Dream of Zion a Disappointing Read.
Dream of Zion
Jeffrey Salkin
Jewish Lights Publishing
reviewed by Allan Gould
Jewish Lights Publishing is one of the more interesting “ethnic” firms in the world today: in the past few years, they have published dozens of high quality books on everything from the scholarly (Bible Study and Midrash) to children’s books; ecology to grief and healing; meditation to Kabbalah. A few years ago, JL put out a remarkable, deeply moving collection of short essays called I am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl, the journalist who was savagely murdered in Pakistan for exactly that reason. A powerful concept, and it worked very well (and now a major motion picture: A Mighty Heart).
I wish I could say the same for Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin’s A Dream of Zion, sub-titled “American Jews Reflect on Why Israel Matters to Them.” True, the Jewish State is undergoing hard times today—when has it not?—and the ugly boycotting of Israel’s scholars, and the way so many major politicians and actual countries treat the Jewish homeland condescendingly, compared with the vicious abuse which women, gays, and their own citizens are treated by so many other lands, may seem like a good reason to produce a book like this one.
But it doesn’t work, and not only because of the half-dozen rather mediocre essays by American Jewish university students, talking about how exciting their first visit to the State of Israel was (!) When one interviews many intelligent rabbis and teachers on such subjects as “Identity and Heritage,” “Refuge,” “Faith and Covenant” and “Tikkun Olam,” you are surely going to get the occasional glimmer of insight, even the memorable statement of fact and opinion, and there are, undeniably, a few. For instance, Rabbi David Wolpe, a superb author, writes beautifully that “We who live outside the land have to be sufficiently imaginative to understand all we do not know. In Europe, a bloody battlefield for centuries, there is a monument for every 10,000 fallen soldiers. In Israel, there is a monument for every sixteen. . . . it is a society that lives under a pressure so far unimaginable in this spacious and generous land [of the U.S.]” And who could not be moved by the poetic declaration of the admired American author Thane Rosenbaum, who writes, “Israel is not just a nation. It is, even more so, a state of mind. That’s the bedrock of its geography, the map that it monopolizes, the mental space and energy it consumes like a burning bush. You don’t have to ever board El Al to be obsessed with Israel’s existence, to love it or hate it, to feel its gravitational weight as a magnet for both revulsion and romance, to know that without it, the world would be a very different place, a planet even more tilted and adrift than it is right now.” Exquisite—and his words move me to want to read his prize-winning novels, several of Jewish content and focus.
I had hoped to find Giants with Great Words to say about the State of Israel and its importance today, and I was taken aback to discover just how few real gems can be found in this anthology’s 250 pages. In fact, I find it sadly telling, that it is in Part V—An American Historical Perspective: The Words of the Fathers and Mothers—where the best comments are found: long-dead American-Jewish leaders and rabbis such as Louis D. Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Abba Hillel Silver, Stephen S. Wise, and, naturally, the glorious Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose words and insights put nearly all else in this flimsy gathering of writing to shame: “What would be the face of Western history today if the end of twentieth-century Jewish life would have been Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Auschwitz? The State of Israel is not an atonement. It would be blasphemy to regard it as a compensation. However, the existence of Israel reborn makes life less unendurable. It is a slight hinderer of hindrances to believing in God.”
Would that even one in ten essays in this under-whelming anthology had such power and majesty. Check out I am Jewish (a national Jewish book award winner) and other fine books from this important Judaica house (located in Woodstock, Vermont of all places!); Jewish Lights is almost always worthy of your support. Just not this particular book, alas.
Allan Gould is an author and journalist who has long studied with Kolel and supported it. He is teaching his fourth course for Kolel in Toronto, in the fall of 2007, on Modern Jewish Literature. (Visit his website: http://www.allangould.com)
