Good stuff, lacking only a center to pull it all together.
Wide-ranging exploration of modern American b’nai mitzvah customs and practices.
Journalist Oppenheimer, raised as a secular Jew, never became a bar mitzvah—a “son of the commandment”—himself (the colloquial phrase, “to get bar mitzvah’d,” is an incorrect usage of the term), and he wants to find out what he missed. Although he originally intended to research the practices of one Westchester congregation for a year, the board of directors put the kibosh on that project, so he took to the road across America in search of the essence of the bar/bat mitzvah experience. Here, he begins in New York, and the predictable excesses are found: the ceremonies where often bewildered teenaged guests far outnumber regular congregants, the extravagant black-tie parties, etc. On the other end of the spectrum is a highly observant congregation in New Haven, peopled by idealists, with services led by congregants rather than rabbis. Oppenheimer also visits that lynchpin of many children’s b’nai mitzvah year: the tutor. Ostensibly just the woman who teaches children how to chant their torah portion, in fact a focal point for that child’s Judaism. Exploring the dominant presence of the ceremony today, Oppenheimer turns up some interesting tidbits that point to the strength of the tradition that has risen to real prominence only in the last 30 or 40 years. Even Noam Chomsky, well known for his unrelenting secularism and anti-Zionism, was forced to join a synagogue congregation when his daughter insisted on becoming a bat mitzvah. Although the book does feel as if it’s casting about for an organizing thesis, the author highlights a lot of interesting bits and pieces, including this one at the close: apparently influenced by the bar mitzvah, at least 1,200 churches have demanded a coming-of-age ceremony for young teenagers.
Good stuff, lacking only a center to pull it all together.Pub Date: May 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-374-10665-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
