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Book Review
This is not an easy book, but it is a deeply rewarding book. Ari
Elon, a Talmud scholar of great learning, grew up on an Orthodox
household, served in the Israeli Army, gave up his Orthodoxy,
rediscovered Jewish learning, and now calls himself a religious
secularist. He has taught Talmud on kibbutzim, in universities,
and at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where I had the
pleasure of studying with him. This book, which is comprised of
four distinct sections, each with its own themes and subjects,
is unlike any book I've ever read- not fiction, not theology,
not history, not criticism, not social theory, not textual commentary,
not poetry, not journalism- but somehow all of these, and more.
Elon wants most of all to reclaim a deeply, playfully creative
mode of Jewish learning and culture, free from pre-modern theological
boundaries but imbued with a traditional kind of spiritual seriousness
and attention to text and story. The four sections of his book
deal with his own life journey, his thoughts on the spiritual
psychology of the rabbis of the Talmud, his view of the current
state of religious affairs in Israel, and his experiences as a
soldier in the Israeli army. Each section is also structured around
part of a painting of children at play- the painting, reproduced
on the cover, serves as kind of a midrash on the book itself.
None of these subjects are treated as a dry essay, but in a poetic,
learned, almost free-associative style. His writing is rich with
allusion to Jewish texts and traditions, and is not always easy
to follow without the footnotes and glossary. Yet it is precisely
this richness that proves the viability of his vision- an imaginative
Judaism, thoroughly contemporary, yet deeply rooted in classic
texts.
NJL
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