Book Description
Born in rural Hesse, Germany, Leo Strauss (1899-1973) became an active Zionist and philosopher during the tumultuous and fractious Weimar Republic. As Eugene R. Sheppard demonstrates in this groundbreaking and engaging book, Strauss gravitated towards such thinkers as Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt as he sought to identify and overcome fundamental philosophical, political, and theological crises. The rise of Nazism impelled Strauss as a young Jewish emigre, first in Europe and then in America, to grapple with--and accommodate his thought to--the pressing challenges of exile. In confronting his own state of exile, Strauss enlisted premodern Jewish thinkers such as Moses Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza who earlier addressed the problem of reconciling their competing loyalties as philosophers and Jews.
This is the first study to frame Strauss's political philosophy around his critique of liberalism and the problem of exile. Sheppard follows Strauss from Europe to the United States, a journey of a conservative Weimar Jew struggling with modern liberalism and the existential and political contours of exile. Strauss sought to resolve the conflicts of a Jew unwilling to surrender loyalty to his ancestral community and equally unwilling to adhere to the strictures of orthodox observance. Strauss saw truth and wisdom as transcending particular religious and national communities, as well as the modern enlightened humanism in which he himself had been nurtured. In his efforts to navigate between the Jewish and the philosophical, the ancient and the modern, Berlin and New York, Strauss developed a distinctively programmatic way of reading and writing "between the lines." Sheppard recaptures the complexity and intrigue of this project which has been ignored by those who both reject and claim Strauss's legacy.
Book Description
During the crusades, Ethiopians, Jews, Muslims, and Mongols were branded enemies of the Christian majority. Illustrated with strikingly imaginative and still disturbing images, this book reveals the outrageously pejorative ways these rejected social groups were represented--often as monsters, demons, or freaks of nature. Such monstrous images of non-Christians were not rare displays but a routine aspect of medieval public and private life. These images, which reached a broad and socially varied audience across western Europe, appeared in virtually all artistic media, including illuminated manuscripts, stained glass, sculpture, metalwork, and tapestry.
Debra Higgs Strickland introduces and decodes images of the "monstrous races," from demonlike Jews and man-eating Tartars to Saracens with dog heads or animal bodies. Strickland traces the origins of the negative pictorial code used to portray monsters, demons, and non-Christian peoples to pseudoscientific theories of astrology, climate, and physiognomy, some dating back to classical times. She also considers the code in light of contemporary Christian eschatological beliefs and concepts of monstrosity and rejection.
This is the first study to situate representations of the enemies of medieval Christendom within the broader cultural context of literature, theology, and politics. It is also the first to explore the elements of that imagery as a code and to elucidate the artistic means by which boundaries were effectively blurred between imaginary monsters and rejected social groups.
Book Description
On November 7, 1938, a young Jew, enraged by his family's expulsion from Germany, walked into the German embassy in Paris and fired five shots at a junior diplomat. Three days later the diplomat was dead, and Germany was in the grips of skillfully orchestrated anti-Jewish violence.
In the early hours of November 10, Nazi storm troopers and Hitler Youth rampaged through Jewish neighborhoods across Germany, leaving behind them a horrifying trail of terror and destruction. More than a thousand synagogues and many thousands of Jewish shops were destroyed, while thirty thousand Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. This was the moment when deliberately inflamed hatreds ignited nationwide destruction.
With rare insight and acumen, Martin Gilbert, one of the leading historians of our time, examines Kristallnacht -- the Night of Broken Glass -- and describes how the rest of the world reacted in its wake. His narration of that night and day of terror is chilling, vividly conveying its scale and intensity through more than fifty previously unpublished eyewitness testimonies and graphic newspaper accounts of the events as they unfolded. No other attack on Jews during the course of the Second World War was as widely reported by contemporary observers.
Kristallnacht marked the beginning of the systematic eradication of a people who traced their origins in Germany to Roman times and was a sinister fore-warning of the Holocaust. By setting the tone for the terrible war to follow, it shaped the second half of the twentieth century and continues to haunt us, almost seventy years later. Meticulously researched and masterfully written, this is an eye-opening study of one of the darkest chapters in human history.
Customer Reviews:
A Peek into the Heart of Darkness.......2007-07-07
Prior to Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939, two events occurred that unequivocally disclosed to the world the evil mindset of the Nazi regime.
The first of these events was the "Knight of the Long Knives", 30 June 1934, in which the Nazis murdered scores of actual or potential threats to their regime and shortly thereafter Hitler and other Nazis brazenly admitted that they had killed over 75 people outright, without a trial or any other semblance of due process, as enemies of the state.
The second such event was "Kristallnacht" (aka the "Night of Broken Glass"), 10 November 1938, when Nazi thugs began a nationwide rampage against Jews, orchestrated in response to a Jewish man's assassination in France of a low-level German diplomat as retaliation for the deportation of his family (along with 12,000 other Polish-born Jews) from Germany to Poland (which then hesitated to accept them). The result of this rampage was the destruction of over a thousand Jewish synagogues; A far greater number of Jewish businesses and homes had windows and property senselessly smashed and broken. In addition, thousands of Jewish men were corraled and herded off to concentration camps, most never to return to their homes or see their loved ones again. Almost a hundred Jews were killed and many more committed suicide during Kristallnacht.
Martin Gilbert's fine book "Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction" describes the events surrounding this signal event, including what led to the shooting of the German diplomat, what transpired during the Night of Broken Glass, and the aftermath of that officially sanctioned lawlessness.
In telling the story of what happened during the Night of Broken Glass, the author (himself a refugee from Germany as a result of that event) utilizes numerous recently obtained eyewitness accounts of how people were mistreated and property vandalized in this event. Interspersed within these stories are also acts of courage by people who helped to prevent additional harm and damage despite the very real threat that in so doing they would subject themselves to beatings by the Gestapo or being sent to prison or a concentration camp.
Most treatments of Kristallnacht in general history books superficially treat the event by highlighting the destruction of Jewish businesses and showing a stock photo or two of some broken windows and glass on the street. This book demonstrates that this event was about much more than hooligans smashing store windows: It was about the desecration of houses of worship (many of which had stood unharmed for hundreds of years) and the personal invasion of people's homes to humiliate them and wantonly destroy (and in some cases steal) their property.
The author similarly uses eyewitness accounts to help tell the story of the aftermath of Kristallnacht when the Jews in Germany and Austria (by then already annexed to Germany under the "Anschluss" of March 1938) desperately tried to emigrate and escape further degradation and suffering. In the meantime, however, the Nazis continued to pass oppressive laws against the Jews, taking away more and more personal and property rights one by one.
It would seem that worldwide publicity about Kristallnacht would engender worldwide sympathy for the plight of the Jews in Germany. But such was not the case. Only Britain and the U.S. took in any significant number of Jewish refugees (and even these countries imposed limits) while many other nations (e.g., Mexico and Ireland) shamefully refused to take in any at all under any circumstances. (The total number of Jews living in Germany and Austria at the time of Kristallnacht was but several hundred thousand.)
Nonetheless, there were a few brave souls working for countries outside of Germany and Austria who tried to do what they could to help the Jews emigrate (even though reprimanded or punished by their superiors) and several of their stories are told here, as well as accounts of those politicians in the U.S. and Britain who opposed aid to the Jewish people.
The author wisely includes several maps that pinpoint each city in Germany were synagogues were destroyed. These maps show more than any single description could how widespread the destruction was and that it occurred throughout every corner of Germany, from one end to the other.
A minor drawback to the book is that it should have included a more complete explanation of the Nazi planning and implementation of Kristallnacht as well as the Nazis' decisions affecting the Jews immediately thereafter as this would have made the book more cohesive. Still, this book is an excellent portrayal of Kristallnacht and is essential reading for students of history in general, as well as students of the histories of Europe, Germany, or the Holocaust.
Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction (Making History).......2006-11-10
An excellent read. It reports on the total extent of the Kristallnacht event, which was far more extensive than I had known. The reporter did an excellent job in seeking out those that experienced that terrifying event, and he also highlighted those "righteous gentiles", who tried to assist the victims of this Nazi terror.
excellent service.......2006-11-03
Thank you for your prompt service with this book.
This is an important part of my history and I wish to keep up to date with the details.
Germany's Everlasting Shame.......2006-10-19
This book is quite simply a horror story. It is over 260 pages of man's inhumanity to man. I base my four star rating on one horror story after another throughout the book. Each person's misery is certainly to be respected, but how people who pass themselves off as human beings could treat other individuals with such despicable behavior defies explanation. Women would hold up their children so they could watch the "fun" taking place at the expense of the Jewish people. This night of November 10,1938 called Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, in which Jewish synagogues and Jewish places of business were destroyed all over Germany not to mention the loss of life these people experienced, was supposedly due to a Jewish person taking revenge on his family's expulsion from Germany by shooting an individual in a German embassy in Paris, France, on November 7, 1938. I've had the chance to meet Martin Lowenberg who was 10 years old at the time of Kristallnacht, and heard him tell his experience of horror at the hands of Hitler's thugs. What is especially frightening is that ordinary Germans got caught up in the terror and relished the role they, too, could play in this everlasting shame on their country. Let us not be so naive to think this could not happen again.
not his best effort.......2006-08-23
Interesting, but spends way too much time in minute details. And..plenty of the book had nothing to do with Kristallnacht.
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Making History: Josephus And Historical Method (Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism)
Manufacturer: Brill Academic Publishers
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Book Description
The encounter between interpretation and history in the writings of Josephus provides the conceptual framework for this collection of essays. The contributions in this volume, which were presented at an international colloquium entitled "Josephus: Interpretation and History" held in Dublin in 2004, are united, not by a single view of Josephus, but by the question of historical method, both ancient and modern. These essays take up aspects of a problem basic to all researchers who would use Josephus for historical purposes, namely: What is the relationship between narratives and history? Organized thematically, the volume reflects a critical engagement with the texts of Josephus, other literary texts, case studies of particular events, and material remains.
Customer Reviews:
making history?.......2007-01-28
This collection of essays with wide-ranging approaches to Josephus and history is well edited by Zuleika Rodgers. I recommend this to whichever history research libraries can afford it. Here I comment merely on Steve Mason's "Essenes and Lurking Spartans in Josephus' _Judean War_: From Story to History." In a previous article ("What Josephus Says about the Essenes in his _Judean War_," available online) Mason made some valid criticisms of the source criticism Bergmeier offered on Josephus. And he rightly noted that "John the Essene" is a misreading--there was no warrior by that name. But, in this new article, as in the older one, Mason again unaccountably underestimates the relevance of sources in the accounts on Essenes in Josephus. Evidently, sources cramp his style--by his, I mean Mason's. Need he be reminded that Josephus, born c. 37 CE, could not write about, say, Judah the Essene, fl. 104 BCE, without a source? Again Mason subjects Josephus to psychoanalysis by concordance, _as if_ Josephus did not use sources. Mason practically ignores Philo, who wrote on Essenes before Josephus. Josephus and Philo share a source, as seen, e.g., in their joint estimate that Essenes numbered "over 4000" (Philo also writes "myriads"). Philo says Essenes were peaceful, an embarassment to Mason's Spartan proposal. Philo wrote: "Essenes...work in various crafts contributing to peace....In vain would one look among them for makers of arrows, or javelins, or swords, or helmets, or armour, or shields; in short, for makers of arms, or military machines, or any instrument of war, or even peaceful objects which might be turned to evil purpose." Spartans were warriors, first and foremost; Essenes were not. No matter; Mason has other plans, so does not quote Philo for his readers. Mason writes that Pliny is not entirely reliable, so can be ignored. But it's unequal treatment to ignore Pliny--who is not really so unreliable when one realizes his source on Essenes, M. Agrippa, is from the time of Herod the Great--and then to comb through Josephus, who is not entirely reliable. That's bracketing off and ignoring evidence. Mason, citing an unreliable secondary source, would have readers imagine that before the Dead Sea Scrolls came to light in 1948 no one located Essenes in the Qumran area. False. Strack did in 1853, placing Ein Gedi south of the Essenes. De Saulcy's 1858 Atlas places a "pays des Esseniens" north of Ein Gedi. Ginsburg in 1870 located Pliny's Essenes on the "north-west shore" of the Dead Sea, right where Qumran is. Many pre-1948 writers speculated that John the Baptist lived in that same wilderness area and may have met Essenes, or even have been one for a time. Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ 1854 annotated edition (ch. 37) correctly places Essenes not far distant from the St. Sabas Laura. And Joan Taylor wrote on Dixon's account which "states--somewhat prophetically--in 1866 that the 'chief seats of this sect [Essenes] were pitched on the western shores of the Dead Sea, about the present Ras al Feshka'"--as indeed was the case. This dismissal of Pliny on Qumran Essenes is deeply flawed. (Not even Magen and Peleg buy Hirschfeld's attempt to place Essenes uphill of Ein Gedi; they prefer Essenes out of Qumran and into limbo.) It's not circular to say that the best reading of Pliny points to Qumran. Also flawed is Mason's dismissal of the increasingly-recognized Hebrew origin of the name "Essenes," found in Qumran texts recognized as Essene on other grounds. Several times osey hatorah, observers of torah, appears as a self designation. And Mason knows Philo and Epiphanius spelled the name with O--Ossaioi/Osshnoi in Epiphanius. How many 2000-year old confirming repetitions would Mason require before paying attention? Again, this was known before 1948. Melanchthon in 1532 knew the correct Hebrew root, as did other scholars in every century following. Mason writes (p. 220) that in the 1950s "there were no interpretations of Josephus' Essene portrait..." Again, utterly false. A glance at Wagner's book Die Essener in der wissenschaftlichen Diskussion, vom Ausgang des 18. bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts; eine wissenschaftliche Studie--with a massive bibliography--suffices to show Mason's assertion absurdly misleading. For further information, see "Jannaeus, His Brother Absalom, and Judah the Essene," available online. Conybeare long ago saw the invitation to compare Spartans and Jews in a discussion of Essenes: 1 Maccabees 12 and the happenstance that Essenes are first mentioned in Josephus as existing (not starting) in 146 BCE (because his source Posidonius began then). But we now know that 1 Maccabees, though available then in Hebrew, is quite absent among the circa 900 manuscripts of Qumran. The pro-Maccabee festival Hanukkah is also unmentioned in those many calendar texts. Qumran was anti-Hasmonean, anti the family writing letters to Sparta. 4Q448 is increasingly recognized as a curse on Alexander Jannaeus. Essenes are more akin to Daniel than 1 Maccabees, and were unarmed (unlike David Koresh, whose disaster Mason oddly compares). If Josephus wanted to compare the Essenes and the Spartans, why did he not, you know, use the word "Spartans"? He used "Pythagoreans" and "Dacians" when he compared; Philo also named names to compare: Magi, Gymnosophists. Mason guesses married Essenes--he supposes invented by Josephus "as a means of permitting his own Essene affiliation"(!)--were in the desert and celebates in the cities, despite the wilderness types including Banus and John the Baptist. Initiation and the giving of all property is a big step, found explicitly in War 2 and in the Qumran cave texts; Mason misdirects attention from that. Moses was a writing lawgiver; Lycurgus was not. Such a waste of learned talent, this incantation of the Josephan nature of all, even his hapax patterns. The essay may be a virtuoso rhetorical performance, but it misleads readers, and unfortunately has little to do with ancient history. (to be continued/revised)
Book Description
Winner, Salo Wittmayer Baron Prize for Best First Book in Jewish Studies, 2003; Finalist, Koret Jewish Book Award, 2004
On the eve of the 20th century, Jews in the Russian and Ottoman empires were caught up in the major cultural and social transformations that constituted modernity for Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewries. What did it mean to be Jewish and Russian, Jewish and Ottoman, Jewish and modern? To answer these questions, Sarah Abrevaya Stein explores the texts most widely consumed by Jewish readers: popular newspapers in Yiddish and Ladino. This skillful comparative study yields new perspectives on the role of print culture in imagining national and transnational communities and the diverse ways in which modernity was envisioned under the rule of empire.
Book Description
"A concise, pointed historical inquiry into Freud's atheism and Jewish cultural identity and their role in his development of psychoanalysis."-Library Journal "A lucid, occasionally provocative close-up of Freud-as-nonbeliever, enhanced by Gay's suave, broadly allusive handling of the historical and theological contexts."-Kirkus Reviews "In this valuable essay, Gay . . . brings great sensitivity and insight to a debate that still persists in some quarters."-Publishers Weekly "Freud . . . would have enjoyed Peter Gay's book."-John C. Marshall, New York Times Book Review "Freud himself asked why psychoanalysis had to be created by a 'completely godless Jew.' Gay elegantly and convincingly answers his question."-Choice "It is an important and welcome contribution to the vast literature that already exists on Freud and the movement that he founded."-Lee Dembart, Los Angeles Times Published in association with the Hebrew Union College Press
Customer Reviews:
Freud the Scientist, the Atheist, the Jew.......2002-01-29
In 1918, Sigmund Freud posed the following question in a letter to his unlikely Swiss friend, the Christian pastor and lay analyst Oskar Pfister: "Quite by the way, why did none of the devout create psychoanalysis? Why did one have to wait for a completely godless Jew?" It is this question that provides both the epigraph and the intellectual predicate for "A Godless Jew," Peter Gay's erudite, brief and readable exploration of the relationship between Freud's atheism and his seminal, world-changing innovations in how mankind came to view the human mind in the twentieth century.
Subtitled "Freud, Atheism, and the Making of Psychoanalysis," Gay's short book was originally embodied in three lectures delivered at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in December 1986. It is an attempt, in Gay's words, "to translate [Freud's] two light-hearted rhetorical questions into three propositions." Gay states these propositions as follows:
"It was as an atheist that Freud developed psychoanalysis; it was from his atheist vantage point that he could dismiss as well-meaning but futile gestures all attempts to find common ground between faith and unbelief; it was, finally, as a particular kind of atheist, a Jewish atheist, that he was enabled to make his momentous discoveries."
After an introduction exploring the late nineteenth century intellectual milieu in which science and religion did battle ("Science Against Religion: `Clericalism, There's the Enemy'"), wherein Gay succinctly draws a counterpoint between the thought of William James and Freud, "A Godless Jew" successively examines each of Gay's three propositions.
Chapter One ("The Last Philosophe: `Our God Logos'") advances the notion that Freud was a child of the Enlightenment, a confirmed atheist who rejected all belief in supernatural faith as inconsistent with the scientific method. "Freud appropriated the whole range of the Enlightenment's agenda, its ideals and its methods, its very language." In doing so, Freud saw his mission, like that of the Philosophes who preceded him more than a century earlier, as one of "awaken[ing] the world from the enchantment in which the magicians and priests had held it imprisoned since pagan antiquity."
Chapter Two ("In Search of Common Ground: `A Better Christian Never Was'") examines the antagonistic relationship between psychoanalysis and religion, an antagonism adumbrated by Freud himself: "Analysis produces no new world view. But it does not need one, for it rests on the general scientific world view with which the religious one remains incompatible." It also examines, however, the way in which many religious thinkers (including Freud's friend Pfister and the brilliant Paul Tillich) managed to absorb psychoanalysis into Christianity and Judaism through a syncretic legerdemain that simultaneously exasperates and amuses.
Chapter Three ("The Question of a Jewish Science") explores the relationship between Freud the Jew and Freud the scientist, for while Freud may have denied the existence of God, he never denied that he was a Jew. The question for Gay, then, is not one of Freud's Jewish identity, but "just what share that identity could have had in the making of psychoanalysis." In exploring the way in one may speak of the presence or absence of a "Jewish quality" in psychoanalysis, Gay examines the professional, intellectual, tribal, and sociological meanings of such a quality. It is an interesting, if at times unsatisfying, discussion that fails to provide the reader with a conclusion more definitive than Gay's statement that "Freud was a Jew, but not a Jewish scientist."
Book Description
Tim Cole's first book, Selling the Holocaust, explained how the Holocaust has been mythologized in popular culture. With his new book, Holocaust City, Cole again covers new and provocative ground by detailing how the Holocaust was literally constructed, planned and built. Drawing from the ideas of critical geography and based on extensive archival research, Cole chillingly examines such concepts as "Nazi space" versus "Jewish space" - the first a living space of authority and control and, the second, a space designated for death.
Cole brilliantly reconstructs the formation of the Jewish ghetto during the Holocaust, focusing primarily on the ghetto in Budapest, Hungary - one of the largest created during the war, but rarely examined. Cole maps the city illustrating how spaces - cafes, theaters, bars, bathhouses - became divided in two. Throughout the book, Cole discusses how the creation of this Jewish ghetto, just like the others being built across occupied Europe, tells us a great deal about the nature of Nazism; what life was like under Nazi-occupation; and the role the ghetto actually played in the Final Solution.
A major contribution to Holocaust studies, Cole's groundbreaking work shows that the architecture of the Holocaust is not the monumental buildings and plans of Albert Speer, but the more modest buildings and structures made for deadly function: the locking gates of the ghetto, the crematorium oven doors. By giving readers a glimpse of daily life in the "Holocaust City", Cole adds to the ongoing debate sparked by Hitler's Willing Executioners about the culpability of people during World War II.
Customer Reviews:
Holocaust City: The Making of the Jewish Ghetto.......2006-02-25
This is an important work of Holocaust scholarship that explores the role of the local population and local officials in the genocide of Hungarian Jews. Cole is a wonderful writer whose extensive research has resulted in an important addition to the picture we have of how the Holocaust could happen. It contextualizes the "Final Solution" and shows how its implementation in Hungary owed much to local interests and local initiatives.
Book Description
From 1925 to 1951--three chaotic decades of depression, war, and social upheaval--Jewish writers brought to the musical stage a powerfully appealing vision of America fashioned through song and dance. It was an optimistic, meritocratic, selectively inclusive America in which Jews could at once lose and find themselves--assimilation enacted onstage and off, as Andrea Most shows. This book examines two interwoven narratives crucial to an understanding of twentieth-century American culture: the stories of Jewish acculturation and of the development of the American musical.
Here we delve into the work of the most influential artists of the genre during the years surrounding World War II--Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, Dorothy and Herbert Fields, George and Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, and Richard Rodgers--and encounter new interpretations of classics such as The Jazz Singer, Whoopee, Girl Crazy, Babes in Arms, Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun, South Pacific, and The King and I. Most's analysis reveals how these brilliant composers, librettists, and performers transformed the experience of New York Jews into the grand, even sacred acts of being American. Read in the context of memoirs, correspondence, production designs, photographs, and newspaper clippings, the Broadway musical clearly emerges as a form by which Jewish artists negotiated their entrance into secular American society. In this book we see how the communities these musicals invented and the anthems they popularized constructed a vision of America that fostered self-understanding as the nation became a global power.
Customer Reviews:
On the outside, looking in.......2005-02-21
I really enjoyed it. It's not too dense or difficult. I imagine anyone interested in show music would be able to profit from the book. She really has a treasurehouse of new ideas about what the makers of Broadway musicals might have had in mind, subconsciously or otherwise. I had never really thought about BABES IN ARMS, for example, and the way she deconstructs the lyrics shows that somebody, somewhere was doing a bit of overdetermination considerating the ostensibly slight plot of the show--and yet the lyrics insist that a "war" is going on.
Professor Most writes clearly and firmly, and yet she is intuitive enough to gently squeeze the meanings out of the most opaque surfaces. I thought I knew OKLAHOMA, and yet I had never really looked at the way the main (white) characters are a bit smug when compared to the "racially different" characters like Ali Hakim, and yet how much Hakim and say Jud, and even Aunt Eller, yearn to be like the better integrated characters (Curley, Laurey, etc). It might be because the Jewish writers of the show were composing an elaborate allegory about assimiliation and difference.
ANNIE GET YOUR GUN I didn't expect to find a chapter about. And yet, it makes perfect sense when you consider that Annie herself is a radical outsider, not even knowing how to read, knowing really only one thing (how to shoot), she's almost the "wild child" of legend. Her contrajuxtaposition vis a vis the native peoples ("I'm an Indian Too") for the first time doesn't seem racist, just makes sense.
All in all, a book which will give you something new to think about on every page.
The sum of its parts.......2004-01-19
In "Making Americans", Andrea Most has crafted a fascinating, if flawed, treatise based on the premise that the Jewish influence on Broadway Musicals was also a major force in the creation of the American way of life in the 20th century. Since it is, first and formeost, an academic work, some of the flaws are inherent in the genre (e.g. a highly repetitive introduction; little of the "razzle-dazzle" that fans of the musical have come to expect from books on the subject; a selective use of sources to prove her point-and a bit of stretching at times to make the selection do its duty, etc.). While I find it difficult to subscribe to the totality of her argument, and have serious questions about whether a given interpretation of facts is, indeed, the most correct (or even intended)one the authors she discusses had in mind, I cannot fault her over-all premise as a POSSIBLE one. What sets the work apart, however, is NOT the whole, but the sum of its parts. Within the over-view, Most presents detailed examinations of a handful of theater works that often offer new insights to these works AS WORKS, whether or not one feels they ratify the over-riding concept. It is for these insights that I recommend the work to any lover of the Musical theater, regardless of race, creed, or religion.
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- A fantastic journey
- Wasn't quite clear to me where he was coming from
- Honest and moving
- Dating Advertisement
- An excellent story
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Shanda: The Making and Breaking of a Self-Loathing Jew
Neal Karlen
Manufacturer: Touchstone
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ASIN: 0743266315 |
Book Description
Early in his memoir, Neal Karlen confesses, "I love Judaism. It's Jews I can't stand."
What he means is that he hates the parochialism, the whole Seinfeld of the Jews he knows from New York to Los Angeles, and he can't stand the thought of being identified as one of them.
Frustrated and embarrassed, Karlen stops looking for the Jewish enclave that fits him, and he simply rejects Judaism. And then one day, he goes too far: he marries a WASP. The marriage is doomed.
Shanda -- the Yiddish word for "shame" -- is the story of Karlen's journey back to his Jewish roots, his faith, and his own self. His guide is an unlikely one: Rabbi Manis Friedman, the renowned Hasidic scholar. With Rabbi Friedman's tutelage and friendship, Karlen rekindles his Jewish spirit and begins to ask the questions that so many modern, assimilated Jews grapple with: How do we bring meaning to our Jewish practice? Where is the line between Jewish and too Jewish? Can you believe in Judaism even if you don't believe in God? As Karlen is led up the mountain to find these answers, Shanda offers a stunning and illuminating view from the top.
Customer Reviews:
A fantastic journey.......2006-05-21
This is a must read for all people who struggle with religion and have to deal with the "fakers" who give religion a bad name.
You don't have to be Jewish to understand Neal's journey back to the fold.
In my personal life, my wife and I struggle with those who forget what religion means. Karlen sums it all up with the "It's not Judaism that I don't like; it's the Jews." He follows up with his quest to me a "mentsch," which is Yiddish for an upstanding person. My wife and I couldn't agree more.
We live in a world today where many of us have lost our moral compass. We judge wach other by what neighborhood they live in, the clothes on their backs, the car they drive and where they send their kids to school or camp. What happened to family values? Respect for our fellow man? Or the power of silence - when we should just shut up.
There's a little bit of Neal's Yiddishe Hartz (Jewish heart) in all of us. This should be a must read for all those trying to keep up with the Jones, Schwartzes, etc.
Wasn't quite clear to me where he was coming from.......2005-12-20
I agree in particular with what reviewer Adamchik aready stated about this book. The book would be more understandable to me if Karlen came from a less knowledgeable background. In fact, it's difficult to ascertain whether his background is Orthodox, Conservative, or somewhere inbetween. While there are people who were raised Orthodox who go "off the derech", that doesn't totally appear to be the case here. And then, Rabbi Friedman takes over the story. I've had the priviledge of hearing him speak - he is awesome, even if I'm not personally into Lubavitch. But all in all, the book seems a bit directionless, even if it is painful/funny at times.
Honest and moving.......2005-12-05
This is an honest and moving account of a man's journey away from and back to his Jewish roots. It's a story of redemption, and of the restoration of a father-son relationship.
You don't need to be Jewish (or speak Yiddish) to enjoy this book. In fact, gentiles may find that this book helps them understand some of the challenges and contradictions faced by modern Jews who seek to connect with their ancient faith.
Karlen's very conversational writing style makes this book an easy read. His own humor, plus one-liners borrowed from Henny Youngman and Steven Wright, provide comic relief despite the very serious issues addressed in this book.
At the end of the book I found myself wishing there were just a few more chapters (and perhaps a soundtrack album so we could hear this "nigguns" mentioned in the book). This is the story of a journey that seems to end before the final destination has been reached. Perhaps that's because the journey continues. But while it may seem a little unfinished, it is nonetheless a very satisfying book.
Dating Advertisement.......2005-08-19
I read the book. I kept thinking throughout, this guy is lonely, single, in his 40's, redeeming himself in the hope of finding a nice jewish wife.
I don't really believe most of his account.
This could have been posted on eharmony.
An excellent story.......2004-10-19
A truly exceptional page turner. Not only is the book light and humorous, but it also has a more deep level with lessons for us all. I highly recommend this faced paced and easy reading story to members of all faiths.
Books:
- Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives
- Marie Antoinette: The Journey
- Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
- Mein Kampf
- Mindfulness for Beginners
- Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles
- One Day Too Long
- Pleasure Wars (Bourgeois Experience, Victoria to Freud/Peter Gay, Vol 5)
- Plutarch's Lives Volume 1 (Modern Library Classics)
- Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present
Books Index
Books Home
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Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography
Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy (The Johns Hopkins Series in Constitutional Thought)
Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem (Modern European Philosophy)
The Truth about Leo Strauss: Political Philosophy and American Democracy
Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism
