Literary and literate biblical exegesis from Jerusalem- based teacher and lecturer Zornberg. Based on ten years' worth of Zornberg's classes on the Pentateuch, these 12 loosely constructed essays correspond to the 12 traditional Jewish weekly portions found in the book of Genesis. Each one is based on some part of the text that Zornberg finds intriguing—often an implicit tension in a story—and she moves easily from idea to idea and in and out of the biblical narrative. In ``Bereshit: The Pivoting Point,'' Zornberg takes off from the mystery behind the strange Hebrew syntax of the first line of the Bible, which reads (in the Jewish Publication Society translation that she uses): ``In the beginning of God's creation of heaven and earth...'' She uses the line as a jumping off point for a discussion of what she calls ``the problem of man,'' or humanity's ambiguous situation between God and the natural world. According to Zornberg, man (she uses the masculine pronoun in the universal sense) is given mixed messages during the creation story. In a single verse, God tells him to ``be fertile and increase,'' using words that connote lowly, even insectlike activities, and also to ``master'' the earth, or rise above it, a predicament she also finds in Hamlet's rhetorical question: ``What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth and heaven?'' Zornberg elaborates, invoking Elias Canetti, Franz Kafka, and traditional Jewish sources with equal facility, demonstrating that the landscape of her mind, as she calls it, is vast and varied. Zornberg's Orthodox reading of the biblical text constrains her interpretation but doesn't detract from it. If anything, her reverence towards her subject prevents Zornberg from taking easy escapes from awkward situations—such as claiming multiple authorship of the Bible. Zornberg's writing is challenging but perfectly accessible to the careful lay reader. A wonderfully erudite debut.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8276-0521-8
Page Count: 458
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
