Warmth, humor, and first-rate scholarship illuminate this elegant, thoughtful work, which should be of great interest to...
Christian theologian Cox reports on experiencing and embracing Judaism in his interfaith home.
When Cox (Divinity/Harvard; Fire From Heaven, 2001, etc.) wed Wellesley religion professor Nina Tumarkin, it marked the beginning of his life in a Jewish household. After 14 years of marriage and participating in each other’s rituals and traditions “as far as our consciences [would] allow,” Cox here takes on the daunting task of serving as guide to a religion that is not his own. He succeeds with remarkable grace. Loosely organizing his book around the progression of the Jewish year, Cox leads the reader through holidays both great and small, as well as marriage, death, and bar and bat mitzvahs. Common Jewish practices that may mystify gentiles (sukkah booths, Yom Kippur fasting) are explained, and personal experiences with his family and spiritual advisors are relayed. Though he finds common ground with some Christian practices, Cox is a careful guide, cautioning against a wholesale appropriation of Jewish tradition as a mere adjunct to Christianity. Nor does he shrink from the hard issues. “Anti-Judaism is not peripheral to Christianity,” he asserts, going on to discuss some grand old institutionalized traditions of anti-Semitism. This clear-eyed view is not reserved for Christianity; Cox examines some of the uglier points of Jewish history as well, including the violence of Purim and the myths of Chanukah. Serving as a broad introduction to Judaism, Cox’s study also offers guidance to interfaith couples searching for ways to embrace the religious traditions of both spouses; his chapter on “December Madness” and his position on the great Christmas tree debate are particularly useful.
Warmth, humor, and first-rate scholarship illuminate this elegant, thoughtful work, which should be of great interest to those considering intermarriage, and those (including Jews) who simply would like to learn more about Judaism.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-06743-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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
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