An uneven but candid testament of two men passionately trying to revive and reimagine Judaism.
A convert to Judaism was deeply influenced by a prolific Jewish intellectual.
Melding biography and memoir, National Jewish Book Award winner Prochnik (The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World, 2014, etc.) examines the life and work of Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), philological archaeologist of the mystical roots of Judaism. For Prochnik, Scholem “loomed as a kind of prophet,” offering “something closer to revelation than anything I could discover in normative Judaism.” Indeed, normative Judaism—to which Prochnik converted in his 20s—failed him just as it had failed Scholem. Growing up in a bourgeois, assimilated German family, Scholem became a Zionist at the age of 11, vowing to go to Palestine, and by his teens, he became obsessed with cabala, a network of “widely diversified and often contradictory” texts. At the age of 17, he met Walter Benjamin, beginning an intense, sometimes-difficult friendship based on common passions. Prochnik traces the evolution of Scholem’s parsing of “the underlying cosmological principles” of cabala, “its metaphysics.” Although Prochnik faithfully and respectfully offers a detailed examination of these metaphysical works, they remain abstract and paradoxical; many who knew Scholem concluded that he “was just a maze of contradictions.” Readers are likely to agree. In contrast, Prochnik vividly renders his own journey to define his relationship to Judaism, which took him and his wife to Jerusalem in search of a spiritual home. They were following Scholem’s path to find “some more galvanizing external form of Judaism” than what they found in America, something “higher and purer.” As they settled into Israeli culture, however, they found increasing consumerism, turbulent politics, violence that included the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and the election of right-wing Benjamin Netanyahu, and strife and oppression among Palestinians that they struggled to fully understand. Frustrated, unable to make a living, the family decided to return to the U.S., where the marriage finally unraveled and where Prochnik’s commitment to both Zionism and Judaism floundered.
An uneven but candid testament of two men passionately trying to revive and reimagine Judaism.Pub Date: March 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59051-776-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.
NBA legends Bird and Johnson, fierce rivals during their playing days, team up on a mutual career retrospective.
With megastars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and international superstars like China’s Yao Ming pushing it to ever-greater heights of popularity today, it’s difficult to imagine the NBA in 1979, when financial problems, drug scandals and racial issues threatened to destroy the fledgling league. Fortunately, that year marked the coming of two young saviors—one a flashy, charismatic African-American and the other a cocky, blond, self-described “hick.” Arriving fresh off a showdown in the NCAA championship game in which Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores—still the highest-rated college basketball game ever—the duo changed the course of history not just for the league, but the sport itself. While the pair’s on-court accomplishments have been exhaustively chronicled, the narrative hook here is unprecedented insight and commentary from the stars themselves on their unique relationship, a compelling mixture of bitter rivalry and mutual admiration. This snapshot of their respective careers delves with varying degrees of depth into the lives of each man and their on- and off-court achievements, including the historic championship games between Johnson’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics, their trailblazing endorsement deals and Johnson’s stunning announcement in 1991 that he had tested positive for HIV. Ironically, this nostalgic chronicle about the two men who, along with Michael Jordan, turned more fans onto NBA basketball than any other players, will likely appeal primarily to a narrow cross-section of readers: Bird/Magic fans and hardcore hoop-heads.
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-547-22547-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
The acclaimed author of My Own Country (1996) turns his gaze inward to a pair of crises that hit even closer to home than the AIDS epidemic of which he wrote previously. Verghese took a teaching position at Texas Tech’s medical school, and it’s his arrival in the unfamiliar city of El Paso that triggers the events of his second book (parts of which appeared in the New Yorker). His marriage, already on the rocks in My Own Country, has collapsed utterly and the couple agree to a separation. In a new job in a new city, he finds himself more alone than he has ever been. But he becomes acquainted with a charming fourth-year student on his rotation, David, a former professional tennis player from Australia. Verghese, an ardent amateur himself, begins to play regularly with David and the two become close friends, indeed deeply dependent on each other. Gradually, the younger man begins to confide in his teacher and friend. David has a secret, known to most of the other students and staff at the teaching hospital but not to the recently arrived Verghese; he is a recovering drug addict whose presence at Tech is only possible if he maintains a rigorous schedule of AA meetings and urine tests. When David relapses and his life begins to spiral out of control, Verghese finds himself drawn into the young man’s troubles. As in his previous book, Verghese distinguishes himself by virtue not only of tremendous writing skill—he has a talented diagnostician’s observant eye and a gift for description—but also by his great humanity and humility. Verghese manages to recount the story of the failure of his marriage without recriminations and with a remarkable evenhandedness. Likewise, he tells David’s story honestly and movingly. Although it runs down a little in the last 50 pages or so, this is a compulsively readable and painful book, a work of compassion and intelligence.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-017405-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998
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