The Wicked Son
by David Mamet
Schocken, 191 pp.

Reviewed by Allan Gould

Are you familiar with the hard-hitting, filthy-language, make-you-think-a-lot-deeper plays and novels of David Mamet of Chicago? Oleanna took on nothing less than male/female relationships in academia, and Glengarry Glen Ross is a truly devastating attack on, or is a description of rapacious capitalism, as shown in the back-stabbing actions of a group of desperate men trying to sell homes in a new development of that name. (The movie was a solid version of the play; check it out). His best plays have won Pulitzer Prizes, and he is inarguably one of the most exciting playwrights and screenwriters of our times, and far more interesting and talented than 95% of Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, and Tennessee Williams.

Perhaps one should not be taken aback to discover that he recently came out with a thin, 191-paged volume called The Wicked Son, sporting a sub-title which could well cause shivers in the (bleeding?) hearts of a number of North American Jews: the 75% who have never visited the State of Israel, perhaps, and certainly the 50% or so who never studied their faith, much less attended a Sabbath meal. The opening essay, which is the Foreward, leaps in your face like a traffic accident, only partly because the juiciest part is reprinted on the back cover. (The title of the book refers to the four boys described in the Passover Haggadah, of course.) Here is that offending/shocking/undeniably thought-provoking paragraph in full; were only more of the essays as powerful and as focused:

To the wicked son, who asks 'What does all this mean to you?' To the Jews who, in the sixties, envied the Black Power Movement; who, in the nineties, envied the Palestinians; who weep at Exodus but jeer at the Israeli Defense Forces; who nod when Tevye praises tradition but fidget through the seder; who might take their curiosity to a dogfight, to a bordello or an opium den but find ludicrous the notion of a visit to a synagogue; whose favorite Jew is Anne Frank and whose second-favorite does not exist; who are humble in their desire to learn about Kwanzaa and proud of their ignorance of Tu Bi'Shvat; who dread endogamy more than incest; who bow the head reverently at a baptism and have never attended a bris, to you, who find your religion and race repulsive, your ignorance of your history a satisfaction, here is a book from your brother.

Wow. And whew. How can almost any Jew in the world today, except the close followers of Halacha and the most serious, scholarly members of the more liberal interpreters of Jewish practice, not feel queasy about at least a few of Mamet's damning descriptions?

Much of the undeniable power in the better essays in this book (I doubt if any are longer than eight or nine pages, and too many of their screeds quickly melt like snow in April) seems dated now: not all Jews are rushing about cutting off their noses to spite their race as the old joke goes; not all Jews are joining groups who applaud Hamas and accuse Israel of apartheid or choose to run toward Buddhism, Maharishis, and anything BUT the faith of their parents and ancestors. Those numbers are probably less than in 1 in 10 but then, a religion/people/nation who recently lost 85% of its adherents during genocidal slaughters in the 1940s cannot afford any self-hating number, no matter how small.

Yet it is true, and widely known, that the number of Jews in the world today who have ever visited the Jewish State at all, much less study its history, its people, its place in a very tense Middle East, is outrageously small, and that gets under Mamet's skin like a hot coal.

This inability to assign to the Israelis a basic humanity is, to me, more deeply disturbing than the reluctance to endorse or accept any of their national positions . Do, can, or could the Israelis delight in reprisals,' in retaliation'? The very words are revelatory, for such actions by the United States are known as defense-- a country defends itself; reprisals and retaliation are the actions of a mob. . . . The outright denunciation of Israel as acquisitionist, bloodthirsty, colonial, etc.' is to me simply a modern instance of the blood libel; that Jews delight in the blood of others.

I could quote two dozen more sections from this highly-uneven, often dated, but often mind-blowing group of nearly three dozen brief essays, but I lack the space. Yet buying and photocopying off a choice essay or two could certainly liven up your next Passover Seder, because it is inarguable that three millennia of being hated has led large numbers of Jews to be embarrassed by their history ("We went like sheep to the slaughter! I continue to hear about the Shoah, which utterly ignores the crafty evil which kept every European Jew off balance (you're just being shipped to farms in the East), and is unaware that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, led by a few thousand starving Jews most of them women and children lasted longer than the entire country of Poland, which had hundreds of thousands of well-fed soldiers, rather more than the ghetto's 87 pistols and single machine gun.")

This book often sickened me, because for all its ranting and raving, its sometimes-unearned rage, it still hit home. Did I, myself, not go to work in Civil Rights in Mississippi in 1964, because I inarguably felt closer to, and more worried about, my black American brothers than my Jewish family in Israel? Did I not often feel embarrassed by the Israeli response to those awful kidnappings last summer in Lebanon? No, I'm not a self-hating Jew; I revel in our culture, rejoice in our heritage and faith, and study, teach, and thrill to (and weep over) our blood-stained history. If anything, perhaps we Jews should congratulate ourselves on how little real self-hatred there is, in our people; the black-on-black crime we still see around the world today shows how easy it is to absorb that ultimate of all self-destructive thoughts: if all these people hate my skin/religion so much, there must be some truth in their feelings; I shall hate it too. Of course, the Jew can always escape through renouncing his synagogue and her people; the descendants of African slaves can also try to run, but never fully hide. Mamet is a brilliant playwright, and although I was completely satisfied with only a half-dozen or so of this thin collection, my head is still spinning, and throbbing, from the occasional Truth that hit too close to home. Far too close.

Why I am a Zionist
by Gil Troy

Reviewed by Allan Gould


These are hard times for Jews around the world, as anyone who opens a daily newspaper knows only too well. Verbal attacks by world politicians on our religion and its sovereign state in the Middle East nearly every day; physical attacks on our co-religionists on the streets of France and Jerusalem nearly every week. And when the State of Israel is voted (this month) in a large European poll “the greatest threat to world peace today”—ahead of North Korea and Iran (!), a lot of us are starting to think, with horror, that we are now experiencing The 1930s: THE SEQUEL. (Personally, I never liked the original.)

So we get books like WHY I AM A ZIONIST—Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today, by a New-York-born Professor of History at McGill named Gil Troy.

It is certainly welcome, and, alas, more needed than ever, especially by Jews who are not very knowledgeable about Jewish and Zionist history, which obviously means a great number of our people, as we edge into the new millennium. The fact that this very cheap (and cheap-looking, and amateurishly-illustrated) paperback (a mere $14.95) was published by the “Bronfman Jewish Education Centre” of Montreal suggests that it is really a vanity book. This fact may sadden us—they couldn’t land a real, quality Canadian publisher?—but this does not deny its inherent value. (Indeed, the note in its opening pages that “all of the author’s royalties. . .will be donated to the Israeli MIA families’ individual efforts to free their children,” with all other profits donated to the Birthright Israel program is both touching and meaningful.)

The Prologue of this slim (under-200 page) volume has several little sections which make the author’s point very clearly. They are headed “I am a Zionist: A Twenty-First Century Manifesto”; “I am an Anti-Anti-Zionist”; “Anti-Zionism: Ugly Rhetoric with Lethal Consequences”; and, finally, “The Aims of this Book: Zionist and Jewish Renewal.”

In this short opening section, Professor Troy writes movingly and well about where he stands, and what he stands for: “During these challenging times, Jews should reaffirm their faith and pride in Zionism, while the world should marvel in its achievements. Zionists must not allow their enemies to define and slander the movement. No nationalism is pure, no movement is perfect, no state ideal, but today Zionism remains legitimate, inspiring, and relevant, to me and to most Jews. A century ago, Zionism revived pride in the label ‘Jew’; today, Jews must revive pride in the label ‘Zionist.” That’s very well put.

This book is most valuable when it talks of the past century and some of its ironies. My favourite: that a hundred years ago, religious Jews were overwhelmingly non- or anti-Zionist; its leaders were firmly secular. “By contrast, today, the religious community—except for the most extreme—is overwhelmingly Zionist, and it is secular Jews who are increasingly agnostic about Israel.” Touche.

There is certainly no question that many people of good will—even Jews—are shaken by the events of the past decade, certainly since Oslo: we more likely remember body parts flying and badly-reported news stories about the “massacre” in Jenin, rather than the grotesquely-generous land-and-peace offerings of Prime Minister Barak, and others, to the Palestinian Authority. And when the author reports that “parents at one day school in Brooklyn, New York, voted to send the school’s seniors to Disney World instead of Israel,” one wants to gag.

And even if you are not lucky enough (or wise enough) to get the regular emails of www.honestreporting.com, you will still not be surprised to read that recent polls have shown “nearly half of American Jews believed that ‘The Palestinians had their land taken away from them unfairly when Israel was created’ and more than a third—thirty-seven percent—believed that ‘Israel is overreacting by shooting live bullets at Palestinian demonstrators who are throwing stones.”

Whether you are sickened, or horrified, by the above, author Troy knows he has the answer: we must “teach our students about the multidimensional nature of the Jewish people’s relationship with the land of Israel, and the State of Israel. Israel should not be thought of simply as the central headache of the Jewish people, but as the historical, ideological, intellectural, and emotional epicenter of our people. We must teach ahavat yisrael (love of Israel), not simply the Arab-Israeli conflict.” Here here. And good luck.

Much of this book, sadly, is either preaching to the converted—I sense it would convert few to his love of Zionism, who don’t already have a deep understanding of the centrality of the land to our religion, our culture, our history, our people. Indeed, much of WHY I AM A ZIONIST reads like a simplified study guide for counselors at a Jewish camp. He describes the beauty and power of experiencing Shabbat at a summer camp; he tries to teach us “how to fall in love with Israel”; he notes that “living in Israel leads to a Jewish connection”; and he gives us an extremely superficial history of the Jews and their relationship with the Promised Land, going back to before 70 of the Common Era, right to modern times. (I do appreciate the often extremely witty chapter headings, such as the one about the “crisis of emancipation and the rise of Zionism,” entitled “MUGGED BY MODERNITY.” How true that is.

So, we get the Arab view of the establishment of Israel (the “naqba”—the catastrophe); the “six day miracle” of the ’67 war; what Oslo offered and what was rejected by the other side; “the blessings and the curse” of power (good point, that). But his easy mocking of “exile Jews” such as Spielberg and Woody Allen doesn’t strengthen my Zionistic feelings at all; who looks to Hollywood for leadership or understanding of our people and our land?

Is there much of worth in this very low-priced volume? Maybe to a not-very-well-read 12-16 year old Jewish kid who has never been to Israel, and might be considering the Birthright programme; after all, the price is right. But I’m being a bit unfair: the appendix called “ADVOCACY 101: How to Talk About Israel on Campus and Elsewhere Without Apologizing, Cringing, Crying or Yelling” is certainly worth the price of the book, alone.

WHY I AM A ZIONIST is not a bad book; I just wish it were better. If you really want to strengthen and deepen your knowledge and understanding of the history of Zionism, and the Arab-Israeli conflict today, I think you’d do better with another very low-cost paperback (this one also low-cost, since it was sponsored by the late, great Israel Asper of Winnipeg): It’s called MYTHS AND FACTS: A GUIDE TO THE ARAB-ISRAEL CONFLICT, by Mitchell G. Bard. Every decent Jewish book store carries it. Heavily footnoted, with over a hundred pages of maps and historic documents, it’s got some of the most powerful, often shocking, proofs of just how right (and occasionally righteous) the Jewish/Zionist side is. Does Israel make mistakes? Of course. Personally, I still refuse to forgive Sharon for the disastrous invasion of Lebanon. But when 19- and 20-year-old Israeli soldiers went door-to-door through Jenin, searching carefully for terrorists (yes, CNN, they are terrorists, not militants), losing over a dozen young lives as they did so, rather than simply blasting the buildings and probably killing hundreds of innocent Arab men, women and children—and most of the world believes to this day that there was a horrific, Jew-caused massacre there, then, boy, do we need facts, and lots of them.

You’ll get a broader selection of those facts, and a deeper understanding of the many myths and how they arose—more easily codified and explained, in Bard’s little paperback, than in Professor Troy’s.

What is Judaism? An Interpretation for the Present Age.
by Emil Fackenheim, Syracuse University Press, 1987

Reviewed by Allan Gould

This month, as a kind of personal Kaddish, I have chosen to review one of the finest books by the late Emil Fackenheim, of Germany, Canada and Israel, who passed away in Jerusalem at the age of 87 just before last Rosh Hashana. My wife and I had the honour of considering him and his late wife Rose among our closest friends. Before they and their children moved to Israel in the early 1980s, we had dozens of Shabbat meals at their Briar Hill home, where we would often pass food plates to Raul Hilberg, the major Holocaust historian whose Destruction of European Jewry is the seminal book on that period, and to Yehuda Bauer (Bricha; A History of the Holocaust; Out of the Ashes), another giant of that era.

So, how to honour the dead? Especially when the deceased was one of the finest Jewish minds of the last century? (And one filled with Canadian content, too: after his birth and youth in Germany, and his arrest and brief internment in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Fackenheim ended up in Canada before the war was over—imprisoned as an enemy alien!—where he became one of the most respected philosophy professors at the University of Toronto, before moving to his beloved Jerusalem).

Most look upon To Mend the World as Emil Fackenheim's greatest work, but I find another more accessible. Several of his books on Hegel and other German philosophers are heavy going, so I wish to examine What Is Judaism? (sub-titled An Interpretation for the Present Age). It was first published in 1987 in hardcover, and it is good to report that Syracuse University Press has kept it in print; it's now in paperback, and it is an admirable work, even if one never had the joy of knowing this passionate, witty, wise, delightful human being. Emil had the quite remarkable ability to make words dance off the page with humour and power, even when writing in a language which was his second, even his third.

When he began to develop this admirable book not long after he moved to Jerusalem, Emil told me that he wanted to "write an updated version of Milton Steinberg's Basic Judaism," a long-outdated but still valuable study of our faith. Fackenheim did far more, of course; what else could one expect from the world's greatest Hegelian scholar, who had been driven to rediscover his Judaism and brilliantly confront the Holocaust after the Six Day War? He had been horrified to see our people once again threatened with destruction, less than three decades after his own arrest on the first night of Kristallnacht, in early November, 1938.

Ever the scholar and philosopher (but never stuffy), he chose consciously not to write treatises or defenses of dietary laws or the Sabbath or the Reform faith in which he had earned his rarely-used rabbinical degree, back in his German homeland, but instead divided his book into three parts: Past ("Presupposed Components of Judaism"), Present ("The Life of Judaism Through the Ages"), and, of course, Future ("Judaism in an Age of Renewed Jewish Statehood.") The State of Israel, its creation and its survival, were all central to the way he saw his religion, and this profoundly-felt Zionism permeates this beautiful, essential book.

Fackenheim's writing style could be wordy, and even breathless. But just read aloud the following portion of a paragraph from an introductory section ("The Religious Situation of a Jew Today"), and see how profound, and yes, how witty, he could be about the "great product of modern Jewish secularism, Zionism":

. . .not much more than half a century after Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) the movement founded by him has produced results that no other modern nationalism can boast of, among them a state founded, maintained, developed, and defended by a people that—so it was once thought—had lost the arts of statecraft and self-defense forever; the replanting and reforestation of a land that—so it once seemed—was unredeemable swamp and desert; the ingathering of a people from all corners of the earth on a territory—so the experts once asserted—with not enough room left to swing a cat; the reviving of a language that—so even Herzl once feared—was dead beyond revival; and, last but not least, the physical rebuilding of the one city on earth, Jerusalem—so the consensus of mankind once held, Jews only excepted—that was meant to remain forever of the spirit only, i.e., holy ruins. Today only outright lies can dispose of the Jewish people as a chimerical nation. Every honest person, and certainly every Jew seeking to come to grips with his religious situation, must come to confront the fact of the State of Israel. He must do so for better or for worse.

What a stunning declaration, made all the more important by the recent outbursts of world-wide anti-semitism and Muslim Jew-hatred. Fackenheim had an uneven Jewish education—his modern Hebrew was never fluent, which made the final two decades of his long life, spent in Israel, more difficult than they had to be—but he knew that Midrash was often the key to the ineffable, even absurd aspects of Jewish existence and survival: how the people who were purportedly chosen by God as "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" could so often be brutalized, maimed, slaughtered. So, this wonderful text overflows with Midrash—those often profound rabbinic legends and fill-in-the-blanks, which attempted to explain the more mystifying aspects of our faith. The book is also filled with references to Fackenheim's own experiences—in Nazi Germany, meeting and studying (illegally) with refuseniks in the former Soviet Union, the saving of Ethiopian Jewry by Israel, his own personal aliyah, his daughter's experiences on a kibbutz, and more, making it all the more personal, meaningful, emotional.

Here, for example, is his "take" on how Judaism differs from most other faiths in history, in his section on "The Ethics of Judaism." After talking about doing "mitzvahs" and "being a mensch," he shoots for the heart of the matter: "God Himself behaves like a mensch when He loves widows and orphans. But who except Jews (and following them, Christians) has ever heard of a God loving widows and orphans? A God (or gods) loving heroes, sages, and martyrs one has heard of. All these, however—the martyrs included—are winners. Widows and orphans, in contrast, are losers. Perhaps Divinity can love even these, provided they are its own, much like a person who loves his widowed mother or his orphaned nephew or niece. That this is so with the "Old Testament" God has long been stock-in-trade propaganda of the kind of Christian who knows no other way of exalting his New Testament than by denigrating the Old. However, this particular canard—that the Jewish God loves Jews only—is disposed of by the fact that He loves the stranger as well: 'The Lord your God. . .executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger.'" (Deut. 10:17)

Early in What is Judaism?, Emil Fackenheim quotes a Midrash which he claims "could serve as a motto of this whole book": 'When was the Torah given? It is given whenever a person receives it."

Books such as this—and they are so rare, much like Emil Fackenheim was so rare, in his deep and abiding love of his people and the State of Israel, and the survival of both—can help us to continue to "receive" the Torah every day of our lives, and not merely in synagogue, or on Simchat Torah, when we quite literally celebrate the original moment of this amazing gift from God.

Not by chance, Fackenheim concludes this relatively brief volume (it is just under 300 pages) with an "Epilogue" consisting of one final Midrash, and it is a deeply moving one:

A Midrash asks why the Divine covenant with Abraham was required. The answer: "This may be compared to a house on fire. People ask, Does the house have no owner? Through the children of Abraham, God says, 'I am the owner of the house.'"

A Jew today still willing to convey this message has a question of his own: if the house has an owner, why does He not put the fire out? Perhaps He can and yet will. Perhaps He cannot or will not. But if He cannot or will not, a Jew today must do what he can to put the fire out himself. A kabbalistic saying is to the effect that the effort from below calls forth a response from above.

Emil Fackenheim's life was a gift to every Jew and every Gentile as well, even if most of the latter are not fully aware of it. (At one point in What is Judaism?, he expresses shock that the entire world—especially Christianity—does not rejoice in the rebirth of the Jewish people in their own land; how can they fail to see the importance, the glory, the proof of God's presence in history in that very fact?)

My loss of Emil Fackenheim is personal, as well as intellectual. But should you purchase this extraordinary book (and it is available on online book websites, as well as most of Toronto's Jewish bookstores), you will feel the loss of Emil Fackenheim as well. And you will feel, as well, the exquisite gain we all had, from his 87 years on this earth, and from the impressive body of writing he left us.

Turbulent Souls by Stephen Dubner.
The Hearst Book Group of Canada, 1999

Reviewed by Rabbi Goldstein


Kabbalah, the system of Jewish mysticism, teaches the concept called "gilgul", or return of souls. This teaching suggests that some Jewish souls "lose their way" and find themeslves in non-Jewish bodies for several generations, through forced conversions, pogroms, rape, and so on. But eventually, this theory says, the Jewish soul "comes home" to a Jewish body through conversion. Thus, a sincere "ger"- Jew-by-choice- is not really a new Jew. They are, in effect, simply returning the lost Jewish soul to its Jewish bodily container- this time, theirs.

Does this concept work in reverse? What happens when a Jew is drawn to another faith? Conversion out of Judaism is a painful topic, one dealt with powerfully and poetically in Turbulent Souls. Dubner traces the passionate conversion of both his parents to Catholicism during the war years, and then unwinds the story of his own "gilgul", his own trip back to Judaism as the son of observant, religious Catholics who had once been Jews. Needless to say, it is a complex and layered story, and Dubner is an excellent writer, well equipped to tell the tale as a personal journey. Along the way we meet the Jews who, through their own straight-forwardness, help him understand his roots. He replants those roots himself, from his own free will, and the result is the reuniting of two sides of a family who have not spoken to each other in thirty years.

Turbulent Souls is fine reading, and leads the reader to probe more deeply their own journey either away or back again to Judaism, and to ponder their own soul's manifestation of its Jewish roots.

Torah of the Mothers: Contemporary Jewish Women Read Classical Jewish Texts.
Edited by Ora Wiskind Elper and Susan Handelman. (Jerusalem: Urim Publications, 2000). 510 pp. ISBN 965-7108-23-3.

Reviewed by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein

Gilla Ratzersdorfer Rosen opens Torah of Our Mothers with a story of how, in her college freshman year, a fellow student tried to "convert her"- her words- to see that God is male. It is the Rav (Soloveitchik) in a lecture that convinces her otherwise.

That the Rav would even speak of the duality of God imagery, posit God’s feminine side, and discuss the maternal presence of Divinity shows that, since the 60’s at least, our understanding of Judaism and Jewish concepts has been radically affected in all Jewish sectors by the now clear voice of women and the realization that the religious needs of women is a "Jewish" issue, not just a 'women's' issue.

Torah of Our Mothers is a product of this realization. It comes out of a milieu in which high levels of Judaic female scholarship is no longer an oxymoron; in which fine, learned women teachers proliferate in Jerusalem and New York yeshivas; in which places like Nishmat in Jerusalem can confer the title of yo'etzet halacha on a woman trained to make halachic decisions for women in the areas of niddah and taharat hamishpacha. Not only is it unfair to characterize the Orthodox movement as holding back women from Torah learning anymore, it is also simply untrue. Thus there is no question that Torah of the Mothers could not have been written in any other generation but this, for its rich array of traditional women who are at once learned, scholarly, yet quite at home in the Orthodox and even Haredi world are also aware and touched by secular influences and respectful of the advances that feminism has brought to them, as well.

But though the authors want us to believe the book is for everyone, non-Orthodox readers familiar with recent Jewish feminist scholarship and deeper feminist critique will find the book timid and apologetic.The title of this book would have been more honest as Contemporary Traditional Jewish Women Read Classical Jewish texts. It is almost as if the authors have suddenly discovered the voices we have been hearing for years. They use heavily male language for God with absolutely no mention of any theological issues this may raise. Their footnotes rely on names like Aviva Zornberg, Nehama Leibowitz, Aryeh Kaplan, and the Lubavitch Rebbe, but there is no mention of ground-breaking feminist scholarship such as Judith Plaskow’s Standing Again at Sinai or Rachel Adler’s Engendering Judaism. Indeed, the last essay, by Esther Sha’anan, rather triumphantly announces, "...we are tapping a precious resource long untapped; we are at long last developing the Torah studies and novellae of women." Only one person mentions Nahum Sarna in a footnote; otherwise there is no sign of any non-Orthodox commentator. The authors use copious, sometimes voluminous footnotes which distract from the reading; yet there is no bibliography at the end of the book.

Torah of the Mothers is in four parts. Part One, "Students and Teachers" consists of five intimate essays on the relationship the particular author had with her mentor. This section is fairly tedious unless you are deeply interested in the authors' personal relationships with their teachers. It feels as if the essays are included to give a stamp of kashrut to the book, but these introductory pieces would have been better as an epilogue or even a separate book on the subject of the special teacher .

The second part, "Readings of Biblical texts" is the heart of the book. From the creation of Adam to the daughters of Tzelophechad (spelled throughout, for some reason I could not fathom, as Tzlafchad), the essays deal with both male and female characters of the Bible as paradigmatic figures and role models. Sarah Idit Schneider's essay "The Daughters of Tzlafchad: Towards a Methodology of Attitude Around Women’s Issues" is the best in the book. Well written and well researched, Schneider argues persuasively that not only do the daughters of Tzelophechad present us with a model of change for women within Judaism, but they also present a ideal for the way the rabbis should respond to such calls for change. She offers "guidelines to petitioners" based on midrashim of the daughters who "presented their petition in a logical and halachically sophisticated manner." In her Guidelines for Rabbis, she asks for empathy and openmindeness. But she knows she can't have it all. She writes, "If the law is clear and closed, so be it." That seems to be the point of the whole book. She argues that the bottom line is "Although they hoped for a favorable attitude, they didn't want it if was not God's highest will for them and for all concerned." A noble sentiment, but one that does somehow close the argument at the same time it is being made.

The third part, Readings of Rabbinic Texts, deals with Talmud and midrashim, and the fourth part entitled Exile and Redemption is essays on Israel and the Diaspora. Some of the essays deal with women's writings (for example, The King and His Daughter in Rabbinic Thought) but most in these two last sections do not.

In an anthology the reader expects a wide range of styles, opinions, and outcomes. Though the writing is uniformly good, Torah of the Mothers presents a fairly uniform face in the assortment of essays, and one senses a predictability to them after a while. The authors seem almost apologetic when they stray too close to what might be considered feminist critique, and none of them pushes the envelope, though Ora Wiskind Elper’s essay "Exodus and the Feminine in the Teachings of Rabbi Yaakov of Izbica" offers a search for a non-stereotypical way of dealing with gender and the idea of "the feminine" altogether. The book jacket promises a "landmark collection of essays and teachings culled from years of Bible and Jewish study by highly accomplished women Torah scholars and educators." Torah of the Mothers is landmark in that it gives these traditional women the opportunity to publish scholarly pieces of interest to women, but it should acknowledge that it stands in a proud, long lineage of pioneering books and feminist scholars who long ago paved the way.

The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to GUILT

The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to GUILT
by Ruth Andrew Ellenson (ed.)
Softcover - 318 pages (2006), Plume (Penguin Group); ISBN: 0452287480

Reviewed by Baruch Sienna

I might not have picked up a book with the title, The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to GUILT, both because I have a relatively positive attitude to Judaism and might worry that a volume on guilt would unnecessarily pull out the various hackneyed Jewish stereotypes on Jewish mothers and neurosis, and because I might have felt that this collection of essays by women would be too gender specific for my (male) life experience. However, because I have an inherited family disease that makes me unable to resist reading the printed word (even discarded ticket stubs), while lying sick in bed, I cracked open this volume on my wife's night table. Lucky for me, since this treasure of 28 modern essays is one of the best collections of well written essays that capture the angst of being Jewish in the modern world.

Really, my only criticism is the title. I am sure the marketing people decided that "Guilt" sells, and since the contributors are all women, they wanted the reader (ie. would be purchaser) to be aware of that, but the truth is, although many of the essays use "Jewish Guilt" as the jumping off point, the essays are really about identity, self, tradition, community, sexuality and family. Even the word 'Jewish' is not entirely necessary. Yes, all the essays are by Jews, and relate to Judaism in one way or another, but many cultural minorities could relate and would agree with many of the contibutors and say, "Yes, my life is exactly like that." My only other caveat is: don't read the whole book in one sitting or you might get indigestion. All the essays are powerful, and frankly, reading them all in one go can be a little overwhelming. I'd recommend reading one or two on a Shabbat afternoon.

So, what's this book about anyways? There are essays about the challenges of finding a place within Judaism for modern (read intellectually critical) feminists. Some grew up in religious, observant homes, and moved away from that world for a variety of reasons but are able to share intelligently about a world that many readers don't have access to. (One contributor grew up in the Chasidic world of Satmar). Others write about family, but the essays are much deeper and thoughtful than you might think. I found only one about a 'stereotypical' Jewish mother to be borderline offensive. One essay is about our relationship with the land of Israel. One of the things I found surprising was the range of experiences: one woman wrote of her family's experience in Iran. Some wrote about having children (or not). Others talked about JDate or their relationships (often with non-Jews) and the issues that raised for families, holiday celebrations, or naming their children. There were also chapters that talked about sexuality (one author shared her coming out experience that I'm sure any non-heterosexual could relate to), and body image. One woman asks, tongue in cheek, "Why are all Jewish women so fat" (meaning: why are all Jewish women (and men) so loud)? There is something for everyone.

The essays are all so wonderful and so insightful. One of my favourites was Rachel Kadish's piece on Guilt Judo. She (together with several others in this volume) are grandchildren of survivors, and she helpfully explains the rules of a game that Jews seem to play called 'Guilt Judo.' "Family obligations pin the needs of single people.... Safety pins punctuality... The Holocaust pins everything." But she then teaches a valuable lesson of how 'Jewish Guilt' or 'Guilt Judo' can become poisonous- and goes on to brilliantly transform the word 'guilt' into simply a road sign that tells us that we have a choice and responsibility.

The list of contributors is a veritable who's who in the modern, young, Jewish world. Ellenson (herself no lightweight) has collected an amazing group of writers, filmmakers, professors. All of them are communicators and write articulately and powerfully about the modern Jewish experience. Almost all are authors of other novels or essays, (one contributor's novel is reviewed here; another founded the hip "Heeb" Jewish counter-culture magazine) so one could easily use this book as a syllabus for the modern Jewish experience by simply listing the contibutors at the back and their published works. Please read this book.