Wanderings

Rating:
Summary: A perfect and flawed history
Review: Chaim Potok is more than just a writer--he's a scholar. From the ancient Sumerian villages just out of the Stone Age to upper class dwellings in 5th century BCE Babylon Potok has sucessfully combined scholarly research with the masterful prose of a storyteller. These ancient worlds come alive. Even more important than that, Potok has captured part of that elusive thing called the Jewish spirit--part survival, part identity, part learning. It's a feeling difficult to describe but Potok seems to have done this as few others could.
In addition, he seems to have done his research. Unfortunately he fails to use footnotes and his facts are difficult, impossible at times, to check. Potok is at heart a storyteller, and while this doesn't detract from the usefulness and power of this book, it certainly lessens its value as a research tool.
I have very few complaints with this book. They aren't minor, and to many they won't matter. For one thing; Zoroasterianism exerted a major influence not only on the Middle East, but Jewish and later Christian and Western thinking. Yet, Potok merely dismisses it as an "ancient fire-worshipping religion" and doesn't even mention its impact on Judaism. Second, his opinions seem forcefully felt as he tells of the disintegration of the Rabbinic Judaism, as he takes out his anger not only on anti-Semites and the Catholic Church as can be expected, but also on the Enlightenment, Hasidism, and to some extent Kabbalists. Third, the closing is rushed. The Holocaust and creation of Isreal are brushed past with wonderful passages but lack the intensive research found earlier.
Nevertheless, Chaim Potok will surely be remembered for his history if for nothing else. He has combined intelligent history with moving prose, creating an informative, inspiring narrative telling the history of a great people.

Rating:
Summary: A perfect and flawed history
Review: Chaim Potok is more than just a writer--he's a scholar. From the ancient Sumerian villages just out of the Stone Age to upper class dwellings in 5th century BCE Babylon Potok has sucessfully combined scholarly research with the masterful prose of a storyteller. These ancient worlds come alive. Even more important than that, Potok has captured part of that elusive thing called the Jewish spirit--part survival, part identity, part learning. It's a feeling difficult to describe but Potok seems to have done this as few others could.
In addition, he seems to have done his research. Unfortunately he fails to use footnotes and his facts are difficult, impossible at times, to check. Potok is at heart a storyteller, and while this doesn't detract from the usefulness and power of this book, it certainly lessens its value as a research tool.
I have very few complaints with this book. They aren't minor, and to many they won't matter. For one thing; Zoroasterianism exerted a major influence not only on the Middle East, but Jewish and later Christian and Western thinking. Yet, Potok merely dismisses it as an "ancient fire-worshipping religion" and doesn't even mention its impact on Judaism. Second, his opinions seem forcefully felt as he tells of the disintegration of the Rabbinic Judaism, as he takes out his anger not only on anti-Semites and the Catholic Church as can be expected, but also on the Enlightenment, Hasidism, and to some extent Kabbalists. Third, the closing is rushed. The Holocaust and creation of Isreal are brushed past with wonderful passages but lack the intensive research found earlier.
Nevertheless, Chaim Potok will surely be remembered for his history if for nothing else. He has combined intelligent history with moving prose, creating an informative, inspiring narrative telling the history of a great people.

Rating:
Summary: The Wanderings by Chaim Potok
Review: I chose to read this book as a reading assignment for a book report in Advanced Placement History during my Freshman year in high school. I feel that this book was difficult to read. It was interesting as a study of the history of the World. However, it was hard to follow because there were no central characters to follow along throughout the story. It was like reading the Bible in 4 weeks, but with added commentary. The author wandered off the topic and talked about other things that didn't seem that important to the history of the Jews. I would give this book about a 3 out of 5 stars. It was okay and interesting at times, but it was way too complicated.

Rating:
Summary: Not only history of the Jews, but the whole human race
Review: Only Potok. Only Potok could write such a rich novel of the Jews. Potok writes in a rich, savory, descriptive term, describing the world as seen through the eyes of our ancestors. Not only the Jews, but The Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Arabs, the early Europeans...
Successfully mixing history with novella style writing, Potok delivers.

Rating:
Summary: Directions
Review: Potok does an amazing job providing an eloquent history dating back to the earliest civilizations. His focus on Judaism provides serious insight into culteral mores dating back centuries. A scholarly work, Potok stays interesting and seems to relate intimately with the historical portrayals.

Rating:
Summary: Starts Good - Ends with a Flood of Disparate Details
Review: Potoks begin the books by setting the stage for ancient Jewish history beginning with Abraham venturing out of the Sumerian city of Ur to come into the land of Canaan. I really appreciated the clarification of the various groups of people who lived in that area at the time including the Sumerians, Akkadians, Egyptians, and Canaanites and how they related to one another. The first three chapters are divided by geographical regions including Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Babylon. These chapters are good and also serve as a good explanation of the historical groundwork of the Torah. The next few chapters are from the classical period and deal with the Jewish relationship with the Greek and Roman cultures.

After that, things become very slow and at times while I was reading I felt as though I was stuck in a quagmire of names and places. It was like a whirlwind tour of all the places and people to have ever been known as being Jewish or in some manner related to the Jewish culture. After the Classical period was described, I would have liked more of a conceptual breakdown on Kabbalism, Hasidism, and Reform and Conservative Jewish movements. All of this was sort of threaded together into an amorphose mass of disparate facts.

To sum, the first half of the book was great and can serve as a good historical basis for understanding the Old Testament, the second half was just a confusion of details, names, and places.

Rating:
Summary: An enjoyable mix of history and storytelling
Review: This book spans thousands of years of Jewish history. It begins with Abraham and goes right into the 20th century.

Right away there is a problem. Outside of the Old Testament, there's not much evidence about the existence of Hebrews or Jews until we get to something like the thirteenth century BC. Potok solves this by telling the Biblical story and also assuming that some of it is true. He suggests that Hebrews probably came from Sumer and probably moved to Canaan.

Potok surmises that Moses probably was the adopted son of an Egyptian princess. I think this may be the author's weakest guess of all, by the way. In particular, I see no reason to guess that Moses was adopted. If he existed and lived in Egypt, I'd guess that he was more likely a genuine prince than an adopted one. As for the business of Moses having been pulled out of the Nile as a baby, I would have hoped for a mention that this might well have been a standard Egyptian ritual. The author also says that three thousand or more Hebrew slaves may have escaped from Egypt in the Exodus. Again, I think this is a very wild guess. Given the lack of any evidence for the Exodus other than the existence of the story (and of Passover) in the first place, I think three thousand could well be a huge overestimate.

Still, once we get into (and past) the Book of Judges, we're in genuine history where we're dealing with a real people in a real land. And now Potok has something besides the Bible to go on. He points out that even according to the Old Testament, Elhanen, not David, killed Goliath. That surprised me, so I had to look it up. In the Bible, David challenges Goliath, but winds up fighting an unnamed Philistine. And later Elhanen kills Goliath.

After that, there are long chapters on the interactions with the Greeks and Romans. And with the Muslims and Christians. And even with more modern and more secular people. At the end, there are about 15 pages dealing with the twentieth century.

Over four thousand years ago, a Sumerian wrote about the previous few hundred years of Sumerian kings. And what he wrote included two short but powerful sentences that Potok quotes several times in this book. "Who was King? Who was not King?" He was referring to a period of anarchy in which everyone did as they pleased. But Potok notes that we've had a number of periods since then that were no better.

I enjoyed this book and I recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: 5-millenum history by a great story-teller
Review: This story reads like a novel despite many names, places, and years. The narrative worked best for me when he intersperses his own experiences, such as meeting his father-in-law, who fled Russia as a 16-year old boy. I would have benefited from more descriptions of how the Jews developed history into ritual, such as Channnuka and discussion of changing beliefs (e.g., the current Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox branches) (Rabbi Dosick's Living Judaism does this well).

This book presents common elements such as the contribution and personalizing of whatever community they are in, e.g., the development of Yiddish in Eastern Europe. There is often a strong intellectual development and reawakening, such as the "Sandhedrin", after the fall of Jerusalem. It is remarkable they have kept their identify despite wide spread dispersal and torture. The irrational hatred for the Jews is troubling both in its intensity as in the Crusades, but also among "learned people" such as Voltaire and Martin Luther.