A disappointing take on what could be a fascinating topic.
An academic look at Jewish crafts.
In this latest entry in the publisher’s Where Religion Lives series, Eichler-Levine, a professor of Jewish civilization, sets out to provide a book that “examines Jewish material culture with a focus on creativity, gender, and religion in North America. It is a book about the power of craft in relation to Jewish identity.” Unfortunately, readers looking for insight into Jewish arts and crafts will be unsatisfied by this sterile text. Instead of a meaningful exploration of the rich history of craft in Judaism, the author instead uses this heritage as a means to explore modern American Jews as an ethnic group. Eichler-Levine begins by pointing toward the concept of generative resilience, whereby “acts of creation become a crucial part of their makers’ ways of being and coping in the world.” This becomes the starting point from which the author views Jewish craft—as a reactionary expression or a coping mechanism. Eichler-Levine goes on to characterize Jewish craft as having an almost entirely activist role, devoting much attention to such “craftivist” subjects as the “Pussyhats,” which were ubiquitous during the 2017 Women’s March. When exploring Jewish crafts from a less political point of view, the author delves into an esoteric study of crafting that will appeal only to die-hard arts-and-crafts enthusiasts. “I want to think with the frame of what is Jewish expansively,” she writes about a knitting group, “as a critical construction, not just a function of Jewish-affiliated bodies.” In the author’s very act of dissecting and scrutinizing the art of Jewish crafting, she unnecessarily divorces it from the culture and the people who make it. By the end of the book, Jewish craft becomes a byproduct of politics, psychology, and ethnology, in the process losing its individuality and humanity.
A disappointing take on what could be a fascinating topic.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4696-6063-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Univ. of North Carolina
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
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 sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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