An enlightening, encouraging take on the complexities of religious intermarriage.
A mother presents a debut guide to building a mindful, harmonious Jewish family life.
Larkin blends a family memoir with religious exploration, in a thoughtful examination of Judaism and intermarriage. Raised Jewish, married to a supportive non-Jew and committed to raising her young son in her faith, she details the arduous but rewarding process of actively defining her family’s religious life. She argues that intermarriage doesn’t threaten Judaism at all, but can actually help increase one’s involvement in the Jewish community. “Falling in love with a non-Jew,” she writes, “was the spark that reconnected me to my faith,” and this book is full of advice for readers in similar situations. She offers an overview of intermarriage and genealogy throughout history, looks at strategies for getting along with extended families and addresses the importance of discussing past and present anti-Semitism. The result is a thorough, sensitive and well-researched journey through the challenges and gifts that intermarried families—and Jewish families more generally—experience. Although an early section about the author’s unhappy first marriage feels superfluous, she largely maintains an effective balance between her own experience and broader trends, making her story read like an intimate chat with a very knowledgeable friend. Although the book is geared mainly toward interfaith families who’ve chosen to raise Jewish children, it will likely interest anyone involved in an interfaith relationship. It’s also an excellent starting point for those looking to engage further with its issues; its appendices include an extensive list of resources for continued study and a guide to starting an interfaith families group. The book’s greatest strength, though, has little to do with Judaism specifically, and more to do with the author’s clear-eyed appreciation of the nuances inherent in any community, religious or otherwise. “[I]t is the zigzags of our family histories,” she writes, “that give the story of the Jewish people richness, depth, and diversity.” That inclusive, open-minded attitude toward politically and emotionally charged subjects makes this book an edifying read for those of any faith.
An enlightening, encouraging take on the complexities of religious intermarriage.Pub Date: July 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495301520
Page Count: 286
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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