Freedman brings impressive research to the biography of a 2,000-year-old text that still excites scholars, inspires...
A history of the Jewish people as reflected in its central text.
The Talmud, Freedman (The Gospels' Veiled Agenda: Revolution, Priesthood and the Holy Grail, 2009, etc.) explains in this capacious history, is an “arcane and obscure” compendium of interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. Containing nearly 2 million words, the original Talmud recorded discussions that took place among scholars in Babylon between the third and fifth centuries. Although the Talmud is now considered “the final authority on Jewish religious law and practice,” it began as an academic exercise of biblical exegesis, with analyses transmitted orally. “Talmudic scholars would happily base their rulings on it when responding to inquiries,” the author writes, “but they weren’t particularly bothered about laying it out in front of the masses as an object of study.” Once the Talmud became fixed in writing, it took on the function of law, and it became the focus of waves of anti-Semitism. Copies in France were destroyed in 1242, when Pope Gregory IX, in a sweeping condemnation of Jews, ordered the text to be burned. From 1553 to 1559, all copies found in Rome went up in flames. In creating the biography of a book, Freedman offers biographical sketches of major figures involved in its story, including the 11th-century rabbi known as Rashi, whose commentary forms part of the modern Talmud; Maimonides, “a giant on the Tamudic stage”; and Baruch Spinoza, a philosopher whose ideas challenged the teachings of the Talmud. The modern Talmud is a layered work, comprising quotations from the Mishnah, a codification of Jewish law written in the second to third centuries; Babylonian commentaries; additions by the original editors of the Talmud; and later material intended to provide introductions and conclusions to various topics.
Freedman brings impressive research to the biography of a 2,000-year-old text that still excites scholars, inspires controversy and reflects turbulent events in Jewish history.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1472905949
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 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.
