THE JEWS: VIEWS AND COUNTERVIEWS

This very short book comprises a dialogue between Father Danielou, Dean of the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic Institute of Paris, and Dr. Chouraqui, former advisor to Ben-Gurion and assistant mayor of Jerusalem. Its purpose is to go beyond the text of Vatican II on the Jewish problem and discuss in depth the significance, for both Catholics and Jews, of anti-Semitism and of Judaism. As an exchange between two gifted and learned thinkers, the book is stimulating and, at times, dramatic. As an ""exploration in depth,"" however, or even as a coherent, organized discussion of a problem, it too often bogs down in semantics or wastes its time and the reader's with trivia, with pedantic cavilling, and with an everly delicate with To Be Fair, which results only in elaborate circumlocutions and/or euphemisms. Danielou's name on a book will sell the book to the Catholic market; otherwise, prognosis would be negative indeed.