THE PEOPLE AND THE BOOKS – BOOK REVIEW BY MERLE
MOLOFSKY
The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature, by
Adam Kirsch, W. W. Norton & Company, New York and London,
2016.
Adam Kirsch offers an in-depth analysis of major currents in
Jewish thought represented in 18 works of Jewish literature that
span millennia, from the Book of Deuteronomy to Sholem
Aleichem’s humorous and heartbreaking tales of Tevye the
Dairyman. Not only is the time span impressive, from the seventh
century BCE until the very early 20th century CE, more than 2500
years of ideas, but the geographic range of the writings also is
impressive.
Eighteen in Jewish lore has special significance. The Hebrew
word “chai” means “life”, and the word combines two Hebrew
letters, “chet” and “yod”. Each letter has a numerical value, based
on the order of the Hebrew alphabet. Chet is the eighth letter,
and connotes an opening or gateway. It is the letter that follows
the first seven letters, which are emblematic of the seven days of
creation. Yod is the tenth letter, and since it is the smallest letter
of the Hebrew alphabet, and its shape is part of every other letter,
it represents a seed, a beginning, and the essence of Jewishness.
Eight and ten are eighteen, and chet and yod spell chai. Thus
there is a special meaning to Adam Kirsch choosing 18 works of
literature spanning centuries and continents. He is telling us that
the life, the essence, of Jewish thought and experience, are
captured in the works he has chosen to present and analyze.
Kirsch’s writing style is crystal clear, engaging, accessible, his
scholarship is impressive, and this book is powerful and
informative. Indeed, he is offering a history of the evolution of
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Jewish thought embodied in major religious, philosophical, and
literary writings.
It is helpful to have a sense of the scope of the selected writings,
both in historical era and in geographical location. Early writings
from the Biblical period through the 12th century CE include the
Book of Deuteronomy from the Torah, most likely written in Judea
or Samaria; the Biblical Book of Esther, which is set in Persia, and
which may have been written in Persia; The Exposition and the
Laws by Philo of Alexandria, in Egypt; The Jewish War by Flavius
Josephus, of Jeruslem and Rome; the Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the
Fathers, by Rabbi Hillel, who was born in Babylon and lived in
Jerusalem ; the Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, written during his
travels in Spain, the Mediterranean region, and the Middle East;
and.the Kuzari, a philosophical defense of Judaism by the poet
Judah Halevi, who lived in Spain, Egypt, and Palestine.
Writings from the medieval 12th century CE, and extending
through the 18th century CE, include The Guide of the Perplexed
by Moses Maimonides, born in Spain but living mainly in Egypt,
the 13th century CE mystical Kabbalistic text Zohar, most likely
written by Moses de León of Spain; and then, emerging from the
Iberian peninsula and the Levant into Eastern Europe, the Yiddish
language retelling of the Torah for Jewish women, the Tsenerene,
followed by the late 17th century CE Memoirs of Glückel of
Hamelyn, lower Saxony, Germany, written for her children after
her husband died, and finally published in 1896!
Contemporaneous with the Eastern European writings addressing
the thoughts and lives and religious interests of Jewish women
was the work of Baruch Spinoza, of Amsterdam, widely
recognized as a philosopher, whose major work, TheologicalPolitical Treatise, was written some time after he was scorned,
and excommunicated, by the Jewish community in Amsterdam.
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Writers in the 18th century CE include Moses Mendolssohn of
Germany, who wrote Jerusalem, and Solomon Maimon, of
Lithuania, who wrote a poignant autobiography describing his
efforts to live as a secular philosopher in Germany rather than be
bound by his Jewishness.
Bridging the 18th and 19th centuries is the beloved Yiddish
language story teller and teacher Nachman of Bretslav, who lived
in Poland and Ukraine; and bridging the 19th and 20th centuries
are the Zionist Theodor Herzl of Vienna, and the famous Yiddish
writer, of short stories and novels, Sholem Aleichem, who lived in
Kiev, Ukraine, and in New York City.
The developmental line of thought that Kirsch identifies and
explores is in a sense the collective mind of the Jewish people,
exemplified of course by their great religious leaders and great
secular and religious intellectuals, and, also, by the people
themselves, most notably the Jewish women who weren’t
“learned in Torah”, who couldn’t read or understand Hebrew, but
who were immersed in Judaism and who raised Jewish children.
A developmental line of thought in any group could be thought of
as a psychological emergence of that group, those people, who
are defining themselves as a people, and as individuals, as they
identify with what their spiritual and intellectual leaders are
thinking and saying.
What then, is the line of thought to which Kirsch directs our
attention? First, who are the Jews according to their own history,
and in world history? The languages in which these books were
written tell the story of where the Jews lived, what cultures they
were embedded in, and, because language has an influence on
how we think, what cultures contributed to their line of thought.
Kirsch uses a geographical metaphor to help the reader focus on
Kirsch’s focus: “In the map of Jewish writing, the law and its
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commentaries are the central continent. To master them,
however, requires a lifelong training available to few people,
usually the most devote; and so they appear only incidentally in
the pages that follow” (p. xii).
Kirsch then describes those “pages that follow” thusly: “What
remains is a literature whose richness and variety testify to the
great length and breadth of Jewish history. The books explored in
the following pages were written over a span of more than twentyfive hundred years, in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Arabic,
Yiddish, and German” (p. xii). Kirsch points us to a “remarkable
continuity in Jewish thought” in the face of crisis, calamity,
catastrophe, and trauma. He identifies four crucial, central
elements in Jewish literature: “God, the Torah, the Land of Israel,
and the Jewish people” (p. xiii).
In 14 chapters, Kirsch explores his chosen 2500 years of eighteen
works of Jewish literature, keeping us focused on where each
work leads. The first two chapters are Biblical writings, “The
Blessing and the Curse: The Book of Deuteronomy”, and “In the
Kingdom of Chance: The Book of Esther”. Kirsch identifies the
Book of Deuteronomy as the last Book of the Torah, and sees it
as a “crucial turning point”, devoted not to “mythical and
miraculous stories”, but to “law and history”, and Israelites’
relationship to the Land of Israel. His focus on blessing and
curse, which echoes a passage from Genesis, questions God’s
relationship with Moses, the hero of the Book of Exodus and the
Book of Deuteronomy. He closes the chapter by marveling at the
“dexterity [that] would always be needed to reconcile God’s justice
with his mercy – and to explain the vicissitudes that history had in
store for the people of the covenant” (p.23).
Kirsch interprets the Book of Esther as continuing and elaborating
”themes that would be, and are, central to Jewish history: the
precariousness of Jewish life in Diaspora, and the
accommodations Jews must make to survive as an often-suspect
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minority” (p. 26). Thus the Jews are embedded in one form of
Diaspora or another from their earliest history, slaves in Egypt;
wandering in the desert for 40 years; the Babylonian captivity;
suspect people, aliens, in Persia, where they were at the mercy of
rulers who accepted them or feared them. The privilege of
Mordecai and Esther in Persia was not without its dangers.
Perhaps we could understand these Biblical chapters as the first
canary in the coal mine warning system of Jewish literature.
In the third and fourth chapters, Kirsch gives a detailed
description and analysis of two classical period Jewish writers,
Jews who were part of the larger world of Greek and Roman
culture and history, Philo and Joseph Flavius.
Philo’s life spanned the first century BCE and the first century CE.
He lived in Alexandria, Egypt, spoke Greek, witnessed the civil
war between Greeks and Jews in Alexandria, and devoted himself
to demonstrating what he considered the intellectual harmony
between Jewish and Greek culture, that Judaism, the religion of
the Jews, and Greek philosophy are drawn from a similar wisdom.
Kirsch tells us that Philo saw Jewish law, Jewish ritual, as a
rational expression of the wisdom to be found in natural law. “He
tries to unite the respect owed to inheritance with the respect
owed to reason” (p. 74), religious law and natural law.
Here we see an attempt by a Jewish intellectual to integrate his
traditional knowledge with the culture in which he is embedded, a
desire to be both Jewish and part of a dominant culture. How
does Jewish identity reconcile with other aspects of self, another
potential identity?
Kirsch points out that Philo tries to justify accepting Biblical
“miracles”, tries to understand Moses as similar to a Stoic
philosopher. Perhaps the yearning of such a gifted philosopher
as Philo to remain Jewish while adopting the philosophy of
another culture is similar to an adolescent differentiating from
beloved parents and turning to an alternate peer culture.
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Joseph Flavius was a witness to, and participant in, the Jewish
wars. He saw his ethnic/national/religious group, the Jews, rebel
against the Roman Empire, resisting Roman presence in Judea,
and he saw Judea fall and the Temple destroyed. Kirsch
describes the Temple as the heart and soul of Jewish life,
necessary to their coherence as a people. He points out that
Josephus saw the Jewish rebellion as suicidal, while the Jewish
rebels saw it as their fight for freedom. Josephus actually served
as a general in the Jewish rebellion, and then allied himself with
Rome, trying to persuade the Jews to stand down. Josephus
writes in The Jewish War Jewish encounters with tyrants such as
Herod and Caligula, and the mass suicide at Masada. Kirsch
sees the concern of Josephus about Jewish suicidal rebellions as
realistic. “When a nation makes a fetish of death, it can expect
only to die” (p. 102). In a sense, following both Josephus and
Kirsch, we can see an adolescent defiance in such a suicidal
rebellion, warned against ages before in Proverbs 16:18, “Pride
goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (King
James Version).
At the sixth chapter, “Building Fences”, Kirsch moves from the
struggle for integrating Jewish thought with another dominant
culture’s ideology to the teachings of the Talmud, purely Jewish
thought, rabbinic Judaism, emerging after the destruction of the
Temple. Developmentally, perhaps we can understand this as an
attempt to reaffirm one’s identity in calamity. Kirsch gives us a
lively account of the manifestation of this spiritual/intellectual
Jewishness as a response to the losses the Jewish people
experienced, particularly the destruction of the Temple. Without
the Temple as the center of Jewish life, what would hold Jewish
identity together? Answer: scholarly approaches to Jewish
spiritual concerns.
Kirsch discusses ”making a fence around the Torah”, a concept
that has become a bit of folk wisdom, which he describes as the
whole essence the scholarly Talmudic Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the
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Fathers. The key to understanding the saying is in recognizing
that Judaism concerned itself with the vulnerability to succumbing
to sin, to straying from what must be preserved.
In concluding the chapter, Kirsch turns to the well-known three
questions of Rabbi Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for
me? And if I am for myself alone, then what am I? And if not
now, when?” (p. 127). He emphasizes that for much of Jewish
history, the questions were interpreted as being about the
responsibility the individual has to God. We constantly are being
judged by God. “In this way, the rabbis turned the individual
Jewish soul into the protagonist of a great moral drama, just at the
moment when the Jewish collective had ceased to figure in the
drama of politics” (p. 126). The trauma of the destruction of the
Temple had to be absorbed by Jewish thinking, so that Jewish
experience, which we can glean from Jewish literature, could
retain focus and meaning.
Chapter Six, “The Scandal of Chosenness”, takes us on a trip,
along with the writers whom Kirsch discusses, as he investigates
the challenging question of how Jews perceive Jewish
chosenness. The two literary odysseys are the Itinerary of
Benjamin of Tudela, and the Kuzari of poet Judah Halevi, travels
of 12th century CE Diaspora Jews. Kirsch challenges what he
considers the “romantic” notion of the golden age of 12th century
Spain, idealized as a time when Muslims, Christians, and Jews
lived in harmony, when in fact Muslims had complete control and
Jews were at the mercy of the “beneficent” rulers. He points out
that Jews assimilated culturally, but not socially. They adjusted to
the social reality, even if they were not fully accepted socially.
Kirsch points out that Benjamin of Tudela incorporates mythical,
fantasy elements into his descriptions of his travels in Yemen, and
China, and Judan Halevi, as his life was drawing to an end, left
supposedly ideal Spain for impoverished Palestine, where he
believed Jews belonged. The basic narrative of the Kuzari is an
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account of how a rabbi convinces the king of the Khazars to
convert to Judaism. The irony is that the Arabic title of the
narrative is “The Book of the Khazars: The Book of Proof and
Demonstration in Defense of the Despised Faith”. What seems to
preoccupy Halevi is the very fact of chosenness in the face of the
Diaspora. Without a Holy Land, without a Temple, can Judaism
survive, are Jews still chosen? The trauma demands an
elaborate defense, and Halevi provides one. Kirsch focuses on a
historical conflictual paradox, that Josephus fled the land of Israel
to live, and Halevi has to return to embrace the Land of Israel,
and die. Jews have to choose to live in the Land of Israel, or not,
to retain their sense of chosenness.
Chapter Seven, “Thinking Toward God”, also keeps us rooted in
the 12th century CE, and addresses the famous The Guide for the
Perplexed, an intellectual tour de force by Moshe ben Maimon,
Moses Maimonides. Kirsch sums up the Guide in one sentence:
“Maimonides sets himself the task of teaching Jews the proper
way to think about God” (p.162). That sentence contains a
challenging intellectual puzzle – the mystery is in the word “think”.
A question that haunts this account of Jewish thought, is the effort
to reconcile Jewish traditional thought, religious thought, with
secular philosophical and scientific thought.
Maimonides strives to keep Jews thinking, rationally, about
Jewish law, which means thinking about God. He also wrote
detailed scholarly works on Jewish law, for other scholars, but his
Guide was for the ordinary reader, and for the scholars. Kirsch
emphasizes the fine line Maimonides had to maintain between
esoteric ideas and clearly delineated laws, because he was
concerned that ordinary readers not be confused, not be thrown
into doubt.
Kirsch also identifies a dichotomy between Maimonides’ goal of
clarifying that God is transcendent, so unique that there is no
recognizable relationship between God and human beings, and
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Halevi’s objection to the “philosophers’ belief” that God is so
perfect that God is utterly removed from the world. Maimonides
insists that God cannot be described, as God is so remote from
our reality that language cannot capture anything of the essence
of God. Thus Maimonides writes volumes in order to praise
silence. We cannot speak of God, language cannot speak of
God.
Chapter Eight, “The Secret Life of God: The Zohar”, returns from
submission to silence as a rational conclusion, to the pinnacle of
Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, which Kirsch describes as “plunging
into a world of divine metaphor in which every human act from
sex to prayer turns out to have supernatural repercussions” (p.
193). While Maimonides sought to protect the seeking Jew from
venturing too far from the law, from the dangers of “philosophy”,
the Zohar tells anyone who ventures into its mystical pages that it
is promised “that the individual Jew [has] a crucial role in the
cosmos”, and is offered “a new kind of knowledge of God” 9p.
193).
The mysteries of Kabbalah are understood as interpretations of
the revealed truths hidden in the Torah, accessible if sought for,
an ecstatic gift. Kirsch is a poet, and in writing about “The Secret
Life of God: The Zohar”, he achieves an ecstatic level of poetic
language, resonant with the mystical ideas he explores.
At the end of the chapter (p. 218), Kirsch summarizes a line of
thought about the different ways in which Jewish literature
describes how Jews think about God. The Pirkei Avot of the
Talmud teaches that “ethical behavior and Torah study were the
route to God”. Josephus focuses on actual physical warfare as a
struggle for God’s sovereignty in the face of oppression.
Maimonides offers “intellectual contemplation”. He is enthralled
by the Zohar, which “enchants the universe as no other Jewish
book, plunging the Jew into a supernatural drama in which his
own actions and intentions influence the fate of the universe”.
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At this point, we seem to be coming to a turning point. But where
is Jewish thought leading us? From reasoned contemplation to
mystical ecstasy, what could follow?
Women. Chapter Nine, “Daughters of Zion”, offers two Yiddish
writings, the Tsenerene, and the Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln.
Kirsch offers a view of the lives of Eastern European Jewish
women. He explains that they did not learn to read, write, or
speak Hebrew, and did not participate in synagogue-based
liturgical ritual or Bible or Torah study. Yiddish, the lingua franca
of Eastern European Jews, became the tool that allowed Eastern
European Jewish women access to Jewish thought. The
Tsenerene was aimed at women who spoke and read Yiddish,
who were buying Yiddish-language secular romances made
available by virtue of the printing press, and who offered them
Yiddish translations of Jewish religious texts. The title itself, he
points out, is a Yiddishized version of a Hebrew phrase, “Come
out and see”.a quote from the “Song of Songs”.
The book focused on Jewish women in the Bible, “using the
Bible’s female characters to model feminine virtues” ((p. 225).
Women are being drawn into the dialogue. I offer a Kabbalisicinflected interpretation of this turning point in Kirsch’s book, from
the rational path to God of Maimonides, to ecstatic mysticism, to
women’s roles, as a reintegration of the Shekhina, which in
Jewish lore is the feminine aspect of God. Kirsch creates a
turning point in which the feminine is brought into the dialogue,
inspired by Kabbalistic mysticism.
Kirsch pays particular attention to the interpretation of the story of
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as told in this Yiddish text
designed for women. Are women to be blamed for Adam’s
disobedience? The interpretation in the text allows women
reading to differentiate themselves from Eve, from any sense of
original sin.
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He then discusses the Memoirs of Glückel of Hamelyn, who
began writing at the end of the 17th century CE, in Yiddish. Of
note, he begins the chapter with a photograph of Bertha
Pappenheim, dressed as Glückel, because Bertha Pappenheim is
a descendant of Glückel, and translated her work into German in
the early 20th century CE. Bertha Pappenheim, whom
psychoanalysts know as Anna O., Josef Breuer’s patient, whom
Freud wrote about, was, in her own right, a significant activist, a
feminist who founded the Austrian Women’s Association. She
devoted herself to working with Jewish girls in an orphanage.
She also was a writer, creating a body of work of poetry, fiction,
and plays. Perhaps the dynamic forces that allowed Glückel to
persevere, documenting her life, the struggles she encountered, a
woman whose first husband died, who raised 12 children, who
she said were born every two years, and who eventually married
a man who turned out to be a wastrel, were passed on to Bertha
Pappenheim, who also struggled, who documented the travails of
women. Women were very much a part of Biblical Jewish history
– Esther, Judith, Sarah, Leah, Rebecca, Deborah, Miriam – and
yet they were not writing Jewish history until Yiddish became a
language used in Jewish literature. The people of the Book were
people of languages, Hebrew and Aramaic, eventually Greek and
Latin, and then, due to the Diaspora, people of all the languages
of all the lands wherein they dwelt.
Chapter 10, “Heresy and Freedom”, focuses on the work of
Baruch Spinoza, who, contemporaneous with Glückel of Hameln,
wrote freely, exploring timeless Jewish themes, themes we may
recognize from the works of Philo and Maimonides, for instance.
But Spinoza’s explorations and interpretations led the Jewish
community of Amsterdam to excommunicate him. His
philosophical writings were, and are, a major influence in Western
culture. He valued reason, and applied reason to theology and
politics. He challenged the concept of “chosenness”, and insisted
that there was no difference between Jew and Gentile. Kirsch
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summarizes one aspect of his thinking as, “You can tell people
how to behave, but not what to believe” (p. 269).
In this chapter we see the “logical, rational” development of a
strain of Jewish thinking that is the spine of this book, the struggle
Jewish thinkers have in assimilating traditional Jewish beliefs with
the “otherness” of a secular world, integrating the history of the
relationship of the Jewish people with God with the world of
scientific knowledge. Kirsch understands Spinoza’s TheologicalPolitical Treatise as “the beginning of a new era” (p. 270). He
continues, “How to reconcile reason and faith, how to give Jewish
law meaning, how to read the Bible – these are not modern
questions, but ones that recur whenever Jews confront the
philosophical tradition”. But, Kirsch concludes, Spinoza initiates
modern era, in that he was different from Jewish thinkers before
him. He could not reconcile reason and Judaism.
Chapter 11, “Between Two Worlds”, follows the unfolding thread
of Judaism and the world of the “other”. Kirsch offers an
examination of two works written about 100 years after Spinoza
wrote, the Autobiography of Solomon Maimon and Jerusalem by
Moses Mendelssohn.
Kirsch describes Maimon finding himself torn between what he
considered ignorant Jewish superstition and the enlightened
rational views of thinkers like Immanuel Kant. He saw Talmud
study as worthwhile because it was intellectual, distinct from what
he considered primitive everyday Jewish life. Maimon uses his
own story, his family history, to explore his concerns, but cannot
help but value Jewish thought, writers like Spinoza. He tried to
escape what he saw as the limitations of Judaism by converting to
Christianity. Kirsch captures the struggle Maimon endured,
describing what happened between the Christian priest and the
Jewish seeker. Maimon could not profess Christian faith,
because it contradicted his reason. The priest said, “You are too
much of a philosopher to become a Christian”. Maimon
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answered, “I therefore must remain what I am, a stiff-necked
Jew”. Kirsch recognizes in this poignant exchange the centuries
old dilemma a Jew faces – what am I, who am I?
Maimon sought friendship, and mentorship, with Moses
Mendelssohn, who was fighting for Jewish political equality in
Germany. Mendelssohn could not give up his Jewish identity, but
wanted to maintain personal independence. Kirsch focuses on
Mendelssohn’s insistence on a separation of church and state,
both of which play roles in the life of the individual. Mendelssohn
finds reconciliation in the idea that the best way to serve God is to
serve one’s fellow humans. Kirsch quotes Mendelssohn writing,
“all of men’s duties are obligations toward God” (p. 290).
Kirsch ends the chapter by quoting the end of Jerusalem: “If we
render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, é! Love peace!” (p. 298).
Chapter 12, “Brokenness and Redemption”, explores the rise of
18th century CE Hasidism, and its significance, through the
writings of fabulist story teller Nachman of Bratslav. Hasidism
offered those Jews who were not Talmudic scholars, not “learned
in Torah”, a new path of piety, a path of exuberant celebration of
God through singing and dancing. Hasidism was formed through
the ecstatic teachings of Israel ben Eliezer, the Basl Shem Tov,
Master of the Good Name, who delighted in stories. The tzaddik,
a wise holy man, interacted with the cosmos, as described in
Kabbalistic teachings. Kirsch emphasizes Nachman’s devotion to
teaching ordinary listeners, not scholars, through story telling, by
publishing bilingual editions, Yiddish and Hebrew, of his work.
The continuing emergence of Yiddish as a language that
communicates essential Jewish thought in Eastern Europe is a
story of democratization of faith. Nachman’s stories encourage
trust in the wisdom of a holy man, rather than the authority of a
rabbi. Kirsch identifies a theme, of longing and separation. As
his book unfolds, century by century, era by era, writer by writer,
we see the accumulative trauma of the loss of a native land, the
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Land of Israel, and the destruction of the Temple, as permeating
the sense of Jewish history, Jewish tradition, Jewish identity,
Jewish rebellion. What am I? Who am I? God, what are you?
Who are you? Are you there?
Chapter 13, “If You Will It”, leads the reader to contemplate what
the Jewish people will, and what God wills. Two books, The
Jewish State, advocating the relocation of Jews to Palestine, the
ancient Land of Israel, and Old New Land, a novel imagining the
dream of returning to the Promised Land fulfilled, by Theodor
Herzl, the acknowledged father of Zionism, were instrumental in
the eventual creation of Israel, the Jewish State. Kirsch points out
that the vision of the novel was nothing like the reality of what
eventually happened. The history of the establishment of Israel,
and everything that since has followed, was not envisioned by
Herzl.
Kirsch writes, “What is notable about Herzl’s vision of Zionism is
that it holds the entire tradition of Jewish longing for Zion at arm’s
length. Since the moment the Temple was destroyed, the idea of
redemption and restoration to the Land of Israel had played a
central role in every aspect of Judaism” (p. 334). Herzl’s vision
focused on what the Jews who would settle, were settling, in
Palestine, the Land of Israel, were becoming, who they would be.
What am I? Who am I? Kirsch points out that rebuilding the
Temple was essential to Herzl’s vision. From the Israelites of
Deuteronomy standing on the bank of the Jordan River
contemplating the land that would be theirs, through the many
centuries of the Diaspora, what has been central is the question,
what is at the center? Kirsch concludes this chapter with the
conclusion of Herzl’s novel. In the novel, people are asked how
to account for the success of the Zionist enterprise. Words are
tossed out: Necessity. Knowledge. Will power. Forces of
nature. Kirsch summarizes, “But the rabbi among them gives a
different answer: ‘God!’ It is the novel’s last word” (p. 351).
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Is God the last word? Is God the first word?
In the Jewish journey through history according to these 18 books
Kirsch has chosen, the final chapter of the journey, Chapter 14,
“On the Brink”, brings us to the turn of the century – which
century? – the end of the 19th century CE, the early 20th century –
and the Yiddish language stories of Sholem Aleichem, particularly
Tevye the Dairyman, stories about this Tevye, this simple/not so
simple dairyman known at first only to Yiddish readers, then to
those who eventually had a chance to read them in translation,
and, finally, to those who saw the 1964 Broadway musical,
“Fiddler on the Roof”, to those who saw the 1971 movie, “Fiddler
on the Roof”. The movie was seen by a multitude, and was
awarded three Academy Awards.
The first song in the musical, in the movie, is “Tradition!” And
tradition is the major theme, the thread, interwoven with the quest
for rootedness in the here and now of the Diaspora, interwoven
with the quest for Return, for Redemption, interwoven with the
quest for “modernity”, for science and rationality, interwoven with
the major question, identity, Who am I? Who am I?
Kirsch describes the Tevye stories as depicting a “Jewish world
on the brink, about to undergo tragedies and transformations that
would permanently alter the shape of Jewish life” (p. 354).
Kirsch focuses on the fact that although the poor Jews whose
lives Sholem Aleichem was depicting faced all sorts of
depredations from the outer, non-Jewish world, dreadful dangers,
Sholem Aleichem was more interested in the relationships among
Jews, the tensions between rich and poor Jews. Kirsch also
compares Tevye to Job. Hardships accumulate. Kirsch also is
quite taken by the fact that Tevye seems to be the only character
in these stories who values traditional Jewish scholarship.
although he is not well-versed in traditional Jewish knowledge, he
values what he does know, what he has come across, and what is
left for others to know. Kirsch sees the problem of “encroaching
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ignorance” as “one of the key transformations of Jewish society
reflected in the Tevye stories” (p. 358).
The book concludes with a statement about the trajectory of
recent Jewish history, history that for Kirsch includes the
Holocaust, the emergence of the State of Israel, the emergence of
American Jewry, that Kirsch says “defines the constellation of
Jewry in the twenty-first century” (p. 366). In a few trenchant
sentences, Kirsch sums up the themes explored in the books that
sweep through the millennia of Jewish thought, The last two
sentences speak volumes, reflecting the history embedded in the
volumes discussed in the book: “In the long perspective of
Jewish history, our own era – which appears so unique and in
some ways really is unique – can be seen as offering a new
formulation of these ancient questions. If the answers keep
changing while the questions keep being asked, what is this but a
sign that the story of Judaism has not yet reached its conclusion?”
(p. 367).
Literature is a great teacher, playing a role in the formation of a
reader’s sense of community, a reader’s sense of self, a reader’s
identity. What Kirsch has offered, in this guided journey through
2500 years of Jewish literature, is homage to what these works
have taught, and continue to teach. When I was a child, living in
Brooklyn, I read a collection of short stories, Tales from the Old
Country, by Sholem Aleichem, and had a sense of being
transported in time and space to the everyday lives of my
ancestors, to the places and experiences of generations of my
family. Through these humane, compassionate, comic and tragic
stories, I learned who I am. I learned what essentially is my deep
sense of Jewish identity. I learned my humanity….
Merle Molofsky
[email protected]
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