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THE GOD I BELIEVE IN

A disappointing example of an interesting idea casually executed, as Haberman, former senior rabbi at Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, D.C., and teacher of Jewish philosophy at several universities, interviews prominent Jews on their ideas of God and spirituality. Haberman begins by describing his own spiritual awakening as a secularly raised Jew who chose to become a rabbi. The book has its roots in his desire to clarify his own thoughts on major religious questions as he reaches the age of 70. He interviewed 14 prominent Jews, whose approaches to faith range from the Hasidism of the ``Bostoner Rebbe'' and Adin Steinsaltz (a celebrated contemporary translator of the Talmud) to the agnosticism of scientist Philip Leder, exploring with each a similar set of issues: the existence of a personal God, the possibility of interaction with God, God's role in history, the Holocaust and the nature of evil, Torah as revelation, the Messiah, and the nature of a Messianic age. Haberman states a basic principle of the volume in the beginning of his interview with philosopher Steven T. Katz, explaining that he is ``not looking for textbook philosophy, but your own personal beliefs.'' As might be expected, the answers cover a wide range of positions. There are many moving or startling moments in the interviews: Katz's reaffirmation of the complexity and richness of the Torah; Emil Fackenheim reflecting on how living through the death camps changed his theological views; a vividly contentious Yeshayahu Leibowitz repeatedly rejecting the basic premises that Haberman puts to him; Norman Podhoretz describing a moment of personal revelation. In his conclusion, Haberman draws from the interviews to extrapolate a common ground that unites all his subjects, then projects that commonality as a set of beliefs that ostensibly unites all Jews. But this final synthesis is suspect, given the patent lack of commonality among the interviewees and the fact that Rabbi Haberman never clarifies how he arrived at his choice of interviewees. That said, however, the interviews are still inherently interesting.

Pub Date: April 12, 1994

ISBN: 0-02-931716-9

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Free Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

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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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

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

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