The Unity Principle: The Shaping of Jewish History

Rating:
Summary: An elegantly written, scholarly review of Jewish history
Review: This distillation of the wisdom gained in a lifetime of scholarly inquiry and teaching by a professor of Jewish history concisely presents complex concepts in a readily comprehensible and elegantly written style. Dr. Rivkin traces the metamorphoses of Jewish concepts of deity throughout the vicissitudes of Jewish historical experience, in the process documenting "the chosen people's" remarkable capacities for adaptation and survival. Inculcated and nurtured by scholars, priests, and prophets, the Jews' commitment to monotheism has remained constant through mutating prisms of experience and historical process. Indeed, Dr. Rivkin emphasizes, there is no simple or universal Jewish theology, but rather a process of searching for, rather than finding, an omnipotent deity who endowed humankind with free will and therefore with the capacities for both good and evil. Within this historical perspective, the author finds an underlying unity in the spectrum of Jewish beliefs from those of the ultra-orthodox through those of their secular and non-professing counterparts, and he identifies this unity with the liberating impulses of capitalistic globalization affecting all of humankind that are disproportionately implemented and advanced by urbanized, well-educated intellectuals, professionals, and merchants of Jewish descent. In short, this work constitutes a summary of world history with especial emphasis on the unique contributions made by those schooled in Jewish thought, values, and faith.