I have just read a book of interviews between the French rabbi and radio host Victor Malka and the Jewish philosopher Stéphane Moses (1931-2007).
Stéphane Moses was born in Berlin. His family fled Nazi-Germany in 1936 to settle in Morocco and then France where he studied German and philosophy. He became a university professor and taught at the Sorbonne and Paris X Nanterre before moving to Israel with his wife in 1968. There he taught German literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
His family was not completely assimilated but Moses really discovered and understood Judaism as a student when, encouraged by some friends, he started to attend conferences by Léon Askenazi.
His philosophical work focuses on Franz Rosenzweig, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Sholem, Emmanuel Levinas, the Maharal of Prague and Chaim Volozhin. Because of its format the book was a rather easy read which encouraged me to read more Jewish philosophy.
I have now started Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard by Deborah Rey and will probably blog about it soon.
Wat about you? What are you reading?
27 Comments
November 7, 2009 at 8:25 pm
I usually have a couple books going at the same time. Right now, I’m reading Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden, The Soloist by Steve Lopez and The Great Influenza by John Barry.
November 8, 2009 at 12:46 am
Two books at the same time is usually my maximum, otherwise I tend to feel overwhelmed.
November 8, 2009 at 12:27 am
I’m reading a biography of Ayn Rand. Fascinating. I didn’t know she was born Alissa Rosenbaum to bourgeouisie parents in Russia and survived the Russian Revolution and the few horrible years after, as did my grandmother.
November 8, 2009 at 12:53 am
I had to check who Ayn Rand was. Thanks for educating me.
November 8, 2009 at 5:59 am
I just finished Maggie O’Farrel, After You’d Gone. worth reading. In the middle of Linda Colley’s Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh, A Woman in World History.
November 8, 2009 at 12:28 pm
I have never heard of these two authors. Thanks MiI.
November 8, 2009 at 7:48 am
“Putin and the Rise of Russia” by Michael Stuermer. and “War and Peace” by that Tolstoy chappie.
What is the title of the book you are reading Leora, that sounds right up my street.
I am slowly working my way through Rabbi Jonathan Sack’s book “To Heal a Fractured World”. It is beautifully written, but I confess I dawdle through it, because it is a bit like a long walk with a good friend, you just don’t want it to be over with.
November 8, 2009 at 10:25 am
Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller – I’ll write more about it later. The first few chapters are about her childhood in Russia – had me glued to the book. Like my grandmother, she lived in both Leningrad and Odessa. But unlike my grandmother, she kept her Jewishness a secret her whole life. It was something negative, to be swept under a rug. I finally understand her books a little better.
Ilana-Davita, I’m always amazed you can read so much Jewish philosophy.
November 8, 2009 at 10:26 am
Oh, and my library doesn’t have the Putin book. I’m planning to ask them to order it.
November 8, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I always enjoy reading what Jonathan Sacks writes too. I see what you mean about not wanting to finish the book too soon.
November 8, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I havent had much time for reading lately, but my son picked up two murder mysteries / action novels. when i have time (haha) i plan to read them.
November 8, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Does he read them too or did he pick them up for you?
November 8, 2009 at 2:03 pm
my two oldest inhale these kinds of books – they left teen fiction behind a long time ago…but he chose them with all of us in mind.
November 8, 2009 at 1:52 pm
At the moment, I’m reading Rabbi Marc Angel’s Maimonides, Spinoza, and Us: Towards an Intellectually Vibrant Judaism. I also will be soon (bz”h) be reading his Voices in Exile: A Study in Sephardic Intellectual History, and rereading (for the second time) Rabbi Isaac Herzog’s Judaism: Law and Ethics.
(Rabbi Herzog’s book is a collection of essays, about half of them about the interaction between Judaism and natural science and/or Hellenism and Greek philosophy, while the other half of the essays are on miscellaneous topics, but all from a German/British-style Maimonidean enlightened Orthodoxy.)
I’ve also recently bought the following, though I have no idea when I’ll read them all:
** The Jews of Moslem Spain (Eliyahu Ashtor)
** A History of the Jews in Christian Spain (Yitzhak Baer)
** Jews of Georgian England, 1714-1830: Tradition and Change In a Liberal Society (Todd M. Endelman; the English Jews in this era were all Western-European Judeo-Spanish Sephardim, similar to the Dutch and the Italians, similar to but different than the Ladino-speaking Judeo-Spanish of Turkey and the Balkans).
** The History of the Jews in the Netherlands (multiple editors, Littman Library of Jewish Civilization; Dutch Jews, as said, were Western European Judeo-Spanish)
** Modernity Within Tradition: The Social History of Orthodox Jewry in Imperial Germany (Mordechai Breuer)
I’m reading all these books because the Jews of Spain (both Muslim and Christian Spain), 19th-century Germany (who imitated the Spanish), England, Holland, Italy, Turkey, and the Balkans all provide us an instructive lesson in how Judaism should confront and relate to modernity and secular culture and knowledge.
Especially, the Jews of England, Holland, and Italy were barely affected by the Renaissance and Enlightenment, because they had already been incorporated into their countries’ lives and cultures.
The Turkish and Balkan Jews, although they confronted modernity to a much lesser extent than others, did successfully cope with whatever they did confront. For example, when Rhodes (Greece) was conquered by the Italians, they immediately built a new rabbinical seminary incorporating secular studies, and Sarajevo (Yugoslavia) also built such a seminary, as soon as they got tired of sending all their rabbinical students overseas to learn in Western European universities. Rabbi Haim David Halevi, a traditional Judeo-Spanish Turkish rabbi living in 20th century Israel, never learned in university himself, but was highly appreciative of secular learning in general (he said that one may study for a secular exam on Shabbat, despite the prohibition of preparing for the week’s activities on Shabbat, because, he said, the secular knowledge gained is intrinsically beneficial in and of itself on Shabbat, irrespective of any additional benefit during the week in school, i.e. passing the exam) and even of academic Jewish studies (he introduced one professor at a dinner in the professor’s honor, saying how the professor’s academic study of Judaism enriched and enlightened our knowledge of Torah).
The German Neo-Orthodox in the 19th-century successfully transitioned from a baroque Ashkenazism that eschewed philosophy and Hebrew language in favor of Talmudic casuistry and kabbalah.
My thinking is: why try to bend the Eastern European Ashkenazi Judaism to fit with modernity? Yes, it can be done, with historical contexualizing, but most Modern Orthodox laymen are not so capable, and so they have cognitive dissonance, granting hegemony to 19th century Eastern Europe and yet being modern too. Thus, to end the dissonance, they either become non-religious or Haredi. But if we grant hegemony to the Judeo-Spanish, all our difficulties disappear.
November 8, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Thanks for your rather exhaustive answer. I think I’d quite like to read the last one on your list about Germany and Orthodoxy.
I quite agree with your analysis of how Orthodoxy could (should?) deal with modernity. All the more so after re-reading Hazony’s introduction to Berkovits’s essays.
November 8, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Professor Marc Shapiro has told me that his Between The Yeshiva World And Modern Orthodoxy: The Life And Works Of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, 1884-1966 also contains a large amount of information on German Neo-Orthodoxy in general. (Rabbi Weinberg was an early 20th century rabbi, who learned in the yeshivot of Eastern Europe and initially followed their rejection of Hirschian Neo-Orthodoxy, but he later came to be a rabbi in Germany and even the rosh yeshiva of the Neo-Orthodox Hildesheimer Yeshiva in Berlin. Hence Shapiro’s title for his book.)
There are a few other books on German Neo-Orthodoxy, but they’re unfortunately long out-of-print and unavailable affordably, even used:
** Dayan Isidore Grunfeld, Three Generations: The Influence of Samson Raphael Hirsch on Jewish Life and Thought
** Hermann Schwab, The History of Orthodox Jewry in Germany
** Naphtali Carlebach, Joseph Carlebach and his generation: biography of the late Chief Rabbi of Altona and Hamburg (Rabbi Joseph Carlebach was the father of the Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach)
So those last three are all out of print, but I thought I’d tell you about them anyway, in case they’re ever back in print; you’ll know to keep your eyes own. In any case, Professor Shapiro’s book about Rabbi Weinberg is easily available.
November 8, 2009 at 3:37 pm
*eyes OPEN
November 8, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Hadassah: That’s pretty thoughtful of your son. Which ones did he pick up?
November 8, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Thanks Michael for all your suggestions.
I haven’t received Rabbi Marc Angel’s Maimonides, Spinoza, and Us: Towards an Intellectually Vibrant Judaism yet but apparently it has been shipped.
Shapiro’s book is indeed available on Amazon.co.uk and seems quite interesting.
November 8, 2009 at 5:40 pm
I’m reading Rabbi Angel’s book, and I’m finding it quite lovely. A lot of what he says is (to me at least) pretty familiar and unexceptional, but he says it all in a lovely way, and it’s good to see his viewpoint expressed systematically. (And besides, I’ve read a lot of Rabbi Angel’s other books, so maybe it’s all familiar to me simply because I’m used to it, and not for any lack of innovative insights by him.)
His book covers a surprising number of topic: G-d’s nature and our prayers and relationship with Him, the divinity of the Torah, superstition and mysticism, halakha’s evolving with the times, the conversion crisis…it’s like everything Rabbi Angel has written in Conversations and for the Institute, but all in one book!
A lot of what he says in the name of Rambam seems to me more like Kuzari or RambaN (at least according to what I know), but even if his book is not correct from a strictly academic standpoint, it’s wonderful from a traditional standpoint. If what he says is good and edifying, does it matter so much (religiously, as opposed to academically) if RambaM or RambaN said it? We’re all good post-modernists, no?
November 9, 2009 at 11:59 am
I just finished Heidi Pitlor’s “The Birthdays,” about a rather dysfunctional family. A light, entertaining read. Now I’m reading Anne Tyler’s “The Accidental Tourist.” I’ve always liked the movie, but never read the book. So far, it’s really good.
November 9, 2009 at 2:24 pm
I don’t think I have ever read anything by Anne Tyler.
November 10, 2009 at 11:46 pm
I haven’t bought any books, as I begin my move tomorrow, and didn’t need additional books to pack. I am having book buying withdrawals. LOL.
I am also reading Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard, thanks to Deborah. And, will review it when I finish it.
I really admire Michael’s book listing.
November 12, 2009 at 9:18 am
Michael is a very impressive reader and writer!
November 13, 2009 at 7:33 am
[...] What Are You Reading? [...]
November 15, 2009 at 11:55 am
Isabelle,
I thought you might find the following interesting; it’s a book a friend of mine in yeshiva has been reading:
Dreyfus: A Family Affair, 1789-1945, by Professor (of Modern European History) Michael Burns
There are two interesting things about this book:
(1) It tries to view the Dreyfus affair from the perspective of (a) the entire period of 1789 to 1945, and (b) the entire Dreyfus family (it even includes a family tree!).
(2) It is written like a novel, even though it is actually a history book. For example, from when I was just glancing through it: beginning his discussion with Dreyfus’s 18th century ancestors, Burns casually remarks on how one of these ancestors, being a butcher, must have had prodigious physical strength, and how he probably would sell the front half of the animal as kosher and sell the rear half to the gentiles due to the unkosher sinews. Burns also discusses the linguistic peculiarities of Ashkenazi French Jewry in Alsance (of which Dreyfus’s ancestors were a part), as contrasted with the French Sephardim in Bordeaux and Bayonnce, and how the French Enlightenment figures never doubted that the latter would be accorded emancipation, even as they were reluctant to emancipate the former.
November 15, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Thanks a lot for the reference; I’ll check it. I finally received and so started Rabbi Marc Angel’s Maimonides, Spinoza, and Us: Towards an Intellectually Vibrant Judaism and am quite enjoying it so far.