What Shall I Do with This People?: Jews and the Fractious Politics of Judaism

Rating:
Summary: fascinating, interesting, disturbing
Review: I bought this book based on comments here, and a recommendation under a review of ONE PEOPLE, TWO WORLDS. But I have reason to question Viorst's accuracy, knowledge, and statements because of the following:

P. 79 (Re: Yochanan ben Zakkai and his yeshiva at Yavneh) "His yeshiva ... also contributed to compiling and editing the books of the Bible, and presided over the Greek translation of what has since become the Old Testament." I assume he is referring to Aquila's translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, but "the Greek translation of ... the Old Testament" began a few hundred years earlier, and many NT quotations of the OT were from this earlier Greek translation (or others). Whatever Viorst means to say, he doesn't say it clearly.

P. 87: "The word 'Torah,' which means 'guidance,' is absent from the Bible, and appeared only in Talmudic times." Huh???? The word "Torah" appears 220x in the Hebrew Bible, beginning with Genesis 26:5. How can Viorst mean what he writes here?

Thus, while I find the book an interesting history of the way rabbinic Judaism came to be, statements like the above make me wonder if what I'm reading is accurate.

The "Advance Praise" on the back of the dustjacket from Letty Cottin Pogrebin ("exhaustively researched") and Balfour Brickner ("a rich knowledge of Jewish history to produce a brilliant, accurate ... analysis") supports Viorst's veracity -- but the above two quotes undermine it, and there may be others that I won't recognize, due to being ignorant of these other matters.

Having written the above, however, this book is eye-opening and fascinating reading for those like myself who have never read about this dark side of Jewish history. And it is dark.

If the author is basically accurate (his endnotes and bibliography support him being accurate), then this is a troubling book that merits reading.

Rating:
Summary: Dissent is nothing compared to Christianity...
Review: Next I would like the author to write a similar history of dissent amongst the Christian religious groups in the world today from Roman Catholicism to born-again christians to Lutherans, to the Church of England.
I see nothing different about people.
Whether they are Jews or Christians, Muslims or Hindus, Buddhists or Sufi, people will always disagree, they will always see things from their perspective, and there will always be dissent even amongst members of the same church or same parish.

The challenge that the author fails to address is how any religion can avoid fractious politics. If in fact it can; if humanity can.

Rating:
Summary: occasionally useful but mostly disappointing
Review: This was not the book I expected from the cover and the reviews. I thought it would be a history of intra-Jewish discord; instead, the first 2/3 of the book is just a general history of Judaism (useful for the beginner, but no more so than many other books), and the rest is a discussion of Rabin's assassination and the ideological disputes within Israel that led to it.

I was disappointed in some other ways:

1. The book's discussion of Israeli politics is out of date. It ends with Rabin's assassination in 1995. But at the time I am writing this (early 2003) the Oslo peace process looks to many former doves like a sham, Israel seems more far more united (behind Ariel Sharon) than it has been in decades, and the dispute between Rabin and his enemies is about as relevant to modern events as the 18th-century disputes between Hasidim and their enemies.

2. The book is sometimes a bit sloppy; the most common distortion seems to be Viorst's belief that most Orthodox Jews (or most ultra-Orthodox, or most Hasidim) share the views of a few ideologues. For example, he cites Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum's attacks on Zionism, and asserts that "To this day, Hasidim conventionally maintain that Israel is a heresy which exposes Jews to a vengeful God." (p. 173). This view would be news to Chabad Hasidim, who conventionally are so pro-Israel they make Milton Viorst look like Joel Teitelbaum.

Rating:
Summary: Nationalism gained, Judaism lost?
Review: To begin with, this is a fine book. It is the first history of the Jewish people in many years, that starts and ends on the topic of Jewish unity and internal divisiveness. Viorst looks at how internal Jewish religious politcs have played out all through Jewish history, going all the way back to the patriarchs, through Exodus to the Temple Destructions. From then on he analyzes the Talmudic age and it's particular issues, through the medival period, down to the divisive internal politics of Israel and the Middle East conflicts in our day.

However, this is not to say this book is a neutral view. The author makes clear his dovish sympathies by mid-way through the text, and as a Conservative Jew, gives very short shrift to the many serious and valid points, at least for them, that Orthodox intellectuals and politicians raise in Israel and abroad. In addition, he presents the history of Jewish internal disagreement with virtually no reference to the spiritual issues involved, which for the Orthodox and this non-orthodox writer, are at the heart of the matter.

Lastly, as many Jewish journalists do, he tends to exaggerate the extent of the internal disagreements within the Jewish world, perhaps to increase the level of apparent urgency in his work. In Israel for example, many members of Knesset will shout insults at each other from the podium and then go sit down to lunch together in the Knesset Cafeteria, yet the media only captures the first part of the performance.

Spiritually though, the level of unity between Jews has been a crucial determinant of Jewish national fortune throughout history, for when Jews start hating each historically, is when external persecution begins to arise. This was the case before the Temple Destructions, and even more so before the Shoah, when Stalinist Jews in Russia, killed hundreds of thousands of their own, and millions of gentiles to appease Stalin.

This aspect, called Sinat Hinam or baseless hatred, is mentioned in Viorst's book, but is given nowehere near the prominence it deserves. In fact, Viorst's text looks at Jewish politics historically and currently, exclusively in that light, and that is it's signal if not only weakness. In my own book, "Jewish History and Divine Providence: Theodicy and the Oddyssey" I look at Jewish history from the standpoint of Divine Providence or Karma, and show how the rise and fall of Jewish fortunes historically, has in fact been effected by Jewish unity and piety.

This was especially the case before and after the Shoah, and with the State of Israel, for reasons I detail in the book, available here on Amazon. For those who want to know about the politics of Jewish disunity, Viorst's work is a good place to start. However, if the reader desires to get the complete spiritual picture, they should read "Jewish History and Divine Providence" in conjunction with it.

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening, annoying, scary.
Review: Viorst is deeply troubled by two segments of the Jewish population which have little use for the goals and thinking of the Western enlightenment: the religious - expansionist Zionists, and the ultra-orthodox Haredim. He tries to put these movements into a historical and Biblical context as well as describing them in some detail. It is a stretch to relate the Biblical Jewish tendency to revert to idolatry to the themes of this book, but the historical context is enlightening. Unfortunately, I don't quite trust Viorst's scholarship when it comes to ancient history, which is treated in a rather cursory way even given the objectives of the book. When it comes to modern Israel, Virost's writing is enriched by the many interviews he has conducted, often with people he totally disagrees with and even abhors, and he makes a definite effort to provide a fair account of their views and characters. Not withstanding this objectivity, Viorst seems unable to truly credit genuine piety and faith, or the marvelous aspects of the Talmudic way. Certainly, not all the traditional orthodox rabbi's were acting out of pride and self-interest. I found this annoying, even though I totally agree with Viorst's basic points. This is an enlightening and scary book.