A substantial but accessible guide to reading and applying Reform responsa.
Washofsky helps curious Reform Jews navigate religious law in this critical work.
Where religious law and modern life meet, there are always questions. In a religious tradition as concerned with ethics as Reform Judaism, the number of questions is especially vast. With this volume, the author, a rabbi and emeritus professor of Jewish law and practice, attempts to address some of these questions by placing them within the context of Reform Jewish thought. “Responsa,” he writes in his introduction, refers to the practice in ancient Rome “in which judges and litigants sent difficult questions of law to legal experts who would respond in writing with learned opinions. We use the word today to describe a similar genre in Jewish law, the sh’eilot ut’shuvot, ‘questions and answers.’” Despite the Reform Jewish belief in personal religious autonomy—the freedom (within limits) of each person to make their own religious decisions—guidelines remain useful for those curious about how their personal religious choices fit within the Jewish tradition. This book includes responsa on several potentially controversial areas of modern Jewish life, from issues of medical privacy and labor unions to the appropriateness of cremation, secular holidays, and the flying of national flags at synagogues. Washofsky not only presents relevant responsa but offers critical readings of them, offering a practical demonstration of how to interpret and sometimes reject the claims made on the religious doctrine in question. His prose is deft and analytical without being abstruse, as seen here when the author considers a responsa that claims Jewish law supports the right of workers to organize unions: “We should greet a sweeping statement like this with attention and, perhaps, a degree of skepticism. Do the sources in fact support it? The concept of a ‘labor union’ is not found in the Talmud, the ultimate proof text for all halachic argument.” Those curious about the tradition of responsa in the Reform tradition, or merely about the intersection of Jewish law and modern life, will find much here of interest.
A substantial but accessible guide to reading and applying Reform responsa.Pub Date: March 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780881236439
Page Count: 288
Publisher: CCAR Press
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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