A collection of prose pieces focusing on the nature of Israeli society and its relations with Arabs within and without its borders. Israeli novelist and short-story writer Hareven (Twilight and Other Stories, 1992, etc.) writes disapprovingly of the values and ethics of modern Israel. She characterizes the predominant mood of the country as shallow and transient; consumerism predominates, and a selfish subjectivity runs rampant. Thousands of people are killed on the road by ``dilettante drivers.'' The ``dilettante rabbis'' of the ultranationalist Gush Emunim forget that the Torah rejects collective punishment and urges us to respect the rights of non- Jews. Hareven feels that her contemporaries have lost a reverence for the past, exemplified by the Tel Aviv municipality's demolishing its first school, the Gymnasium, to build yet another shopping mall: ``The shmatte business and its attendant fashions take precedence over a historical educational institution.'' Consumerism and superficiality, she feels, characterize the new Israeli. The root of all this, insists Hareven, is the nation's refusal to give up its historical victim status. Israeli Jews think that they are entitled to let loose, free of moral or historical bounds, and to commit atrocities like exiling Arabs from their homes and appropriating their lands. Turning from national pathology to policy, Hareven contends that Israel must evacuate the administered territories, since the alternative is ``permanent potential for war.'' While much of Hareven's writing offers insights and provocation, she tends to blithely dismiss, rather than debate, differing opinions. In her passion to focus on the humanistic concerns of Judaism, she pushes over ritual pillars such as dietary laws and Sabbath observance as not necessary to ``the framework of basic Judaism.'' A thoughtful, disturbing, though often simplistically one- sided view of a complex country and its heterogeneous people.
Pub Date: May 8, 1995
ISBN: 1-56279-072-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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