Dennis Ross on Yitzhak Rabin JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS Volume 8, Number 1 Spring 2017 $10.45 The Jewish Language Wars Alan Mintz Allan Arkush Stuart Schoffman A New History of Yiddish vs. Hebrew The Dream of Hebrew in the Yishuv Esperanto Ruth R. Wisse Revisits a Resonant Poem Allan Nadler Rediscovers an Expression of Litvak Love Matti Friedman Runs Down Dizengoff Street with Erez Bitton Editor Abraham Socher BRANDEIS Senior Contributing Editor Allan Arkush JEWISH JUSTICES OF THE SUPREME COURT Art Director Betsy Klarfeld David G. Dalin Managing Editor “I thought I knew a lot about the Supreme Court’s Amy Newman Smith eight Jewish justices, since I have known six of them personally. But I learned so much more from David Editorial Assistant Dalin’s brilliant and readable account. A must-read Kate Elinsky for anyone interested in Jewish, American, or legal history.” Editorial Board —Alan Dershowitz Robert Alter Shlomo Avineri Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, Harvard Law School Leora Batnitzky Ruth Gavison Moshe Halbertal Jon D. Levenson “[A] landmark collective biography. That all-too-rare Anita Shapira Michael Walzer history that serves up lessons from the past that speak J. H.H. Weiler Leon Wieseltier to our moment in time.” Ruth R. Wisse Steven J. Zipperstein —Pamela S. Nadell President of the Association for Jewish Studies Publisher “Memorable details and gripping narrative. Dalin Eric Cohen provides an invaluable account of the contributions of Advancement Officer these remarkable justices.” Malka Groden —Jeffrey Rosen President and CEO, National Constitution Center Associate Publisher Author of Louis D. 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Please send all unsolicited manuscripts to the attention of the editors at [email protected] or to our edi- Brandeis Series in American Jewish The Brandeis Library of Modern Jewish torial office. Review copies should be sent to our editorial office. History, Culture, and Life Thought Advertising inquiries should be sent to ads@ jewishreviewofbooks.com or call Dalya Mayer at 917-947-0947. Visit us at www.upne.com/brandeis.html or call 800-421-1561 JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY PRESS @UPNEBooks JEWISH REVIEW Volume 8, Number 1 Spring 2017 OF BOOKS www.jewishreviewofbooks.com LETTERS 4 Uninspired Cousins and Jewish Excellence, The Menorah and Its Flame, A Joke Retold, Romcom, and Remembering Salonica FEATURE 5 Stuart Schoffman The Great Family Circle Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, “the father of modern Hebrew,” famously raised his own son to be the first child in almost 2,000 years to speak only Hebrew. When Itamar Ben-Avi grew up, he was fascinated by . Esperanto. Esther Schor’s new book on L.L. Zamenhof, his would-be universal language, and those who still speak it inspired Stuart Schoffman to revisit the oddly parallel careers of Ben-Yehuda and Zamenhof. REVIEWS 10 Alan Mintz Adventure Story The Story of Hebrew by Lewis Glinert 13 Michael Weingrad The Exilarch's Lost Princess Septimania: A Novel by Jonathan Levi 14 Francoise Mirguet "Repent, Repent" How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture by David A. Lambert 17 Daniel B. Schwartz The Sephardic Mystique German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic by John M. Efron 19 Steven E. Aschheim Of Memory, History—and Eggplants Where Memory Leads: My Life by Saul Friedländer 23 Allan Arkush On the Importance of Booing Mayne Yiddishe Mame An Unpromising Land: Jewish Migration to Palestine in the Early Twentieth Century by Gur Alroey • Babel in Zion: Jews, Nationalism, and Language Diversity in Palestine, 1920–1948 by Liora R. Halperin 27 Dennis Ross A Life with Consequences Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman by Itamar Rabinovich 30 Jordan Chandler Of Spies and Centrifuges The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals that Reshaped the Hirsch Middle East by Jay Solomon 33 Lance J. Sussman Big Tent Jews and the American Religious Landscape by Uzi Rebhun 35 Abraham Socher Is Love Stronger than Death? After One-Hundred-and-Twenty: Reflecting on Death, Mourning, and the Afterlife in the Jewish Traditionby Hillel Halkin READINGS 37 Ruth R. Wisse Funny How a Poem Can Get Under Your Skin On Celia Dropkin’s avant-garde Yiddish break-up poem and a political insight. 39 Matti Friedman Homer of Lod: The Indispensability of Erez Bitton The blind writer from Algeria is one of Israel’s most important voices, both in poetry and in policy. 42 Adam Kirsch From Hasidism to Marxism The radical publisher Verso has re-issued Isaac Deutscher’s The Non-Jewish Jew: And Other Essays. But what is a “non-Jewish Jew”? And what was Deutscher? LOST & FOUND 44 Saul Lieberman Chaim Grade: A Testimony Toward the end of his life, the talmudist Saul Lieberman published his only Yiddish essay, an appreciation for his friend, the novelist Chaim Grade as the great witness to a lost world. Translated and with an introduction by Allan Nadler. THE ARTS 47 Sarah Rindner Mystical Teachings Do Not Erase Sorrow Two Worlds Exist by Yehoshua November 49 Jenna Weissman Joselit Ready to Wear Uncommon Threads: Clothing & Textiles from the Yeshiva University Museum Collection The Jewish Wardrobe: From the Collection of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem edited by Esther Juhasz LAST WORD 51 Matt Goldish A Very Jewish Encounter On the cover: Potayto Potahto by Mark Anderson. LETTERS Uninspired Cousins and Jewish Excellence left and right of the menorah are pointed toward the century C.E.) and a synagogue chancel screen from As a footnote to Eric Cohen’s account of David Ben- central one, in keeping with the biblical instruction Ashkelon (5th to 6th century C.E.). A number of vi- Gurion as a young man (“Three Portraits of Jewish of mul p’nei ha-menorah. Hence it is clear that for the sual sources depict the menorah, with and without Excellence—at 29,” Winter 2017) and the paucity of Jewish icon, it is not the vessel itself that is of sacred flames, alongside other Temple vessels (e.g., the attendees at his Zionist lectures in North America: value (as would be the case, for example, regarding a showbread table and firepans) and other ritual ob- My maternal grandfather, Nathan Green, was a first Jesus-less cross in medieval Christian art) but rath- jects (lulav, etrog, and shofar). It seems reasonable to cousin of Ben-Gurion. (Green, not Gruen, was the er the flames themselves which are of spiritual and conclude that the menorah compelled interest ini- name under which the family came to the United eschatological significance—the vessel merely being tially as an object among other Temple objects and States from Płońsk in 1906.) My mother, the young- a necessity, since flames require a source of fuel. then later as a vehicle for its redemptive flames. est of four children, was 12 years old when Ben- Gurion arrived in New York in 1915. She recalled A Joke Retold that during his stay he was constantly “dragging”— In Joseph Epstein’s review of two books on Jewish to use her word—her father to one meeting or an- jokes (“Jokes: A Genre of Thought,” Winter 2017), other. (Also, he wore “funny caps.”) Nathan was a he retells a story that his friend the sociologist Hebrew-school teacher and shamus of the local shul Edward Shils told about the three untruthful syna- in Harlem. I don’t know whether he had any interest gogue members exposed by the rabbi. This is actu- in Zionism, but neither he nor any of his children ally a variant of the story Sholem Aleichem records were inspired to make aliyah. as being told to him at his own expense. A Jewish Raymond S. Hack traveler at a train station is persuaded to miss the Coconut Creek, FL last train before the Sabbath in order to complete a minyan. The traveler is put up for the night, urged Eric Cohen’s essay on Leo Strauss, Joseph Soloveit- to taste his host’s wife’s cooking, and so on for sev- chik, and David Ben-Gurion at the age of 29 is an eral days.