Rating: 
Summary: It's Fun to read Jewish History!
Review: It's a passionate and in-depth study of Jewish history and culture. Right on, dude. So far, I'm really enjoying it, but it's... so... long. I guess that's one thing about Jewish history, eh? However, unlike most stuff written about Jewish history, it's fun to read.
Rating:
Summary: it's good
Review: It's perfect for entry level as well as ppl trying to relearn their stuff
Rating: 
Summary: Clearest and briefest book on the subject I've seen.
Review: The great advantage of this book has, is the readablity of it. It almost reads like a novel. It covers a huge period, in time and history, in distance and thinking, yet keeps it all within manageable proportion, eminently suitable for a layman.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introduction
Review: This book provides an excellent introduction to Judaism. It seems to be primarily targeted at non-religious Jews, but it also serves as a clear overview for the curious gentile. Wouk's prose is clear, conscise, and full of useful illustrations. In many ways, his style resembles the accessible apologetics of the Christian C.S. Lewis. A very easy, informative read. The clearest, most useful book I have ever read on Judaism.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Introduction
Review: This book provides an excellent introduction to Judaism. It seems to be primarily targeted at non-religious Jews, but it also serves as a clear overview for the curious gentile. Wouk's prose is clear, conscise, and full of useful illustrations. In many ways, his style resembles the accessible apologetics of the Christian C.S. Lewis. A very easy, informative read. The clearest, most useful book I have ever read on Judaism.
Rating:
Summary: A Broad and Balanced Account of the Jewish Faith
Review: This Is My God
Herman Wouk
This is the perfect starting point for anyone-Jew or Christian -who wants to learn about Judaism. It is thoughtful, insightful, entertaining and sensitively explains Judaism to a broad readership
This is not simply a guide to the Jewish religion .Herman Wouk-a well known novelist and playwright - is clearly a man of the world but is also an observant Jew
He speaks about his own illuminating insights and experiences
Written in 1959 it is still equally relevant today as then . He points out the contradiction of leftwing secularists who claim that their rejection of religion is a result of the conformity in inherent therein , when their own entire ways of life and thought processes are based on conformity
He explains a conversation he had with a radical young student thus:
'She had been reading sociology and was full of terms like anomy , other-directedness , acculturation and similar jaw-breakers which she got off with athletic ease. The burden of her tale was that Judaism meant ritualism , and ritualism meant conformity which was a great evil.
'The interesting thing about my charming enlightener while she delivered her polemic against conformity , was dressed in a garb as ceremonious as a bishop's from the correct wrinkles in her sweater sleeves to the prescribed smudge on her saddle shoes. She spoke her piece for autonomy in a vocabulary of the teens as rigid , as circumscribed , as repetitious , as marked in intonation , as a litany'
His social commentary is one of observation rather than of judgement and he states for example that while his preference is for Orthodox Judaism he is unable to join the wringing chorus of denunciation of Reform and Conservative Judaism of some fellow Orthodox Jews.He also refuses to pass judgement on the 'assimilators' while fully voicing his grave concerns about the threat of assimilation to Judaism
He also points out the common roots of Christianity and Judaism and in a discussion .A good example is his discussion of the Jewish Festival of Lights : Hanukkah , which falls in the same month as Christmas and is often celebrated so that Jewish children do not have to feel that they are missing out on the Christmas enjoyed by their Christian peers
Hanukkah is observed in remembrance of the defeat by the Israelites of the Greek and Syrian overlords led by Antiochus who aimed to obliterate the Jewish faith.
Wouk reminds us what the real point of contact between the two festivals is :
' Had Antiochus succeeded in obliterating Jewry a century and a half before the birth of Jesus , there would have been no Christmas .The feast of Nativity rests on the victory of Hanukkah'
Overall this is an explanation of the religion for anyone interested to learn whatever their faith or orientation.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful introduction to Judaism
Review: Well written, engaging, and comprehensive but concise, this introduction to Judaism (from an Orthodox perspective) can be read straight through like a novel or used for reference. It includes every topic you'd want in an introduction: the Sabbath, the High Holy Days, kosher rules, the Torah, the Talmud, Hasidism, Israel, and so forth. Wouk's obvious love of Judaism is contagious, even to non-Jewish readers like me.One warning: When I read this for a class on Judaism at a Christian seminary, some students had trouble getting by the extravagantly non-gender-inclusive language. I personally can deal with masculine language for all humanity in books more than a few decades old (this was first published in 1957), but when Wouk assumes that all of his readers are male, as when he refers to the reader's beard (I'm female)--well, it's almost too funny to be offensive. In any case, I highly recommend it.
|
