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THE LAMB'S SUPPER

Name: THE LAMB'S SUPPER
Author: Scott Hahn
ISBN: 0-385-49659-1

THE MASS AS HEAVEN ON EARTH

by Scott Hahn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 19, 1999

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Hahn, a Protestant minister who converted to Roman Catholicism, has written extensively about the Catholic faith in previous books (A Father Who Keeps His Promises, not reviewed, etc.). Here he examines the relationship between the Divine Liturgy and the Book of Revelation. Attending his first Mass, Hahn was struck by the word used to describe Jesus: lamb. Not the majestic, awe-inspiring language we usually reserve for God. But the Book of Revelation calls Jesus lamb, too, 28 times in 22 chapters. This was Hahn’s first inkling that the key to understanding the Mass was Revelation, and the key to understanding Revelation was the Mass. His was not a new insight, but if Christians in the know have long understood the connections between Revelation and the Mass, most average church-goers would cock an eyebrow quizzically at the suggestion that the last book of the Bible has anything to do with bread and wine. Hahn’s exploration of the connections between them is marred by superficiality, exemplified, but not limited to, a penchant for peppering the text with cute, near-pun subheadings, such as “Well Bread” and “Moriah Carry.” Still, if taken in the (light) spirit in which it is offered, this is worthwhile addition to one’s eucharistic library.

Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1999

ISBN: 0-385-49659-1

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999

Categories:

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION

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FAREWELL ESPA•A

THE WORLD OF THE SEPHARDIM REMEMBERED

by Howard M. Sachar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 11, 1994

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An engaging, if sometimes spotty, history of the Jews who resided in the Iberian Peninsula until their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. A distinguished scholar and author of many books on modern Jewish history (A History of the Jews in America, 1992), Sachar has done little, if any, original research here, but he nicely synthesizes secondary sources. He shows how the late medieval Convivencia—the period of Jewish-Islamic mutual tolerance and cultural cross-fertilization—gave way to the nationwide pogroms of 1391, in which 30,000 Jews were killed (4,000 in Seville alone). Following this violence, the Inquisition that began in the late 15th century, and the expulsions, Sephardic Jews spread throughout the Mediterranean littoral and the Ottoman Empire, as well as to Holland, England, the Western Hemisphere (in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Inquisition's long arm pursued conversos—crypto- Jews who professed to be practicing Christians—to such places as Lima and Mexico City), and beyond. In almost every country where they settled, the Sephardim incorporated their pride in and yearning for Spain in a distinctive Jewish language, Ladino. Sachar's strengths include succinct and informative discussions of Sephardic communal and intellectual history, his excellent unfolding of the Inquisition's complex history, and his many colorful anecdotes of the Sephardic ``rich and famous.'' However, his coverage of the middle class and poor, of Sephardic women, and of the early modern period (16501850) is weak and, occasionally, embarrassingly clichÇd (he claims that ``by the eighteenth century, the Jews of Italy had become superstitious, neurotic, timorous''). Finally, he ``takes a stab'' at discussing the contemporary Sephardic communities of Israel and France (but not, puzzlingly, of the US, where about 200,000 Sephardim live), but this too is so brief as to be greatly inadequate. A more detailed and comprehensive history of Sephardic Jewry waits to be written. For now, Farewell Espa§a provides a quick introduction that, if a little light in terms of scholarship, contains a fluid and often fascinating narrative.

Pub Date: Oct. 11, 1994

ISBN: 0-679-40960-2

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994

Categories:

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION

- BOOK REVIEW
A HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN THE MODERN WORLD
by Howard M. Sachar

- BOOK REVIEW
DREAMLAND
by Howard M. Sachar

- BOOK REVIEW
ISRAEL AND EUROPE
by Howard M. Sachar

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A TREMOR OF BLISS

CONTEMPORARY WRITERS ON THE SAINTS

edited by Paul Elie ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1994

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Lambent prose and a general lack of self-indulgence characterize these essays on the Catholic canon of saints. Each of the 20 contemporary authors whom FSG assistant editor Elie has assembled here centers his or her contribution on a particular holy man or woman—usually a saint for whom they were named or whom they have adopted as a patron. The Catholic experience predominates, but Elie intersperses other perspectives. After a serviceable introduction by Robert Coles, Bruce Bawer sets the pace with a fine essay on St. Francis of Assisi, artfully stitching a biographical account with a personal meditation on the lessons he teaches. Kathryn Harrison follows with a forceful tale of how her namesake, St. Catherine, inspired in her an anorectic self-abnegation. Literary types may be impressed by Richard Bausch's epiphany of Thomas Aquinas as paragon both of faith and of the modern spirit—achieved, Bausch lets us know, through the mediation of his friend Walker Percy. Francine Prose writes about Saint Teresa of vila by focusing on the seemingly unlikely notion of irony; Tobias Wolff, in contrast, presents a most straightforward saint, the adventurous Jean de BrÇbeuf, martyred among the North American Indians. Also in the Americas, Enrique Fern†ndez discusses Cuba's santer°a religion, an Afro-Caribbean form of saint worship that provides an interesting counterpoint to the more traditional Christianity under discussion elsewhere. Editor Elie builds a summa of sainthood around his recent encounter with the figure of Doubting Thomas, in the form of a Renaissance bronze of Thomas with Christ. A critique of the official Church sanction of canonization comes in Martin E. Marty's look at the still unsanctified Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement. Valuable for inspiration, but also for information—the details of the lives and deaths of many saints are here, refracted through 20 idiosyncratic, often powerful points of view.