Gorgeous commentary.
Halevi shines new light on a very old story, offering a brilliant interpretation of perhaps the most influential piece of scripture ever written.
It’s said that when second-century Jewish rabbis envisioned heaven, they imagined a great table at which the blessed would sit, arguing over the possible meanings of torah–Jewish teaching–for all eternity. If this is paradise, Shira Halevi is well on her way. Her new tome is a targum–basically a hybrid of translation and commentary–of the opening chapters of Genesis. The allure of writing a targum for a comprehensive thinker like Halevi is evident: the format allows its creator to tease out all (or at least some) of the various meanings of the famously spare Hebrew scriptural text. Thus Halevi fills her elaborately footnoted expansion on the story of Adam and Eve (or Havah) with alternate translations, interpretive traditions, linguistic clarifications and explanatory dialogues. Among its many strengths, her targum is both devout and progressive. The author has an easy familiarity with modern biblical scholarship and willingness to parse stale orthodoxies. Her discussions of gender and theodicy are particularly piercing. Further, her innovative interpretations of this oldest of tales may provide new insights for even experienced readers. Nonetheless, it is clear from the intricacy of Halevi’s introduction–a long and detailed excursion into the technical differences between torah, targum, midrash and other forms of scripture and commentary–that the book will likely appeal to none but the most literate reader of Jewish texts. More casual observers will probably turn away when she writes of “medium[s] for polyvalency” and “triliteral consonantal roots.” But for those willing to immerse themselves in Torah–surely, Halevi’s ideal readers–Adam and Havah offers a myriad of joys.
Gorgeous commentary.Pub Date: March 30, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4414-9784-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Only slightly better than a tabloid look at papal controversies.
A tale of two popes.
Novelist, screenwriter, and playwright McCarten (Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink, 2017, etc.) provides a sensationalized examination of the Catholic Church’s two most recent leaders. The groundbreaking decision by Pope Benedict XVI to resign the papacy in 2013 led to widespread speculation and gossip about his motives, and the author digs into many of those theories. Describing Benedict at one point as “a frail and confused old man drowning in shallow waters while those closest to him watched,” McCarten is largely dismissive of Benedict as anything aside from an academic. Though he occasionally takes pity on the former pontiff—e.g., noting that his desires to go into seclusion went unheeded by his predecessor, John Paul II—the author mainly describes him as lacking any interpersonal skills and being utterly disconnected from the real world or the church he was called to lead. Benedict was a strong defender of orthodoxy, so his resignation came as a surprise; indeed, “the most conventional man in the Catholic Church [did] the most unconventional thing in its modern history.” McCarten sees in that decision a mixture of guilt over failures to stem the church’s sex abuse scandal and overwhelming inability to lead in the light of his own shortcomings and the Vatican’s continued scandals. Though the author is obviously more aligned with Pope Francis’ progressiveness, he does not spare the newest pope from scrutiny. He provides a disconcerting report of Francis’ career in Argentina, strongly suggesting that he was complicit, even if only through silence, with the brutality his nation faced in the late 20th century. Ultimately, though intermittently intriguing, this book is just another average addition to the well-saturated genre of Vatican intrigue works. Since the author fails to provide much new information or analysis, serious readers will want to look elsewhere.
Only slightly better than a tabloid look at papal controversies.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-20790-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
The director of the Florilogia Institute in Sonoma, Calif., uses literature, current events, and the Bible to argue that the efficacy of ritual violence in human affairs has been undermined by the Judaeo-Christian concern for the victim. Bailie proceeds from a traditional anthropological understanding of how cultures are held together by sacred violence: Periods of social chaos are often resolved by acts of definitive violence that, because they establish order, become sacred to a community's memory; and such definitive acts need to be reenacted from time to time by the ritual death of one or more scapegoats. The author argues that the effectiveness of this social mechanism has been gradually eroded, over the course of history, by an awakening empathy for the victim. In the first half of his book, he traces history from Aeschylus, who glosses over the sacrificial death of Iphigenia prior to the Trojan War, to US intervention in Somalia and the beating of Rodney King, observing that the status of victim has now become the seal of moral rectitude. The result, he claims, is a crisis of culture that has led to the increase, not the decrease, of violence—part of which, he asserts, is due to the evaporation of the Cold War's useful conventions. In the book's second half, Bailie shows how the Bible itself struggles with the concept of scapegoat, especially when Abraham's God rescinds the traditional demand for human sacrifice and when the Crucifixion becomes the vindication par excellence of the victim. Throughout, the author displays an awareness of the Western literary and philosophical tradition, and if his prose is at times obscure, it is brightened by exciting insights. Demanding but stimulating fare for those who believe that human events are ultimately responses to ideas and attitudes.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8245-1464-5
Page Count: 326
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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