A sincere but largely unconvincing attempt to answer the questions posed by Jewish skeptics and nonbelievers. As spiritual leader of Congregation Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, Calif., Schulweis (In God's Mirror, not reviewed) is perturbed by the indifference—often bordering on hostility—that characterizes so many Jews' relationship to their faith. To his credit, he does not dismiss their complaints but sees them, in fact, as justifiable and even ``honorable.'' He insists that debating the existence of a supreme benevolent omnipotent being is firmly rooted in Jewish tradition. For those who question God's ability to answer prayers, the rabbi responds that we cannot expect magical answers from God. The purpose of prayer is ``to open a two- way bridge,'' and to ``depend on miracles is to belittle our divinely given intelligence as well as our moral responsibility.'' In grappling with the Jobian-Kushnerian question of why bad things happen to good people, Schulweis suggests that there are two dimensions of divinity representing two complementary faces of the one God, as represented by two of God's Hebrew names: Elohim is the source of nature, while Adonai is the source of morality. Inexplicable tragedies are the work of Elohim. By accepting these events and transforming them, he argues, we express the wholeness of one God. Schulweis is more successful in responding to the universalists' charge that Judaism is parochial. Rather than betraying humanity with loyalty to the Jewish people, he argues, commitment to one's own family allows one to be more generous to others. Schulweis also scores points in defense of ritual, which he credibly presents as providing a ``rooted connection between the ache and emptiness of the present, the reverence for the past, and the promise of the future.'' Though there is some inspiration here, the book is, in the end, too logically sophisticated (as in sophistry) to reach the heart of the nonbeliever.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-018241-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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
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