Eitan Fishbane Radiant Zohar JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS Volume 9, Number 3 Fall 2018 $10.45 Steven Aschheim Scholemania! Ruth R. Wisse The Bellarosa Disconnect Robert Alter Trilling’s Jewish Demons Rich Cohen Tweets and Bellows Zionist Ideas Nationalist Virtues Shlomo Avineri Christopher DeMuth Allan Arkush Editor Abraham Socher BRANDEIS Senior Contributing Editor Allan Arkush UNIVERSITY PRESS Art Director The Soul of the Stranger Betsy Klarfeld Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective Managing Editor Amy Newman Smith Joy Ladin Web Editor “An intellectual and spiritual journey illuminated by the audacity of Rachel Scheinerman faith in God. Ladin’s transcendent readings of scripture restore the luster of the revelation at Sinai.” Editorial Assistant Kate Elinsky Rabbi Burton L. 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Maurice Samuels, author of The Right to beyond.” Please send all unsolicited manuscripts to the attention of the Difference: French Universalism and the Jews Noah Feldman, Harvard Law School editors at [email protected] or to our edi- torial office. Review copies should be sent to our editorial office. Advertising inquiries should be sent to www.upne.com/brandeis.html | 800-421-1561 | @UPNEBooks [email protected]. JEWISH REVIEW Volume 9, Number 3 Fall 2018 OF BOOKS www.jewishreviewofbooks.com LETTERS 4 The Melting Pot and the Cheshire Cat, Yom Kippur Dance, The Courts and the People, and More FEATURE 5 Eitan P. Fishbane The Book of Radiance Daniel Matt’s massive new English edition of the Zohar is not only a great translation, it is also one of the great commentaries on the classic work of Jewish mysticism. Insofar as it is possible, Matt has brought the unfathomable, mysterious, and poetic depths of this “book of radiance” to the English reader. REVIEWS 9 Steven E. Aschheim The Secret Metaphysician Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah by David Biale • Gershom Scholem: An Intellectual Biography by Amir Engel • Stranger in a Strange Land: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem by George Prochnik • Gershom Scholem: From Berlin to Jerusalem and Back by Noam Zadoff 13 Glenn Dynner Visualizing Hasidism Hasidic Art and the Kabbalah by Batsheva Goldman-Ida • Historical Atlas of Hasidism by Marcin Wodziński, cartography by Waldemar Spallek 15 Stuart Schoffman Lost from the Start: Kafka on Spinoza Street Kafka’s Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy by Benjamin Balint 17 Robert Alter Man of Letters Life in Culture: Selected Letters of Lionel Trilling edited by Adam Kirsch 20 Michael Weingrad Lost in America Zot ani, Iowa (It’s Me, Iowa) by Galit Dahan Carlibach • Ha-morah le-ivrit (The Hebrew Teacher) by Maya Arad 22 Daniel Ross Goodman Torah U'Madda Modern Orthodox Judaism: A Documentary History by Zev Eleff 24 Christopher DeMuth Mending Walls The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony 27 Allan Arkush Zionisms, Old and New The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland—Then, Now, Tomorrow edited by Gil Troy • Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi 31 Shlomo Avineri A Normal Israel? In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea by Michael Brenner 35 Alan Verskin Talmuds and Dragons The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog by Adam Gidwitz, illustrated by Hatem Aly READING 38 Ruth R. Wisse Bellow, Broadway Billy, and American Jewry As Mark Cohen’s new biography reminds us, “Broadway” Billy Rose was America’s master showman for a quarter of a century. When a friend told Saul Bellow how Rose had saved a fellow Jew from an Italian prison in 1939 but refused to speak with him afterward, Bellow knew he had a story. THE ARTS 41 Frances Brent Art Over Vitebsk Chagall, Lissitzky, Malévitch, l’avant-garde russe à Vitebsk, 1918–1922 curated by Angela Lampe • Chagall, Lissitzky, Malevich: The Russian Avant-Garde in Vitebsk, 1918–1922 edited by Angela Lampe LOST & FOUND 44 Ariel Evan Mayse The Rebbe and the Professor After the war, the great Jewish historian Salo Baron wrote to Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, for help with his work on the Commission on European Jewish Cultural Reconstruction. As Hannah Arendt suggested in a side note to Baron, the commission probably wasn't “kosher” enough for Schneersohn, but their exchange illuminates a dark historical moment. LAST WORD 46 Rich Cohen Tweets and Bellows On the cover: Scholem at the Portae Lucis by Mark Anderson. LETTERS The Melting Pot and the Cheshire Cat Jack Wertheimer, David Biale, Edieal Pinker, and Tom Ginsburg Responds: For the last 25 years I have been applying Lewis Erica Brown at www.jewishreviewofbooks.com.) Mr. Marcus obviously sides with Friedmann on the Carroll’s famous description of the Cheshire Cat, proper role of judges in a democracy and would who “vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end Yom Kippur Dance hardly be comforted were I to list India, Pakistan, and of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained Ronald and Allis Radosh describe rebellious young other countries in which judges have both eviscer- some time after the rest of it had gone,” to American Jewish atheists “mocking the holiest day on the ated standing requirements and dominated the ap- Jewry. Even as the Reform and Conservative move- Jewish calendar” by holding a dance on Yom Kip- pointments process. There are many more examples ments now seek to boost their declining member- pur in their discussion of early 20th-century Jew- of countries, including some with relatively function- ship rolls and pay their bills by drawing non-Jews ish anarchists (“Free Radicals,” Summer 2018). No al legislative branches, in which the judicial role has into their ranks, smiling apologists continue to reas- doubt they were rebelling against tradition, but per- expanded even without that extreme combination. sure us that all is well . just different. But in fact we haps they also remembered a famous mishnah that The legitimacy of this global expansion of ju- are witnessing yet another Jewish historic tragedy, quotes Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel as saying that dicial power is hotly debated, and I am in print as albeit this time self-inflicted. on Yom Kippur “the maidens of Jerusalem used to being critical of the trend. But to understand the In his article “In the Melting Pot” (Summer 2018), go out dressed in white . and danced in the vine- alternative, we cannot fall back on an abstract con- Allan Arkush states that he “can’t believe in the long- yards, saying ‘Young men, look and see who you struct like “the people,” which hardly does justice term survivability of any form of Judaism in our will choose.’” Or maybe it is just a historical irony, of to the complexities of modern government, and it modern liberal democracy that isn’t rooted in solid which we Jews have more than a few. is the case that in most democracies (including my convictions and consolidated by a disciplined and Talia Kagan own), legislatures are currently held in particularly more or less segregated communal life.” Granted Tel Aviv, Israel low esteem. It is not for me to tell Israelis how to run Arkush is writing about the challenges confronting their democracy, but if the Knesset wants to, it could American Jewish life.