With a blessedly light touch, Schiffman, formerly an editor with the San Francisco Review of Books and until recently a nonobservant Jew, relates her beginner’s quest for a Judaism she can genuinely practice and believe. Generation J is that vast mÇlange of youngish, contemporary Jews who, born into already assimilated families, are fragmented in their Jewishness and ambivalent toward Judaism. Schiffman’s search is for outwardly Jewish behavior that doesn—t compromise her happy interfaith marriage or her values of experimental openness and tolerance. The burden of the assimilated Jew who wants to observe Judaism is the self-consciousness that blocks easy entry into the world of ritual acts that virtually define the religion. That self-consciousness, which in the wrong hands becomes self-righteousness, veers towards humor and self-mocking satire in this for the most part delightful spiritual narrative. But Schiffman identifies the problem with her idiosyncratic approach to Judaism when she confesses that “groups, especially ones made up of religious Jews, made me uncomfortable.” Her body tatoo of David’s star seems her easy substitute for the much more difficult embodiment of Judaism in flesh-and-blood communities. And so her parting pronouncement to the reader—“I refuse to reject myself”’sounds a pyrrhic victory over assimilation, since she has not come to terms with a large part of the Jewishness she claims to own: its boundedness to communal structures that inevitably submerge the very idiosyncrasy that has enlivened her story up to now. Schiffman’s challenge will be to sustain her winsome, ironical tone as (and if) she enters more deeply into Jewish community. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-251577-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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