Judaism, Physics and God: Searching for Sacred Metaphors in a Post-Einstein World, David W. Nelson (300 pages, Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 2005, $24.99)

Reviewed by Andrea Wershof Schwartz

The intersection of science and religion in America often enters the spotlight at moments of tension, such as the debate over how, or whether, to educate children about evolution or the age of the earth. The two fields are so often depicted in conflict that one might forget the possibility that both science and religion can serve as paths to deeper understandings of humanity and creation. Two recent books strive to remind us of the positive contribution to be made by both science and religion to understanding God: physicist Gerald Schroeder’s God According to God: A Physicist Proves We’ve Been Wrong About God All Along and Rabbi David Nelson’s Judaism, Physics and God: Searching for Sacred Metaphors in a Post-Einstein World are both eloquent attempts to revive conversation between science and religion.

While Nelson’s book is a self-proclaimed “book about Judaism” that draws on lessons of physics to enrich the discourse about God within the Jewish community, Schroeder’s book addresses a more diverse audience, drawing on the wonders of nature and the words of the Bible to describe an unknowable God. Both books engage in a rich dialogue between the discoveries of science and the sacred beliefs of religious traditions, building on both in their quest for a clearer understanding of God and of the world.

In Judaism, Physics and God, Nelson reframes scientific metaphors in a Jewish context. For instance, Nelson describes the scientific concept of a fractal, a shape within a shape, a pattern repeated infinitely within a larger finite pattern, as a beautiful metaphor for understanding God and creation. The idea of the fractal structure of nature is echoed in Jewish prayer as well; as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out in the new Koren Sacks siddur, the structure of the first blessing of the Amidah, composed of praise, request, and thanks, mirrors the structure of the Amidah and of the prayer service as a whole. Nelson provides many elegant examples of metaphors drawn from the natural world — from string theory to the uncertainty principle — that enrich the Jewish approach to understanding God.

In God According to God, Schroeder seeks to strip away preconceived notions about God that readers may have absorbed as children but not revisited, and introduces a language of discourse about God based on a close reading of biblical narratives and the principles of physics. He uses the flood narrative to explore the notion of a God who regrets, who is part of the ongoing learning process of creation and renewal. Schroeder reframes biblical narratives as windows into human perceptions of God: a God who needs human partners yet argues with them, gets frustrated with them, and loves them. The lessons of science, for Schroeder, serve as yet another passageway into understanding God, a counterpoint to the biblical narratives about the divine that provides further clues to God’s nature.

These two books remind us that the relationship between science and religion need not be one of conflict, nor one of two parallel but non-intersecting realms. Rather, as Schroeder and Nelson convincingly demonstrate, the language of science, particularly of physics, is well served in describing the complex relationship between humans and the divine, and can contribute to a richer understanding of Jewish texts and traditions. Similarly, reading biblical narratives with a mind toward the interconnectedness of nature enables the reader to envision a God of complexity and nuance. Both of these books require the reader to move beyond a simplistic, if perhaps comforting, notion of God toward a nuanced, multifaceted understanding of the mysteries inherent in nature and in the quest for understanding the divine.

Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East by Martin Indyk (Simon & Schuster, New York, 512 pages, 2009, $28)

The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power by David Sanger (Harmony Books, 498 pages, 2009, $33.00)

Reviewed by David Twersky

What will the Obama administration’s policies in the Middle East look like? According to two new books on various aspects of the problem, whatever America does — or doesn’t do — will leave the Middle East different than it is today. American action, diplomatic and/or military, has its obvious consequences; so too do American inaction, diplomatic and/or military withdrawal, or disengagement.

The Bush administration, whose responsibilities for the subject has only recently ended, sought to spread democracy and end with stability and peace. The Clinton administration had sought peace and thought that would lead to security and stability. Neither succeeded, but President Bush is leaving the world in a more perilous state, largely because of the Iraq war.

Or at least so concludes David Sanger, who has long covered Washington and the world for the New York Times, and who maintains that North Korea is more dangerous than it was eight years ago; that Iran is far closer to possessing a nuclear weapon; and that already nuclear-armed Pakistan is closer to unraveling.

In The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, Sanger presents six deeply disturbing views of different world problems that all pose daunting challenges to American power and American values. Interestingly, the Israel-Palestine dispute is not one of them. The six areas are in order: Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea, China, and what he calls the “Three Vulnerabilities” — a dirty bomb, chemical, and cyber attack.

If you are the worrying type or want to lose sleep, this book would a great place to start.

With respect to Iran, he argues that the Bush administration did too little, too late; imposed weak sanctions lacking the necessary bite to alter Iranian behavior; and opened the door to Iranian penetration into the Arab world by destroying the Saddam regime. Sanger proposes the imposition of a tough embargo on Iranian imports of refined gasoline products; this, he says, would bring them to their knees. But such a move would require what amounts to a naval blockade in order to search incoming vessels. Such a blockade could credibly be seen by Tehran as a casus belli. At that point the distinction between sanctions and military action blurs beyond recognition.

Because of the enormous energies required to change the dynamic in Iraq from “the war is lost” to the “war is winnable,” the requisite attention for Afghanistan and the other tough spots was never forthcoming under Bush.

Across the border lies not only the al-Qaeda central, but both the Afghani and Pakistani Taliban, each seeking pure Islamist rule. The problem in Pakistan is that the army’s intelligence services are supporting the Taliban and want to see a pro-Pakistan Sunni state in Afghanistan. And the big problem is the fate of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Will the security envelope be penetrated by Islamist sympathizers? Will al-Qaeda/Taliban get its hands on a nuclear weapon? According to Sanger, this danger is right up there with North Korea and Iran. North Korea not only developed several bombs but proliferated weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by selling Syria (at least) the design and materials to build a nuclear reactor to turn out weapons’ grade uranium — the one that was bombed by the Israelis in September 2007.

In Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East, Martin Indyk makes the excellent point that Bill Clinton’s peace-process diplomacy “pitted him against the established order in the Arab world.” If today there is a change, it is because Obama has not yet earned credibility — will he stand up to Iran or cut a deal at the expense of the Arab countries and Israel? — and because of  Iran’s push toward regional hegemony at a minimum and its progress in acquiring the bomb. Having been threatened by peace under Clinton, and threatened by the “democracy” policies of Bush, the Arab established order is now threatened most by the rise of Iran.

Another complicating factor is that, in addition to preserving their own power, regional “actors are pursuing complex and obscure agendas not served by peacemaking.” Not only are Arab leaders holding different cards, they are playing an additional game.

Indyk shares details about the Clinton years, when he contributed significantly to discussions about Iraq; it is clear that the harder view of Iraq — including a commitment to regime change — began while Clinton was in the White House. During those discussions authoritative voices made the argument that any effort to dislodge Saddam’s forces from southern Iraq (where they were massacring Shiites and the Marsh Arabs) would lead to a greater role for Iran. Which state was worse? Indyk proposed a policy of “Dual Containment,” an attempt to keep Iran and Iraq in their respective boxes, limiting the damage either could do.

Indyk argues that then Prime Minister Barak essentially had a failure of nerve — that a Syrian track should have been pursued and that it held the greater promise for success. To Obama, Indyk recommends a commitment to addressing the Palestinian issue and expressing support for the renewal of Israeli-Syrian talks.

With respect to Iran, Indyk acknowledges a “chicken-and-egg” problem. An Israeli-Syrian peace and, when possible, a resolution of the Israel-Palestine problem would weaken Iran and break up its emerging anti-American coalition. And weakening Iran (and ensuring that it does not acquire a nuclear weapon) will weaken Hamas and Hezbollah and Syria, and make peacemaking more possible.

American policies change but they always reshape and reconfigure the states in the Middle East. 

Reviewed by Joseph Reimer

If you are a parent, educator, clergy, or youth worker, you’ve almost certainly been wondering lately about boys. The anecdotal stories are everywhere: while the honor roll is 70 percent girls, the kids in detention are 70 percent boys; vast numbers of boys are diagnosed with ADHD or behavioral problems; far more girls than boys are signing up for youth groups, and applying to college (undergrad and beyond). Are boys really having trouble?  If so, why? And what should we do about it?

In The Trouble With Boys: A Surprising Report Card on Our Sons, Their Problems at School, and What Parents and Educators Must Do, former Newsweek journalist Peg Tyre offers an insightful and provocative introduction to this important — and politically explosive — issue. The book is clear, well-researched, and chock full of stories and insights that are sure to leave you challenged, pensive, alarmed, and inspired. 

Tyre begins with the facts. Her overview of relevant research eliminates any doubts about  anecdotal stories. Boys are achieving less than girls in all subjects and in every grade level across the spectrum of socioeconomic status; and the gap is significant and growing.

Tyre does a great job of alternating between macrolevel statistics and microlevel tales from the front lines. She presents data describing the considerable gap between the literacy levels of boys and girls in elementary school, and then describes a classroom where a teacher is constantly chastising boys for being too fidgety and unfocused. She describes college attendance rates that are approaching 60 percent female/ 40 percent male, and then introduces us to a young man admitted into a particular college as part of a special program designed to even out the gender ratio. Is it fair that this underachiever got in when women with better grades were rejected? These are the questions that make any exploration of the trouble with boys so controversial.

Tyre offers a compelling explanation of the history that informs the heated debate.  Not so long ago, girls achieved less than boys particularly in math and science. A generation of feminist scholars and activists fought long and hard to unravel systems of instruction and funding that privileged boys over girls. Although the data suggest that feminists have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams at transforming schools into places that support female achievement, many remain committed to a stance that appears to be growing outdated.

Tyre repeatedly argues against a feminist notion that current efforts to address how schools fail boys represents an attempt to dismantle the hard-won gains made by girls. She believes that gender achievement is not a zero-sum game, in which every gain made by boys results in an equal loss by girls (and vice versa). Rather, she urges us to imagine win/win educational environments that support the success of all students. 

Tyre does an impressive job of honoring the complexity of the issue. She explores recent findings from neurology, psychology, intriguing educational interventions like all-boy schools and all-boy classes in coed schools, and surprising cases of literacy and math instructional methods that have proven to work particularly well with boys. By debunking some popular trends (you may want to rethink Michael Gurian’s work on the “minds of boys” after reading this) and highlighting promising practices (check out the Scottish septuagenarian’s innovative literacy approach), Tyre brings much-needed clarity to a complicated debate.

Tyre notes that despite the overwhelming evidence that boys are falling behind, there is remarkably little research focused on rigorously exploring the problem — perhaps because of the controversial nature of the subject. Given the magnitude of the problem presented here, this status quo is clearly not acceptable.

Ultimately, however, Tyre is an optimist. In the past 30 years, feminists successfully transformed American education by insisting upon viewing educational practices through the lens of gender. No one can doubt that norms, values, funding patterns, and best practices in the world of education can be changed to more effectively ensure the academic achievement of an underperforming gender. The time has come to take on a new gender challenge; this work begins with a thoughtful, energetic, and informed national dialogue. With this important and insightful book, Peg Tyre has kick-started that discussion in a powerful way.

Reviewed by Shulamit Reinharz 

One day, Sarah Abrevaya Stein, an historian and private collector of illustrated works in Yiddish, came across a book by Leybl Feldman (1940) with the grandiose title, Oudtsboorn, Yerushalayim d’Afrike. How could Feldman imply that this small town in the South African province of the Western Cape deserved comparison with Jerusalem, Stein wondered. Was it because Oudtsboorn had its own Diaspora — in North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, France, Great Britain, and the United States — wherever ostrich feathers flew?

Stein’s study is much more than this charming story. For various compelling reasons, it is a historic breakthrough. As she informs us, “Economic historians…have not interrogated the involvement of ethnic communities…in the shaping of individual commodity chains. Cultural historians… have…avoided the terrain of supply. Historians of modern global commerce, colonial economics, and consumer culture…have neglected Jewishness as a category of analysis. And, finally, scholars of Jewish culture have been understandably wary of linking Jews to the global market in luxury goods — or to the proliferation of capitalist markets in colonial settings — for fear of reinforcing anti-Semitic stereotypes.” (7-8) The result? “Little serious research on Jews’ involvement in transnational or trans-hemispheric commerce….” (8) [italics added] Until Plumes. Stein is not interested in standing alone, however. She argues forcefully that “we must dispel the stigma associated with linking Jews to capital and international exchange,” (8) and get on with the studies.

In her lively introduction, Stein enumerates how “Jewishness was an asset to many in the feather trade.” (9) But she also argues that “it would be misleading to pin Jews’ success in feather commerce on [their] general traits.” (9) Many Jews in the trade failed, of course, and yet remained Jews. 

Many other factors also played a role in the plume boom: modern forms of communication and transportation, increasing consumer 
demand for exotic fashion, and the actions of nation-states. Nevertheless, Jews were over represented in the feather trade because “they had a background in similar industrial and mercantile trades, because they had contacts across the Anglophone Eastern European and Mediter ranean Diasporas, and because many were immigrants poised to move into new or expanding industrial niches.” (12)

The time was right. Mass immigration brought Eastern European Jews to New York and Western European cities where they were ready for new pursuits just when feather trading was opening up. The movement of Jews throughout the world meant that businesses could develop far-flung branches headed by brothers or other family members. By page 17, Stein presents what she calls one of her central arguments: “Jews brought certain elements of human capital to the ostrich feather trade: background in like industries, contacts of kith and kin within and across sub-ethnic diasporas and political and oceanic boundaries, copacetic relations with the reigning authorities, geographic mobility, and, no less important, economic need.” Each subsequent chapter spells out these elements in sumptuous detail.

But what about the demand side of the equation? As it turns out, women of impeccable taste were drawn to ostrich feathers between the 1860s and World War I for a number of reasons: First, the feathery fashion statement emanated from Paris, the city that defined style. Moreover, women’s magazines, as today, marketed particular choices, including ostrich plumes, intensively. But most important, ostrich plumage was not tied to a season; nor was the fashion associated with the age of the woman, her size, or complexion. “With at least fourteen varieties and countless grades available, ostrich feathers’ appeal also crossed class lines.” Coming as they did from Africa, they represented colonial conquest as well. And, best of all, they were considered sexy, a symbol of emancipation and mobility, because the feathers — and by implication, the women — moved freely. The ideal product: “colonial booty and cosmopolitan trope” combined to create a voracious market. (21)

For every boom there is a bust, and Stein explains why the allure of ostrich feathers did not persist. Today they are an anachronism.

While one might predict that a book of this sort could explain how Jews affected the trade, it may come as a surprise that Stein reminds us how “deeply trans-hemispheric currents of capital, bodies, and goods affected modern Jews….” (27) By asking both questions, she intends to blur the line that divides economic and cultural history.

For the Love of God: The Bible as an Open Book, Alicia Suskin Ostriker, Rutgers
University Press, 2007, 164 pages, $22.95

Torah Queeries: Reading the Bible Through a Bent Lens, edited by David Shneer, Joshua Lesser, and Gregg Drinkwater; preface by Judith Plaskow, New York, New York
University Press, 2009

Reviewed by Mara Benjamin

When the Bible enters public discourse in the United States, it usually does so in the abbreviated form of the prooftext. Prooftexts are a dense form of communication; they import a biblical verse or passage into otherwise ordinary speech and thereby immediately conjure a shared set of cultural and literary references. In just a few words, a prooftext can transform our biblical textual heritage. The effect can be breathtaking. Recall Martin Luther King Jr.’s August 28, 1963, speech: after imagining “the sons of former slaves sitting down with the sons of former slave owners at the table of brotherhood” and a world in which his children would be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” King spoke the words of the prophet Isaiah: “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.” The power of the prophet’s words in King’s speech lay in the awesome chutzpah of calling forth the prophet’s vision and asking us to imagine that we could realize it.

But all too often, both public discourse and the Bible have been degraded when the prooftext is used as a rhetorical device. The prooftext can act as mere pious flourish; at worst, it can replace sustained thought and inquiry into the ambiguous, complex, and contradictory nature both of our world and of the biblical text. We who have survived the rapid ascent in recent decades of the Christian religious right (and the renunciation of religious discourse by the left), know all too well the dangers of a superficial encounter with the Bible. And yet we may shudder when contemplating the results of a deeper encounter with what can be a terrifying text. Perhaps, we think, the Bible is best locked up in the sober carrels of academe.

Three recent books, For the Love of God, Torah Queeries , and Whose Torah? , ask us to think again. Each offers a political, critical, and deeply personal engagement with Torah. Of the three authors, Alpert, who once proposed the “religious left” as an explicit counter to the religious right, focuses most explicitly on contemporary politics. She seeks to define a nuanced role for biblical and rabbinic texts in the political life of modern Jews. In this effort, Jewish textual sources appear as a set of underappreciated and valuable resources for modern political engagement. Talmudic and medieval concepts of abortion, for instance, suggest new possibilities for a “religious” take on this fraught political issue. But Alpert does not accept these sources as prima facie authoritative. In each case she considers, texts cannot speak for themselves; texts only speak when readers give voice and meaning to them. “Justice, justice, shalt thou pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20) forms the backbone of Alpert’s approach to contemporary public social and political life, but she recognizes that even this seemingly self-explanatory injunction yields a multiplicity of meanings.

Some of the most inspiring contemporary interpreters of Torah are those who return to it from a compulsion at once aesthetic, intellectual, and ethical. For the Love of God and Torah Queeries invite readers to bring precisely this unaccountable desire into the open — onto the page and into our public discourse. The diverse group of scholars and rabbis who have contributed to Torah Queeries ask us to bring the whole of our selves — our imaginations, bodies, and senses — to Torah. They collectively demonstrate that every parashah (Torah portion) can speak to us as embodied, conflicted, desiring selves and as cognitive individuals. Ostriker, uniformly elegant in word and thought, shows us a Bible that mirrors but also refracts our world and ourselves, bringing the disparate ends of ourselves together. Its texts speak to “our longing for a divinity we can love without fear” (page 31), to our inkling that eros and justice are interconnected, and to our contradictory and inexplicable selves.

The authors of and contributors to these volumes know that they walk a hermeneutic tightrope. Torah, they contend, is a profoundly complex text, yet at the same time it is “not in heaven”; we need it in order to make a just world. What these works suggest is that success in walking this tightrope occurs in moments of interpretive grace. With enough effort and courage — and with models like these — we may eventually enjoy a discourse with and about the Bible that goes beyond prooftexts.

Reviewed by Haim WatzmanIt’s hardly surprising that Hayyim Nachman Bialik chose a bird as the central image of his first published Hebrew poem. For a Diaspora Jew caught in Europe, longing for another life, a bird symbolized freedom and the ability to soar over physical, political, and psychological barriers.

It’s also not surprising that Bialik didn’t know, or at least didn’t tell us, what kind of bird it was who brought him a message from his brothers in Zion. Bialik tells us all about his conversation with the bird, but nothing about the bird’s markings, habits, the shape of its beak, wings, and tail, or the peculiarities of its song.

Poor birds. We so frequently press them into use as symbols that we often forget to see them. It’s a rare writer who can combine an appreciation for the bird of literature with knowledge of the bird as an animal. One of those rare writers is Jonathan Rosen, who now offers us a wonderful account of his observations of and thoughts about, American woodpeckers, Israeli hoopoes, and many more in between.

Rosen is a writer by trade, a novelist, journalist, and editor. He tells us (perhaps once too often) that his upper middle-class Jewish upbringing prepared him for the life of an intellectual, not a naturalist. But his love of poetry came together with a love of science, and that led him to writers who wrote and thought about nature — in particular, Henry David Thoreau. So he was well-primed when, twelve years ago, a chance comment over a Shabbat lunch in Manhattan — “The warblers will be coming through Central Park soon” — induced him to sign up for a birdwatching course at the Audubon Society.

Thus began a saga that reached a climax when Rosen flew to Louisiana in the hopes of spying a bird that most people thought already extinct, the ivory-billed woodpecker. This, the largest of North American woodpeckers, occupied a narrow ecological niche, eating the grubs that attack recently dead trees. These birds require old-growth forests with plenty of trees several centuries old, so that enough old trees die regularly to be attacked by insects. And they need a warm and moist area where dead trees decay quickly. Ivory-bills used to flourish in the Mississippi delta, east Texas, and the Florida panhandle, but the last old forests in these areas were clear-cut in the mid-20th century. The last adequately documented sighting of an ivory-bill was in 1944, but occasionally birdwatchers and hunters report seeing them. It was one such sighting, in 1999, that impelled Rosen to embark from the Upper West Side to a mosquito-infested swamp in hopes that he, too, would be granted a view of this elusive, and possibly non-existent, bird.

He wasn’t. The ivory-bills either weren’t there or weren’t showing themselves. But Rosen tells a fascinating story of his sojourn. And like the whirling, intermixing flocks of migrants he sees on a trip to Israel’s rift valley, he interweaves his own story with Thoreau’s observations at Walden Pond; with the story of America’s great bird painter, John James Audubon; with the observations of naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace; with speculations on evolution and the nature of the world; and with much else besides. He also quotes a lot of fine poetry that helps the reader both see birds as natural objects and conceive of the meaning they bear in the human mind.

Impressively, and unusually for a book of this sort, Rosen explicitly rejects Thoreau’s pretense that a writer can negate himself, recording the landscape as it is untouched by human action, thought, history, and current events. “I cannot belong to that school of nature writing where you set off with a knapsack and nothing else — seemingly without parents or children or religion or tradition or friends or country.” The September 11 attacks and the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada are part of his birdwatching experience, as are his dying father, his family, his religion, and his own biography.

Factually, birds do not sing for us. “They sing not for our pleasure or their own, but for intensely practical reasons,” Rosen reminds us — they must mark out territory, attract mates, deter predators. But how can we not seek a message in their song? How can we not make them ours? “Sing, my bird, of wonders from a land in whose spring eternity resides,” Bialik pleads in his poem. Rosen seeks, and hears, a more subtle and complex message, one for the birds, and human beings, of our age.

Reviewed by Sean R. Singer

“Neoconservative cabal” has become a familiar phrase. Some say both words have Jewish roots. Kaballah (from which cabal comes) fittingly has mystic connotations, for neocons have cast a spell over the U.S. and transformed it into a nuclear-armed Golem. Others believe the slightest insinuation of any connection is antisemitic.

These are both exaggerations (mostly), but the relationship between Jews and neoconservatism is a sensitive one indeed. They Knew They Were Right explores this relationship candidly. Jacob Heilbrunn argues that “Neoconservatism isn’t about ideology. It isn’t about the left. It is about a mindset, one that has been decisively shaped by the Jewish immigrant experience, by the Holocaust, and by the 20th-century struggle against totalitarianism.”

Heilbrunn, an editor at the National Interest (my former employer, though our tenures did not overlap) is well positioned to make this argument. In a heartfelt prologue Heilbrunn — the son of a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany and once an aspiring neoconservative — places himself in the drama about to unfold. His personal investment in the subject resonates from start to finish.

In the interwar years, young (mostly Jewish) men and women united around radical leftist politics in Manhattan. Their Jewishness was irreligious — most were completely secular — and had even less to do with Zionism, to which they were hostile or indifferent. It also had little to do with the Holocaust, as most were aloof to its horrors, philosopher Sidney Hook being a notable exception.

Instead, in the words of Lionel Trilling, whom Heilbrunn labels a proto-neoconservative, Jewishness provided a “sense of identity” developed in opposition to “social antagonisms.” In that sense, there is nothing innately Jewish about neoconservatism’s origins. It is a phenomenon Jews have steered, not, as Heilbrunn suggests, a “Jewish phenomenon” or “ineluctably Jewish.”

Pushing this line, Heilbrunn’s narrative is religiose. The biblical allusions — starting with the chapter names: Exodus, Wilderness, Redemption, and Return to Exile — that litter the book are often trite, seemingly the inspiration of multiple viewings of The Ten Commandments. The Republican Party is described as a “new Promised Land” and Irving Kristol is “like Joshua leading the Israelites into Canaan.” Commentary was Norman Podhoretz’s “private Sinai.” We get it, they’re Jewish.

In the postwar era two major developments shaped the neoconservatives’ trajectory: First, disillusionment with the Soviet Union, Communism, and then the American Left, and

second, the disappearance of institutional antisemitism, which opened doors that were previously closed.

At this nexus, Heilbrunn judiciously tracks the academic maturation of leading Bush Administration figures, examining the intellectual foundations of neoconservative luminaries like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith. One such pillar is the nuclear strategist Albert Wolhsetter, who, as Heilbrunn writes, believed that “There was no real distinction between defense and offense,” a concept discernible in the aftermath of 9/11 and palpable among some presidential candidates.

As the neoconservative story races toward the present, They Knew They Were Right transitions from intellectual to political history, taking the reader into the heart of the Reagan and Bush 43 administrations, where many other writers have ventured. The narrative becomes increasingly familiar; the intellectual battles throughout the Cold War make for more stimulating reading than the bureaucratic battles inside the Beltway.

September 11 revealed a new antagonism — Al-Qaeda and “Islamofascism” — that dwarfed the others. In the War on Terror, Israel fits seamlessly into the neoconservatives’ Manichean worldview. Contrary to allegations from both the Left and the Right, Heilbrunn argues, convincingly, the neocons have not subordinated America’s interests to those of Israel, but rather conflated them at times. Though this doesn’t excuse the policy missteps such a facile worldview produces, being wrong and being treasonous are quite different.

Heilbrunn repeatedly compares the neoconservatives to the prophets and writes that, “they belong” in exile. With chimerical promised lands, perhaps they have no choice.

We have arrived at a time in history when the powerful impact of feminism on the shape of American Judaism is not only acknowledged but sufficiently accepted (by scholars, at least), making possible critical analysis of this phenomenon. Women Remaking American Judaism, an anthology that expands on a May 2004 conference at Wayne State University, not only ably documents the transformation of Jewish life sparked by the past 30 years of feminist activism in the Jewish community, but also examines the process, meaning — and incompleteness — of these widespread changes in leadership, institutions, theology, and ritual.

The book is organized into three sections that demonstrate the diversity of Jewish feminist approaches: Reenvisioning Judaism, which explores how feminism has questioned and revised Jewish theology, God-language, and modes of biblical interpretation; Redefining Judaism, which analyzes changes in the denominations brought about by feminism; and Reframing Judaism, which considers how feminists, through innovations such as Rosh Chodesh celebrations, Miriam-centered ritual objects, and adult bat mitzvah ceremonies, have created a Judaism that includes women’s voices, perspectives, and experiences.

Riv-Ellen Prell’s introduction to the collection is masterful (if one may use that word in describing a book about changing gender roles and challenging hierarchy). She goes beyond the usual introductory summary and synthesis of the individual essays (which she does gracefully) and creates a larger context for the project by examining the relationship between Jewish feminism and the Enlightenment. Prell sees some early roots of Jewish feminism in Enlightenment claims to equality and to the compatibility of Judaism and modernity. While she compares feminism to the Enlightenment in terms of feminism’s   commitment to equality and the radicalism of its impact on Judaism, she also demonstrates how feminism challenges notions about gender — particularly, the relegation of women to the domestic sphere — that are central to both the Enlightenment and Judaism.

Even as she makes a bold claim for Jewish feminism’s radicalism, she also points out that Jewish feminism is, paradoxically, deeply accommodationist; it has a vested interest in sustaining Jewish community. This argument is further developed in the essays in the last (and to my mind, most interesting) section of the book. The authors of these essays argue that women’s ritual innovation — which may, at first glance, seem to be among the most radical developments of Jewish feminism in that they create new forms of religious practice — are in some ways the most accommodating because they focus on including women’s experiences rather than on changing existing practices or questioning authority. Not surprisingly, some of the most accepted feminist contributions to Judaism are those that reinforce certain traditional concepts of gender roles and/or women’s nature. This dynamic, as Chava Weissler demonstrates in her provocative article on meanings of Shekhinah in Jewish Renewal, is noted with discomfort by some, but goes unnoticed and unchallenged by many.

The generous number of illustrations help to capture the creativity and diversity of Jewish feminism, and the timeline of American and Jewish feminism at the back of the book — which begins in the mid-19th century with the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 and the first use of a family pew in an American synagogue in 1851 — reminds readers of the relationship between secular American feminism and Jewish feminism, the long history of feminist activism, and the inseparability of feminism and the development of American Judaism.

Beyond the scope of the project but something that would be important to address, is a detailed analysis of what might be the biggest feminist challenge today: the persistent institutionalized sexism in communal organizations in regard to leadership and workplace issues. Though mentioned briefly within the discussion on denominations, these problems require greater attention in a consideration of Jewish feminism’s agenda for the 21st century.

In her introduction, Prell writes that “Jewish feminism, then, is very much like Second Wave feminism and no different from other social movements in the United States and elsewhere that bring about transformations whose origins are often forgotten and whose claims are imagined to have been unnecessary.” This collection is an important contribution toward recovering the history, power, and impact of Jewish feminism, and will, I hope, spark continued conversation among scholars and lay people.

The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism , by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Indiana University Press, 2007. 320 pages, $24.00

The Family Flamboyant: Race Politics, Queer Families, Jewish Lives , by Marla Brettschneider, SUNY Press, 2006. 232 pages, $24.95

Two new books provide food for thought about contemporary Jewish identities in the United States. The Family Flamboyant: Race Politics, Queer Families, Jewish Lives by Marla Brettschneider, and The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism , by Melanie Kaye Kantrowitz, have much in common. Both books are informed by the authors’ deep commitment to social justice, their insights as Ashkenazi Jewish lesbians, and their experiences as coalition organizers. And both authors offer a nuanced, passionate, and sophisticated analysis of slippery Jewish identities in relationship to racial politics and inequality in the United States.

Each author inserts compelling autobiographical experiences into their political analyses. Brettschneider reveals the unsavory and overt racism and homophobia of the adoption system in the United States based on her own experiences of trying to adopt as an outspoken Jewish lesbian. Kaye/Kantrowitz draws upon her experiences of living in diverse places in the U.S., her struggles for racial and economic justice, and her memories of growing up in a secular, Yiddish-inflected family in Brooklyn. And both books provide meticulously documented empirical and theoretical evidence for the arguments they advance, offering a veritable bibliographic trove of resources for scholars and lay readers interested in these literatures.

In The Colors of Jews, Kaye/Kantrowitz maps out an ambitious intellectual and activist agenda. In the first third of the book, she does a fine job deconstructing the complicated histories of race and Jewishness, and the pernicious myths about Jews and African Americans in the racial hierarchy of the United States. She also provides a lucid analysis of how the concepts of Jewishness have been racialized in relation to other groups throughout history and in different places, including Israel. For some readers unfamiliar with these ideas, I imagine reading The Colors of Jews might prompt a feeling that the solid ground of Jewish identity (read: Ashkenazi Jewish whiteness) is shifting under one’s feet.

The second section describes the world of Jewish activists organizing for social change and racial justice. Here, Kaye/Kantrowitz analyzes case study examples of cutting-edge nonprofits, multiracial Jewish congregations, and research centers that are challenging conventional notions of whiteness and Jewish identity. She includes extensive material from interviews with activists about issues of race, ethnicity, and inclusion. And she gives detailed descriptions of the coalitions that progressive Jews try to create to work within, across, and beyond Jewish communities to dismantle racism.

In the final section, Kaye/Kantrowitz outlines her vision of diasporism (and an explicit rejection of Jewish nationalism), and how such a political move can link progressive Jews together and in coalitions with others, across the lines of racial, economic, and social differences. She writes, “Diasporism places at the center our memory of strangeness and our desire (not duty, desire) to welcome strangers. Diasporism means, given the multicultural nature of the Jewish community, inside the Jewish community we should expect to experience the simultaneity of home and strangeness.” (p. 221)

For Brettschneider, these issues of race intersect with a trenchant critique of the adoption system and reigning ideologies about heterosexuality, family formation, marriage, and monogamy. In short, her project is to use political philosophy and experiences from her everyday life, to re-think basic cultural assumptions about race, family, sexuality, and identity. She includes much discussion and empirical evidence for how “mutually constitutive identities” influence who has power and how the intersections of race, class, and sexuality shape people’s lives.

Suffice it to say, Brettschneider is not pleased with the historical and contemporary conditions of family formation and how those ideologies preclude/obscure creative thinking about intimacy, love, and human relationship. The first chapter of her work covers similar terrain as The Colors of Jews , but with far more academic theoretical contextualization that might be helpful for Jewish studies scholars unfamiliar with this literature. In the most disturbing chapter, Brettschneider provides a description of her own convoluted, complicated, and sometimes painful path toward adopting two African American girls with her partner Dawn. She also lodges a searing critique of the not-so-implicit injustices and rampant problems (for example, antisemitism, racism, classism, and homophobia for starters) of the adoption system in the U.S., with forays into global examples of market forces of international adoption at work as well.   She writes: “There are clear hierarchies of human worth in this country and the adoption world has done the market research, assessed the situation, organized a filing system, and very neatly attached price tags to services and humans according to their appropriate rank.” (p. 49). And yet, this same system provided the author with not one, but two opportunities to open up their hearts, lives, and home, to become the self-described loud, proudly queer and Jewish mothers that they now are. So at the end of the day, Brettschneider’s own story is, despite the ugliness of the system she critiques, happy if paradoxical and bittersweet.

My one criticism of these books is actually a broader plea for scholar-activists more generally. Today, more than ever, we need books like these that critique and challenge the entrenched inequalities and forms of oppression (racial, class, and gender) that characterize U.S. history and society. But we need more than just critique. We also need visionaries who can inspire the compassion, joy, and passion to “fight the good fight,” by outlining what is possible to imagine. That’s a tall order. Sometimes I worry for the health and coronary well-being of activists like Kaye/Kantrowitz and Brettschneider, given the depth and breadth of their anger at the structural and ideological arrangements of the global order. In such relentlessly bleak analyses of systemic injustice, I often wonder if and where there is room for hope, joy, pleasure, and potential happiness, both individual and collective, in the myriad efforts to create healing and transformation in our broken world.