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PIETY AND POWER

THE WORLD OF JEWISH FUNDAMENTALISM

An engaging look into the philosophies and lifestyles of the various sects of Orthodox Jewish fundamentalists. Landau (an editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz) examines the resurgence of haredism and its sociopolitical impact. Though he describes haredi ghettos in London, N.Y.C., and elsewhere, he focuses primarily on Israeli sects, delineating their newly emerged political power and predicting a growing role for them in Israeli's future: Haredi mentor ``Rabbi Shach's decision in March 1990 to support the [right wing] Likud was the most momentous event in Israeli politics for years.'' Both the rightist Likud and the left- leaning Labor parties woo the haredim with financial support for their institutions of learning and with draft deferments for their ubiquitous Talmudic academy students. Landau documents the extent of all this kosher political pork, tracing it back to Israeli's founding years. Though he remains objective throughout, he depicts the 92-year-old spiritual leader of Degel Hatorah as backward and bigoted and cites a Hasidic editor who warns against ``talking with disgusting heretics.'' More appealing are Landau's portraits of more tolerant leaders like Rabbi Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Sephardic Jews from North Africa and the Near East. Landau also details the schisms that divide the sects from one another, and the even wider breach between them and the National Religious Party, representing the Modern Orthodox in Israel. While Modern Orthodox are, for the most part, fervent nationalists, the haredim, the author says, see the sinfully secular state of Israel as ``a vindication of their anti- Zionism.'' Landau concludes with a fascinating study of the fierce debate in Israel and beyond on ``Who is a Jew?,'' suggesting that ``the dismissal of haredism as anachronistic may itself be an anachronism.'' A valuable, well-researched study of this misunderstood minority of a minority. (Appended with a solid bibliography and a glossary of both Yiddish and Hebrew terms.)

Pub Date: June 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-8090-7605-5

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955

ISBN: 0679733736

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955

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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.

“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0

Page Count: 200

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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