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
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
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