptitious critic of the of national communities with members dispersed pears.” He supports this surprising assertion with a idea of the melting-pot. One of his principal pieces across political and territorial boundaries.” He is reference to Kohn’s 1957 book American National- of evidence for his lasting loyalty to Zionism is an grateful to Kaplan for simultaneously devaluing ism, which includes, he tells us in an unfortunate article that he published in Commentary in 1951 sovereignty and ratifying the equal status of all the bit of dissertation-speak, “a subtle counternarrative in which he praised the founder of cultural Zion- amorphous nation’s component parts. that nuances an association of Kohn with a level of ism, Ahad Ha’am, as a man who “belongs in the age The appearance of Hans Kohn as the third person complete assimilation suggested by the melting-pot of nationalism to the small company of men of all on Pianko’s short list of 20th-century thinkers who concept.” From Kohn’s elaborate paean to the idea of tongues who in their unsparing search for truth and offered better models of Jewish nationality is some- the melting pot, Pianko extracts two pieces of evi- in the sobriety of their moral realism are the hope thing of a surprise. A Prague-born cultural Zionist dence that bolster this claim. The more important is of the future.” But this comes at the end of an essay and a supporter of the creation of a binational state Kohn’s citation of the Zionist Sir Alfred Zimmern’s in which Kohn depicts Ahad Ha’am as a man whose

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Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 13 philosophy was defeated by history, whose worst state,” but denied that it would destroy it. Yet how from conceiving of themselves as members of a na- fears of the Zionist movement’s spiritual disintegra- could he be so sure? Did he really think that the tion other than the one in whose midst they live. tion were realized after his death and who “might worst hazards would be avoided if only Israel simply Most Israeli Jews have little interest at all in the Jews have felt today even lonelier among the Zionists barred from return “those Arabs who have no desire of the diaspora except insofar as they are potential than he did during his lifetime.” Kohn’s Commen- or ability to be loyal citizens of the State of Israel” immigrants to the Jewish state or capable of offer- tary essay was really an obituary for Ahad Ha’am’s and admitted hundreds of thousands of others who ing it material or moral support. Pianko’s call for a cultural Zionism. were, perhaps, ready to do nothing more than pay “program for global Jewish nationalism following Pianko ought to have left Kohn out of his book, lip service to the idea of a Jewish state until they re- the logic of Kaplan’s and Rawidowicz’s Zionism” is which is primarily concerned with undoing some established themselves within it? Maybe, in the end, destined to fall on a multitude of deaf ears. of the damage suffered by the Jewish people as a re- he wasn’t so sure, and that’s why he chose to keep his But our author’s case for rehabilitating and reviv- sult of its having failed to travel along the routes de- radical proposal to himself. ing the “counterstate” thinkers is not based primarily marcated by Rawidowicz and Kaplan. In his view, the success of state-seeking Zionism in establish- ing Israel has brought about a situation in which The Jews of the diaspora and Israel alike, Pianko believes, Jews “either constitute an ethnoreligious minority in liberal states” or “a sovereign nation within the need to acquire a new consciousness of themselves as equal Jewish state.” As a result of this split, Israelis’ Jew- ish identity is “intimately linked to a civic religion, members of a nation without borders. to the Hebrew language and to patriotic defense of their homeland.” American Jews, however, are free Noam Pianko devotes several pages to Rawidow- on their capacity to answer the felt needs of any exist- to “decide to affiliate with a Jewish community as a icz’s “Between Jew and Arab,” but he is by no means ing group of people. His final and probably his stron- religious minority group.” Consequently, “Ameri- as concerned about the Jewish-Arab relationship as gest argument is that their way of thinking can help to can Jewish and Israeli narratives of themselves and he is about the relationship between Israel and the counteract some of the deficiencies of the “sovereign each other have actually contributed to increasing diaspora. His own effort to dislocate the State of Is- mold, espoused both by American Jews and Israelis,” the rift between the two centers of Jewish life, thus rael from its central place in contemporary Jewish which have “hindered the development of a robust retarding efforts to galvanize strong ties between consciousness is not due to his disapproval of its and global language for articulating global solidarity.” diverse Jewish communities.” What the Jews of policies but to his sense of what is necessary to revi- American Jews, Pianko argues, need to stop feeling the world therefore need are new theories of Jew- talize both poles of the Jewish world. The Jews of the that they are on the periphery of the Jewish world of ish peoplehood that “serve as an effective strategy diaspora and Israeli Jews alike, he believes, need to which Israel is the center. “The self-negation of Jewish for articulating the ties that bind the global Jewish acquire a new consciousness of themselves as equal vitality outside the state has the potential to obfuscate community.” Pianko’s effort “to rehabilitate and re- members of a nation without borders. Familiarity the existence of innovative cultural production . . . vive . . . dissenting streams of Zionist thought that with the thought of the dissident Zionists who long Relying on a symbolic homeland disempowers local offer models of Jewish nationality as distinct from, ago pointed to “the roads not taken” can help them initiatives to galvanize sustainable models of commu- and even defined in opposition to, the nation-state reach this level of self-awareness. nal affiliation. Moreover, it drains creative energy and model” is designed to help them come up with But why should their forgotten ideas catch on to- financial resources that could invigorate local, self- such new theories. day any better than they did when they were initially sustaining cultural centers.” set forth? As Pianko reminds us, “counterstate” ide- Reliance on a symbolic homeland in which they ose, Butler, Myers, and Pianko all have some- ologies failed to win over the world’s Jews the first do not live may indeed be something for which Rthing in common, despite their differences. time around, and not by accident. Israelis reveled some Jews in the diaspora have paid a price in self- They are divided, of course, by their attitudes to- in their independence, and American Jews (the esteem and vitality. One ought not to forget, how- ward the State of Israel. The first two clearly wish only contemporary Jewish community to which Pi- ever, that most of the spring remaining in the step that it had never come into being and can barely, if anko devotes any sustained attention) were pleased of the contemporary diaspora is the by-product of at all, stomach its existence. The latter two call at- to have at their disposal a “nation-state logic” that Zionism’s successes. Without the restoration of Jew- tention to some of its defects and drawbacks, but made it easier for them “to assuage anxieties about ish independence in the Land of Israel, it is hard to only with a view to making it a better place. All four dual loyalties” by affirming that they themselves believe that the diaspora communities that survived authors are united, however, in their critical stance were members not of the Jewish nation-state but the the Holocaust would have been able to summon the toward political Zionism, which is what leads them American one. energy to face the future, much less reshape it. Nor to seek legitimation or guidance from those whom If things are different now, says Pianko, it is is it possible to imagine that today’s assimilation- Pianko calls “counterstate” Zionist thinkers. Rose because “the correlation between nation and state ravaged branches of the diaspora would have the and Butler are too malevolent and ill-informed to has once again become increasingly blurry.” And heart and the incentive to sustain themselves if Is- merit serious consideration. Myers and Pianko, “with the ascendancy of multiculturalism, ethnic rael’s enemies were to succeed in wiping it off the however, are learned historians and deeply com- identity, and criticism of cultural homogeneity, in- map. A time like the present, therefore, when the mitted Jews who write with their people’s best in- terest in rethinking the boundaries of groupness State of Israel finds itself in the vortex of uncertainty terests at heart and deserve our careful attention. has grown dramatically.” Those Jewish intellectuals and turmoil, does not seem like the best moment to Both of them have written books that make major whom the zeitgeist has moved to reconsider their rehabilitate time-worn theories of Jewish national- contributions to our knowledge yet leave important identities will find that Rawidowicz, Kaplan, and ism that could qualify or reduce its importance in questions hanging. Kohn can help them to “think differently about dif- the eyes of Jews who share a concern for its welfare. Myers has unearthed and celebrated the unpub- ference.” From these three thinkers they can learn This is not to deny, however, that the problems to lished work of an obscure and lonely thinker whose how to affirm “national solidarity as a primary which Pianko points are real, and that a significant ethical thought was, as he himself acknowledges, allegiance for Jews, without relying on grounds number of diaspora Jews feel somewhat estranged both lacking in solid foundations and rather unre- of national inclusion, such as coercive criteria or from a Jewish state that permanently relegates them alistic. He nevertheless believes that Rawidowicz’s ascriptive characteristics that might jeopardize lib- to second-class membership in the Jewish people. If writings can serve as a wake-up call reminding the eral principles.” Pianko’s book alerts Zionists who are by no means supporters of the Jewish state of their moral duties. Pianko has accurately characterized certain “counterstate” to the dangers posed by this situation But why shouldn’t it inspire them instead, or just as changes in the intellectual climate and pointed to and motivates them to think creatively about them, much, to explain why, in the real world, absolute de- specific circles in which a certain amount of re- it will have performed a useful service. mands of the kind made by a thinker like Rawido- thinking Jewish identity is taking place. But these wicz are inherently impractical, and therefore not circles are small, as he himself acknowledges, and Allan Arkush is a professor of Judaic studies and history morally compelling? Rawidowicz himself knew that it is an exaggeration to say, as he does, that they are at Binghamton University, and the senior contributing the fulfillment of his dictates would “burden the influential. Most diaspora Jews are infinitely remote editor of the Jewish Review of Books.

14 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 REVIEWS The Hasidim: An Underground History

BY SHAUL MAGID

tory was first made, unmade, remade, distorted, generated a whole new apologetic literature. Assaf Untold tales of the Hasidim: Crisis concealed, and contrived. It also suggests that the shows how, in this case, the power of the rebbe de- and discontent in the history OF polemics against Hasidim by the maskilim and mit- rives as much from his ability to rewrite the past as hasidism nagedim were no better, and often worse, than the from his ability to predict the future. by David Assaf one-sided, paranoiac Hasidic self-fashioning. Like The second tale Assaf examines is that of the Brandeis University Press, 360 pp., $55 On the eve of Simchat Torah in 1814, the Seer of Lublin fell out of a window into an alleyway.

ostwar American Jews learned of Hasidism He died on Tisha b’Av from his injuries. largely through the romantic renderings of Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Hes- the writings of the neo-Hasidic romantics, those of mysterious and infamous death of Yaakov Yitzchak chel, the photographs of Roman Vishniac, the Hasidim, maskilim, and mitnagedim reveal at Horowitz, better known as “the Seer of Lublin.” The Pand—after the 1960s—through the popular evan- least as much about their authors as they do about Seer was perhaps the most renowned Hasidic rebbe gelism of Chabad or the liberal appropriations of the Hasidim they depict. Nonetheless, out of these of his generation and was the founder of Polish Ha- the Havurah and Jewish Renewal movements. Of juxtapositions, the elements of a raw, unsettling sidism in the 19th century. He was a rebbe’s rebbe, course, some encountered Hasidim in the streets of clandestine history do emerge. the teacher of some of the central Hasidic figures in New York or Miami, but for most of us, Hasidism subsequent generations, including Elimelekh of Li- was what our treasured authors wanted us to believe erhaps the most resonant chapter of this book is zhensk and Simcha Bunim of Przysucha. As a result it was: a movement in love with God, the world, and Pa detailed account of the sad story of Moshe, the of his popularity, the Seer was the target of vehement fellow Jews. Many of us read the books of Buber & youngest son of Schneur Zalman of Liadi, founder attacks. (An early anti-Hasidic pamphlet referred to Co. because they seemed to reflect our values, our of Lubavitch (also known as Chabad) Hasidism, him as both Nimrod and Balaam, two of the more non-conformity, our spiritual restlessness. As the who converted to Christianity. The story is well- villainous figures in the Jewish imagination.) historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi wrote in 1982, known. Indeed, by the 20th century most internal On the eve of Simchat Torah in 1814, the Seer “The extraordinary current interest in Hasidism to- Hasidic sources acknowledged Moshe’s conver- fell out of a window into an alleyway, where he was tally ignores its theoretical bases and the often sor- sion while focusing on his apparent mental illness found gravely injured, lying face down in urine and did history of the movement.” feces. Some of the local mitnagedim In Untold Tales of the Hasidim: Crisis and Discon- celebrated the news, perhaps viewing tent in the History of Hasidism, Israeli historian David this as the downfall of Hasidism itself. Assaf uncovers some of that sordid history, but he When, nine months later, on Tisha isn’t much interested in its theoretical bases. Assaf’s b’Av, he died from his injuries, Hasidim book isn’t about Hasidic texts or ideas, nor is it about and their opponents wrote very differ- Hasidism; it’s about Hasidim. Assaf recounts a series ent obituaries. Assaf quotes Yitzchak of lurid and pathetic tales from what one might call Gruenbaum, a leading Polish Zionist the “clandestine history” of the 19th-century Hasidic born more than 60 years after the Seer’s movement: the rebbe’s son who converted to Chris- death, whose father and mother passed tianity, sainted Hasidic leaders who went insane or on two of the leading theories of the found themselves in embarrassing circumstances, Seer’s fall: and still others whose piety primarily consisted of beating up opposing sects and using their rivals’ sa- According to my mother’s tale, cred texts as toilet paper. Assaf introduces the reader the Seer foresaw that the Messiah to Hasidic rebbes who ride into small towns like as- was to descend from heaven on piring cattle barons, terrorize the inhabitants, and Simchat Torah and that he must take over the place. (If cowboys were Hasidim, this go forth to greet him. The rabbi would be Deadwood.) However, in the last chapters decided to . . . ascend at what he of the book, Assaf also introduces us to three en- calculated was the moment that lightened Hasidic teachers who have been largely the Messiah was beginning his erased from Hasidic memory. The book ends with a descent to earth. He opened the reproduction and translation of a long, tragic letter window, stood on its sill, and went. by one of these figures, Yitzchak Nachum Twersky of He failed to rise, broke his neck, Shpikov, lamenting his life in this “tiny, ugly world.” and died. Assaf does not narrate the history of 19th-century In my father’s version this was a Hasidism directly. Rather, he proceeds by examin- The baptismal certificate of Moshe, son of Schneur Zalman of simple matter, the Rebbe, who drank ing the self-representations and polemics, the histo- Liadi, July 4, 1820. (Courtesy of Brandeis University Press.) copiously in honor of Simchat Torah, ries and counter-histories of Hasidim and their op- fell from the window and was killed. ponents, who included both the modernizing pro- and subsequent lifelong quest to repent for his ac- ponents of the Jewish Enlightenment (maskilim), tion. However, in the 1920s, the sixth Lubavitcher Still others depicted the fall as a suicide, perhaps and of the anti-Hasidic mitnagedim of the rabbinic Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, boldly rewrote out of despair that Napoleon’s Russian campaign establishment. Untold Tales shows us the mudsling- the episode, denying Moshe’s conversion and, con- didn’t usher in the Messiah, or perhaps out of simple ing, biting, and nail-scratching way Hasidic his- sequently, his need for repentance. This, in turn, insanity. Assaf writes:

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 15 It is highly unlikely that the actual us how Hasidic historiography began as a bloody For Assaf (and here I am taking some critical li- circumstances of the Seer’s fall will ever come three-way battle between Hasidic apologists, mit- cense), Hasidic historians helped destroy their own to light, nor is it important that they do so. nagedic vultures, and maskilic parodists. Contem- movement. In their attempt to protect Hasidic so- Yet close examination of the different versions porary historians are caught in this thicket (to ciety from mitnagedic and maskilic attack, they un- of the fall highlights the satirical-polemical invoke the original Hebrew title of Assaf’s book, dermined the potential for Hasidic creativity by stamp in each and reveals the convoluted which alludes to the entangled ram at the binding writing some of their most interesting figures out of paths of memory building, which are not of Isaac). the movement. Neo-Hasidic romantics, on the other always guided by the truth as it was. hand, chose to ignore rather than confront the de- omewhat surprisingly, Assaf does not leave us bauchery of Hasidic life, and in doing so, offered un- Today, visiting the grave of the “holy Seer” of Sin the thicket. In the second part of the book, he realistic and indefensible portraits of these masters Lublin is a regular part of the itinerary of many Or- abruptly turns to three tragic Hasidic figures who that will not bear the weight of historical analysis. thodox trips to Eastern Europe. These trips are pop- were written out of Hasidic historiography because The Hasidic, and later Haredi (often called “ultra-Or- thodox”), mainstream did not take seriously enough the necessity of adapting to new social and intellectu- al circumstances. Of the thoughtful and courageous Menachem Nachum Friedman of Itscan, who tried to integrate elements of modernity into his Hasidic world, Assaf asks how the surrounding Hasidic so- ciety reacted to “such a complex, unusual phenom- enon as Friedman.” The answer? Not too well; it re- jected him and his innovativeness. Assaf portrays Twersky, Chajes, and Friedman as men who understood the deeper challenges of mo- dernity and attempted to initiate an internal critique of their society. They each failed. It was not only that they were rejected in their time but—just as impor- tantly—that they were erased from historical memo- ry. What has survived in Israeli Haredi society might be described as the continuation of the lamentable insularity that Assaf chronicles in the first part of the book. In contemporary Israel, where Assaf lives and works, this Haredism has both won and lost. The Haredim have become a tremendous political force and a moribund spiritual resource. The story, how- ever, is far from over. Today there are spiritual de- scendants of Twersky, Chajes, and Friedman (many of whom likely never heard of them) constituting a Yitzchak Nachum Twersky of Shpikov. kind of neo-Haredism that is less tied to the dynas- (Courtesy of Brandeis University Press.) tic structure, more synthetic in their work, and more open to non-Haredi worldviews. In this sense, As- Left: Tombstone of Yaakov Yitzchak saf’s book is a much needed addition to work being Horowitz (“the Seer of Lublin”), Lublin done by Jonathan Garb, Boaz Huss, Jonathan Meir, cemetery, Poland. Aubrey Glazer, and others in Israel and the diaspora who study neo-Haredi sub-cultures. ulated by descendants of Hasidim, maskilim, and of their positive appraisal of elements of moderni- As a post-ideological historiographer of Ha- mitnagedim, most of whom are unaware that some ty. Such teachers would very likely be venerated by sidism, Assaf teaches its devotees a lesson: Many of the venerated rabbis of the past, as well as some romantic ba’alei teshuva and academicians alike, of the figures whom you romanticize acted in ways of their own ancestors, celebrated the Seer’s demise. if only they knew of them, but in the era before that were grotesque. Such criticism is not meant to Assaf also recounts the very ugly history of what Hasidic romanticism merged with countercultural subvert or destroy Hasidism as mitnagedic polem- can only be called “Bratslav-bashing” on the part of spirituality, such religious figures had no audience. ics and maskilic parodies intended. Themitnagedim various Hasidic groups, mostly during the 1860s. And so Rabbis Akiva Shalom Chajes of Tulchin, and maskilim hated Hasidism. Assaf does not, at Again, this story is well-known but Assaf brings Menachem Nachum Friedman of Itscan, and least as I read him. Rather, he is trying to salvage it to light in gory detail. Here we are introduced Yitzchak Nachum Twersky of Shpikov had virtu- Hasidism from the mitnagedic and maskilic slaugh- to Hasidic imperialism and “wilding” at its worst. ally no influence on their successors and remain ter-knives as much as from the neo-Hasidic lava The guiltiest parties were the Talner and Savraner unknown. lamp. To understand the phenomenon called “Ha- Hasidim who acted more like marauders and thugs These chapters also differ from the previous sidism” one must also understand Hasidim. And to than pious disciples of the Baal Shem Tov. But here ones in being active historical retrievals of forgot- understand the latter one must look behind the holy again, history is a trickster. The Talner and Savraner ten figures rather than second-order, comparative books and into the dark corners of their sometimes Hasidic sects have all but disappeared, while Brat- readings of earlier historical discussions. My guess unholy lives. slav is one of the most powerful Hasidic groups in is that Assaf thinks that Hasidism held, perhaps Israel and has a worldwide following. even still holds, the potential to offer the contempo- Shaul Magid is the Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein It is worth noting that neo-Hasidic romantics, rary Jewish world a template for religious, spiritual, Professor of Modern Judaism at Indiana University- from Martin Buber to Shlomo Carlebach, have and cultural meaning. Yet it often undermines that Bloomington. His book From Metaphysics to Midrash: given us portraits of Nachman of Bratslav and his potential by getting mired in pettiness, bigotry, and Myth, History and the Interpretation of Scripture in disciples as proto-existentialists, the Lubavitch hatred. In Assaf’s view, the tragedy of these figures Lurianic Kabbalah (Indiana University Press) won the dynasty as a paradigm of holiness and purity, and is not the same as that of the poor Bratslav Hasidim 2008 American Academy of Religion award for best the Seer of Lublin as the magisterial figure of early who were beaten to a pulp by the Talner and Savra- book in textual studies. His upcoming book Jews and Hasidism. Assaf’s history doesn’t entirely belie ner Hasidim when they traveled to their rebbe’s Judaism in Post-Ethnic America: Identity, Renewal, or negate such characterizations, but it certainly grave in Uman. The tragedy is that they might have and the Post-Judaism Era will be published next year by complicates them. In these chapters, Assaf shows saved Hasidism from itself. Indiana University Press.

16 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 The Rise of Hank Greenberg

BY Eitan KenskY

been the subject of several books and a well-regarded paragraph that actually praises Greenberg’s style: HANK GREENBERG: THE HERO WHO documentary. For most of the book, Kurlansky re- “the bat sliced through the air, propeller-like, with DIDN’T WANT TO BE ONe produces the familiar Greenberg narrative: where he such clean speed and power that it was hard to be- by Mark Kurlansky played, what he hit, the anti-Semitism he faced, and lieve it was a man-made motion.” Whether or not Yale University Press, 164 pp., $25 what he meant to Jews during his life and times. Kur- one finds the description helpful, it is at least an lansky occasionally suggests other, more interesting, honest attempt to describe how Greenberg hit, and The closest a Jewish hitter has ever been to perfection n his short story “Perfection,” Mark Helprin came in 1938, when Hank Greenberg hit 58 home runs, re-imagined Bernard Malamud’s “Natural” as an adolescent Holocaust survivor whose oth- only two shy of Babe Ruth’s record. erworldly ability to hit home runs every at-bat comesI from understanding the spiritual balance ways of telling Greenberg’s story, but he resists pursu- what it might have felt like to watch him do so. of God’s creation. He temporarily redeems the ‘56 ing them, effectively forgoing the opportunity to add By contrast, Kurlansky hardly attempts to de- Yankees before exchanging athletic perfection for to our understanding of Greenberg’s life. scribe Greenberg’s fielding. He reproduces the old the simple life of a Hasidic child. Helprin’s story is judgment, without checking if it is historically true, the most “Jewish” of all baseball stories, seamlessly ank Greenberg was one of the best offensive that Greenberg was “a mediocre defensive first base- blending theology with the myths of the game. Part Hfirst basemen in baseball history, and he ap- man” who was “not particularly graceful,” and had of what makes baseball unique is the way fact and fic- proached the game in a unique, even beautiful way. to practice diligently just to make routine plays. tion combine in the minds of its fans. If we can’t quite In his elegant little book on the aesthetics of sports, While defensive baseball statistics are notoriously imagine a prodigy ba’al shem perfecting the sport, we In Praise of Athletic Beauty, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht less developed than those for hitting and pitching, can imagine a mighty Jewish slugger so devout that he criticized sports books for focusing on biographical the numbers we have (a career .991 fielding per- refuses to play on holidays, even if it’s not quite true. details instead of providing “materials or even sug- centage at first base) suggest otherwise. The last The closest a Jewish hitter has ever been to per- gestions for our visual imagination.” Kurlansky re- thirty-years have seen the development of new and fection came in 1938, when Hank Greenberg hit 58 produces traditional statistics for individual seasons more fine-grained statistics that have changed our home runs for the Detroit Tigers, only two shy of but provides very little description of how Green- understanding of baseball, and Greenberg succeeds Babe Ruth’s record. Four years earlier, Greenberg berg played the game. Ironically, there is a chapter by these measures as well. According to Bill James, had refused to play on Yom Kippur, but, as Mark called “A Beautiful Swing,” but it contains only one doyen of sabermetricians, Greenberg led American Kurlansky tells us in the prologue to his new biog- League first basemen in “Range Factor” in 1937. raphy Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want The idea that he was a mediocre fielder seems to to Be One, his decision wasn’t really a religious one. have come from his relative lack of athleticism and The Tigers were in a tight pennant race with a few high-profile errors he made after being forced games scheduled for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kip- to switch to the outfield late in his career. pur. Greenberg, having his first great season, had not But Kurlansky’s larger problem is conceptual. stated his plans, leading to intense speculation by the Gumbrecht argues that thinking about sports has press and Jewish community as to whether he would long been dominated by the concept of agon (com- play. A local Reform rabbi noted that the Talmud petition), when we should be more focused on areté mentions children playing in the streets of Jerusa- (virtue or striving for excellence). Greenberg has al- lem on holidays, though he neglected to mention ways been described as one of the hardest working that these were Roman children. An Orthodox rabbi baseball players, but this striving has tended to be ruled that Greenberg could play on Rosh Hashanah held against him: he wasn’t “a natural.” under three (impossible) conditions: Orthodox Jews “Ungraceful” may actually be the perfect way of could not buy tickets for the game; no smoking could describing Greenberg’s play, though not for the rea- be allowed in the stadium; and all the food served in sons his critics maintain. Theologically, grace is un- the ballpark had to be kosher. On Rosh Hashanah, earned. In sports, as Gumbrecht tells us, it “reminds Greenberg went to shul, then the ballpark and hit us how we are sometimes unable . . . to associate two home runs. (“Hank’s Homers are Strictly Ko- the body movements we see with the intentions sher,” said the Detroit Free Press.) When it came to or thoughts who carry them out.” Greenberg’s ap- Yom Kippur his Romanian-born father was quoted proach, on the contrary, emphasized deliberation. in the New York Evening Post assuring readers that He studied the pitcher’s tendencies and weaknesses his son would not play on Judaism’s holiest day. As in order to decide where and when to swing, even in The Jazz Singer, which had been a hit only seven intentionaly chasing a ball outside the strike zone years earlier, the Americanized son fulfilled his reli- if it meant the possibility of driving in a run. While gious and filial duty—though by that time the Tigers praising Ted Williams as his era’s greatest hitter, already had a lock on the pennant. Greenberg criticized the Splendid Splinter’s narrow Kurlansky’s prologue is the high-point of a disap- strike zone: pointing book, the one moment when he actually re- frames one of the famous events of Greenberg’s career. One of the “Baseball Sluggers” commemorative He had trained himself to make them give him While Hank Greenberg no longer has the same reso- stamps released by the United States Postal Service, his pitch before he’d swing. That’s great, but nance with American Jews as Sandy Koufax, he has July 15, 2006. when . . . you’re the number four hitter or the

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 17 number three hitter, you’re the boy they’re all another massive power-hitting first baseman, was baseball was not without its downside. His acrimo- leaning on and looking to carry them to victory. all-but washed up. In short, Greenberg was a pro- nious contract negotiations with Al Rosen (arguably Sometimes you have to hit the ball whether you fessional athlete years before sports required them. the second best Jewish slugger of all time) ultimately want to or not. This professionalism extended to his financial drove Rosen into an early retirement. dealings. He frequently held out for more money, Greenberg’s athletic accomplishments gave him Greenberg understood his job as run produc- not out of greed or petulance but because, in an era access to some of the most wealthy and successful tion, and approached every at-bat with that goal. before free agency, it was the only viable negotiat- Americans. He married Caral Gimbel, a depart- His ideal of athletic movement was subsuming the ment store heiress, and made influential friends. Af- actions of his body to his mind. Greenberg understood ter his career as a baseball executive ended, Green- A new biography of Greenberg should use all the berg moved back to New York where he founded a tools of modern statistics and historical research to that baseball was a business small securities firm. Kurlansky sees Greenberg’s in- describe more accurately who Greenberg was as a vestment career as a hobby, something to keep him player, and why his style of play was compelling, pos- early on. occupied between tennis and reading, when it was sibly even beautiful. In the process, we might learn actually a thriving business. To his credit, Kurlansky more about why this simple game has fascinated so ing tactic. He also requested deferred compensa- gives Greenberg’s post-playing career more atten- many great Jewish American novelists and poets. tion, now a regular part of sports. In the final year tion than do most biographers, but he treats it as a of his career, he even negotiated a contract with the coda to the main Greenberg narrative rather than a f there is a Jewish Hank Greenberg story to tell, Pirates that gave him an ownership position in the continuation of his working life. Iit is the story of first-generation success. Green- team, with the guarantee that he could sell it back at Although we are arguably living in the golden berg's immigrant parents succesfully worked the end of the season to benefit from the difference age of Jewish American baseball players—Ryan themselves into the middle class, and Hank con- between income and capital gains taxes. Braun, Ian Kinsler, and Kevin Youkilis, among oth- tinued the family's upward trajectory: a boy from Kurlansky and other biographers have a ten- ers—no Jewish hitter has yet reached the heights of the Bronx who assimilated into the upper classes dency to link Greenberg and Jackie Robinson, high- Hank Greenberg, (His career totals would be even of American society through profesional achieve- lighting the adversity both of them faced (though, as more impressive were it not for his military service ment and, later, financial specualtion. Greenberg’s Greenberg himself declared, there was no compari- in World War II.) Yale University Press’ decision to autobiography makes clear that he understood that son). But the more important story is how aggres- include Greenberg—and by implication, baseball— baseball was a business early on. He played tennis sively he integrated the Cleveland Indians during his in its “Jewish Lives” series is admirable. Unfortu- and handball regularly as part of his condition- tenure as General Manager. This was entirely well nately, Kurlansky’s book is little more than an intro- ing at a time when players were more famous for motivated, but it was also good business. Premier duction to the facts of Greenberg’s remarkable life. carousing than training for peak performance. athletes were going un-pursued because of preju- Greenberg hit 44 home runs and had a .977 On- dice, and Greenberg, like Branch Rickey before him, Eitan Kensky is a doctoral candidate in Jewish studies Base Plus Slugging percentage when he was 35, an jumped on the market inefficiency. As with Rickey, at Harvard University, focusing on Jewish American age when his All-Star contemporary Jimmy Foxx, Greenberg’s aggressive approach to the business of literature and culture.

september 15, 6:30pm september 18, 12:30 – 6pm november 2, 6:30pm december 15, 6:30 pm genesis: imagining new perspectives on glikl’s legacy: jewish bismarck and the the beginning of time moses mendelssohn women in france growth of modern anti- before the revolution semitism in germany lecture symposium lecture lbi memorial lecture Elisheva Carlebach, Salo W. Baron Professor A day of discussion and debate devoted to Jonathan Steinberg, Professor of History, of Jewish History, Culture and Society at exploring the thought and legacy of Moses Based on the records of the Metz rabbinic University of Pennsylvania Columbia University, author of Palaces of Mendelssohn, the 19th-century founder court, Professor Jay Berkovitz will examine Time: Jewish Calendar and Culture in Early of modern Jewish thought. A group of how the lives of women prior to the French Professor Steinberg is the author of the Modern Europe, will speak for the New Year international scholars will highlight recent Revolution both mirrored and expanded highly acclaimed new book Bismarck: A Life, on the ways we account for Jewish time scholarship related to contemporary issues on the example set by the famous memoirist, which Dr. Henry Kissinger called “the best and its meaning in Jewish history. in religion, politics, culture and identity. Glikl Hamel. Professor Berkovitz, the study of Bismarck in the English language.” recipient of the Center’s inaugural National Steinberg describes the political genius of “Thus the calendars do not measure Related exhibit opening in September: Endowment for the Humanities Senior the man who dominated his era. Bismarck’s time as clocks do; they are monuments Moses Mendelssohn, His Circle and the Legacy belief in Prussia’s cohesion and authority, of historical consciousness.” of the Enlightenment. Scholar Fellowship, is spending the year 2011-2012 in residence at the Center for and in a nationalism that could be put — Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, 1938 Jewish History. to good use, ultimately led to Germany’s tragic 20th century.

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18 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 Irving Kristol, Edmund Burke, and the Rabbis

BY Meir Soloveichik

rived from experience.” to the past and to the future with an intensity The Neoconservative Persuasion: At the same time, Kristol held that a genuinely lacking in Oakeshott’s vision. Judaism, for all selected essays, 1942-2009 Jewish reverence for tradition—a genuinely Jew- its this-worldly focus, also believes that the by Irving Kristol ish conservatism—must be more than a desire to whole purpose of sanctifying the present is to Basic Books, 416 pp., $29.95 preserve the past. When he was a young editor at prepare humanity for a redemptive future. Encounter, he tells us, he received an unsolicited es- say from Michael Oakeshott, one of the fathers of In several essays, Kristol links Judaism’s rever- British conservatism. In lyrical prose, Oakeshott ence for the past with its “rabbinic” aspect, and enowned as a founder of neoconserva- tivism, Irving Kristol was “neo” in other Kristol received a manuscript from Michael Oakeshott respects as well. “Is there such a thing as a ‘neo’ gene?” he once asked, because, if describing the conservative temperament as preferring thereR was, he certainly had it. By his own account, before he became a neoconservative, he was a neo- “present laughter to utopian bliss.” Kristol loved every Marxist, a neo-Trotskyite, a neo-socialist, and a neoliberal. But “one ‘neo’,” he acknowledged, “has line and rejected it. been permanent throughout my life, and it is prob- ably at the root of all the others. I have been ‘neo- described the conservative disposition as pre- its longing for the as yet unrealized future with Orthodox’ in my religious views (though not in my ferring “the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, its “prophetic” aspect, and describes the genuine- religious observance).” the actual to the possible, the limited to the un- ly Jewish worldview as a combination of both of Kristol passed away in 2009 and this posthumous bounded, the near to the distant . . . the conve- them. Modern Jews, on the other hand, as Kristol collection of essays, spanning his career, has been nient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian sees it, have too often been guilty of disregarding widely reviewed by political allies and foes seeking to bliss.” Kristol read the essay, loved every line, and the richness of tradition, both Jewish and Western, assess his achievement. Like Neo-Conservatism: The rejected it. For Oakeshott’s vision, he wrote, was in order to make the world anew—in the name of Autobiography of an Idea, his influential collection of “irredeemably secular, as I—being a Jewish con- Judaism, but in the spirit of the Enlightenment. essays published in 2005, The Neoconservative Per- servative—am not.” “Our scriptures and our daily Above all, in his view, such Jews have turned suasion demonstrates Kristol’s concern with a wide prayer book link us,” Kristol proclaimed: against rabbinic tradition and the restraint it put on range of historical, cultural, sociological, and other the utopian elements of Judaism. matters. This new volume differs from its predeces- “To simplify considerably,” Kristol sor, however, in that it includes a significant represen- writes, Jews engaged a “sharp shift tation of his writings on Jews and Judaism. Gertrude in emphasis from the ‘rabbinic’ Himmelfarb, the editor of this collection and Kristol’s elements in the Jewish tradition wife, clearly wished to give adequate attention to the to the ‘prophetic’ elements.” They “abiding interest in and respect for religion” that led then merged prophetic Judaism him to identify himself as a “neo-Orthodox Jew.” with secularism “to create what Nonetheless, most reviewers have spent little time can fairly be described as a pecu- thinking through what this meant to Kristol. liarly intense, Jewish, secular hu- A good clue to the answer can be found in one manism.” This shift was “part and of his later essays, “On the Political Stupidity of the parcel of the emerging messianic Jews.” Kristol there recounts an experience that his sensibility—in matters political, wife once had while teaching a graduate course on social, and economic—that the British political thought in which she had spent sev- Revolution established through- eral sessions on the writings of Edmund Burke. At out European society.” It is this the end of one class, she was approached by a “quiet ethos that “infused itself into all and industrious” young woman. “Now,” this student non-Orthodox versions of con- said, “I know why I am Orthodox.” Needless to say, temporary Judaism.” this wasn’t because Burke had supplied an incontro- vertible proof that the Oral Torah had been revealed ne of Kristol’s earliest com- at Mt. Sinai. “What she meant was that she could Oplaints about this modern now defend Orthodoxy in terms that made sense to transformation of Judaism can the non-Orthodox, because she could now defend a be found in his 1948 review of strong deference to tradition, which is the keystone Milton Steinberg’s book Basic Ju- of any orthodoxy, in the language of rational secular daism, which aimed to establish discourse, which was the language in which Burke Jewish doctrines that Jews of all wrote.” denominations could accept. Yet Like this graduate student, Irving Kristol him- for Kristol, such a “basic” version self felt the tug of tradition and admired the way in of Judaism, insufficiently con- which Burke upheld the right of “the dead” to have nected to the rigorous rabbinic a vote “in deciding on the ordering of our govern- past, results in “the transforma- ment and society because of the wisdom which tion of messianism into a shallow, we may gain from the ideas which they had de- Irving Kristol in New York, 1960s. (Courtesy of the Kristol Family.) if sincere, humanitarianism, plus

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 19 a thoroughgoing insensitivity to present-day spiri- tual problems. Steinberg’s Basic Judaism, according to Kristol, was essentially a theological justification of liberalism, which at its core is essentially an ac- commodation of “religious views with facility to the outlook of an American ‘Main Street’ in its New Plan for Deal variant.” Kristol was not then—and never became—an the future enemy of FDR’s policies (that was what made his conservatism neo-), but he rejected the idea that with an this could be the essence of Judaism: “What are we to make of a rabbi who claims for the Mishnah and the Talmud the right to strike—thereby providing AFHU Holy Writ with the satisfaction of having paved the way for the National Labor Relations Act!” As Kris- tol observed, Rabbi Steinberg’s state of mind was all Hebrew too representative “of a large section of the Ameri- can rabbinate, and much of the American Jewish University tradition in general.” As modern Jews moved in this new direction, Gift Annuity they also became convinced that a secular society is most conducive to individual liberty. But, Kristol felt, in their eagerness to enjoy its blessings, they overlooked something that rabbinic Judaism under- stood, and that Burke himself eloquently explained: a market economy cannot truly succeed without a society of people who “resolutely defer gratification, sexual as well as financial, so that, despite the free- dom granted each individual, the future nonethe- less continues to be nourished at the expense of the present.” For rabbinic Judaism, as well as for “the conservative political tradition,” it is religion, and only religion, that “restrains the self-seeking hedo- nistic impulse so easily engendered by a successful market economy.” “ e are strong believers in Israel a high-fixed lifetime income right Such thoughts led Kristol to be “neo-Orthodox and what the nation stands now while providing for The Hebrew in his religious views.” At the same time, however, for,” says Martin Zelman. “My University of Jerusalem in future years. one searches through his essays in vain for any en- W gagement with the tradition that is the foundation family fled Germany in 1939, leaving of Orthodox Judaism. He correctly noted that if Or- everything behind. When we came to AFHU Hebrew University GiFt AnnUity rAtes the United States, my parents, with five thodoxy never succumbed to purely prophetic uto- tax-free portion pianism, it was because “even today, a student in the children, started from scratch. This Age Rate country has been good to us, and Lois (Gift of Cash) yeshiva in his early years never studies the Prophets in isolation from a study of the Pentateuch or the and I believe in the power of education. 65 6.0% 68.3% Talmud.” Yet this intellectual whose worldview was By creating an AFHU Hebrew University deeply informed by a reverence for the classics of Gift Annuity, we are helping Israel’s 70 6.5% 71.6% Western civilization had little to say, indeed little most capable and deserving students.” apparent interest, in the Talmud itself, the study of 75 7.1% 74.4% which essentially dominated Jewish intellectual life “I’ve spent my life as a leader active in 80 8.0% 77.0% for two thousand years. Jewish philanthropy,” says Lois. “It’s Kristol’s distance from the rabbinic tradition is the way I was raised. Marty and I want 85 9.5% 81.1% tellingly reflected in a 1998 essay in which he com- to make a statement for the future. An pared Judaism and Christianity, describing the AFHU Hebrew University Gift Annuity 90 11.3% 83.4% latter as the “far more intellectually complex—far offers a win-win type of philanthropy. more intellectually interesting” of the two. This, We receive a high regular rate of return Rates are calculated based on a single life. he writes, is because Christianity “has absorbed during our lives, after which our gift Visit http://www.afhu.org/charitable-gift-annuities so much Greek neo-Platonism as well as a liberal supports the well-being of Israel and sprinkling of Gnosticism, in both belief and spirit.” The Hebrew University.” For further information, please contact One may indeed grant to Kristol that Jewish works Peter T. Willner at 212-607-8555 or email: tend to be less systematic in their examinations of doctrinal questions. The freewheeling nature Since 1925, The Hebrew University [email protected] of talmudic discourse makes it impossible for the of Jerusalem has educated Israel’s uninitiated to pick up a tractate and begin to read, brain trust, producing leaders in every the way one can read, say, the Summa Theologica. field. Establishing an AFHU Hebrew But that is part of why the Talmud is more intel- University Gift Annuity through lectually complex than most Christian works, not American Friends of The Hebrew One Battery Park Plaza, 25th Floor less so. It is in the Talmud that one truly discovers New York, NY 10004 | 800-567-AFHU (2348) University is a wonderful way to secure [email protected] | www.afhu.org Jewish tradition in all its vibrancy, and in studying Talmud one sits in on the symposium of genera- tions that constitutes that tradition. Moreover, the

20 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 discussions that one encounters in the Talmud are While Orthodox Jews in America can be com- We are beginning to wonder, and discuss, the not only legal, but also theological and doctrinal. mended for not seeking to remake the world, they question “why Jews are in the world,” even if, The problem of evil; the nature of Israel’s election; can perhaps be faulted for showing too little inter- to date, we have ended with hoary platitudes. the reasons for the commandments; human na- est in it. But it is interest in the world, on the part We have scarcely dared to ask “why are goyim ture, body, and soul, are all debated and examined. of the tradition-loyal segment of American Jewry, in the world?”—an important question, it must It was in reading Rosenzweig, Buber, and Scho- be conceded. Perhaps we are afraid that we lem after World War II, Kristol reveals in his au- will not be able to stop there, but will go on to tobiographical essay, that he “was delighted to the semi-blasphemous question “why men in discover that there really could be an intellectual the world?” Yet, if theology today is to ask any dimension to Judaism.” Yet this discovery never question, the last one is the most pertinent, seemed to take him back to the Jewish classics—a whether it be asked by Jew, Protestant, strikingly discordant note in the intellectual sym- Catholic, or atheist. phony of a man who sums up his own reverence for tradition as follows: Can American Orthodoxy—plumbing the depths of the aforementioned Abaye and Rava, Meanwhile, for myself, I have reached certain Ravina and Rav Ashi—answer these questions, in a conclusions: that Jane Austen is a greater clear and convincing way? I believe so, but admit novelist than Proust or Joyce; that Raphael is that it has yet to accomplish this task. Some sectors a greater painter than Picasso; that T. S. Eliot’s of Jewish Orthodoxy are unconnected to American later Christian poetry is much superior to intellectual life. Regrettably, others, in the name of a his earlier; that C. S. Lewis is a finer literary liberal version of Orthodoxy, have begun to embrace and cultural critic than Edmund Wilson; aspects of the counterculture whose moral tenets that Aristotle is more worthy of careful study are anything but traditional. Never has there been than Marx; that we have more to learn from a greater need for a Judaism that is both unapolo- Tocqueville than from Max Weber; that . . . getically Orthodox and passionately engaged in the Well, enough. As I said at the outset, I have intellectual debates of American life, willing to put become conservative, and whatever ambiguities forward to American Jewry—and to the world—the attach to the term, it should become obvious case for addressing the issues facing modern man what it does not mean. by looking first to the ancients. Whether this can happen remains to be seen, but if it does, I think that Should not Kristol, then, also consider the possi- it will bear some affinities to Irving Kristol’s “neo- bility Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, Orthodox” persuasion. Rav Yochanan and Reish Lakish, Abaye and Rava, Irving Kristol, 1970s. (Courtesy of the Kristol Family.) Ravina and Rav Ashi—sages of rabbinic Judaism every yeshiva student knows but few modern Jews Meir Soloveichik is the associate rabbi of Congregation struggle to engage—might have had more to say that is so desperately needed. In the conclusion of Kehilath Jeshurun in New York, and received his Ph.D about Judaism than Franz Rosenzweig and Gershom his critique of Steinberg, Kristol bemoaned the fail- in Religion from Princeton University. He was recently Scholem? It is regrettable that, for all his erudition ure of American Jewish writers to plumb the depths appointed director of the Zahava and Moshael Straus and Burkean reverence for tradition, Kristol did not of Jewish writing and address the truly great issues Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva turn his attention to the Rabbis. that face modern man: University.

Brother Daniel, Sister Ulitskaya

BY Nadia Kalman

sessions later, “they want me to join their church.” under the Law of Return. In one of the most famous DANIEL STEIN, INTERPRETER Reading Ludmila Ulitskaya’s new novel, Daniel cases that has ever come before the Israeli Supreme by Ludmila Ulitskaya Stein, Interpreter, reminded me of that night. Court, the judges decided that his conversion had Overlook Press, 416 pp., $27.95 The novel, which won Russia’s highest literary obviated his status as a Jew under Israeli law, even prize and comes to the US in an elegant translation if Jewish law held otherwise. Rufeisen nevertheless by Arch Tait, is based upon some of the events in remained in Israel and eventually became a citizen the life of Daniel (Oswald) Rufeisen. That life is cer- through the ordinary naturalization process. He tainly a fascinating one, filled with narrow escapes lived as a monk and founded a “Jewish Christian” hen I was a freshman in high and stunning reversals. Born into a Polish Jewish church. It is on this later, calmer portion of his life school, a very friendly girl asked family, Daniel Rufeisen was able to pass himself off that Ulitskaya’s novel focuses. me to join her philosophy club. as a Gentile when the Germans invaded. Escaping Daniel Stein, the fictional counterpart to Daniel “We’re going to talk about ideas, to Mir, in Belorussia, he found work translating be- Rufeisen, hires an assistant named Hilda; together, Wabout life, and God, and ethics,” she said. “And tween the Gestapo and the local police. When he they build his church, and then rebuild it after a Stan will be there.” Poor Stan was the object of my overheard plans for a mass killing, he helped 300 break-in. He has theological debates with church adolescent yearning, which mostly manifested it- Jews flee the Mir ghetto. In the wake of this “trea- leaders—for example, he disagrees with the idea self in attempts to lend him books. An interesting son,” Rufeisen hid in a convent, where he converted of the Immaculate Conception—and his fellow conversation, an interesting boy—I went to the to Catholicism. monks file complaints about him, but his small girl’s house. “Oh,” I realized, thirty-eight minutes After the war, he was eventually able to immi- community endures. Until the end of his life, Dan- and myriad invitations to picnics and pastor rap grate to Israel, where he sought admittance as a Jew iel counsels his parishioners, and officiates funer-

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 21 als, baptisms, and the occasional conversion. Stein is in their dealings with collaborators. After novel, the elderly Jewish ex-partisan Rita Kowacz A novel in documents, Daniel Stein includes the war, Daniel Rufeisen helped identify Nazi col- is initially fascinating (if her abiding love of Com- five sections of letters, diary entries, newspaper laborators in Mir, and testified against them. He munism, even after years in the Gulag, is difficult to articles, telegrams, tourist brochures, sermon and was an especially important witness in the case of swallow, it is not out of the range of human possi- interview transcripts, tutorial notes, and KGB files. the local police chief, Szymon Serafinowicz. The bilities). Rita comes alive through the ornery vitality Ulitskaya, herself a Jewish-born convert to Christi- fictional Stein doesn’t testify. of her letters, which manage to be simultaneously anity, appears as a character in a series of letters de- I do not question Ulitskaya’s right to artistic li- brusque and manipulative. She writes to a former boyfriend: When she isn’t theorizing, Ulitskaya can be a sly and I’m in the same almshouse just in case you feel exact observer. No one writes complex female characters a sudden urge to write although what is there for us to write to each other about? When you better than she does. were in Israel in 1971 you didn’t even bother to let me know let alone come to take a look scribing her intentions, the process of writing the cense, but I do wonder why she made this particular at me although of course there’s not much to novel, and her religious and philosophical views. choice. Is it possible that a Stein who sought judg- look at. To summarize: Ulitskaya is tired of ideologies, ments against war criminals would have conflicted believing that good acts are more important than too much with the author’s belief in the harmfulness Equally convincing is the mutually aggravating dogma, but follows the Christian faith. She is tired of judgments? messiness of her relationship with her daughter of “The Jewish Question” to the point of nausea; Ulitskaya has the character Hilda (based on a Ewa, a much-married shopaholic who writes of a after all, “God has laughed at his chosen people far real-life woman whom Ulitskaya calls “one of heav- vacation, “When I think that instead of taking this more than at any of the others!” Interestingly, she en’s angels”) say, “this simple division of people magical trip I ought really to be sitting with my is also tired of judgments, which she believes are a into Fascists and Jews, murderers and victims, evil mother in Haifa and listening to her cursing, I feel product of the Jewish tradition. and good is just too straightforward.” The novel at- a little ashamed, but, I have to admit, not regretful.” tempts to complicate these judgments by describ- Then, Rita converts to Christianity, and begins he bulk of the novel depicts various charac- ing the decent acts of war criminals. Thus, Stein to write things like, “ . . . the love of Jesus binds Tters’ impressions of Stein, but the picture that people to each other with a special love.” emerges is less than—or, more accurately, more In death, her beatification is complete. than—human. A Catholic nun calls him a saint. Ewa writes: Ulitskaya compares him to Jesus. Even his own brother is given to observations such as, “He never My mother looked beautiful. At the did evil to anyone, only good.” end of her life she had earned that! Usually, when Daniel speaks for himself, he is The tense, suspicious expression so providing explanations, either for his religious choic- typical of her all through her life es, or for his views, which are quite similar to those had changed to one of serenity and in Ulitskaya’s letters. Oddly, for a book containing so profound contentment . . . I was many theological discussions, his conversion is dis- completely reconciled with her. pensed with in a few paragraphs, culminating in this one, during an address to schoolchildren: Rita’s conversion to Christianity brings her beauty, peace, and reconcil- I saw that Jesus really was the Messiah, and that iation with her daughter. The cantan- his death and resurrection were the answer to kerous and convincing Rita of earlier my questions. The events in the Gospel had pages disappears completely, replaced happened in my ancient land, to Jesus the Jew, with an angel. As for Ewa, she redis- and the problems dealt with in the Gospel covers Catholicism. It is, perhaps, an were so important to me precisely because they irony that the Ulitskaya of the let- were Jewish problems, associated with the land ters that appear in this novel is such a for which I was so homesick . . . I identified staunch opponent of ideology, and yet that with the cross which my people bears has written a novel in which characters and with all I had seen and experienced. This are subsumed by it. understanding of suffering is also to be found in the Jewish religion. fter the novel’s first, and most -en Agaging, section, the sermonizing Ulitskaya’s Stein seems to be making a case and lecturing begins in earnest, and rather than relating a memory, and despite the often takes the form of actual sermons many reasons he provides, his conversion seems and lectures. Even the most personal under-motivated. In The Varieties of Religious communications take on a proselytiz- Ludmila Ulitskaya in Israel, 2007. (© Margherita Bourtsev.) Experience, William James described conver- ing quality. Here’s an excerpt from a let- sions that were highly emotional and never fully ter from a wife to a husband: explicable—not lists of reasons, but poems. Per- haps the comparison is unfair. In any case, Daniel expresses gratitude to the “perfectly decent” Nazi I wanted to tell you, dear Ethan, that I have Stein’s faith—the narrative motor and apparent Major who organized the killings of Jews, but was always slightly envied Jews having such a subject of Ulitskaya’s novel—remains curiously always kind to Stein himself. Needless to say, in- closeknit community and such strong family bloodless and abstract. dividual instances of decency do not expiate mass support—not including your family, of course— murder—and, as the saying goes, every anti-Semite but this time I have found there is the same litskaya has said that although the life cir- has his own pet Jew. family feeling among Christians, and when we Ucumstances of Rufeisen and Stein are “almost When she is not theorizing, Ulitskaya can be a are all together we are like brothers and sisters. identical,” the novel takes a literary, rather than sly and exact observer. As is clear from her earlier strictly documentary, approach. One difference novel, The Funeral Party, no one writes complex fe- The characters in this novel not infrequently between the historical Rufeisen and the fictional male characters better than she does. In the present make discoveries about the superior appeal of

22 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 Christianity, and when they do, they share them in Stein, and kind Gods like Daniel Stein’s God, would similarly sugared tones. forgive even the worst murderers if they also, some- I must admit that I am curious about what might times, behaved decently. have led to the bestowal of the Russian National Lit- Although Daniel Stein, Interpreter takes place al- erary Prize on this particular work by Ulitskaya, who most entirely in Israel, it is difficult to imagine a novel has published many other, and, in my opinion, bet- that sounds less like the Israel with which I am famil- ter novels. At its core, Daniel Stein is a novel about iar, where all types of people, and many people who the dissolution of distinctions—between Christian defy categorization, embrace, shout, argue, boss each and Jews, between murderers and victims. In recent other around, joke, and complain. Ulitskaya writes years, anti-Semitism has made its reappearance in of Israel in her fifth letter, “It is difficult to live there. Russian intellectual circles, and the idea that Jews The stew is too thick, the air too solid, passions too might finally melt into the mainstream, as Tsar Nich- heated. There is too much pathos and shouting.” olas I and the Bolsheviks intended, may be a source This book has little pathos, shouting, stew, or of hope to some Russians, as well as to some Jews air. For all its multi-textuality, it makes the same who have tired of being targets. (Of course, these points, over and over again, like a lone church bell hopes aren’t unique to Russia; midway through this tolling. novel, a heroic Jewish doctor approvingly cites a set of assimilationist laws in the Austro-Hungarian Em- pire.) It may also be that, in a place where so many Nadia Kalman’s first novel,The Cosmopolitans, won ordinary citizens participated in state crimes, it can Daniel Rufeisen (Brother Daniel) in Israel, 1962. Moment Magazine’s Emerging Writer Award and was a be comforting to believe that kind people like Daniel (Courtesy of Photo Archive, Yad Vashem.) finalist for the Rohr Prize.

Railroads and Dragon's Teeth

JORDAN CHANDLER HIRSCH

against the British Empire. In a tale recounted by The World War I Arab uprisings are, at their THE BERLIN-BAGHDAD EXPRESS: Sean McMeekin in The Berlin-Baghdad Express, the core, tales of Western powers attempting to man- THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND GERMANY’S Germans believed that a declaration of jihad by the age revolt in the Arab world. In doing so, the British BID FOR WORLD POWER Ottoman Sultan-Caliph—titular head of the Islamic and Germans misunderstood Muslim motivations, by Sean McMeekin world—would rally Bedouin fighters and inspire overestimated their influence, and promised their Harvard University Press, 496 pp., $29.95 clients far more than they would, or could, ever de- liver. Their follies provide powerful lessons in the THE BALFOUR DECLARATION: The The World War I Arab limits of Western influence in the Middle East and, Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict uprisings are, at their core, more significantly, the danger of inflating expecta- by Jonathan Schneer tions—both in their own minds and among the Ar- Random House, 464 pp., $30 tales of Western powers abs whom they roused to battle. attempting to manage ermany’s attempt to exploit the Bedouin at GSuez represented the latest manifestation of s dawn emerged on February 3, 1915, revolt in the Arab world. its long-running flirtation with jihad. The court- British machine guns positioned on the ship began nearly two decades previously, when western bank of the Suez Canal mowed rebellion among the British Empire’s 100 million Kaiser Wilhelm II embarked on a grand tour of the down a squadron of Ottoman sappers Muslims. The Germans, McMeekin writes, planned Ottoman Empire. In a letter to Tsar Nicholas II fol- attemptingA to reach the shore. The German-led to ride the resulting “wave of anti-British pan-Is- lowing his voyage, Wilhelm declared that if he had Ottoman troops vying to unseat Britain from its lamism to world power.” come to Jerusalem “without any Religion at all [he] longtime stronghold would not recover from the But the British countered the Turko-German certainly would have turned Mahommetan!” Yet barrage. They withdrew after several more hours’ jihad by backing a Bedouin revolt of their own. the Kaiser’s infatuation with Islam transcended fighting, never to threaten Suez again. Shortly after the Ottoman call to jihad, they wooed such symbolism. In the same letter, Wilhelm in- The battle for Suez would seem unremarkable in Sharif Hussein bin Ali of Mecca, whose religious structed his royal cousin “never to forget that the the scheme of World War I, if not for the fighters re- authority rivaled that of the Ottoman Caliph, to Mahommetans were a tremendous card” in their sponsible for revealing the Ottoman position to the launch an Arab rebellion. In The Balfour Declara- machinations against Great Britain. British: Arab Bedouins. Recruited by the Germans tion, Jonathan Schneer chiefly addresses the histori- Germany began nurturing that Islamic trump to bring their fabled Islamic fervor to war, the Bed- cal forces that produced that famous document. But, card in 1903 by entering into an ambitious relation- ouins did just that—although in word rather than like McMeekin, Schneer devotes substantial atten- ship with the Ottoman Empire to build a railway deed. The Bedouin warriors prepared for battle by tion to European efforts to incite jihad among the from Berlin to Baghdad. The proposed railroad shouting “Allahu akbar!” so loudly that they be- Arabs—in particular, those of the British Empire. would stretch thousands of miles from the Euro- trayed their location to the British. Once the ma- Schneer argues that the British hoped that Hussein’s pean mainland to the far edge of Ottoman territory, chine guns erupted, the bulk of their force immedi- uprising would allow them to retain the loyalty of across deserts, marshes, and mountain ranges. It ately scattered. their Muslim subjects while toppling the Ottoman posed a financial and logistical nightmare, a grand The Bedouins’ poor showing at Suez signaled a Empire from within. Thus commenced a conflict project that, in McMeekin’s words, represented the major disappointment in the revolution they were between two Arab jihadi revolutions, backed by two “crusading, imperial spirit” of the era. meant to wage—a German-backed Muslim jihad Western Christian powers. Britain and France both attempted to secure rail-

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 23 “

Jewish Terrorism in Israel From Empathy to Denial Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger Arab Responses to the Holocaust “[Pedahzur and Perliger] provide excellent Meir Litvak and Ester Webman insight into a little reported and even lesser Winner of the Washington Institute Book Prize, understood reality.” Gold Medal — Publishers Weekly (* starred review) “[An] important new book.” “Sets a high bar for subsequent works.” — The Chronicle of Higher Education — Foreign Affairs “An excellently documented and exceptionally “This work is timely, objective, and bold ... objective book chronicling the evolution of highly recommended.” — Choice Arab perceptions of the Holocaust.” — Shofar

columbia/hurst

Contemporary American Judaism A Philosophical Retrospective Transformation and Renewal Facts, Values, and Jewish Identity Dana Evan Kaplan Alan Montefiore “[An] insightful description of radical changes in American Judaism.” — Publishers Weekly “An illuminating exploration of the complexities and ambiguities of the modern notion of iden- “Kaplan is clearly breaking new ground and writing tity ... [The book] is exemplary of what philoso- a new narrative for twenty-first-century American phy can do (but rarely does): relating the viscer- Judaism.” — Jewish Review of Books ally felt dilemmas of life to the most universal issues of thought.” — Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age

Elijah and the Rabbis Story and Theology Doubting the Devout Kristen H. Lindbeck The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American Imagination “Rendered in clear, succinct prose, this fine study [is] ... recommended.” — Choice Nora Rubel

“Like a craftsman who recognizes that a particular “Smart and perceptive book.” — Jewish Book World raw material will be best handled by a custom- “Provocative, disturbing, and deeply insightful ... made tool, [Lindbeck] considers the strengths Penetrating into the writings that few before her and weaknesses of various existing methods to have had the courage to scrutinize, Rubel exposes cobble together her own approach to handling deep-seated fears that modern Jews — and those the diverse Elijah texts of the Bavli. In doing so, who read them — alternatively nourish, vanquish, she is able to accomplish more, more satisfacto- or repress.” — Jonathan D. Sarna, author of rily, than previous studies.” — Christine Hayes, American Judaism: A History Yale University

The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism Judith Butler, Jurgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Cornel West John Calvert Edited by Eduardo Mendieta “This rich and carefully researched biography and Jonathan VanAntwerpen sets Qutb for the first time in his Egyptian context, rescuing him from caricature without Four major political philosophers discuss whitewashing his radicalism. It is no small the place of religion in society, culture, and achievement.” —The Economist government.

columbia/hurst www.cup.columbia.edu • cupblog.org

24 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 way contracts with the Ottomans before the Ger- Arabia and Afghanistan, recruiting Muslim lead- Key to shepherding through the eventual ar- mans, but the Kaiser was well positioned to strike ers to rise up against the British. When the Otto- rangement was Sir Mark Sykes, a British civil ser- an agreement with the Sultan—one that would lead man Sultan declared global jihad on November 14, viceman of noble pedigree. Although less intoxi- to a far-reaching alliance. As Germany realized, 1914—excepting Germans, Austrians, and Hungar- cated with the Middle East than his German coun- Britain, France, and Russia all ruled over millions of ians—Berlin waited anxiously to see whether its terpart Oppenheim, Sykes’ thorough knowledge of Muslims, whose resentment of colonial rule offered pan-Islamic gambit would succeed. the region earned him accolades from his superiors. After returning from a six-month voyage across the The man responsible for buttressing Islamic support Middle East and India at the end of 1915, Sykes en- thusiastically endorsed Hussein’s planned rebellion was Baron Max von Oppenheim, a non-Jewish heir to a and won its approval in Britain’s War Council. The sides rapidly converged from there. Convinced that Jewish banking dynasty whose life was almost an the Germans and Turks might actually enlist Arab support with their own package of incentives, the Orientalist caricature. British, in what became known as the Hussein- McMahon correspondence, affirmed Hussein’s - in a tantalizing breeding ground for rebellion. More ritish policymakers, however, did not stand idly dependence and recognized his sovereignty over particularly, by the turn of the century, Ottoman Bby. They believed as strongly as the Germans a broad swath of Arabia, the borders of which re- relations with Britain and France had deteriorated did that their Muslim population might prove re- mained intentionally vague. rapidly, as the two nations encroached further and ceptive to Ottoman jihad. Ironically, the British Secured by Britain’s assurances, Hussein laid further upon the Sultan’s sovereignty. By contrast, agreed with the Germans that a Caliphate-endorsed the groundwork for his revolt throughout the first McMeekin argues, Germany “could reasonably jihad could unite the Arab and Islamic world. But half of 1916. Declaring jihad on behalf of his antici- claim innocence in the Islamic world,” having rela- while the Germans backed the sitting Caliph, the pated Arab kingdom, the Sharif began his revolt in tively few Islamic subjects and little history with the British sought to replace him with the Hashemite early June, as his sons launched armed hostilities on Ottoman Empire. Sharif Hussein, steward of Mecca and Medina, the several key Hejazi cities and his followers stormed The planned train would solidify this budding holy cities of the Hejaz. Much like McMeekin, Sch- Mecca. By June 11, Mecca belonged to the Hashem- German-Ottoman marriage by ushering raw metals neer in The Balfour Declarationbucks conventional ites. The two Arab uprisings nursed along by Eu- and minerals to Germany’s hungry industrial sec- histories of World War I by claiming that Britain’s rope’s most powerful empires finally clashed on the tor and potentially reviving the Ottoman Empire’s efforts on the “Eastern Front” ultimately played a field, each attempting to out-revolutionize the other. moribund eastern provinces. Perhaps just as impor- significant role in its overall strategy. The results, for both Germany and Britain, would tant, the Kaiser hoped that the railroad would revi- The alliance between the British and Hussein prove disillusioning. talize the weak Ottoman Caliphate by extending its seemed natural. The Grand Sharif shared Brit- reach to Mecca and Medina, and enabling it to serve ain’s concerns about the Ottoman jihad, suspect- he German-British bidding war for the Ca- as a potential locus for Muslim unity that could be ing that Turkey’s ruling party, the Committee for Tliphate—the bedrock of both jihadi insurrec- harnessed against the British Empire. McMeekin’s Union and Progress (CUP), would exploit the war tions—would also spell those uprisings’ undoing. book argues that these jihadist aspirations consti- to depose him. Meanwhile, British officials in Cai- Thought by both powers to be the one institution tuted a central plank of Germany’s war strategy. The ro, Schneer argues, could “think of no better fig- capable of rallying the world’s 300 million Mus- railroad would represent the literal and figurative ure to undermine a Turkish call for jihad than a lims behind jihad, the Caliphate instead united promise of Germany’s entreaty to the Arab and Is- descendant of the Prophet himself who was also otherwise disconnected Muslims as an object of lamic world. When the time came, Germany would the Grand Sharif of Mecca.” Together, it seemed, near-universal disinterest. “There was something utilize its success to rally Muslims across the globe Britain and Hussein would wage a counter-jihad absurd,” McMeekin writes, “about this shadow- against the Entente powers. against their common foes. boxing between two Christian powers over the The man responsible for buttressing Islamic support for the Caliphate was Baron Max von Op- penheim, a non-Jewish heir to a Jewish banking dynasty whose life was almost an Orientalist carica- ture. McMeekin writes that after reading The Thou- sand and One Nights as a young boy, Oppenheim eventually “went native” in the Middle East. From his Cairo palace, Oppenheim ventured out to study Bedouin tribes, entertained European visitors, and kept a harem. Oppenheim’s reports on the region, which were read and admired by Lawrence of Ara- bia, reached the Kaiser as well, who befriended the Baron and brought him to Berlin every summer so that he could learn about his adventures. Oppenheim became chief of “a pan-Islamic pro- paganda clearing house,” at the outset of World War I, meant to spread “anti-Entente screeds” across the Islamic world. In one particularly bloodthirsty pam- phlet, he wrote that Muslims “should know . . . that the Holy War has become a sacred duty and that the blood of the infidels in the Islamic lands may be shed with impunity.” He continued by urging each Muslim believer to “take upon him an oath to kill at least three or four of the ruling infidels, enemies of God, and enemies of the religion.” From his Berlin headquarters, Oppenheim sent forth an expert company of Orientalists armed with his propaganda. They traveled from the coasts of North and East Africa to the innermost parts of Kaiser Wilhelm II at the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, 1898. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 25 Caliphate, an ancient Islamic institution most lines. The deportations also halted further con- patrons. In killing the railway, the Turko-German educated Muslims themselves no longer took very struction of the Berlin-Baghdad railway by exiling jihad ultimately killed itself. seriously.” In McMeekin’s words, the Caliphate de- the Armenian skilled workers so necessary to the Britain’s accord with Hussein, on the other rived its legitimacy from “political-military power” effort. Germany’s two-pronged revolutionary offen- hand, allowed it to revolutionize the Middle East alone. The Caliphate’s clout, then, depended on the sive—one part railroad, the other part jihad—had far more successfully than its German rival. To es- clout of its host empire—an empire soon to expire. committed fratricide. tablish this partnership, Britain and Hussein had The misbegotten war between the Germans and The railway’s death, according to McMeekin, engaged in elaborate negotiations over the course British over the carcass of the Caliphate reflected prevented Berlin from delivering much-needed of two years, careful to couch their pledges in artful their fundamental misunderstanding of jihad’s supplies to its jihad agents from the Red Sea coast to obscurity. But, as Schneer shows, the festering am- potential sway over Muslims. As McMeekin notes Arabia and Afghanistan. Bereft of the resources that biguities underlying the accord between them that throughout Berlin-Baghdad, the Germans’ attempt the train could have provided, German agents could would soon poison Britain’s relationship with the to exempt themselves from the Ottoman declara- not fulfill their promises to potential anti-British Arab revolt. Negotiations over the extent of Husse- tion of jihad (a concept that historically did not distinguish between various groups of infidels) ex- posed the theological sloppiness of the entire enter- prise. In each region visited by Oppenheim’s men— Afghanistan, Persia, Libya, and the Horn of Afri- ca—Germany’s attempt to muster jihad floundered. Outmatched by British naval boats and baksheesh at nearly every turn, the Germans made few inroads in these far-flung outposts of Islam. The forces that they could assemble did not stir the expected muti- nies among Muslim troops fighting for Britain. By sharing the Germans’ faith in the mass ap- peal of an Islamic religious figure, the British found themselves ensnared in the jihad trap as well, heav- ily subsidizing Hussein’s underwhelming rebellion. As Schneer relates, Bedouin soldiers besieging Me- dina in the fall of 1916 abandoned their posts in the wake of a Turkish attack. Hussein’s son Feisal, in command of the operation, rushed to the scene with his own forces, only to witness the left wing of his army suddenly retreat for no apparent rea- son. Bedouin leaders, writes Schneer, explained to Feisal that “they had retired . . . not from cow- ardice but only because they wished to brew their coffee undisturbed!” Hussein’s call to jihad failed to stem similar desertions and military gaffes over the course of the rebellion. Unable to amass a size- able and disciplined army, the Hashemites resorted to guerilla strikes on Turkish forces and the rail- Max von Oppenheim meets with Muslim leaders, Viranşehir, Ottoman Empire, 1899. road from Damascus to Medina. However much (Archives of Sal. Oppenheim Jr. & Cie., Cologne.) Lawrence of Arabia romanticized this hit-and-run

N campaign, it proved a mere nuisance to Ottoman Berlin R . Durak

D

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i e Bahçe armies. British soldiers would proceed to win Hus- G ERMAN Y p e R r . D Osmaniye Gaziantep on s tain un s o Ceyhan n sein’s Arab revolt for him. M Adana i s a ru Dörtyol t R au Mersin n . V T u Prague o o lga Alexandretta M s u n RU S SIA a R m Antioch et of all the blunders caused by the German . D A Aleppo a nu Y be R G A and British jihad-fetish, the empires’ proclivity Vienna U N Y - H I A S T R Budapest to issue empty promises spawned the most discord A U C and future conflict. In that sense, the accounts pro- A S P vided by McMeekin and Schneer document more I A Belgrade RO M ANIA N than just the influence of theology and ideas—they Vladikavkaz Bucharest BLA C K S E A S address the lasting impact of unmet expectations. SERBIA Tiis (Tbilisi) E Constanta A Niš B ULGARIA

Germany’s failed jihad can be traced back to its O Soa Trabzon I R T G Samsun E Sarıkamıs A Adrianople Amasya inception: the Berlin-to-Baghdad railroad. Origi- L N Y E Erzurum Skutari Erzincan T Constantinople Izmit N MACEDONIA nally scheduled for completion in 1908, the line suf- O Haydarpasha Adapazari Sivas Lake Van Van Tabriz M Ariye O ResenT T O M Ankara Salonica Bursa A N Bitlis Karahisar fered a slew of delays, yet it muddled through the Eskisehir Kharput Kütahya Diyabakir first years of World War I and received a massive in- Afyon E Mardin Maras Mosul Bulgurlu Karapunar M Urfa Konya R GREECE Smyrna Nesibin . fusion of German funding in 1915. In a grisly twist, Kasaba P T PERSIA i g r Monastir i Hanekin I s Tikrit however, the railroad—once a beacon for prog- Karaman Biredjik R See inset Samarra E ress—became a path to ruin. In prodding the Ot- SYRI A R . E Baghdad up hr tomans to unleash an ill-directed jihad, McMeekin ates

Beirut argues, Berlin invited confusion as to whom the MEDITERRANEAN SEA Damascus Basra Karbala Haifa Tiberias holy war should target and why. Unable to conduct Nazareth Najaf Jenin Caesarea Nablus Kuwait their appointed jihad against the British and French Jaffa Jerusalem Bethlehem European railways CYRENAICA Port Said

I

In service Alexandria I

directly, the Turks turned to the closest viable target: I

I ARABIA

I

I Projected

I Ma’an

Suez Canal I

I

I   km the Armenians. Turkish expulsions of Armenian I EGYPT Cairo   miles citizens in late 1915 threatened to clog the railway . The Baghdad railway in  , with gaps and projected development Hejaz railway with refugees, choking desperately needed supply The Baghdad railway in 1914, with gaps and projected development. (Map courtesy of Penguin Books, UK.)

26 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 Europeans excelled in.” Britain’s of pan-Islam,” Oppenheim and the Kaiser com- attempt to outfox its interlocu- mitted a “breathtaking error in judgment, and we tors emanated from a faith that are all living with the consequences today.” In the it could remain one step ahead of same way, Schneer believes that Britain’s actions any diplomatic trouble, no mat- "sowed dragon’s teeth” that would later come to ter how many promises it dis- haunt it. tributed. Seen in this light, the Yet in locating the origin of today’s jihadi Germans and British may have threat in early-20th-century Western gamesman- viewed jihad as an extension of ship, McMeekin overstates his case. Modern-day their own arrogance: If we can Islamic extremism emerged from an entirely dif- unite to construct technological ferent and complex set of circumstances—most wonders and reshape the globe, notably, as a violent reaction to the tyranny of why is the Islamic world inca- secular Arab dictators themselves. And in passing pable of summoning jihad? As over these vital fluctuations, McMeekin subverts Germany and Britain imagined the true lesson of his work: that Muslims, from ji- their own limitless capacities, hadis to liberals, have their own desires that they, they demanded the same mythic regardless of Western meddling, will continue to potential—and desire to carry pursue. out that potential—from others That is a lesson worth remembering today. If the as well. Western powers were tempted a century ago to har- McMeekin argues that Brit- ness jihad for their own purposes, they now face the ain and Germany’s follies in the opposite temptation: to see in the rebellious young Arab world spawned a Franken- men and women in Western clothing, the bloggers stein-like jihad that, once awo- and Google executives of Tahrir Square, as their ken, turned on its progenitors. potential allies in the war against contemporary While a strategic failure during jihadis. But as the United States considers and re- World War I, McMeekin writes considers its approach to the people of Tahrir—in Grand Sharif Hussein bin Ali of Mecca in Amman, Transjordan, 1924. in his epilogue, “the Kaiser’s pro- Egypt and across the Arab and Islamic world—it (© Bettmann/CORBIS.) motion of pan-Islam . . . threw would do well to remember that the protesters are up the flames of revolutionary neither strategic proxies nor avatars of the Ameri- jihadism as far afield as Libya, can dream. in’s kingdom, encapsulated in the infamous Husse- Sudan, Mesopotamia, the Caucasus, Iran, and in-McMahon correspondence, led the Hashemites Afghanistan, which never entirely died down af- Jordan Chandler Hirsch is an assistant editor at Foreign to understand that their sovereignty would reach ter the war.” By promoting an “atavistic version Affairs. from the Hejaz to the northern Mediterranean port of Alexandretta, down the coast to Jaffa and into Palestine. Yet the British never formally acceded to this demand. In fact, even as they conferred with New! Hussein, they pledged parts of that same terri- tory to the French in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which remained secret until 1917. The British en- dorsed yet another aspirant to some of the territory in question by approving the Balfour Declaration, Daily Inspiration for which declared that the British government would use its “best endeavors” to facilitate “the establish- the Three Weeks ment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” By 1917, the British had triple-promised much of the land to which Hussein laid claim. However skillfully it conducted its diplomacy, Dr. ErICA Britain did not have the means to meet its over- lapping obligations. As arrangements secret and BrOWN public became known, Schneer writes, British duplicity triggered profound and unrelenting dis- “Brown has what many trust “of all parties by all parties.” Hussein’s fam- people are looking for ily—feeling robbed of its inheritance—found itself these days…conviction.” expelled from both Syria and the Hejaz within six years of the war’s end. And the Zionists eventually – David Brooks saw their promised territory whittled away by suc- The New York Times cessive British White Papers. Britain’s Arab revolt may have broken the seat of the Sultan-Caliph and its supposed potential to spearhead pan-Islamic jihad, but it laid the ground for countless future problems. Available in hardcover and as an ebook ermany and Britain’s respective missteps were Grooted more than anything else in their pro- jection of their own self-regard onto Arabia. Ger- many’s plan to build a railroad from Berlin to Bagh- A Division of Koren Publishers Jerusalem dad represented, according to McMeekin, “just the www.korenpub.com MAGGID kind of half-mad imperial enterprise fin de siècle

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28 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 Missed Connections

BY Anne Trubek

gaffe-prone, comically pursues her. Emma acts the are the invented stories, the history verifiable. A Curable Romantic lady mostly, but now and again she is possessed by Skibell, in other words, like any good histori- by Joseph Skibell the lusty, vile spirit of Ita, who scolds Jakob for his cal novelist, is a dybbuk—animating the dead and Algonquin Books, 608 pp., $26.95 treachery, tells him about his family since he left, and making the past speak. Freud argues that a dybbuk reminds him of their need to be together. During one is just the superstitious old world’s name for hyste- Skibell, like any good historical novelist, is a dybbuk— n fin-de-siècle Vienna, women took out ads animating the dead and making the past speak. in the local newspapers to send covert mes- sages to prospective lovers, a precursor to long scene in a sanatorium, two angels join Freud and ria. “Yesteryear’s demonical possession corresponds Craigslist’s “Missed Connections” section. Sig- Jakob as the dybbuk inside Emma strains to exit her entirely to the hysteria of our time,” he diagnoses. mundI Freud, who lived in the city at the time, was body. Throughout the rest of the novel, Ita appears (or And the cause of the illness? “Hysterics suffer pri- enchanted with the theories and personality of Wil- does she?) in other human forms, and Jakob, never marily from reminiscences,” the doctor tells us. If helm Fleiss, an ENT who believed that the nose was settled, always exiled, keeps searching for her. there is one thing from which his novel suffers, it is the root of unhappiness, and cocaine could cure all This fantastic and fantastical plot is, surprisingly, reminiscences. maladies. The founder of Esperanto, L. L. Zamen- as much sub-plot as main motor of the novel. As Ja- Of his possession, his hysteria, Skibell is self- hof, had a daughter who converted to the Baha’i kob says, he is a minor character, content to be the aware. As Jakob laments: Faith in the 1930s. During the Holocaust, sneaking wingman of the famous men and possessed women into the Warsaw Ghetto’s mikvah would lead to a who possess him. His favorite activity is watching It is a peculiarity of us Jews that we tend to sentence of ten years imprisonment. the puppet shows in the park, because “no one asks drag our history along behind us, clattering Joseph Skibell’s A Curable Romantic contains a puppet to reform his character or to improve it and clanking like tin cans tied to the tail of a all of these historical nuggets and dozens more. through psychoanalysis.” frightened dog, and the more we attempt to The novel is nothing if not ambitious, and it cov- outrun it, the louder and more frightening it ers such enormous thematic, formal, and historical n this historical novel, history often trumps the becomes. Still, it’s nearly impossible for me ground—think Ragtime plus One Hundred Years of Ifiction of Jakob’s life, or at least history as imagi- to describe the shame of being haunted by Solitude with a dash of Dara Horn’s The World To natively rendered by Skibell. Freud and Zamenhof a dybbuk at the dawn of the 20th century, as Come—that it resists easy summary. It begins, via talk a lot, and their words take up many of the pag- though I were nothing but a benighted Ostjude! flashbacks, in the village in Galicia where the title character, Jakob Sammelsohn, was born and where After the novel’s first part, Sammelsohn leaves he lived until age 13, when he ran away from his Freud, his first Doktorvater, and latches on to domineering, pious father. Jakob moves to Vienna, Zamenhof, a kindlier, more idealistic, forward- where he becomes an oculist, a good occupation for thinking visionary. Zamenhof, unlike Freud, be- a descendent of the Hasidic master known as “the lieves that history can be overcome and psychic Seer of Lublin.” fragmentation made whole. He invented Esperanto In Vienna, Sammelsohn befriends Freud and because he saw how language separated Russians, falls in love with his first patient, Emma Eckstein. Poles, and Jews in Warsaw: Later, he meets Zamenhof and becomes a convert to the cause of Esperanto, traveling to Paris for in- No one can feel this unhappy separation as ternational Esperanto meetings and falling for an- strongly as a Jew. And one day, when our people other ardent Esperantist, the daughter of a wealthy will have reacquired our ancient homeland, we will businessman. During World War I, he briefly hides succeed in our historic mission, of which Moses out on his father’s old property, then spends years in and Jesus and Mohammed all dreamt . . . uniting Warsaw, where, in 1940, he works as the amanuen- mankind in a Jerusalem that will once again be the sis to the saintly Rabbi Kalonymos Kalmish Szapira center of universal brotherhood and love. and smuggles provisions over the ghetto wall. Language is the dybbuk inside us all, possessing hat propels our hero from era to era? What us, dividing peoples. It must be released, neutral- Wdrives the plot? Women—more specifically, ized. Yiddish is unequal to the task, as Zamenhof the spirit of one woman, Ita, who is reborn (may- points out: “Do you suppose we can achieve all that be) as a dybbuk, and follows him through the ages with Yiddish . . . a jargon that doesn’t even possess a in a kind of reverse-quest narrative. According to proper grammar?” Freud, the two first met during the time of Moses, Jakob’s father too was possessed by language, and and have been missing connecting ever since. Joseph Skibell. (Courtesy of Algonquin Books.) also distrusted Yiddish. He spoke only in Hebrew, Ita and Jakob are briefly united when Jakob’s fa- quoting whichever scriptural passage best suited any ther forces him to marry Ita (in the form of an “idiot occasion. In one hilarious scene, he tells his son the child”) for reading secular books. Jakob never con- es. Sometimes their dialogue is didactic and stagy, facts of life by threading together snippets from the summates the marriage, instead sneaking out the but often it is as naturalistically rendered as that of Torah, in classical rabbinic fashion. Skibell does not window and going to Vienna. There, one night at the best historical fiction. The reader generally feels translate all the Hebrew his father speaks, nor does he the opera, he falls in love at first sight with Emma. confident that Skibell has done his research, and that translate all of the Esperanto, or the nonsense words Freud introduces the two, and Jakob, love-struck and the otherworldly bits—dybbuks and long-lost loves— spoken by the angels and Ita. All told, the book is

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 29 written in six languages, and in three scripts. cere. Why? Because Freud is right, and our his- separate novel). The angels reappear, and together Esperanto, tellingly, has no word for “dybbuk” tories must be spoken by composite, fractured they ascend the steps to heaven. From the granular (“Dibuko? Transmigrado? Metempsikozo?”). The people? Or, perhaps, it’s because of the Jewish specificity of Viennese newspaper ads to the ren- would-be universal language is the opposite of pos- condition. As Skibell has one critic put it: dering of the Heavenly Bakery, Skibell’s scope really session and Freudian psychopathology, which frag- is breathtaking. This ambition sometimes swamps ment and segment. It doesn’t even have a word for Just as we possess a despised and ridiculed the novel’s plot and pacing, and reading it feels “war.” Skibell pairs and contrasts this universalist jargon that allows us to communicate with more pedagogical than enjoyable. But it is always utopianism with Zionism, which Zamenhof reject- ourselves, as one family, across national borders, thought-provoking. ed. Jakob asks his sister, headed for Palestine, how so, if Dr. Zamenhof has his way, will the entire What would happen if Jakob were reunited with one is any less improbable than the other: world soon possess such a jargon. In this way, his demon lover, Ita? It would be like everyone talk- be believes he can smuggle our people into ing Esperanto, or getting up off the couch, cured. Our Sore Devore, let’s be honest now . . . As noble the great family of man while no one is paying Zelig-like oculist would have to change his last name. as your Drs. Herzl and Nordau might be, as attention. But, you see, there’s one problem . . . Better not to tempt such fate; the perils of attaining splendid as is their goal, do you really imagine They don’t want us in their family. one’s desire, of uniting, speaking a lingvo internacia, that the attainment of universal peace and we are told, there in the ghetto, are too horrible to brotherhood through an international auxiliary Throughout A Curable Romantic, history keeps bear. Better to keep moving, one place to the next, language is any less realistic than the restoration chafing against trans-historical desires, from the one woman to the other, speaking that possessed of the Jewish homeland in ancient Palestine? dybbuk, which Jakob continues to chase and be tongue or the other, missing connections, a hysterical chased by, through his conversion to Esperanto, puppet trailing the clanging tin cans of history. The Esperanto movement fails, in a flurry of and into the Warsaw ghetto. There, he meets Rabbi infighting and backroom deals, and it, as well as Szapira, his third father figure (and, for some read- Anne Trubek is the author of A Skeptic’s Guide To Zamenhof, come off as ridiculous as they do sin- ers, perhaps the beginning of what should be a third, Writers’ Houses (University of Pennsylvania Press).

Words, Words, Words

By Shoshana Olidort

Eunice is “freaked . . . out” to observe. As if read- his relationship waxes, then wanes, against the Super Sad True Love Story ing weren’t bad enough, Lenny also keeps a diary, Tbackdrop of Shteyngart’s America, where the by Gary Shteyngart which constitutes half of the narration of this novel. Bipartisan Party is the only political option; televi- Random House, 352 pp., $26 The other half comes in the form of Eunice’s online sion has been reduced to all of two channels, Fox correspondence. Eunice is a prototypical twenty- Liberty-Prime and Fox Liberty-Ultra, and The New something in this hyper-digitized world, where “ap- York Times has been replaced by The New York Life- parati”—futuristic iPhones—give people access to style Times. The Lifestyle Times is still “more text s its mouthful-of-a-title suggests, Super each other’s credit and sexual desirability ratings, heavy than other sites” with “half-screen length Sad True Love Story is a super-ambitious book. But super may be the only part of In a world where books are archaic and widely believed to the title that pans out in Gary Shteyn- Agart’s novel about a nightmarish near-future Amer- smell bad, Lenny persists in reading Chekhov and Tolstoy, ica overrun by consumerism and obsessed with youth. In Shteyngart’s dystopian satire, America is as Eunice is “freaked out” to observe. at war with Venezuela and economically dependent on China—which is threatening to pull away—and among other things, and her messages are a pastiche essays on certain products sometimes offering the general public is at the mercy of a constantly of internet slang and vulgarities, and talk of clothes. subtle analysis of the greater world.” Individuals streaming information and sensory overload that It’s not that Lenny is entirely impervious to his are ranked according to their financial worth and renders both privacy and books virtually obsolete. surroundings; but he is more than just a product physical robustness, with those at the very bottom At the center of the novel is the tragic figure of of his environment. Thus, while everyone in the of the hierarchy labeled “Impossible to Preserve.” 39-year-old Lenny Abramov, the earnest, intelligent, world of this novel lusts after youth, Lenny’s la- Shteyngart’s depiction of what our increasingly rather awkward and unattractive son of Russian- ment seems more heartfelt: “Oh, dear diary. My technology-dependent world is coming to, as people Jewish immigrants who sells “indefinite life exten- youth has passed, but the wisdom of age hardly become more comfortable tweeting than talking, is sions,” and who, having fallen in love with a 24-year- beckons. Why is it so hard to be a grown-up man telling. But too often the novel goes over the top in old Korean-American beauty named Eunice Park, is in this world?” As for Eunice, while she is occa- its parody, so that at times it closely resembles the determined to live forever. The couple’s doomed ro- sionally introspective, her conversational style is very object of its derision. This begins with the book’s mance is unconvincing from the start, at least in part inevitably trite. Of Lenny she notes that, despite box-like jacket, which includes a description of the because Lenny and Eunice are stock characters. He’s having promised her that he would read less, he is package’s contents: “a printed media artifact formerly the needy, nerdy Jew-boy; she’s the beautiful, oppor- “all caught up in these texts. I looked up War and known as a BOOK” and a warning: “Reed at our own tunistic and hypersexual Asian woman. (It is perhaps Peace and it’s about this guy Pierre who fights in risk! Harvard Fashion School studies has been shown worth noting—or at any rate, Shteyngart expects us France, and all this terrible stuff happens to him, that reeding long-form texts can dicrease shopping/ to note—that the author is the son of Russian-Jewish but in the end because of his charm he gets to be consupmtioning abilities and cause eye strain prob- immigrants, and his wife is Korean-American.) with this girl he really loves, and who really loves lemz and unattractiveness in girlz aged 3 to 90.” In a world where books are archaic and widely him even though she cheated on him.” That, she Even more bizarre is a trailer produced for the believed to smell bad, Lenny persists in reading says, is “Lenny’s view on life in a nutshell, that in novel in which Shteyngart plays an illiterate version (Chekhov and Tolstoy are among his favorites), as the end niceness and smartness always win.” of himself, an up-and-coming Russian-American

30 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 author who has just published his third novel—this very much present in their characters’ lives and con- spite of himself, a good writer and there are beautiful one—to critical acclaim, despite the fact that he sciousness. But Lipsyte’s loser is a more sympathetic sentences lurking about, as when Lenny observes of cannot read. It might have been a clever marketing character than Lenny, if only because The Ask is a Eunice’s mother that there was “a great spidery web ploy (indeed, the YouTube video has over 150,000 less grandiose novel than Super Sad, with room for a of defeat spread across her face.” He can also dis- hits), but the Borat-inspired humor is cringeworthy. character to grow and develop. In Shteyngart’s novel, play a sly sense of humor, as when we learn that the In one scene, his student (Shteyngart teaches at Co- character comes off as just another gimmick, as does New York City transit system is “run on a for-profit lumbia University) says that her favorite class was Jewishness and immigrant identity. basis by a bunch of ARA (American Restoration a seminar titled, “How to behave at a Paris Review This is a pity because Shteyngart is, perhaps in Authority)-friendly corporations under the slogan Party,” and the video shifts ‘Together We’ll go Somewhere.’” But more often than to Shteyngart in action, not the humor gets lost in the noise of exaggeration. swirling a glass of wine as In the end, Shteyngart leaves us less afraid of the he demonstrates in a heav- impending demise of books than alarmed at the nar- ily accented drawl: “I do so cissistic collection of jokes and tricks that are being much prefer early Ian McE- passed off here as a serious work of literature. When wan to late Ian McEwan, Lenny decides, toward the end of the novel, that he ahem, ahem.” is going to give up on immortality and die after all, Although it does raise he remarks that all that will remain will be his data, real questions about our col- “Words, words, words.” In a sense, of course, words lective future, Shteyngart’s are all that remain of any work of literature—even novel doesn’t raise itself very Lenny’s beloved Chekhov—but in Shteyngart’s case, far above such promotional one sometimes feels as if that’s all there is to the novel. clowning. Lenny, in par- As Super Sad True Love Story draws to a close, ticular, is an all-too-familiar we discover that much of what we’ve read is a character: the Ashkenazic book within a book: Lenny’s diary entries and anti-hero, a pseudo-intel- Eunice’s online correspondences have been pub- lectual hopelessly out of lished and released in New York and Hong Kong. touch with his environs, a When Lenny encounters an actress who has been loser, in short. We’ve met cast as Eunice in a theatrical adaptation, he finds him before in Roth and Bel- himself compelled to propose a final, gruesome low, and onscreen in Woody scenario, in which both he and Eunice die. The Allen films. More recently, actress and her friends are shocked into silence, he’s made an appearance in and with the book’s final sentence the reader fi- Sam Lipsyte’s novel The Ask. nally identifies with Lenny, who is blessed with Like Shteyngart, Lipsyte is a what he “needed the most. Their silence, black rising star on the American and complete.” literary scene; for both, Jew- ishness is more incidental Shoshana Olidort is a freelance writer living in New than central, although it is Gary Shteyngart. (Illustration by Alex Fine, © Alex Fine.) York City.

Jacob Glatstein’s Prophecy

BY Dara Horn

made his characters’ prewar lives poetically moot. untranslatable because of his punning and layering The gLATSTEIN CHRONICLES The Glatstein Chronicles might have been that book, of nearly every word (in Yiddish, Hebrew, English, by Jacob Glatstein, edited with an introduction by Ruth R. had it been written in 1946. Instead, this devastating and Polish) and his clever references to both Yid- Wisse, translated by Maier Deshell and Norbert Guterman kaleidoscopic vision of doom for Jewish Europe first dish highbrow and children’s culture (all, by 2011, Yale University Press, 432 pp., $20 appeared in print in . . . 1934. Jacob Glatstein was no requiring extensive footnotes), Glatstein’s first three mere poet, but a Yiddish prophet. And now Ameri- published books of poetry are works of genius by a can Jews can rediscover what prophecy really means. writer stretching his wings in a Jewish world that felt Like most prophets, Glatstein at first resisted the too small for his talents. t isn’t every day that one has the opportunity to call. Born in Lublin in 1896, he escaped Poland’s But in time Glatstein saw that these brilliant read a literary masterpiece. But a literary mas- painfully circumscribed opportunities by convinc- tours de force could be no more than brilliant, and terpiece that doubles as a work of prophecy? ing his parents to send him to America at age 17— the growing crisis in Europe made him see the piti- Such books have been rare since the death of where his one American uncle couldn’t even leave ful aspect of writing Yiddish verse modeled on the Isaiah—whichI is why this new English edition of The his sweatshop job to meet him at the dock. Bright language games of Anglo-American poets. Like Glatstein Chronicles deserves not only praise but its enough (and fluent enough in English) to enroll in claiming today that his novel is a “Jewish Magic own cantillation. Largely set in a Jewish sanatorium- New York University Law School, and also bright Mountain,” this kind of work suggests that Jewish resort in 1934 Poland, The Glatstein Chronicles is easy enough to voluntarily drop out, Glatstein at 24 literature is a pale imitation of “world literature,” to label as a Jewish Magic Mountain. But Thomas made a conscious decision to live his literary life rather than the generator of world literature’s most Mann’s novel about the decline of European civi- in Yiddish. His early poetry is phenomenal, world- fundamental themes. Without anti-Semitism, this lization as dramatized at a sanatorium-resort was class modernist verse that catapulted Yiddish into assumption would be merely pathetic. But when published in 1925, after the ravages of World War I the worlds of Eliot and Joyce and beyond. Almost one considers the active degrading of Jewish culture

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 31 within the most lauded realms of Western civiliza- narrator’s dying mother, who was supposedly the These discussions remain theoretical until the tion, the idea that Jewish literature ought to mirror purpose of his journey; nor does he even mention ship docks in Europe—and the narrator must travel its non-Jewish counterpart becomes worse than her, except in a few flashbacks to his childhood to Poland through Germany, via trains packed with base. After violent pogroms in Poland in 1938, Glat- and negotiations over her burial, which are writ- Hitler youth. stein in New York wrote his most famous poem, ten to resemble the biblical Abraham’s purchase of In Poland, it becomes clear that anti-Semitic fury “Good Night, World,” which bids a sarcastic fare- the Cave of Machpelah. Instead, we are left with has already begun to take its toll on Jewish youth. Young people train for professions that will not ad- As he meets more and more desperate Jews begging mit them, and then fall back on flimsy businesses that barely survive ongoing boycotts, causing “love for help from their American relatives, the narrator’s to die among them” as even romance falls prey to the practicalities of their artificially-induced poverty. intimations of doom give way to a stunning clarity. They endure this poverty on a knife’s edge. At first, the narrator’s intimations of mortality are subtle or well to the supposed glories of Western civilization, the impression that the dying mother to whom he atmospheric, taking the form of dreams involving “a insisting to the non-Jewish world that “Not you, but has come to bid farewell is Jewish Poland itself. vague fear of impending destruction,” or an observa- I slam the gate,” as the poet rejects Western culture And this is where the book crosses the line from tion that “It was the end of August, and these men for a stunted Judaism that at least opposes the wider travelogue to prophecy. were probably the first to become aware, in the midst world’s moral hypocrisy: The narrator’s prophetic visions begin on the of summer pleasures, that winter was on the way.” Atlantic crossing. During the voyage, word arrives But as he meets more and more desperate Jews Good night, world. I’ll give you a parting gift of the “Night of Long Knives,” Hitler’s first violent who try to stuff his suitcases with messages beg- Of all my liberators. ging for help from their Take your Jesusmarxes, choke on their courage. American relatives, the nar- Croak on a drop of our baptized blood . . . rator’s intimations of doom From Wagner’s idol-music to wordless melody, give way to a stunning clar- to humming. ity. On nearly every page of I kiss you, cankered Jewish life. this magnificent novel, one It weeps in me, the joy of coming home. finds astonishing remarks like these from Polish Jews In The Glatstein Chronicles, the poet literally in 1934: comes home. Composed as two novellas here com- bined in one English volume, The Glatstein Chron- The fact is that a real war icles is a work in the great 200-year-old tradition is being waged against us, of Jewish autobiographical novels—including a war of attrition . . . masterpieces ranging from S.Y. Agnon’s A Guest There’s no escaping it: for the Night (also about a Jewish man visiting all the countries have his hometown in 1930s Poland) to Saul Bellow’s imposed a siege . . . Adventures of Augie March. But it surpasses even Believe me, the Poles are those, because its majesty derives from the author’s much cleverer than Hitler. reimagining of the Hebrew Bible’s recurrent mo- They don’t rant and rave, tifs of personal and national betrayal—and from they just pass over our his astonishing power of genuine prophecy. Of the bodies with a steamroller dozens of thematically interlocked layers that this and drive us right into book offers its readers, many of which have been the ground . . . Formerly richly mined by scholars, it is its prophecy that you could escape by resonates loudest of all in 2011. Reading this work emigrating. Today our today, one cannot help continuously flipping back people are staring death to editor Ruth R. Wisse’s insightful introduction to in the eyes. check the book’s publication history, incredulous. The second novella first appeared in 1940, though Nor is this intended to it was likely composed long before that. The first be figurative, as conversations was already serialized in 1934. Jacob Glatstein (Illustration by Val Bochkov, © Val Bochkov.) like the following make abun- dantly clear: he novel’s putative story is that of an unnamed Tnarrator whose biography matches Glatstein’s purge of his Nazi rivals. Seeking others who share “It started with Pharaoh who bathed in the exactly (the Yiddish titles included the narrator’s his panic, the narrator tests out the news on his blood of Jewish children. Why, oh why, why do name, “Yash,” a diminutive for Jacob), and who fellow passengers—and finds that the ship is di- we deserve this, Mr. Steinman? What do they after 20 years in America is called back to Poland vided, as Europe soon would be, between Jews and have against us, Mr. Steinman?” to attend his mother’s death. The book’s first half, non-Jews: “Homeward Bound” (in Yiddish, Ven Yash is ge- “Ah, you’re raising fundamental questions,” forn, “When Yash Set Out”), follows the narrator’s I realized that to the Gentiles, Hitler meant Steinman said. He had become grave. “You Atlantic crossing and his journey through Europe, something altogether different than he did want to go to the root of things. Well, I’ll tell focusing on his encounters with the cosmopolitan to me. My non-Jewish fellow passengers . . . you: they want to destroy us, nothing less. Yes, Jews and non-Jews whom he meets on the way. regarded Hitler as merely Germany’s dictator. to destroy us. For instance, take me—I am a Its second half, “Homecoming at Twilight” (in To me, to 600,000 German Jews, and indeed patriotic Pole. And yet they’d destroy me too. Yiddish, Ven Yash iz gekumen, “When Yash Ar- to all the 17 million Jews worldwide, Hitler They want to exterminate us, purely and simply. rived”), takes place at a Jewish sanatorium-resort was the embodiment of the dreaded historical Yes, exterminate us.” in southern Poland where the narrator stays after hatemonger, latest in a long line of persecutors his mother’s death—and where his fellow resi- that stretched from Haman . . . wielding a The “Haman” dimension of current events is dents from all walks of Polish Jewish life share bloody pen that was writing a dreadful new hauntingly evoked near the book’s conclusion, their stories and ultimately die. We never meet the chapter of Jewish history. when the narrator visits Kazimierz. A picturesque

32 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 Jacob Gordin, and even a sanatorium resident modeled on Peretz himself. One misses, painfully, the world that once existed where every reader of this novel would have known these references as household names. Unfortunately, The Glatstein Chronicles is unlike- ly to find a wide audience among American readers, even American Jewish ones. Americans are taught to seek in literature the satisfaction of our own hun- ger for action and unambiguous resolutions—nei- ther of which are on offer here. In a contemporary review of Glatstein’s book, Isaac Bashevis Singer, whose popularity came largely from fulfilling American literary expectations, complained that “Jules Verne would not have wasted ten lines on a journey so bereft of adventure or romance.” He was certainly right, but the observation does more harm to the critic than to the author. For the patient reader open to other possibilities, The Glatstein Chronicles does progress—in a symphonic rather than a linear fashion—toward important revelations. And time has only added new layers of power to its prose. Now that the prophesied destruction has come to pass, the few moments where Glatstein’s prophe- cies fail him have an even more terrible poignancy. “It occurred to me,” Glatstein’s narrator muses as he arrives in Europe,

Casimir the Great and Jews, by Wojciech Gerson, 19th century. (National Museum, Warsaw.) that in twenty-five years such travelers returning to pay respects to the graves of forefathers will have disappeared . . . Should resort beloved by artists, Kazimierz is a town with store. The grave. But the people created a legend their children ever think of visiting Soviet a Jewish-Polish myth attached to it. Its ruined castle in defiance of the limitations of this life. Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Romania, they would was once occupied by King Casimir the Great, a real go as one might visit Paris, Switzerland, or 14th-century Polish monarch who, according to leg- This legend claims to be a Purim story, but in Italy . . . There will be tourists, but no one going end, had a Jewish lover named Esther who lived in Glatstein’s prophetic vision, it is really a story about home to see a dying mother or father, or to the castle as his queen. The story was imagined vari- Tisha b’Av—and Jewish Poland is the latest holy mourn dead parents. ously in Polish and Yiddish sources as abduction or temple on the verge of destruction. Returning from seduction, but among Polish Jews it usually evoked Kazimierz, the narrator considers this “dark omen.” In 1934, even the prophet Glatstein could not a sense of Polish-Jewish interdependency and be- Alluding to a Spanish novel about a wounded Ca- imagine that American Jews would someday go as longing, echoing the biblical Book of Esther with its sanova, he reflects: “All of us . . . would very soon tourists to Poland exclusively to mourn. irresistible Jewish woman married to a non-Jewish arrive at winter with a hand shot off. That would be But Glatstein’s Poland is not only a place of king—with the queen placed in the palace for the the hand which, I had vowed, I would let wither if mourning. It also has an eerie consoling power. In Jews’ eventual rescue. I forgot you, and you, and everything that had ever the sanatorium, where “you never know whether The narrator goes to Kazimierz almost by ac- imprinted itself on my eyes and mind.” you’re talking to a mental case,” the narrator’s pre- cident, when a driver appears at the hotel with the science is amplified by the haunting symbolism of mistaken information that he has planned a day eading The Glatstein Chronicles is itself an act the hotel guests. In one scene, the narrator comes trip there. Another guest, in love with the town, de- Rof mourning, and the editor and translators across the hotel’s proprietor standing watch in the cides to go and invites the narrator along, explain- must have endured this grief all the more acute- hallway at the witching hour: ing: “You see, it’s fate. A man has to visit Kazimi- ly. The translation is rendered magnificently, and erz sooner or later, so what difference does it make Wisse and the translators (Maier Deshell and the “You aren’t asleep yet?” I stammered, vaguely when you go?” With its echo of the appointment in late Norbert Guterman) have taken great pains to frightened. Samarra, “visiting Kazimierz” becomes a metaphor produce the illusion that we are reading this mas- “I can’t sleep until my last guest has turned in,” for the destiny of Polish Jews: everyone believes in terpiece as the author wrote it. Terms that would he said. “I’m responsible for the lot of you, you this myth of Gentile-Jewish romance at some point, have felt natural to 20th-century Yiddish speakers know. That’s the kind of job it is.” just as the poet Glatstein once did, until the myth is have been subtly explained within the text; more revealed to be a picturesque ruin—or worse. complex cultural references are explicated in un- Reading these lines, one thinks of the transla- Once in Kazimierz, the narrator climbs up to the obtrusive endnotes. tors of Yiddish in the 21st century—and of the edi- ruined castle with his traveling companion, who ca- But the reader familiar with the original cannot tor Ruth R. Wisse, who has brought this and many resses its stones and describes it as holy, suggesting but mourn—not only for the doomed community other Yiddish masterpieces to new generations of the ruins of the ancient Temple: captured within its pages, but also for the world of readers and students. The second novella’s opening readers lost with it. The book offers its readers end- line, spoken by one of the central figures at the hotel, For what has really gone on here in Kazimierz? less unspoken references to once-famous works of is “Even from the gutter will I sing praises to Thee, I think I can help you to understand. The Jew Yiddish literature, like I. L. Peretz’s “At Night in the O Lord, even from the gutter.” Seventy years after had his own poor world, and the Gentile led his Old Marketplace,” a surrealist play set among the Glatstein’s devastating prophecy came true, the con- own separate life. We always walked as far as living dead (at one point the novel is subsumed by soling miracle is that these volumes still sing. the city gates, beyond which death lies—a great a surrealist play), as well as brilliant portraits of real cemetery full of ancestors. In other words, walk figures who once illuminated the Jewish world: the no farther than the gates and turn right back, Hebrew poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik, the German Dara Horn is the award-winning author of three novels, for you can see only too clearly what lies in historian Heinrich Graetz, the Yiddish playwright the most recent of which is All Other Nights (Norton).

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 33 The Poet Goes to War

BY Margot Lurie

and Achia and Oria and Shaked and Miriam) they shall be as frontlets HEAR O LORD: POEMS FROM THE for his heroism is for them too between your eyes (like the sniper’s shot) DISTURBANCES OF 2000-2009 and when he returns in peace, to the heart of And you shall write them (in blood) on the by Eliaz Cohen, translated by Larry Barak the great embrace doorposts of your house Toby Press, 190 pp., $14.95 shall he return. And on your gates

More often, however, the poems are not so na- This is Cohen at his rhetorical best. Clever, ana- kedly plaintive as this, and nowhere near so suc- lyzable, and startling enough for its inversions to be he Israeli poet Eliaz Cohen is a Religious cessful. Although Cohen, to his credit, avoids spe- reckoned true, the poem has, not surprisingly, found Zionist who lives with his family on a kib- cial pleading of the hath-not-a-settler-eyes? variety, its way into prayer services. Even so, what it displays butz in the southern West Bank. And there- the politics in his work is opportune if not oppor- is Cohen’s skill as a sermonizer, not an imagist. by hangs a tale. In a 2005 interview with the tunistic. The dominant posture is one of cautious In general, as he borrows richly from Jewish sa- THebrew daily Ha’aretz, Cohen sardonically addressed cred texts, Cohen lets his forebears elbow too ag- the issue presented by settler-artists like him: gressively into his own work, making for absurd Cohen is fighting the stoicism conjunctions between the heroic (or the prophetic, Over the years, playwrights, poets, and cultural or the sublime) and the merely pat. A religious man, people have scolded us: “You’re settlers! How of the pioneer generation of Cohen has been praised for venturing into the realm dare you write poetry after you’ve devoured two of the erotic. But in contrast to, for example, the Palestinians for dinner?” As they see it, there Hebrew poets, who felt called novelist S.Y. Agnon’s genuinely subversive way with couldn’t possibly be any art coming from the upon to prove their mettle. biblical and rabbinic texts, Cohen’s combination of Right. cut-and-paste Song of Songs verses and demure sexual sentimentality wouldn’t raise the eyebrow— In point of fact, although Cohen’s poems do aim evenhandedness (“To all the dispossessed and the let alone the libido—of anyone’s maiden aunt: for political resonance (loosely defined), they are dispossessors”) and nervous moralism, sweating far from an example, let alone a vindication, of “art up concessions on all sides to the vicissitudes of And at night coming from the Right.” human nature, fallibility, and the necessary com- I hide poems in the secret parts of your body Born in Petach Tikva in 1972, Cohen makes his memoration of universal suffering. Not so much (like notes in the Wall) living as a social worker and as an editor of the Is- shaping as enlisting his material in the service of a a breeze caresses us healing limbs weary raeli poetry journal Mashiv Haruach. He is primus number of bromidic ends, Cohen gives us pleas for from labor and pregnancy. inter pares of a group of second-generation Re- de-escalation (“words harder than stones, and where Soon it will be morning ligious Zionist poets whose names include Hava were you . . . Arab boys do it to me / they throw me the children will come in under the covers Pinhas-Cohen, Shmuel Klein, Yoram Nissinovitch, three thousand seven hundred years / back . . . ); per- and find the poems Nahum Petchnik, Mira Kedar, Yonadav Kaploun, sonified land (“This land trembling under our feet Shmuel Lehrman, and Bambi Sheleg. (A study of is / a wild lioness”; “the mouth / of this screaming By contrast, “Hear O Lord” succeeds (to the ex- the group by David C. Jacobson, who wrote the in- land”; “shall all these hopes drain from your frail tent it does succeed) because the prayer’s cadenc- troduction to the present volume, is now out from body / to your ground, Sinai?”); updated biblical es—however torqued—remain intact, with Cohen’s Academic Studies Press.) episodes (“Among the fragments of the bus and your own words forming a running exegetical counter- The “disturbances” of this book’s subtitle burnt / Jews I make a covenant with you saying . . . point to the undoctored text. Still, what about those (me’oraot, events) refer to the 1929 anti-Jewish ri- do not slaughter the bird”); atavistic folktales (“Ishmael “phosphorescent blue numbers”? The reference is ots by Arabs in Mandate Palestine—a dark week of [i.e., the Arabs] and I are sowing the winds of heav- to concentration-camp tattoos, but why “phospho- violence echoed, in Cohen’s rendering, in the sec- en”); and deadpan religious rodomontade (“at night / rescent”? One suspects an allusion to the chemical ond Intifada instigated by Yasser Arafat. The poems I wander from mountain to mountain / freeing all the weapons in which Israel has been accused of illegal- collected here, indifferently translated from the He- bound ones . . . searching for rams to replace them”). ly trafficking, but the image is too imprecise and too brew by Larry Barak, progress from the start of that He has done better than this. Cohen’s most well- outlandish to reconcile or respond to, functioning murderous operation in 2001 through the terrorist known lyric, “Hear O Lord,” is a rejoinder to the more as stage gesture than as realized effect. attack at a communal seder in 2002, Israel’s unilat- Jewish credo Hear O Israel: Like others of his peers, Cohen is fighting the eral disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and subse- stoicism of the pioneer generation of Hebrew poets quent bloody episodes. And you shall love Israel your people (Natan Alterman, Avraham Shlonsky) who, in the Cohen describes the book as “a kind of diary.” With all your heart shadow of Israel’s fierce battle for independence in That is both its strength and its literary undoing. And with all your soul the late 1940s, felt called upon to prove their mettle. For Cohen writes best when he writes plainest. In And with all your might Today’s settler poets, accused not of artistic coward- a poem of war, both the use of personal details (like And these sons who are being killed for you ice but of brutality, go in the opposite direction, ap- the names of his family members) and the familiar daily shall be pealing openly to emotionalism and pathos. As in formulations of Hebrew prayer serve him well: upon your heart the war poem quoted above, Cohen can mine this And you shall teach them diligently in your vein well when he is working with narrative, mobi- He should know that he is fighting for the heavens lizing authentic detail to document the ravages of oneness of God, and shall put And you shall talk of them: soldiering and battle. his life in his hands (and guard it well) When you sit in your house Another of his poems in that mode is included and neither fear nor be affrighted. And when you walk by the way here. Its title, “An Invitation to Cry,” echoes that of And he shall think of his wife and his sons and And when you lie down and when you rise a widely discussed article written by an Israeli re- his daughter And you shall bind them as a sign upon servist traumatized by the carnage of the 1973 Yom (may the merciful One bless me and Efrat your hand (phosphorescent blue numbers) and Kippur War. Here, the poet addresses a soldier who

34 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 has been given orders to evacuate a house in Gaza:

here I prepared a little corner to write the unfinished novel JEWISH STUDIES FROM PENN PRESS now from the fig tree in the yard the last leaf falls everything is filled with symbols you say you fall on my neck, weeping bitterly THE THIRD PILLAR my good, loyal soldier, now at long last it is Essays in Judaic Studies permitted to cry. Geoffrey Hartman “This is Geoffrey Hartman’s best and most insightful book.”—Elie Wiesel This is clear writing with the authority of first- “In the form, substance, intellectual brio, and imaginative reach of these essays, Geoffrey Hartman hand experience. (A subscript informs us that the has no peer. And to say it (almost) otherwise: in learning and in originality, two characteristics that poem was composed at a moment of high anxiety, are only very rarely found paired, Geoffrey Hartman is matchless. You may read him solely as a after the 2005 evacuation proposal was adopted by scholar if you wish, but once you stir in the ‘creative,’ you will have something or someone else: a the Sharon government but before it was enacted.) poet. In these essays, Hartman as innate poet speaks to readers: to readers of poetry, to discern- The fig tree alludes to the expulsion from Eden ers of bottomless ideas, to you and to me.”—Cynthia Ozick while deftly undercutting such pert poeticizing Jewish Culture and Contexts (“everything is filled with symbols”). 2011 | 240 pages | 5 illus. | Cloth | $39.95 When working, however, not in the narrative but in the lyric mode, Cohen can be disastrous. Ev- BECOMING THE PEOPLE OF THE TALMUD erything, even a poem about tranquil snow, is ren- Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures dered in clanging fortissimo: Talya Fishman “Becoming the People of the Talmud offers a unique and highly original contribution to our under- Snow on bleeding Jerusalem standing of Jewish culture in the Middle Ages. The book indubitably places Talya Fishman in the as though bandaging her wounds vanguard of scholarly research.”—Israel J. Yuval, Hebrew University of Jerusalem all rests in tranquility now Jewish Culture and Contexts filling the cracks of yearning in the Wall 2011 | 424 pages | 2 illus. | Cloth | $65.00 children in your streets, Jerusalem the sons of Isaac and Ishmael are staging white wars (and their blows are soft) THE MIXED MULTITUDE even the pigeons are hurrying today Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755–1816 cooing because they have found new footprints Paweł Maciejko on the way leading up to the Gate of Mercy “Maciejko’s scholarship is stunning in its comprehensiveness and the combination of careful analy- sis of detail with breadth of historical vision. This book fi lls a longstanding lacuna in European and The harried “tranquility” in this poem, an obvi- Jewish historiography. It is innovative both in the sense that many new sources are consulted and ous channeling of Yehuda Amichai, is not dispassion in its conceptually innovative revision of the historical signifi cance of Frank and his movement.” or quietude but what James Agee memorably labeled —Gershon David Hundert, McGill University rigor artis, the strain of art trying to be bigger, more Jewish Culture and Contexts resonant than it is. The poem’s attempted simplicity 2011 | 376 pages | Cloth | $65.00 is subverted by clever linguistic tricks, consonances, and double meanings: the Hebrew spelling of “Je- rusalem” is an archaic one, and Ishmael’s name is JUDAISM AND CHRISTIAN ART spelled so as to emphasize its meaning of “God will Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to Colonialism hear.” Unlike God, Cohen conspicuously lacking an Edited by Herbert L. Kessler and David Nirenberg ear for the music of poetry, does not hear. It’s hard for a writer to be so in competition “An impressive collection displaying considerable erudition and argumentative skills. Judaism and Christian Art makes a stimulating and useful contribution to scholarship.” with his subject, particularly when his influences —Walter Cahn, Yale University (Agnon, Amichai) are so identifiable, and when am- bition rather than erudition turns his verse into an 2011 | 456 pages | 110 illus. | Cloth | $69.95 echo chamber of gratuitous religious allusion. Even worse is Cohen’s resort to overheated analogies, as when he anticipates Israel’s planned withdrawal from Gaza as “the coming Holocaust.” Hayyim DEMONIC DESIRES Nahman Bialik’s “In the City of Slaughter,” written “Yetzer Hara” and the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity in the immediate aftermath of the 1903 Kishinev Ishay Rosen-Zvi pogrom, commands similar effects, but Bialik’s por- “Demonic Desires analyzes a crucial element of late antique Jewish religious thought, the concept trait of devastation and havoc is at once so large and of the yetzer hara. Rosen-Zvi aims to correct misplaced assumptions about the yetzer, in terms of so acutely observed that the horror dominates the both anachronistic readings of the rabbinic tradition and misleading comparisons made between verse without destroying it, without turning suffer- the yetzer and other aspects of late antique religious thought in the Hellenistic world. The book is ing into sensationalism. a valuable contribution to an important area of study.”—Columba Stewart, Saint John’s School of Poets, no less than politicians, shame themselves Theology Seminary by invoking the Holocaust for loose rhetorical pur- Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion poses. Articulate, earnest, and determined, Cohen 2011 | 280 pages | Cloth | $69.95 would be well served by using his limited poetic gifts to stricter ends.

Margot Lurie, a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is associate editor of Jewish Ideas Daily.

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 35 The Great Non-Miracle Rabbi of Prague

BY Allan Nadler

image of Landau as an opponent of Kabbalah must parenthetic, as evidence of his mysticism. More The Kabbalistic Culture of be understood in the larger historical context of his grievously, she rallies every instance in which Lan- Eighteenth-Century Prague: Ezekiel battle to protect and conserve traditional rabbinic dau endorsed, or himself practiced, customs that Landau (The “Noda BiyehudaH”) and culture—which for Landau included Kabbalah— originated with the advent of Kabbalah but were his Contemporaries from an array of new threats. close to universal by the 18th century, as evidence by Sharon Flatto Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 268 pages. $54.50 Flatto interprets Landau’s every reference to a kabbalistic idea or use of a kabbalistic term, no matter how

rom the Maharal’s mythical Golem to Kaf- tangential or parenthetic, as evidence of his mysticism. ka’s metamorphosed Gregor Samsa, Prague’s Jewish lore is suffused with mystery. While In her tellingly entitled chapter, “Mystical and of his passionate dedication to “spreading” and “the Maharal” (the acronym by which Rab- Modernizing Trends,” Flatto thus treats Landau’s “promoting” Kabbalah. Fbi Judah Loew is commonly known), is the most responses to the Haskalah, Sabbateanism, and Ha- When describing Landau’s hostility to the rise celebrated of Prague’s rabbis, and the Golem he sidism as all being of one cloth, with the single, tac- of the Hasidic movement in Eastern Europe, Flatto never created remains the city’s most stubbornly re- tical agenda of protecting the primacy of halakhic commits errors that are not merely exegetical. Aside silient Jewish symbol, its greatest rabbinical scholar practice and traditional Jewish education. She in- from using the misleading term mitnaged—prop- was Ezekiel Landau, who served as Chief Rabbi of sists that Landau’s opposition to the Sabbateans and erly applied only to those rabbis in Eastern Europe Prague and Bohemia from 1754 to 1793. Landau, actively engaged in combating the spread of Ha- commonly referred to as “the Noda Biyehudah” af- sidism—in describing Landau (the Hasidic move- ter his book of halakhah, brilliantly negotiated the ment did not reach Prague in his day), her effort to challenges posed to Prague’s Jews by governmental categorize him is especially problematic: modernization and the Enlightenment. The institu- tions he created ensured the survival of traditional Many rabbis were both involved in Jewish legal Judaism in a modernized context. However, he is re- and communal matters and deeply committed membered most for his battles with Prague’s Jewish to kabbalistic study and a pietistic lifestyle. mystics and messianists. The recurrent convergence of these categories, In her new book, The Kabbalistic Culture of Eigh- as best demonstrated by the rabbinic giants, teenth-Century Prague: Ezekiel Landau (the “Noda Landau and Elijah, the Gaon of Vilna, has often Biyehudah”) and His Contemporaries, Sharon Flatto been overlooked. Much of the opposition to aims to radically revise the image of Landau as an the new Hasidim came neither from ‘the rabbis’ antagonist of Jewish mysticism. Flatto argues that nor ‘the pietists,’ but rather from a group of not only was Landau immersed in Kabbalah from normative rabbinic authorities, such as Landau, his early years as a student in Brody, as has been well Emden, and Elijah of Vilna, who were both known, but that he pursued a lifelong “enterprise” to rabbis and pietists. spread kabbalistic lore and practice. Flatto buttress- es her argument with extensive citations from all of But the Gaon of Vilna was a celebrated ascetic, Landau’s writings, his sermons in particular, which never held any communal post, and wrote monu- are replete with kabbalistic references and terms, all mental commentaries on central kabbalistic texts, of which Flatto rallies to prove her thesis. all of which earned him the title Ha-Gaon he- While neither Landau’s remarkable life nor his Hasid. None of this can be said of Landau, who vast published scholarship is properly remembered never authored an original kabbalistic work or today, his vital leadership, over almost a half-cen- commentary, and was hardly an ascetic recluse like tury, as the towering religious figure of one of Eu- Ezekiel Landau (the Noda Biyehudah), ca. 1840. the Gaon. Landau had absorbed kabbalistic influ- rope’s largest and most important Jewish commu- (Courtesy of the YIVO Archives.) ences, but this fact only puts him in the company of nities during the period of its critical transition to almost every rabbi since the expulsion of the Jews modernity, had a lasting impact on Jewish history from Spain. and has only recently begun to receive the scholarly Hasidim not be confused with any general reticence, Flatto’s very erudition and assiduously narrow ap- attention it deserves. In addition to Flatto’s book, let alone hostility, towards Kabbalah as such. If Flat- proach to the primary sources is, ironically enough, Israeli scholar Maoz Kahana’s brilliant doctoral dis- to’s reading of her sources were reliable, and if her her book’s real Achilles’ heal. She seems barely able sertation on Landau—a work that sets up a seri- use of sources were more impartial, her book would to contain her excitement at each and every encoun- ous challenge to Flatto’s book, and to which we will have constituted a stunning revision of the image of ter with a kabbalistic notion, or the offhand use of return below—is scheduled to be published later the Noda Biyehudah as it has emerged both in pious the most commonly employed terms, which she this year. hagiographies and critical academic studies. repeatedly depicts as “striking” and “remarkable” Following a sketch of 18th-century Prague Jewry, Unfortunately, Flatto’s work is essentially when they are nothing of the kind. Though such the first section of Flatto’s book focuses not on Lan- flawed by her unwavering determination to estab- terms originated in kabbalistic lore, they had long dau’s “kabbalism” but rather on his complicated re- lish its central, governing idea, causing her to read become a standard part of rabbinic Hebrew. Use of sponses to the emergence of the Haskalah in Central primary sources tendentiously. She interprets Lan- words such as devekut (clinging to God), kavanah Europe. However, this too is marshaled to support dau’s every reference to a kabbalistic idea or use (spiritual intent in religious observance), tikun (cos- Flatto’s main thesis. She argues that the historical of a kabbalistic term, no matter how tangential or mic correction attained through religious ritual),

36 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 and so forth, prove only that Ezekiel Landau was an 18th-century rabbinic intellectual. In her determination to establish that Landau was on a mission to “promote kabbalistic study and books,” Flatto relies most heavily on a small handful of haskamot, or approbations (something like elabo- So . . . what am I rate book blurbs), penned by Landau for kabbalistic works. But by Flatto’s own reckoning, “of the sixty- eight approbations he wrote during his lifetime, five thinking? were for kabbalistic works.” Moreover, the impor- tance that Flatto attributes to the genre of haskamot is problematic. Flatto herself admits that there is no evidence that Landau actually read the works he en- dorsed. In one case, she is driven to insist, without a shred of evidence, that “unlike some of Landau’s Here’s what we’re thinking: other approbations, in this endorsement, he asserts Who’s Against a Two-State Solution? that he ‘saw the composed book,’ so he must have by Efraim Karsh known of its kabbalistic content.” This dubious as- sumption is compounded by the accompanying Torah and Service footnote: “In this approbation Landau only praises by Jack Wertheimer

Peretz’s treatment of aggada and musar. However I Natan Sharansky Israel vs. the International Criminal Court maintain that he also knew of and approved of its by Anne Herzberg kabbalistic contents.” This all reflects a surprising ignorance of the Who Needs Denominations? by Yehudah Mirsky both casual and courteous manner in which such n one year of publication, haskamot were, and are still today, both requested Jewish Ideas Daily has Sympathy for the Devil and granted in rabbinic society. Such approbations I by Allan Nadler were routinely granted purely on the basis of the built a vibrant intellectual Jews and Capitalism author’s reputation, or his friendship with the au- community eager to read by Elliot Jager thority in question. In the specific case referred to our original feature pieces above, namely of Landau’s approbation of Peretz The Last Great Yiddish Poet ben Moses’ Beit Peretz, the author and Landau were and our daily selection of top by Ruth R. Wisse close youthful colleagues in the Brody kloyz (study articles from around the web. No Springtime for Palestinians? center), and Landau could hardly have denied him by Sol Stern the favor of a haskamah, even had he never seen the work, just as he had done for two other members of Come see for yourself! Spirituality Lite the kloyz. Plus, sign up for our FREE by Aryeh Tepper Similarly, Flatto finds great significance in Lan- e-mail newsletter and get Let My People Go dau’s alleged support for the publication of prayer by Joshua Muravchik books that contained kabbalistic elements. But the best of Jewish thought in Prague Jews—like all 18th-century Jews—considered Jewish Studies in Decline? the Kabbalah to be an inseparable part of traditional your inbox: by Alex Joffe Judaism. It is neither “striking” nor “remarkable” Of Calendars and Controversy that their Chief Rabbi supported the publication by Michael Carasik of siddurim that included a smattering of mystical www.jidaily.com/jrb poems and references to long-accepted kabbalistic Shakespeare in Yiddish customs. by Nahma Sandrow Halakhah for Americans o explain Landau’s repeated protestations, es- by Elli Fischer Tpecially in his later writings, that he eschewed all involvement in the nistarot (mysteries), Flatto The Best Proletarian Novel Ever Written interprets him as writing esoterically, going so far by D.G. Myers as to compare him to Maimonides as interpreted Jesus for Jews by Leo Strauss. Upon this entirely fanciful com- by Eve Levavi Feinstein parison, she builds a theory that Landau delib- erately hid “his desire to disseminate kabbalistic Sifting the Cairo Genizah ideas” which “overrides his concerns about their by Lawrence Grossman esoteric and potentially subversive nature.” And much more . . . Unfortunately, Flatto’s reading of Landau’s hal- akhic responsa is just as skewed. By far the most fascinating of these legal texts concerns the per- missibility of exhuming the body of an infant who died before eight days, in order to perform a post- JEWISH DAILY mortem circumcision. Landau prohibits it unless it is done within a few days of the burial and before IDEAS the body’s decomposition. In the course of this The best of Jewish thought. responsum, Landau preemptively deflects a pos- sible objection from kabbalists who might argue www.jewishideasdaily.com that if the child possessed the transmigrated soul of an adult, he would suffer from “fear of the fi-

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 37 nal judgment,” which mystics believed afflicts the over the course of a long and stormy career. Most maskilim, false messianism, and kabbalism. This adult dead when their graves are opened. Landau astonishingly, given how much credence she pays in itself completely undercuts Flatto’s insistence on flatly dismisses this as superstition with no legal to Landau’s youthful studies in the Brody kloyz, separating Landau’s assault on the Sabbateans and relevance. Flatto never once mentions the change of posture Frankists from his allegedly enduring reverence Flatto, alas, completely misconstrues this res- of that very institution toward kabbalistic study for the kabbalists of his day. posum, incorrectly claiming that Landau permit- during the height of the Frankist controversies. The vehemence of Landau’s denunciation of ted the exhumation based on the basis of the kab- When Frankists provoked public burnings of the practitioners of Kabbalah is in itself remarkable, as balistic doctrine of gilgul neshamot (transmigra- Talmud in Poland, the rabbis of the Brody kloyz, he accuses them of opening the door to idolatry by tion of souls). More bafflingly, she contends that in May 1756, issued an unprecedented ban on the spreading doctrines such as the ten sefirot (emana- Landau’s deflection of a possible objection to ex- public teaching of the major texts of Kabbalah, in- tions) to the uninitiated. As Landau himself attests, humation based on mystical superstitions in fact cluding the Zohar, stating, “we prohibit anyone to his polemic would shock many listeners. In the constitutes proof of his devotion to Kabbalah, study these writings, even those of ‘the Ari’ (Rabbi course of this sermon, Landau issues an astonish- arguing that “he exhibits his kabbalistic procliv- Isaac Luria). It is strictly prohibited to study any of ing confession regarding the “sins of his youth.” As ity here by initiating this unsolicited mystical dis- them before the age of 40.” it dramatizes precisely what is entirely missing from cussion, which could have been avoided.” Flatto Flatto’s book, I will conclude my review with Lan- adds in the footnote to this bizarre claim that “the t is precisely the careful reading of primary dau’s own words: original question that prompted this responsum Isources, attention to changing historical cur- mentioned neither the kabbalistic doctrine of rents, and careful consideration of biographical There is another sect of those who, on account gilgul neshamot nor the legal complexities that evolution, so lacking in Flatto’s book, that distin- of our many sins, believe they are ever rising would result from it.” But, “the original question” guishes the work on Landau’s thought and times higher. If only they will not cause a great is not extant, and Landau offers no more than by Maoz Kahana, referred to above. Among Ka- descent! They are kabbalists of our times, those a one-line summary of the presenting problem hana’s great achievements is the interpretation of who engage in the study of the Zohar and raised by the questioner. a major section of one of Landau’s most polemical writings of the Ari. Woe unto me if I speak out, Ultimately, the most serious problem among sermons that had been censored from all published and woe if I do not . . . If I do speak . . . I know the many that plague her book is Flatto’s ahistori- editions of the compilation Derushei Ha-Zelah. they will say: ‘this rabbi’s heart is not complete cal and non-biographical approach to her subject. The reason for its censorship, as Kahana and his as he lacks the merit of understanding the true She conflates the young kabbalistic initiate in the teacher, Michael Silber, conclusively demonstrate secrets of Torah’ . . . As for the “true secrets of Brody kloyz with the mature and wizened leader in their collaborative article in the latest edition of Torah” that they study, in my youth I probably of a major Jewish community beset by problems the Israeli journal, Kabbalah, was the controversial knew them as well as they, and thank God who created precisely by the popularization of the nature of this text’s unprecedented attack on the rescued me from them. Kabbalah on the part of its antinomian messian- students of Kabbalah, particularly the practitio- ic distorters. She pays absolutely no attention to ners of Lurianic kavanot (devotions) in Landau’s Allan Nadler is a professor of Jewish studies at the dates of the primary sources she cites, neither time. The censored text devotes separate but equal Drew University, and the author of The Faith of the does she allow for the possibility that Landau’s time to denouncing the three distinct “heresies” Mithnagdim: Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rapture posture towards Kabbalah might have evolved of Landau’s day—the Enlightenment deism of (Johns Hopkins University Press).

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38 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 Readings Yehuda Amichai: At Play in the Fields of Verse

By Robert Alter

ehuda Amichai was an exuberant person of course an intrinsic feature of most poetry, but its Mitchell’s lines are noticeably longer than Ami- with a lively, impish sense of humor. He spectacular centrality in Amichai is noteworthy. Let chai’s, but that is probably unavoidable because the was, at the same time, a melancholy man. me illustrate from “The Visit of the Queen of She- structure of literary Hebrew makes possible a conci- Perhaps the note of melancholy, accom- ba,” a poem in eight parts from his second volume sion ordinarily unavailable in English. The provoca- Ypanied by a certain hint of fatigue, became more pronounced in his later years, but Amichai’s sense of The idea sometimes voiced that he is an easily translatable fun never entirely left him. Both traits of his person- ality are present in his poetry in shifting combina- poet, perhaps almost as good in English as in Hebrew, is tions and permutations, with the playfulness actu- ally feeding into the darker brooding of his poems. profoundly misconceived. Amichai’s playfulness is most spectacularly evi- dent in his use of figurative language. He did not, of verse that is one of his most inventively exuberant tive rhyme of “pudenda” and “agenda” is certainly in as far as I can tell, have a fixed aesthetic program creations. Here are the first five and a half lines of the spirit of the Hebrew original, and the alliteration for using a particular kind of imagery. Rather, his the sixth poem, in which Solomon and the Queen of d’s and r’s in the first two lines here is a decent imagination reveled in seizing possibilities for of Sheba are brought together in his spectacular pal- gesture toward approximating the abundant sound- metaphor from unlikely directions (he was simi- ace. I will first offer a transliteration of the Hebrew play of the Hebrew. Nevertheless, the acrobatic vir- larly inventive in conversation). Amichai’s charac- in order to be able to refer to the sounds of the origi- tuosity with which Amichai somersaults from word teristic move was to light on some familiar object nal. Then I will quote Stephen Mitchell’s heroically to word through likeness of sound is scarcely per- and, in a quick gesture, usually not felt as a conceit, resourceful translation that nevertheless encounters ceptible in the English. use it to focus an emotion or even serve as a gate- a barrier of untranslatability. Let us look at the first line of the Hebrew, con- way for vision: “Longing is shut up inside me like sisting of just three words and surely air bubbles / in a loaf of bread.” “My girl left her one of the most untranslatable lines love on the sidewalk / like a bicycle. All night long in all of Amichai’s poetry. The literal outside and in the dew.” “For my heart has lifted sense is “the rose of her blind sex.” (The weights of pain / in the terrible competitions.” “I term for the woman’s sexual part, ‘er- see you taking something from the fridge, / lit up vah, has been translated elsewhere by from within it in the light from another world.” Or- some of Amichai’s translators with a dinary material objects sometimes take on a wild much blunter Anglo-Saxon term, but life of their own: “All night long your empty shoes it is not an obscenity. It is the decorous screamed / by the side of your bed.” There are con- biblical word for the “nakedness” one is stant crisscrossings between emotion or abstrac- forbidden to uncover, so it is an indica- tion and materiality, as in “A will like the fingers tion of sexual anatomy fraught with a of a cast-off glove.” This frequently leads to a flam- sense of secretness or taboo.) But what boyant syntactic bracketing together of terms from has happened here is that the sound of disparate semantic realms. This device is nowhere one word has led to another, and then more insistently and extravagantly used than in another, each one a little surprise: vered the brilliant long autobiographical poem, “The (rose) produces ‘ervatah (her sex), Travels of the Last Benjamin of Tudela.” Here is a which then engenders ‘iveret (blind). brief representative instance: The alliteration of r-sounds and the replication of the phonetic pattern e- Echoing and hollowing Rosh Hashanah halls consonant-e-consonant (“e” as in “egg,” and Yom Kippur machines of bright metal, with the first “e” accented) continues prayer-gears, an assembly line of bowing and in the next line, but that is a secondary prostration effect. The Queen of Sheba’s lovely sex, Yehuda Amichai, Jerusalem, April 16, 1986. (© Hulton in a melancholy mumble. Archive/Getty Images.) mirrored in King Solomon’s marvel- ously reflective floor because she has As this quick sampling suggests, the athletic nothing on under her robe, is a vered play of Amichai’s figurative imagination is evident Vered ‘ervatah ha-iveret because of the traditional poetic association of even in translation. But the idea sometimes voiced mukhpelet beritspat hare‘i. Meyuteret the rose with the beloved woman’s body, and also that he is an easily translatable poet, perhaps al- because of the petal-like delicacy of the female most as good in English as in Hebrew, is profound- kol ha-zehirut, bah nakat, anatomy. So, vered becomes ‘ervatah, which then ly misconceived. He had an acutely sensitive ear to ‘et yashav ve-od shafat is ‘iveret, the last two syllables of this word sound- the distinctive resonances of the Hebrew words ing like a virtual homonym of vered. And there is a he used, the deep backgrounds of allusion they acharonei ravim discovery in this association of sound: The Queen’s evoked, and the significant shifts of register they sexual part is blind because it is an orifice, unlike enabled. The dewy rose of her dark pudenda the eye, without the capacity of perception, but In the serious play of Amichai’s poetry sound be- was doubled in the mirrored floor. His agenda also because desire is blind, impelling one where it, gets like sound, leading to surprising and meaning- seemed superfluous now, and all the provisions not the reasoning mind, wants to go. Toying with ful matches between words one might have thought he had made for her, the decrees and the decisions the possibilities of an English equivalent for this were unrelated and creating startling new percep- he had worked out while judging the last amazing line, I came up with nothing better than tions of things. Sound-play of one sort or another is of the litigants… “The sunflower of her sightless sex,” which has a

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 39 certain alliterative momentum but entirely lacks “her longing and the rings of her belly.” The dele- ties of sound. Every one of the first seven words has the sense in the Hebrew of word generating word tion of the second phrase was perhaps done in the an l-sound. The word for “she dreamt,” chalmah, is through phonetic resemblance. interest of efficient statement, but the omission is picked up in its cognate noun chalomot (dreams), One should add that in these lines Amichai ex- unfortunate. The joining of emotion and concrete which then magically engenders chelmon (egg- pands a medieval midrash on the biblical account yolk), a word that shares all three consonants of the of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (1 Kings triliteral root but no etymological or logical connec- 10). There is a vigorous interplay here between pon- The joining of emotion and tion. This combination is followed by the rich allit- dered texts and the imagined lived context that goes eration and assonance of oneg donag, which sounds beyond allusion. concrete object is a characteristic like a near-rhyme in the Hebrew. One gets a sense that the words are copulating through sound, that in efore we move on to more somber uses of Amichai move, extending the the fantastic imagery an orgy of language has been Bplayfulness in Amichai’s poetry, I would like initiated, in keeping with the storm of desire of the to consider one more extended passage from “The high-spirited verbal circus of the African queen. Visit of the Queen of Sheba” in order to observe Finally, at the end of the poem, the Hebrew poses a fuller range of its linguistic inventiveness. Here poem. a different challenge to the translator that is equally is the fourth poem in the sequence, entitled “The characteristic of Amichai’s poetry—an image taken Journey on the Red Sea”: object is a characteristic Amichai move, extending from the apparatus of Jewish tradition, boldly dis- the high-spirited verbal circus of the poem. The placed from its original context and scarcely intel- Fish blew through the sea and through captains navigate both by the map of the queen’s ligible in English without a cumbersome footnote. the long anticipation. Captains longing and the rings of her belly, just as the fish, The mysterious “cantillations” underneath the plotted their course by the map perhaps performing as instrumentalists, blow world and the sea are ta‘amei neginah, the indica- of her longings. Her nipples preceded her like through the sea itself and through the queen's long tions of musical tropes that guide a person chanting scouts, anticipations. Less significantly, the “sea and ship” at a haftarah, the passage from the Prophets recited in her hairs whispered to one another the end of the sixth line in the English are actually synagogue on the Sabbath after the reading of the

Solomon and the Queen of Sheba by Tintoretto/Jacopo Robusti (1518-1594). (© Scala/Art Resource, NY.)

like conspirators. In the dark corners between “sea and hull”—the Hebrew dofen suggests, in fact, Torah. The ta‘amei neginah are little musical nota- sea and ship the inside of the hull, which makes a better match tions, squiggles and dots above and below the let- the counting started, quietly. with “dark corners.” In any case, much of the wild ters in the Hebrew text. As the Queen of Sheba sails A solitary bird sang inventiveness of figurative language is evident: the through the Red Sea on her way to meet the fabled in the permanent trill of her blood. Rules fell Queen of Sheba’s “nipples preceded her like scouts” Solomon, the world and the aqueous realm around from biology textbooks, clouds were torn like both because she is headed into unknown territory her are, like the Hebrew biblical texts, underscored contracts, and because she is aroused. with markings of song: “everything sang each other.” at noon she dreamt about In a yoking of concrete and abstract combined The exuberance of invention that is exercised so making love naked in the snow, egg yolks with a strategy of breaking open idioms that the spectacularly in “The Visit of the Queen of Sheba” dripping young Amichai may have picked up from Dylan remains a driving force of Amichai’s poetic imagina- down her leg, the thrill of yellow beeswax. All Thomas, “Rules fell / from biology textbooks, tion even when the mood of his poetry is somber. the air clouds were torn like contracts,” a whole world is Consider a poem from the volume Even the Fist Was rushed to be breathed inside her. The sailors pulled apart by the rapture of desire. Instructively, Once an Open Hand with Fingers, written more than cried out the sexiest moment in the poem is also the point three decades later in 1989. Here is “Summer Eve- in the foreign language of fish. at which the play of language is most intense: “she ning by a Window with Psalms,” in my translation: dreamt about / making love in the naked snow, egg But underneath the world, underneath the sea, yolks dripping / down her leg, the thrill of yellow Close scrutiny of the past. there were cantillations as if on the Sabbath: beeswax” sounds like this in the Hebrew: chalmah How my soul yearns within me like those souls everything sang each other. ‘al / mishgal be-sheleg lavan va-chalomot chelmon / in the 19th century before the great wars, ve-oneg donag tzahov. A literal, and unfortunately like curtains that want to pull free Mitchell’s translation here is on the whole a nonsensical, rendering of these ten Hebrew words of the open window and fly. faithful and resourceful rendering of the Hebrew, at would be: “she dreamt of making love in white snow least until the erotic high-point of the poem where and dreams of egg-yolk and the pleasure of yellow We console ourselves with short breaths, the sound-play in the original becomes spectacular. beeswax.” What makes this sequence work wonder- as after running, we always recover. One small lapse before then occurs in the fourth fully in the original is the way, yet again, one word We want to reach death hale and hearty, line (the third in the Hebrew), which should read tumbles headlong into the next through similari- like a murderer sentenced to death,

40 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 wounded when he was caught, whose judges want him to heal before he’s brought to the gallows. I think, how many still waters can yield a single night of stillness Re-Locating Herod’s Temple and how many green pastures, wide as deserts, A NEW THEORY IN LIgHT Of ANcIENT LITERARY EvIdENcE can yield the quiet of a single hour and how many valleys of the shadow of death ecently uncovered archaeological do we need and historical evidence may now “Antonia was a fortress overlooking the Temple” bring into serious question a basic prem- to be a compassionate shade in the pitiless sun. ise of contemporary biblical archaeol- – Josephus, Antiquities, Book 20

ogy: The assumption that the Western Steps where or “wailing” Wall was once a part of the Double colonnades, Pontius Pilate I look out the window: a hundred and fifty as reported by “washed his Western Wall first-century Jewish Temple, destroyed in eyewitness hands” of the Actual Temple Josephus, Roman Temple the Roman/Jewish war of 66 to 70 CE. “Jesus problem.” psalms pass through the twilight, Site? connected the Praetorium It is 600 feet south Temple precinct a hundred and fifty psalms, great and small. “...the arguments regarding the of Fort Antonia with Fort Antonia. What a grand and glorious and transient fleet! size of Fortress Antonia, based on Josephus and other evidence I say: the window is God we have about Roman military encampments, must be and the door is his prophet. addressed. Slated flagstones surround Martin’s thesis is so bold that it Fort Antonia for protection. Southeast corner is a 40-story building in The first line is ordinary modern Hebrew with cannot be ignored.” elevation. Traditional site where Ya'akov, a tzaddik and the brother of Jesus,was hurled perhaps even a hint of the bureaucratic. The expres- – Prof. James D. Tabor, Chairman to his death. Valley of Kidron sion at the beginning of the second line is a Bibli- Dept. of Religious Studies UNC Charlotte Azazel Bridge Exit waters from Gihon Spring. Both Tacitus and Aristeas report Bridge of the Red Heifer that cism, mah tehemeh nafshi, “How my soul yearns,” the Temple sat directly over a “gushing” and “inexhaustable leads to the Mount of Olives. In The Temples that Jerusalem Forgot, supply”of water. and carries the literate Hebrew reader directly back noted historian Dr. Ernest L. Martin to Psalm 42:5, which in King James reads, “Why art weaves together a collection of long- “None of the Jewish Temples were ever built dormant and seldom-cited eyewitness ac- thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disqui- counts of ancient and medieval Jerusalem in the area of the Dome of the Rock. Although a popular eted [tehemi, the verb I have rendered as “yearns”] to present a compelling premise: Simply, theory, it is free from any support from biblical sources. th the walled rectangular structure that is Martin is the first modern scholar to realize this.” in me?” I would guess that Amichai’s 19 -century today the grand centerpiece of metropoli- souls might be ones he knew from the great nov- tan Jerusalem–assumed by one and all to – Dr. George Wesley Buchanan be the walls of the Second Temple–was in Prof. Emeritus • Wesley Theological Seminary els of the period—Madame Bovary, Middlemarch, fact the Roman Fortress Antonia, and the Anna Karenina— souls that could at least dream of only structure in first-century Jerusalem able to garrison the five-thousand-strong stones of Fortress Antonia, not the Temple ting over an ever-flowing spring” with grand shimmering horizons of fulfillment. The qui- Roman 10th Legion. walls. And while placing the Temples a “gushing” and “inexhaustible” supply et segue from souls to curtains tugged by the wind Surprisingly, the present Western over the Dome of the Rock has become of water flowing into and out of the Wall has been officially accepted as the established Temple Mount lore, there is Temple. No such natural water source at the open window and wanting to fly is another western wall of Herod’s Temple only no reference in either Scripture or early has ever existed on the Haram-esh-Sharif. one of those characteristic splicings of the spirit and since the 16th century, following a secular sources associating either Temple Martin’s premise, depicted above, centuries-long “dark ages” of lost knowl- with a natural outcropping of rock. shows the massive Fortress Antonia over- the material quotidian that we observed before. edge and misinformation. The natural phenomenon that did looking the Second Temple. His book The poem then moves into a meditation on By connecting a series of historical have great relevance to the Temples’ loca- presents a detailed, century-by-century “dots” and clues–historical records, early tions is running water. Classical writers chronicle of how the religious authorities mortality in the second stanza. The short breaths pilgrims’ eyewitness accounts–Martin’s and eyewitnesses Tacitus and Aristeas of all three Abrahamic creeds lost the are a figure for all the countless ways in which life premise elegantly reconciles many seem- both describe the second Temple as “sit- knowledge of where the Temple stood. takes the wind out of us, though they may also be ingly contradictory accounts of the lay of the land and the positioning of buildings “Everything you ever knew about Jerusalem is wrong.” an ironic glance at our culture’s preoccupation with in Herodian Jerusalem. Hershel Shanks, Editor-in-Chief, Biblical Archaeology Review Magazine physical fitness. The simile of the murderer is a vivid For example, early eyewitness December, 1999 accounts–including Josephus–place instance of how Amichai uses surprising figurative the height of the Temple at a dizzying Few modern scholars have a better working knowledge of Temple Mount equations to shock us into recognition. Perhaps we 40 stories, a preposterous figure when topography than Dr. Ernest L. Martin. Over a 5-year period, Dr. Martin positioning it on the present Haram- worked with noted archaeologist Prof. Benjamin Mazar and Hebrew are not all guilty of some terrible crime, but exis- esh-Sharif or “Temple Mount.” Martin, University in extensive excavations on Mt. Zion.* His research on other tence treats us as though we were, sentencing each however, places the Temple 600 feet topics has been included in such standard works as Handbook of Biblical south, and over the Gihon Spring in one of us to death, and at best indulging the desire the City of David, with its foundations Chronology, and his books have garnered favorable reviews from such for the condemned person to come to the gallows running deep into the precipitous Kidron noted theologians as F. F. Bruce and W. H. C. Frend. Valley, another detail often noted by early *TIME magazine, September 3, 1973 hale and hearty. travelers to Jerusalem. The Book of Psalms, announced in the title and Further, the huge foundation stones “Martin’s arguments are very persuasive” uncovered by Prof. Mazar in the late alluded to in the second line, comes front and cen- sixties exactly match the dimensions Prof. Jack Finegan, Author, Handbook of Biblical Chronology ter in the third stanza. Of course, one can describe given by Josephus in describing the For more reviews and graphics visit: www.whomovedthetemple.com the still waters and the green pastures and the Val- 3 EASY WAYS TO ORDER TODAY! ley of the Shadow as allusions to the twenty-third Locating Herod’s Temple psalm, but I think something is happening here, 1. Online: www.WhoMovedTheTemple.com in Light of Ancient 2. Call: 1-800-852-8346 Literary Evidence. and in the rest of the poem, that goes beyond al- 90-minute Interview 3. Mail coupon to: CenturyOne Books with Prof. George lusion. The speaker is contemplating the biblical Wesley Buchanan on 111 South Orange Grove Blvd. Suite 300-JR, Pasadena, CA 91105 2 audio CDs. $14.95 text—he is, as he sits at the window on a summer evening, “with” Psalms—in the light of his own ex- ❏ The Temples that Jerusalem Forgot - Softcover Book, 485 pages - $24.95 ❏ Locating Herod’s Temple in the Light of Ancient Literary Evidence. 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Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 41 The poem’s penultimate stanza takes this move a of an aged nation, like the strange instruments involves an intricate play of sound similar to what step beyond allusion. The psalms on which the speak- of a ghost orchestra, like some odd motionless we observed in the sexual imagery of “The Visit er has been brooding become, through metaphor, bottom fish deep in the waters of time. of the Queen of Sheba”: “All is gold of grief, silver physical objects that meet his eye, like the window A collection of ritual objects donated by Dr. of longing, / copper of calamity.” The use of al- and the curtains. A miniature armada of the hundred Feuchtwanger, literation in the Bloch-Kronfeld translation is re- and fifty canonical psalms passes before him in the Jerusalem dentist. And whoever hears this will markably resourceful, but the clustering of related fading light. These psalms make a grand array, for assume sounds in the Hebrew is still more intricate and they are moving poems he knows and loves, but they a delicate smile on his lips, like well-wrought intense: ve-hakol zehav ’akhzavah ve-khesef kisufim are also something passing by, transient (cholef). The filigree. / u-nechoshet ha-choshekh. The first of the three poet can admire their splendid display but he cannot phrases, zehav ’akhzavah (literally, “gold of disap- reconcile their promises and consolations with his This contemplation of ritual objects—presumably pointment”) repeats so many phonemes that it cre- own sense of the human condition. under glass—becomes a moving elegy for the van- ates a sense, like the examples we looked at from This perception of an unbridgeable gap between ished Jews of Europe. The poem quickly moves from Amichai’s early erotic poem, that the second word the speaker and the remembered text leads to the the spice boxes, used in the havdala ritual that marks is somehow generated by the one that precedes it. starkly simple language of the assertion of the po- the end of the Sabbath through “fragrant generations The same dynamic is even more pronounced in the em’s last two lines: “I say: the window is God / and of sacrifice”—dorot nikhoach is literally “generations next two phrases. Kesef kisufim (silver of longing), the door is his prophet,” which are obviously framed of fragrance” but nikhoach is a term for fragrance as- suggests an intrinsic link between the two terms, on the model of “Allah is God and Mohammed is sociated with sacrifice in the Bible—to the genera- which display the same three-letter root, k-s-f, and his prophet.” Such an appropriation of theological tions of Jews who held those spice boxes and chanted may conceivably have an etymological connection language to express a secular sense of reality oc- the words of the ritual. A series of poignant puns is (the face turned silver-pale through longing). The curs often in Amichai’s poetry. The poem began initiated in the fourth line. “Sabbath nights,” that is, final phrase,nechoshet hachoshekh (literally, “copper with a man sitting at a window, looking out into the Saturday nights, in Hebrew is motzaei shabbat, liter- of darkness”) combines a replication of consonants twilight. It concludes, having woven in and out of ally the exit or going-out of the Sabbath. This inno- with strong assonance, so that the last two syllables Psalms, with the declaration that, after all, we have cent idiom indicating the end of the holy day is trans- of each word, choshekh / choshet, each with a penul- only the here-and-now: there are no beckoning ho- formed by word-play into a grim image of extinction, timate accent, almost perfectly echo each other, only rizons of aspiration, as in the 19th century, and the from the exit of the Sabbath to the exit into death. the consonant at the end changing. The result of all Lord is not our shepherd; there is only the full reve- Three lines down, “in desire and love,” is an intensi- this interfusion of sound is that the precious metals latory presence of what we can see and touch. fying rich rhyme, be-ta’avah ve-ahavah, which is im- out of which the ritual objects were fashioned are mediately followed by the “long metal hands,” which transmuted into mythological tokens of an eternally n Amichai’s last book of poems, Open Closed are actually finger-shaped pointers, usually made of irremediable sadness: the gold, silver, and copper IOpen, published in 1998, this idea of biblical silver, used for reading the Torah. The metal hands used to glorify God’s commandments are now wit- texts as objects that are part of the reality of the pointing to what is gone then lead, in a macabre pun, nesses of an unending bleakness to which they are speaker is more pronounced than ever before, to human hands severed from their bodies. wedded by their very sounds. and a good many of the poems are exegetical or “Seder plates that rotate at the speed of time,” is In the last three lines of the poem, the speaker midrashic. The mood of melancholy is still deep- a nice translation of a line that provides a concen- emerges from his darkly meditative immersion in a er in this volume, which abounds in meditations trated thematic focus for the entire poem. The con- vanished world to the surface of the Jerusalem mu- on transience, loss, and death, including the mass ventional phrase is, of course, “the speed of light,” seum and the quotidian reality of a dentist named deaths of European Jews at the hands of the Nazis. that ultimate limit of velocity, but here, it is time it- Feuchtwanger who collected ritual objects. The in- Yet the manifestations of poetic playfulness—pun- self that is imagined traveling at 186,000 miles per junction to smile at the end of the poem is an en- ning and sound-play and wildly inventive meta- second, in its horrific rush sweeping away all that forced substitute for tears: we have no choice but to phor—are almost as abundant here as in “The Visit was once cherished. If something could travel at the go on, after all that has been irrevocably destroyed, of the Queen of Sheba,” as can be seen in “Gods speed of time, it would seem to be standing still, and but the smile on the lips is mere artifact, ironically Change, Prayers Are Here to Stay,” which I shall that is the odd and gloomy reflection that occurs to mimicking the artifacts on display that are the sole quote in the admirable translation by Chana Bloch the speaker as he looks upon the seder plates and sad remnants of the Jews who once used them in joy and Chana Kronfeld. kiddush cups from an era that with all its human and devotion. population is forever gone. Play is something we generally associate with A collection of ritual objects in the museum: At this point, Amichai’s partiality for sports im- pleasure, and there are abundant illustrations of that spice boxes agery comes to the fore, reinforcing a sense of deep- nexus in Amichai’s poetry, especially, though by no with little flags on top like festive troops ly gloomy playfulness. The cups for the kiddush rit- means exclusively, in his erotic poems. But language and many fragrant generations of sacrifice, ual celebrated at innumerable Sabbath and festival is, after all, an instrument of meaning, and so the and the memory of many Sabbath nights that dinners become “trophies . . . victory cups”—also play with language also becomes a vehicle for the did not end in death. often kept under glass—“from the track and field of discovery of unanticipated meanings, some delight- And happy menorahs and weepy menorahs and the generations.” The generations of fragrance at the ful, others somber. Amichai was a zestfully inventive oil lamps beginning of the poem are now human generations poet who reveled in the linking of words through with the pouting beaks of chicks like children that once strove, attained their triumphs, and in the intricate combinations of sounds and in the joining singing, end, were wiped out. Amichai’s fondness for meta- of the most disparate concepts through the force of their mouths open in desire and love. phors drawn from athletics reflects not only his metaphor. He exercised this faculty with equal vigor And long metal hands to point out everything own interests—he was an avid soccer fan—but also whether he was imagining the allure of the sensual that is no more. The human hands that held a sense that this realm of play regulated by compli- world or peering into the abyss. them— cated rules is an apt analogue for poetry. Play on the soccer fields or the running track is long since underground, severed from the bodies. Amichai’s predilection for the yoking of hetero- a competition bound by rules in which someone Seder plates that rotate at the speed of time geneous elements through metaphor plays a key ends up taking home the championship cup. Play in so it seems they are standing still, and kiddush role here in the superimposition of sports imagery the fields of verse when it is done as skillfully as in cups on ritual objects, the joining of the sacred with the Amichai’s poetry has no losers: the reader, through in a row on the shelf like soccer trophies profane. A related move, in which playfulness leads the gift of the poet’s virtuosity, is offered the prize of or victory cups from the track and field of to melancholy, is the pointed reversal of the tradi- repeated new recognitions. generations. tional idea of God as father and Israel as his chil- All is gold of grief, silver of longing, dren, in which the ritual objects are imagined as Robert Alter’s most recent book is The Wisdom Books: copper of calamity. A collection of ritual objects toys of a baby god given him by his aged people. Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with like the gaudy toys of a baby god, the gift The summarizing image of the ritual objects Commentary (Norton).

42 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 LETTERS (continued from page 4) fully—led Arabs away from that path and toward nial, which he unreservedly condemns. My review Crossing the River their refusal to acknowledge an independent Jewish contained many criticisms of Achcar, but he is well political entity. Sixty years after Israel’s founding, and worth listening to, as he is trying to speak across the our publication is stimulating, informative, thirty-five years after Husseini’s death, his urging to great divide that separates Israel from its enemies. Yand comprehensive. However, someone must “kill the Jews wherever you find them” is repeated have been emulating air-traffic controllers and and acted upon by far too many. Admitting Hussei- thus missed an obvious error. ni’s Jew-hatred, but claiming he was of no importance Cooking By Any Other Name Vanessa Ochs’ review discusses two haggadahs in the Arab world, is a poor effort to make excuses for with a connection to the capital area: Cokie and many people who deserve to be condemned. learned some things from Michel Gurfinkiel’s Steve Roberts’ interfaith work, and the venerable Perhaps most outlandlishly, Penslar suggests Ireview of Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My “Wahington Haggadah” at the Library of Congress. that the Arabs were “dumbfounded” by Israe- Search for Jewish Cooking in France by Joan Na- The review locates the former “just across the Po- lis’ invocation of the Holocaust with regard to than, for example, that Rue Manin (near the Buttes tomac in Bethesda” and the latter as “back on the the Six-Day War, as if it was just silly for those Chaumont park) and Porte de la Villette are new DC side of the Potomac.” Since I live four blocks paranoid Jews to take Nasser seriously when he Jewish food centers. from the Roberts’ home, I can assure you the one amassed 100,000 troops in the Sinai and said, But Gurfinkiel does a lot of quibbling: “The book does not have to cross the Potomac to get to Wash- “Our goal is clear: to wipe Israel off the map.” doesn’t have a very French title: Quiches, Kugels, and ington from Bethesda, MD. In fact, one does not Jerome M. Marcus Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France. have to cross that river anywhere in Maryland to Lower Merion, PA Quiche is more American fantasy than true French reach the District. If one crosses the Potomac, one staple; no one eats kugels in France nowadays; and will find oneself in Virginia, where your reviewer the French do not speak of ‘cooking’ but rather of apparently lives. I hope she has a good GPS. Derek Penslar Responds: ‘cuisine or ‘the table.’” Other than that basic flaw in geography, your The book was written for an English-speaking— Spring 2011 issue is quite good. I fully appreciate Mr. Marcus’ concerns and anxiet- and not a French-speaking—audience. Did the re- Daniel Mann ies about Israel’s situation vis à vis the Arab world, viewer come to my house? I happen to make kugels Bethesda, MD and in my review I made his point that the case for in France nowadays. And while the French words correction (Spring 2011) Zionism rests in the Jews’ right to self determina- for cooking are cuisine and la table, the English and tion, not the Holocaust alone. The value of Achcar’s alas very ordinary word for those terms is cooking, In Maxim D. Shrayer’s “Lucky Grossman,” the text book is its attempt to show how the traumatic legacy as unchic and banal as that word might be! on page 17 states that 200,000 Jews were murdered of the Holocaust has distorted Israeli perceptions of Sheila Malovany-Chevallier by the Nazis in Berdichev in September 1941. The the Arab world and triggered Arab Holocaust de- Paris, France number should read 20,000.

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Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 43 Lost and found Loaves in the Ark

BY MATT GOLDISH

his striking tale of mistaken but nonethe- presence of a converso family recently returned to Ju- God’s immanence. From a rationalist point of view, less pure faith, divine fiat, and free food daism in Safed is not unlikely. In addition, Luria was the rabbi is perfectly correct in his rebuke, if not in its in 16th-century Safed comes from a book widely believed to have had access to the deliberations delivery. This, however, is a mystical tale whose sen- by Rabbi Moses Hagiz entitled Mishnat and decisions of the “heavenly academy.” timents are altogether with the immanent God who ChakhamimT (Wandsbeck, 1733; pp. 52). It is one of The Christian upbringing of the conversos plays loves and draws enjoyment and even sustenance from a number of versions in circulation, including some an important role in the story. The Portuguese man’s the simple, passionate commitment of the converso, as fanciful variants. error may well relate to the Catholic doctrine of tran- well as, apparently, the all-too-human enjoyment of Hagiz (ca. 1671-1750) spent much of his life substantiation, according to which the wine and wafer the synagogue attendant. The rabbi’s combination of wandering through Europe fighting the heresy of the ingested at communion become the actual substance rational theology and personal coldness—a trait often Sabbateans. While the Hebrew wording is slightly ob- of the blood and body of Jesus. This man’s invented associated with rationalism—constitutes, apparently, scure, his apparent claim to have heard the tale from ritual (enabled, it should be noted, by the labors of his such a serious breach with true Jewish values that he contemporaries of Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572) wife) is a sort of mirror image of the Eucharist: God must die for his error. can't be true. Luria, the great kabbalist of Egypt and consumes the bread as a sacrifice from man. Perhaps Safed, did, however, have contact with conversos— this is why the rabbi is so quick to label this an act of those descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews anthropomorphic heresy. The original showbread, one story was told to me by trustworthy whose ancestors had converted to Christianity in the of the regular offerings given by the ancient Hebrews people and elders from that generation 14tth and 15th centuries. A tradition preserved in the in the Tabernacle and Temple, was never meant to be of special wisdom who lived in the days late-16th-century hagiography Toledot ha-Ari reports “eaten” by God; the priests, in fact, were entitled to eat of Rabbi Isaac Luria of blessed memory that Luria acquired his first mystical book from a re- it after it had been displayed for a week. [theA Ari, z”l ]. An episode occurred concerning one cently re-Judaized converso who could not himself The end of the story plays on the tension throughout of the conversos [anusim] who came from Portugal read Hebrew. Portuguese priests who visited Safed pre-modern Jewish thought between a rationalistic ap- to the upper Galilee, to the holy city of Safed, may at the time found homesick conversos there anxious proach to Judaism that emphasizes the transcendence God rebuild and establish it. He listened to the rabbi to hear the news from their land of origin. Thus, the of God, and a mystical approach that emphasizes of one of the holy congregations there who delivered a sermon on the matter of the showbread that was of- fered in the Holy Temple every Sabbath. Apparently, this rabbi sighed sorrowfully during his sermon and LAUNCH OFFER! commented, “But now, in our multitude of sins we have no worthy vessel [i.e. the Temple] that is able to draw down the divine effluxshefa’ [ ] on the unworthy [the rest of the world] as well. This converso, in his simplicity, went home and told his wife that under all circumstances, every Our lively, Friday she must bake him two loaves of bread risen thirteen times and kneaded in purity. They should intelligent also be beautified in every manner and baked with care in the oven at home. His intention was to of- discourse is fer these at the sanctuary of God [le-hakrivam lifnei heikhal Hashem; that is the ark where the To- now available rah scrolls are kept]; perchance God would show him favor, accept them, and consume this offering. on Kindle. His wife did it just as he had described, and each Friday he would present the two loaves at the ark. He would pray and beg before blessed God that they Anywhere. would be accepted with good will, that God would consume them, that they would be pleasant to Him, Instantly. and that they would make Him glad. He would speak words in this way; he would talk and plead like a son pleading before his father. He would then put down the loaves and exit. $1.99 PER MONTH After this, the synagogue attendant would come and take the two loaves of bread without investigat- ing whence they came or who brought them. He FOR 11 ISSUES would eat them with great enjoyment and content- Get your subscription started today! ment. Later, at the time of the evening prayer, that visit http://amzn.to/jJzXip God-fearing [Portuguese] man would run to the ark, and, finding that the loaves had vanished, would be The World’s filled with exceeding joy in his heart. He would go Commentary Greatest Monthly home and say to his wife, “Praise and thanks to the Lord, may He be blessed, for He has not rejected the

44 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 proffering of a poor man—he has already received the bread and eaten it while it was hot! For God’s New From Academic Studies Press sake, do not diminish your efforts in making them, 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135 and be very careful, because we have no other means Tel: (617) 782-6290 Fax: (857) 241-3149 of honoring Him. We see that this bread is agreeable to Him, so it is our duty to bring Him contentment [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com [nachat ruach] with them.” He kept this practice up For ordering or further information please visit our website at with great regularity for some time. www.academicstudiespress.com It happened that one Friday, the selfsame rabbi of the holy congregation—the one whose sermon Modern Jewish Thinkers: From Mendelssohn to Rosenzweig had led this man to bring the loaves—was at the syna- by Gershon Greenberg gogue, standing on the bimah reviewing the sermon ISBN 978-1-936235-31-5 he planned to deliver the next day, the Holy Sabbath. 498 pp. cloth The man now came according to his good tradition carrying his loaves and approached the ark. He began $65.00 to utter his thoughts and prayers as was his habit, nev- Historical conditions at the end of the eighteenth century opened an arena between the for- er noticing that the rabbi was standing on the bimah, merly autonomous Jewish community and the Christian world, which yielded new departure because of the deep exhilaration and joy he felt at that points for philosophy, including revelation and philosophical reason, dialectically considered; moment from bringing this gift before the Lord. rationalism as intellection and advancing consciousness, heteronymous revelation, historicity, The rabbi remained silent, observing and listen- and universal morality. In Modern Jewish Thinkers, Greenberg restructures the history of modern ing to all that the man said and did. He became truly Jewish thought comprehensively, providing first-time English translations of Reggio, furious. He called to the man and castigated him, Krokhmal, Maimon, Samuel Hirsch, Formstecher, Steinheim, Ascher, Einhorn, Samuel David saying, “Fool! Does our God eat and drink? It must Luzzatto and Hermann Cohen. The availability of these sources fills a gap in the field and stimu- be that the attendant has been taking it. And you, lates new directions for teaching and scholarly research in modern Jewish thought, going be- meanwhile, thought it is God who has been accept- yond Spinoza and Mendelssohn at one end, and to popular 20th century figures on the other. ing them! It is a great sin to attribute any physical Sex Rewarded, Sex Punished: A Study of the Status 'Female Slave' in qualities to God, may He be blessed, for He has nei- ther a body nor the shape of a body.” He continued Early Jewish Law by Diane Kriger rebuking the man in this manner until the attendant ISBN 978-1-934843-48-2 arrived to take the loaves as he usually did. When 424 pp. cloth the rabbi saw him, he called him over and told him, $48.00 “Give thanks to this man for that which you came to get. Who exactly was it that took the two loaves that A masterful intersection of Bible Studies, Gender Studies, and Rabbinic law, Diane Kriger ex- this man was bringing here to the ark every Friday?” plores the laws pertaining to female slaves in Jewish law. Comparing Biblical strictures with The attendant unabashedly admitted to it. later Rabbinic interpretations as well as contemporary Greco-Roman and Babylonian codes of When he heard this, the [Portuguese] man be- law, Kriger establishes a framework whereby a woman’s sexual identity also indicates her legal gan to cry. He asked the rabbi to forgive his error status. With sensitivity to the nuances in both ancient laws and ancient languages, Kriger adds in misunderstanding the sermon, and for thinking greatly to our understanding of gender, slave status, and the matrilineal principle of descent in he was performing a great deed when he was in fact the Ancient Near East. guilty of a transgression, as the rabbi had said. While all this was going on, a special envoy from A Coat of Many Colors: Dress Culture in the Young State of Israel Rabbi Isaac Luria (of blessed memory) arrived for by Anat Helman the rabbi. He declared in the name of the godly rab- ISBN 978-1-934843-88-8 bi of blessed memory, “Go to your house. Tell your 242 pp. cloth household that tomorrow, at the moment you were $59.00 to deliver your sermon, you will surely die. The de- A Coat of Many Colors investigates Israel's first seven years as a sovereign state through the cree for this has already been promulgated.” unusual prism of dress. Clothes worn by Israelis in the 1950s reflected political ideologies, The rabbi was shocked by this terrible news and economic conditions, military priorities, social distinctions, and cultural preferences, and all hurried to Rabbi Luria in order to learn what his sin played a part in consolidating a new national identity. Based on a wide range of textual and and transgression had been. Rabbi Luria responded, visual historical documents, the book covers both what Israelis wore in various circumstances “I have heard that it is because you have put a stop and what they said and wrote about clothing and fashion. Written in a clear and accessible to God’s contentment. For, from the day the Temple style that will appeal to the general reader as well as students and scholars, A Coat of Many was destroyed God had no contentment like that He Colors introduces the reader both to Israel's history during its formative years and to the rich enjoyed at the moment when that converso would field of dress culture. bring the two loaves with the simplicity of his heart and present them before the ark, thinking that God Antisemitism on the Campus: Past and Present accepted them from him. Your action in obstruct- Edited by Eunice G. Pollack ing him from bringing them caused the proclama- ISBN 978-1-934843-82-6 tion of your death sentence with no chance of a 474 pp. cloth reprieve. The rabbi who had delivered the sermon $65.00 went home and commanded his household [to pre- Antisemitism on the Campus: Past & Present, edited by Eunice G. Pollack, is the first book of a pare]. On the Sabbath day, at the very hour when he multidisciplinary series on Antisemitism in America to be published by Academic Studies Press. was to preach, he passed away into the next world In this volume, twenty-one leading scholars explore the roots and manifestations of an- as Rabbi Isaac Luria, the man of God, had told him tisemitism and anti-Zionism and the efforts to combat them at American, British, and South would happen. African colleges and universities in the 20th and 21st centuries. Topics such as antisemitism and anti-Zionism on individual campuses, in black militant groups, on the Far Left, and in academic organizations; students’ exposure to antisemitism and anti-Zionism through popular Matt Goldish is Samuel M. and Esther Melton Professor culture and the internet; discrimination against Jewish faculty, students and organizations; of Jewish History and director of the Melton Center of the anti-Israel boycott/divestment movement, among others, are covered. Jewish Studies at The Ohio State University.

Summer 2011 • Jewish Review of BooKS 45 Last word Hope, Beauty, and Bus Lanes in Tel Aviv

BY Noah Efron

’m standing behind a Brazilian oak dais in The sweet and earnest cluelessness of this pricks Chomsky in the Hungarian Pastry Shop in Morn- the Einav Cultural Center rotunda, where my heart, as when my daughter, at the age of 3, de- ingside Heights. This, I now can see, was my true the Tel Aviv-Jaffa City Council meets month- clared her intention to marry my wife and live with acculturation, as there is nothing so Israeli as with- ly, speechifying for priority bus lanes. The us forever. It is easy to see now that I took myself ering pessimism about Israel itself, and lacerating councilI chairwoman, Yael Dayan, sits to my right, too seriously, misunderstood how things work, and self-criticism. I perfected my Tel Aviv sigh, a prêt- admonishing me, in her harsh smoker’s growl, to overestimated my talents and the plasticity of my a-porter reply to each new political outrage, equal shut up and sit down. The mayor, Ron Huldai, sits character. Still, in 1982 there were reasons for me to parts exasperation, desperation, and resignation. to my left, scolding in a stage whisper: “You are a disgrace. I expected integrity from a university professor but you have none. You bring shame to Recently, I’ve lost my talent for anguish about Israel, and your profession, your family, your city. You have no honesty; you are a populist, a demagogue.” I for despair. My decades of fashionable ennui now seem keep my eyes pinned to the text of my speech, but like time poorly spent. stumble on the words. My tongue is fat and my mouth dry. I am frantic and exhausted, and run- ning through my mind is, “I’m being trash-talked believe I could leave an imprint on Israel in a way that As all this was going on, disillusionment with by the mayor of Tel Aviv . . .” and then, with self- I could not in America. Israel then seemed less than politics and politicians has flourished. For the past pity, “How did I ever get here?” fully formed. Only sixteen years had passed since the three elections, a popular bumper sticker has read This wasn’t the first time I asked myself that Six-Day War, nine since the Yom Kippur War, and “Mushchatim, nimastem!”—roughly an amalgam question. Twenty-six years ago, fresh out of Swarth- four since the Camp David Accords brought peace of “You Crooks Disgust Us!” and “Throw the bums more College, I enlisted in the Israeli infantry and with Egypt and the evacuation of Sinai. Settlements out!”—and it captures a prevailing mood. In the three months later found myself trudging through in the West Bank and Gaza were still new and small; past decade alone, two Presidents (Ezer Weizman Sidon, Lebanon at dusk, carrying a gun I could so too was “Peace Now.” Like Greenwich Village in and Moshe Katsav) and one Prime Minister (Ehud barely shoot, following orders in a language I could the 1930s, the country seemed small. In my first Olmert) have resigned under criminal investiga- scarcely speak, in a war I could hardly understand six months in Israel, I met the famous philosopher tion. The son and campaign manager of a Prime for a cause I could hardly remember. All at once Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the famous novelist Chaim Minister (Omri Sharon) has gone to prison, as have nothing around me, nothing in the life I had only Gouri, the famous politician Luba Eliav, and the fa- a Finance Minister (Avraham Hirschson) and a La- just then chosen for myself, made any sense to me mous kibbutz historian Muki Tzur. I studied Midrash bor and Welfare Minister (Shlomo Benizri). Today’s anymore. “How did I ever get here?” I said on that with Ari Elon, whose father was a justice on the Su- Foreign Minister (Avigdor Lieberman) stands ac- first night over the border, my breath fogging the preme Court. It seemed that everyone in the whole cused of bribe-taking, fraud, and money launder- frigid December air. country was just an Egged-bus ride away. ing. Political office has come to be seen by many as a These two stories bracket my adult life. What What’s more, the atmosphere was improvisation- sinecure for the debauched and debased. brought me to Israel in 1983 was politics, or some al. If other armies are regimented, Israel’s had a seat- fancy notion of it that I’d gotten in college. I was des- of-the-pants ad hocness to it. Ehud Barak’s early fame ecently, though, I’ve lost my talent for anguish perate to wrench myself from the predictable path I was owed to a stunt in which he cruised through Bei- Rabout Israel, and for despair. Perhaps this is the was on—another American Jew destined to be pro- rut in the front seat of a Mercedes wearing a woman’s result of some perverse mid-life crisis, in which my fessor of something somewhere—and I knew that wig, arriving safely to assassinate a thug behind the decades of fashionable ennui suddenly seem like time to remake myself I needed to be elsewhere. People 1972 Munich Olympic murders in his home. On Tel poorly spent. Maybe it has something to do with see- make their societies, I figured, and societies make Aviv’s streets, one still saw horse-drawn carts, Czech ing my kids grow up unmistakably Israeli and un- their people. Athenians made Athens, Aristotle had motorcycles with sidecars, boxy three-wheeled cars mistakably beautiful. Part of it, certainly, is the dawn- written, and Athens made Athenians. Israel was a made out of fiberglass, motorized bikes, and home- ing realization that in truth we are not a nation in place that I could mold, and it was a place I reckoned made hybrids that teased the imagination. Television decline. While some things have gotten worse since I I wouldn’t mind being molded by. The earliest Jew- had only come to the country in 1966, and color tele- arrived here almost thirty years ago, others have got- ish pioneers to Palestine had a slogan for this: Anu vision not until 1980. Just after I arrived, Jonathan ten better, and sometimes the retreat and advance are banu Artza li-vnot u-lehibanot bah (“We’ve come Miller, a kid I’d known growing up, new to the coun- linked. Israeli politicians are indicted these days at a to the Land to build and be built by it”). I joined a try like me, made it as a musician, appearing on tele- rate without precedent, yes, but this fact owes more to group moving to Israel from the United States that vision and filling big halls. His band came to perform rapidly rising standards of accountability for public described its aims in a pamphlet mimeographed for my unit in basic training. In Israel of the early servants than it does to rapidly declining moral stan- onto card stock: 1980s, everything from sedans to sitcoms to celebri- dards among politicians themselves. ties was provisional and open to redefinition. So, at Once one is willing to see them, there are, in fact, Moving away from the fragmentation of least, it seemed to me. And then it didn’t. many indications that in politics here there are more western urban society, we hope to weave our Soon after I arrived I stopped believing that I possibilities and opportunities than conventional lives into an integrated whole . . . Of course, could much change the country, or that the country wisdom allows, and reasons for hope that, in time, socialism is basic to us . . . We want to be could much change me. I retreated from all that had problems that now seem intractable will find resolu- actively involved in our region of Israel. From brought me here, including the hope of being a dif- tion. Some are large and some are small, little more the day we arrive we want to be in contact with ferent person than I would have been in America. than anecdotes. In May 2003, for example, three our neighbors—other settlements, development I quit the kibbutz to which I’d moved, and enrolled hundred Israeli Arabs and Jews traveled together to towns, Arab villages, cities—we do not want to in a Ph.D. program in hopes of becoming a profes- Auschwitz-Birkenau where they tearfully intoned a be islands unto ourselves . . . We will become sor of something somewhere. I became as cynical long list of names of Jews murdered on that spot by different people. Our children will grow up and alienated and self-righteous about politics as Nazis. The organizers, a priest named Emil Shufani differently. any grad student in John Lennon glasses reading and a journalist named Nazir Magally, both of Naz-

46 Jewish Review of Books • Summer 2011 From left: Yael Dayan, Noah Efron, and Ron Huldai at theEinav Cultural Center. (Illustration by Mark Anderson.) ereth, explained that their purpose was to expand the poor discreetly, so as not to embarrass; how free halal, the first collectivist moshav in Palestine. It is their own spirits by coming to understand firsthand performances of Molière in the park could improve easy to forget that the parents of Mayor Ron Hul- the depths of Jewish suffering and the source of many literacy. The high voltage goodness and generosity dai, who talked trash as I stuttered about my busses, Jewish fears. What is most remarkable about this trip of spirit in those living rooms finally jolted me out were Ozer and Henke Huldai, who helped estab- is that, by conventional wisdom, it could not have of thirty years of fashionable pessimism about Israel lish Kibbutz Hulda after moving to Palestine from taken place at all. It finds no place in the standard sto- and its possibilities. Lodz. Millions have lived and died in a century and ry, rehearsed in most mornings’ newspaper, in which Running for the Tel Aviv-Jaffa City Council was a quarter of Zionist history, and many have suffered the ability of Jews and Palestinians to regard one an act of hope, and serving has been a source of hope. in many ways. But equally, many have awakened another with empathy is vanishing. Much else also It reminds me that the obdurate issues of the settle- to the suffering of others as well as our own. Golda belies the dystopic tale of Israeli decline. When my ments and Hamas and the rest, though they are mat- Meir’s casual dismissal of Palestinian aspirations wife first sought an OB/GYN residency in Tel Aviv ters of life and death, produce a distorted image of was shared by almost all Israelis only forty years in the 1980s, she was turned down on the grounds Israel and of our politics when considered in isola- ago, yet it finds little echo in today’s Israel, not on that it was unwise for women to treat women, as they tion. For most of the past year, I’ve been agitating to the right or the left. As I write, young Israelis who lacked the natural objectivity needed to do so. (She get the mayor to build a network of fast, cheap bus- could be working in high-tech are tutoring kids in completed her residency in Boston.) Now, most OB/ ses with their own lanes, high-tech ticketing, and the run-down part of town, living in cheap apart- GYNs in Israel are women, a small fact that reflects GPS that changes the traffic signals as they approach. ments furnished from the street. Israel’s history is a a grand improvement in the lives of women here. In Thousands have joined the campaign, and lobbying blip, and though too many of us complain that it is stark contrast to its portrayal abroad, Israel has be- has won us the support of the Ministry of Transporta- static, in fact, it has never stopped moving. Rather come a gentler, more decent place for almost every- tion. If it now takes an hour and a quarter for a single than suggesting fixed and irrevocable decline, the one within its borders. No matter what bad things mother in Jaffa to get to and from classes at the uni- arc of this short history suggests that there remain are noisily happening here, alongside them are quiet versity, once we’ve got our bus system in place, it’ll many possibilities still unrealized. things, easily overlooked and surely good. take her twenty minutes. When I think of Israeli Muslims, Christians, and This is also what I have seen in local politics. In crusading for these busses, I am finally plant- Jews weeping together on the railroad platform of Running for City Council, I spent two months do- ing my olive tree in this soil. I am saying, along Auschwitz, or when I remember the woman two ing what aspiring local politicians do: trudging door with many others, that I believe in the future of this blocks from my apartment gathering canned goods to door, shaking hands, speaking and listening to place, that I believe that one day will lead to the next, from her neighbors to deliver to poor families in city residents. By election night, I’d sat in 1,500 liv- and that we can make this city, this country, better. Jaffa, I conclude that my old cynicism was a sucker’s ing rooms, balancing a glass of water on my knees, Amidst the sturm und drang of geopolitics, quotid- fancy. Hope is a better bet. I find myself believing discussing politics. People told me with feeling how ian life continues and, in its way, it is beautiful. that, with time, in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, we’ll even get our their schools could be improved; how neighbor- It is easy to forget how little time has passed since priority bus lanes. hood bomb shelters could be rehabbed into art cen- Israel was established, how new this place is, how ters for kids; how Arab kids from Jaffa and Jewish recent the vintage of its successes and its failures. It kids from Tel Aviv could be encouraged to know is easy to forget that the father of Yael Dayan, the Noah Efron serves on the Tel Aviv City Council and is and trust one another; how medical care could be woman who reproached me at the dais, was Moshe the author of Real Jews: Secular, Ultra-Orthodox and extended to refugees from Eritrea and Sudan; how Dayan, a general who executed wars and negotiated the Struggle for Jewish Identity in Israel (Basic Books) composting could be promoted; how bus lines an historic peace with Egypt, and that his parents and, most recently, of Judaism & Science: A Historical could be improved; how food could be supplied to Shmuel and Devorah Dayan were founders of Na- Introduction (Greenwood).

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