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• W4379804513 abstract "The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature Peter Heinegg Adam Kirsch is a poet, critic, journalist, and director of the M.A. program in Jewish Studies at Columbia University. The task he undertakes here—a comprehensive survey of Jewish writing from the Bible to the twentieth century—is clearly impossible, especially since he's aiming at readers unfamiliar or marginally familiar with this mountain of material. And what polymathic prodigy could do full justice to all these diverse texts? No matter: despite some rough edges, Kirsch's fly‐over reveals many expansive vistas that are well worth the trip. Of course, the choice of readings is bound to be problematic. Kirsch comments on excerpts from eighteen sources (not coincidentally, in gematria 18 = “life”): Deuteronomy, the Book of Esther, Philo of Alexandria's Exposition of the Law, Josephus’ Jewish War, the Talmudic tractate Chapters of the Fathers, Benjamin of Tudela's Itinerary and Yehuda Halevi's Kuzari, Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, the Zohar, the Tsenerene and the Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln, Spinoza's Theological‐Political Treatise, the Autobiography of Solomon Maimon and Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem, the Tales of Nachman of Bratslav, Theodor Herzl's Jewish State and Old New Land, and finally Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the Dairyman. Whew. But no prophets, major or minor? No Job or Psalms? No Joseph Caro? No Moses Luzzatto? No Heine, Peretz, Kafka, or Buber? (Qoheleth answered this objection in advance, when he said (12.12), “Of making many books there is no end.”) Kirsch's treasure trove naturally defies summary, although he maintains it can be reduced to four basic themes: God, the Torah, the Land of Israel, and the Jewish people—a sound, if predictable, set of guidelines. But what the newcomer might find more surprising‐provocative is the almost unrelenting contradictoriness of the authors, who are constantly at odds with their heritage, with one another, and sometimes with themselves. Judaism may have a recognizable central vision (or visions); but it has no party line; and a lively dissonance, rather than tame harmony, is its signature. The trouble, or beauty of it all, begins in Deuteronomy (Greek for “second law” or “repetition of the law”). The text, or key parts of it, seems to be the “scroll” discovered by the high priest Hilkiah in the Temple during the reign of Josiah (622 BCE). The king is horrified because it reveals a body of law that the nation had been violating for centuries, in particular the foundational ban on idolatry. So forgetful had Israel, now reduced to the southern kingdom of Judah, become that it no longer even kept the Passover. How could this catastrophic state of oblivion have come about, since Moses had thundered so forcefully (e.g., in Dt. 13) against worshiping false gods and delivered such precise directions for celebrating the Passover (in Ex. 12—even before the event had occurred)? No explanation is given for this; but Kirsch calls Josiah's astonished encounter with the Torah the beginning of Jewish history. If so, it was a rather dark beginning; because the ferocious campaign the king subsequently led against Canaanite religion, destroying pagan shrines (the “high places”) and butchering their priests, proved to be of no long‐term avail. A generation after Josiah's death (609 BCE) the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem (586 BCE) and took the “cream” of the population off to exile in Babylon. Righteous as he was, Josiah's good deeds weighed less in the Lord's scale than the horrific crimes of his grandfather Manasseh (697–642 BCE), which included child sacrifice, and which ultimately doomed the country to its downfall (whence the perpetually nagging issue of corporate guilt). In one final insult, Josiah himself had been assured by the prophetess Huldah (2 Kings 22.20) that he would be “gathered to his grave in peace.” But in fact Josiah was slain in battle at Megiddo by the Pharaoh Neco. Back to Deuteronomy. In his last sermons to the Israelites supposedly gathered in the fields of Moab, Moses issues a vehement warning about what would later be called the Deuteronomic Principle: following the Law guarantees prosperity, breaking it brings disaster. The..." @default.
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• W4379804513 date "2017-12-01" @default.
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• W4379804513 title "The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature by Kirsch Adam (review)" @default.
• W4379804513 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/cro.2017.0037" @default.
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