A highly literate, thought-provoking, persuasive argument for the centrality of love in the Jewish faith.
An exploration of the role of love in Jewish scripture, ethics, and practice.
Held, president of the Hadar Institute and author of The Heart of the Torah, provides an erudite look at what lies at the heart of the Jewish faith. Noting that some view Judaism as based on justice, tradition, law, or other elements, the author argues convincingly that love is the central tenet. Held’s thesis stems from the concept of hesed, a theme in the Torah commonly translated as “lovingkindness.” Hesed is both an important aspect of God and a central command for God’s people. From it, the author identifies a wide variety of applications for love in Jewish thought as well as in daily life. Beginning with love within the family unit, he moves on to the love of neighbor, stranger, and enemy. Held explores human dignity in depth, seeing the creation of each person in God’s image as a basis for Jewish ethics. He also discusses love in the face of evil, asking how a God of love can be rationalized with the existence of widespread suffering. The author concludes that God provides us with the ability to love and, further, admonishes us to love; but in the end, he provides us with free will to do so or not. “God implants a capacity for love within us,” writes Held, “but God does not determine whether and how we exercise that capacity.” The author balances the academic strength of a scholar with the pastoral sensitivity of a rabbi. Readers will be intrigued by the dizzying array of references to Jewish teachers across the centuries, as well as philosophers, Christian theologians, and others, and he approaches topics such as family relations with practicality and nuance.
A highly literate, thought-provoking, persuasive argument for the centrality of love in the Jewish faith.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9780374192440
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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