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The Mabam Strategy by Amos Yadlin & Ari Heistein JEWISH REVIEW Volume 10, Number 1 Spring 2019 $10.45 OF BOOKS John J. Clayton Nobody Expects the Inquisition: A Memoir Michael Weingrad Harold Bloom’s Science Fiction Diane Cole Giorgio Bassani’s Memory Garden Plus: Nathan Englander’s New Novel, Aleph-Bet Mysticism, Mizrahi Spies, and more Editor BRANDEIS Abraham Socher Senior Contributing Editor Allan Arkush UNIVERSITY PRESS Art Director Spinoza’s Challenge to Jewish Thought Betsy Klarfeld Writings on His Life, Philosophy, and Legacy Managing Editor Edited by Daniel B. Schwartz Amy Newman Smith “This collection of Jewish views on, and responses to, Spinoza over Editorial Assistant the centuries is an extremely useful addition to the literature. That Kate Elinsky it has been edited by an expert on Spinoza’s legacy in the Jewish world only adds to its value.” Steven Nadler, University of Wisconsin Editorial Board Robert Alter Shlomo Avineri March 2019 Leora Batnitzky Ruth Gavison Moshe Halbertal Hillel Halkin Jon D. Levenson Anita Shapira Michael Walzer J. H.H. Weiler Ruth R. Wisse Steven J. Zipperstein Executive Director Eric Cohen Associate Publisher Nadia Ai Kahn Chairman’s Council Blavatnik Family Foundation Publication Committee Marilyn and Michael Fedak The Donigers of Not Bad for The Soul of the Stranger Ahuva and Martin J. Gross Great Neck Delancey Street Reading God and Torah from Susan and Roger Hertog A Mythologized Memoir The Rise of Billy Rose a Transgender Perspective The Lauder Foundation– Wendy Doniger Mark Cohen Joy Ladin Leonard and Judy Lauder “This heartfelt, difficult work will “Walking through the snow to see “Comprehensive biography . Sandra Earl Mintz Wendy at the stately, gracious compelling story. Highly introduce Jews and other readers home of Rita and Lester Doniger recommended.” of the Torah to fresh, sensitive Tina and Steven Price Charitable Foundation will forever remain in my memory.” Library Journal (starred review) approaches with room for broader Pamela and George Rohr Francis Ford Coppola human dignity.” Daniel Senor March 2019 Publishers Weekly (starred review) Paul E. Singer The Lost Library Jewish Legal The Legacy of Theories The Jewish Review of Books (Print ISSN 2153-1978, Online Vilna’s Strashun Writings on ISSN 2153-1994) is a quarterly publication of ideas and Library in the State, Religion, criticism published in Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, by Bee.Ideas, LLC., 165 East 56th Street, New York, NY 10022. Aftermath of the and Morality Holocaust For all subscriptions, please visit www.jewishreviewofbooks. Edited by Leora com or send $39.95 ($49.95 outside of the U.S.; digital sub- Dan Rabinowitz Batnitzky and scriptions: $19.99) to Jewish Review of Books, PO Box 3000, Yonatan Brafman Denville, NJ 07834. Digital subscription orders must include an email address. Please send notifications of address changes to the same address or to [email protected]. For customer service and subscription-related issues, please call (877) 753-0337 or write to [email protected]. Letters to the Editor should be emailed to [email protected] or to our editorial office, 3091 Mayfield Road, Suite 412, Cleveland Heights, OH 44118. “Rabinowitz detects a breathtaking history . that “This rich, fascinating volume shows Jewish legal Please send all unsolicited manuscripts to the attention of the expresses the rupture of the Holocaust and the thought in dialogue with modernity, from the nation- editors at [email protected] or to our edi- contested visions of Jewish life after catastrophe.” state to reproductive technology, feminism, and torial office. Review copies should be sent to our editorial office. Advertising inquiries should be sent to Elisabeth Gallas, Leibniz Institute beyond.” [email protected]. Noah Feldman, Harvard Law School JEWISH REVIEW www.brandeis.edu/library/bup.html | 800-621-2736 OF BOOKS JEWISH REVIEW Volume 10, Number 1 Spring 2019 OF BOOKS www.jewishreviewofbooks.com LETTERS 4 Lachrymose Criticism?, Was Lincoln Jewish?, The Rebbe and the Professor, and The Transjordan Question FEATURE 5 Amos Yadlin & The Mabam Strategy: Israel, Iran, Syria (and Russia) In 2017, Israeli fighter jets hit an Iranian weapons facility Ari Heistein in Syria, and such strikes have continued over the last 18 months. But as Assad solidifies his victory in the Syrian civil war while Iranian and Russian forces remain on the ground, the next Israeli government must rethink its strategy in “the campaign between the wars,” known in Hebrew as mabam. REVIEWS 7 Shai Secunda Quarried in Air Sefer Ye ṣirah and Its Contexts: Other Jewish Voices by Tzahi Weiss • Victoria Hanna by Victoria Hanna 9 Steven E. Aschheim Moses and Hellenism Moses und Homer: Griechen, Juden, Deutsche: Eine andere Geschichte der deutschen Kultur (Moses and Homer: Greeks, Jews, Germans: A Different History of German Culture) by Bernd Witte 12 Lawrence Rosen Victim Enough? The Jews of North Africa During the Holocaust The Holocaust and North Africa edited by Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein 15 Diane Cole In Giorgio Bassani's Memory Garden The Novel of Ferrara by Giorgio Bassani, translated by Jamie McKendrick 18 Allan Arkush Seventy Years in the Desert Desert in the Promised Land by Yael Zerubavel • Concrete Boxes: Mizrahi Women on Israel’s Periphery by Pnina Motzafi-Haller 20 Yehudah Mirsky Universal Rights and the Particular Jew Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century by James Loeffler 23 Jesse Tisch Some Kind of Genius Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures by Adina Hoffman 26 Chloé Valdary The Fire Now Antisemitism: Here and Now by Deborah E. Lipstadt 28 Esther Schor America's Jewish Bridegroom Horace Kallen Confronts America: Jewish Identity, Science, and Secularism by Matthew J. Kaufman 30 David B. Green Our Man in Beirut Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel by Matti Friedman 32 Amy Newman Smith All or Nothing? kaddish.com by Nathan Englander READINGS 33 Elliott Abrams Lessons of the Soviet Jewish Exodus Between the mid-1960s and 1991, more than two million Jews left the USSR. To the extent that the Soviet Jewish exodus is remembered, its lessons are misunderstood. 37 John J. Clayton Nobody Expects I mug at myself in the mirror and recite the old Monty Python gag. 39 Michael Weingrad Harold Bloom: Anti-Inkling? The great critic’s greatest literary obsession? A little-known 1920 fantasy novel called A Voyage to Arcturus. LOST & FOUND 41 Isaac Bashevis Singer A Letter to Mama A story, with an introduction by David Stromberg. LAST WORD 47 Jake Marmer Disgruntled Ode On the cover: Outside the Café Royal by Mark Anderson. LETTERS Lachrymose Criticism? (and Agnon reminded Bellow), it is only in Hebrew The Rebbe and the Professor Dara Horn’s review of Black Honey, a film dedicated that our texts in other languages will be preserved— Ariel Evan Mayse’s translations of the correspon- to the poet Avraham Sutzkever (“Yiddish Heroism, hence, the Hebrew translation of Sutzkever’s oeuvre dence between Salo W. Baron and Rabbi Yosef Hebrew Tears,” Winter 2019), turns on a series of is a project of commemoration, of resurrection. Yitzchak Schneerson (“The Rebbe and the Profes- moments when people interviewed in the movie cry: Uri Barbash sor,” Fall 2018) were incredibly evocative, illustrat- the poet’s granddaughter when she reconstructs her Tel Aviv, Israel ing in two short letters the worlds of difference be- memory of a German actor announcing the death of tween two types of modern Eastern European Jews, her grandfather during a performance in Berlin; the Dara Horn Responds: the Hasid and the university-educated professor, Yiddish scholar Avraham Novershtern when he de- I thank both Anita Shapira and Uri Barbash for their contrasting approaches to reestablishing Jew- scribes Sutzkever requesting funding for his journal their thoughtful letters. Professor Shapira is utterly ish life after the Holocaust, and the role of the Jew- Di goldene keyt from the general secretary of the His- correct that Sutzkever is an unsentimental poet. My ish cultural treasures plundered by the Nazis in that tadrut in 1948, unaware that the man had just lost his review, however, was not of his poetry but rather process. son in the War for Independence; and Ruth R. Wisse of the film and how it inverts the traditional Zion- Dana Herman’s fine dissertation (“Hashavat Ave- as she describes an encounter with Sutzkever, who ist disdain for sentimentality (I am reminded of a dah: A History of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, accused her of not understanding the Holocaust. Last sarcastic poem by Yehuda Amichai entitled “You Inc.”) treats the history of both Baron’s initial orga- but not least, Ms. Horn also describes herself shed- Mustn’t Show Weakness”). What I found amazing nization, the Commission on European Jewish Cul- ding tears at a security checkpoint in Israel. about Black Honey was how it showed not only the tural Reconstruction, and its successor, Jewish Cul- I found this the wrong tone for a review of a movie power and unsentimental beauty of Sutzkever’s life tural Reconstruction, Inc., which was only given the about a great poet and a wonderful human being. The and work but also the astonishing way that his utter- authority to work in the Offenbach Archival Depot in last incident, the encounter with the soldier at the check- 1949. Before then, Max Weinreich, Lucy Schildkret point, was, I thought, too much. The story of Sutzkever (who became Lucy Dawidowicz), Seymour Pom- and of Yiddish poetry, even in Hebrew translation, does renze, and many others worked tirelessly to save and not need the embellishments of sentimentality. redistribute the libraries and archives brought to the Anita Shapira depot. Gershom Scholem had a bibliophilic field day Tel Aviv University in Offenbach before Baron’s organization got there.