Reviewed by Jason Weiner

Facing Illness Finding God by Rabbi Joseph B. Meszler is an enjoyable read and an important contribution to the field of Jewish values in patient care. It is presented as a guide, both for patients experiencing illness and those who hope to lighten their burden by visiting them. The book consists of very brief chapters containing stories, lessons, and relevant quotes from rabbinic literature. Though this is not written as a scholarly or comprehensive work, it provides a helpful introduction to some of the basic concepts in Jewish pastoral care.

The first part of the book addresses the patient and provides meaningful thoughts on reaching inward to the soul when one’s body is failing. This section helps the patient articulate what he or she may be feeling and provides words of comfort and encouragement. The intended audience seems to be people with somewhat little Jewish background as considerable space is dedicated to introducing well-known customs such as changing a sick person’s name, saying morning blessings, or reciting the prayer of thanksgiving, Birkat Hagomel, upon recovery. Although Meszler treats these traditions as “relics from the past,” he does a nice job of showing how profoundly meaningful they can be, if taken seriously.

The second part of the book addresses those providing spiritual care for patients. It includes a number of interesting and important anecdotes and pointers, such as the need to be fully present for patients — that is, making them rather than us the primary focus of a visit. This section, like the book in general, tends not to treat subjects extensively. For example, Meszler brings up complex and pressing issues like mental health and addiction, but he offers minimal practical advice or approaches to dealing with these issues. He does mention well known organizations that specialize in these matters, which is appropriate since this book’s intended audience may find it most prudent to make a referral if they encounter these issues.

The final part of the book focuses on God and prayer, which highlights one of the book’s more problematic aspects. While one might expect such a short book of sweet stories and brief comforting lessons to avoid contentious theological issues, throughout the book, Meszler rejects belief in an omnipotent God and views the power of prayer as having limited potential. He begins by arguing that bad things don’t happen for a reason, but that, “from a Jewish point of view, good and evil can only be the product of human decisions” (32) and nature (34). In my experience, this view is often unhelpful for people seeking to give or receive comfort and guidance in the face of illness.

More troubling, the book contains some incorrect citations, misquotes, and contradictions. Perhaps most surprising is Meszler’s claim that Maimonides suggested that everything that happens in life is simply the result of natural phenomenon (34), which directly contradicts Maimonides’ own 11th Principle of Faith and ruling in Hilchot Teshuvah 9:1. Textual errors aside, Meszler — rather than addressing this issue in a sophisticated and nuanced manner — simply dismisses the traditionalist view as “offensive.” (33) While this brief review is not the place to debate Jewish theology, my experience as a chaplain has taught me that it is often better to avoid such discussions with a suffering patient, and that different patients find a very wide range of diverse beliefs comforting. After all, although Rabbi Meszler calls “absolute faith” a “lesser form of religion” and “unrealistic,” (162) and claims that “The goal of prayer in Judaism is humility” (148) not “Supernatural wish fulfillment,” (132) he goes on to relate that when his wife was in surgery he cried out to God, “Please help my wife.” (146)

One is left wondering if the author would do better to either completely remove the theological discussion from the book, treat it in a deeper manner, or create separate books for the patient and for the care provider. Either way, while scholars and professionals may find some aspects of this book lacking, it does contain many very valuable lessons and provides a wonderful introduction and inspiration to those who are new to visiting patients or are looking for some Jewish insights into the matter.

Who by Fire, Who by Water — Un’taneh Tokef, edited by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD, Jewish Lights Publishing, 2010, 253 pp, $24.99.

Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuvah by Louis E. Newman, PhD, foreword by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, preface by Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar, Jewish Lights Publishing, 2010, 224 pp, $24.99.

Reviewed by Adena Berkowitz

Coming on the heels of Elul, Rosh Hashanah ushers in a ten-day period of deep prayer, introspection, accountability, repentance, and final judgment that leaves us with a gnawing feeling. What does the coming year hold for us? Do we approach it with terror and trepidation, awe and trembling? How can our faith carry us though our heartfelt repentance, our prayers, and our acts of righteousness?

These and other themes evoked by the High Holy Days are sensitively addressed in Who by Fire, Who by Water, a compilation edited by Rabbi Dr. Lawrence A. Hoffman that examines the text of Un’taneh Tokef. Forty rabbis, scholars, and lay people explore the prayer’s historic, theological, halakhic, and personal meaning. Essays range from analysis of the authorship of Un’taneh Tokef to the translation of key lines, to the overall theological meaning of the piyyut. Hoffman references the 12th-century book Sefer Z’chirah, which describes the martydom of Rabbi Amnon, who is traditionally viewed as the author of the prayer. He is called Rabbi “Faithful” because he’emin (he had faith in the living God) draws on the Hebrew pun for “faithful, neeman”; when the Hebrew letters are rearranged, they spell Amnon.

While some of the pieces seem to repeat themes and analyses, the wide range of theological approaches makes for fascinating reading. Many of the liberal contributors grapple with their personal struggles to accept the view of God as Judge sitting on high, determining our fate for the coming year. For example, Rabbi Sharon Brous writes that although life can appear at times as though it is being lived on the edge of an abyss, what we do can bring radical meaning into the uncertainty of our lives.

In analyzing the recurring line about prayer, repentance, and charity, the volume utilizes Dr. Joel Hoffman’s translation, “But Prayer, Repentance, and Charity help the hardship of the decree to pass,” as a meaningful way to understand the heart of Un’taneh Tokef.

Rabbi Reuven Kimelman explores the talmudic antecedents to the wording of the prayer, noting that the text of Un’taneh Tokef we recite lists teshuvah first, and changes the wording so that the harshness or misfortune that result from a decree can be mitigated. Prayer, repentance, and tzedakah do not cancel the decree but rather avert the severity of it. Kimmelman explains that mitigation happens through these acts either because they can lead to a reconsideration of the original judgment of Rosh Hashanah or because they provide the resilience to bear the ups and downs of life.

As Rabbi Margeret Moers Wenig and other contributors note, though we may not always be in control of our destiny, we do have the power to control our responses: “How we play the hand we have been dealt is up to us.” Rabbi Asher Lopatin, quoting the Rema, says that in the face of death, we can’t say, “Oy what can we do?” We can do so much. And as to our destiny? Rabbi Avi Weiss shares with us the rabbinic view that the mazel we are born with is elastic. Quoting Rabbi Yosef Dov Solveitchik, who teaches us to distinguish between goral, fate, and yi’ud, destiny, our mission in this world is to turn fate into destiny, from an existence that is passive to one that is active and influential.

Dr. Louis E. Newman’s book Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuvah is a unique mix of the scholarly and the personal, not only a well researched book but — referencing his own twelve-step recovery process — a moving account of the spiritual dimension of Jewishly transforming ourselves. It is a special blend of “how to do repentance” — that is, how to acknowledge our shortcomings, hold ourselves accountable, and truly turn from our ways. His explanations of soul reckoning, cheshbon hanefesh, of how our larger society confronts moral failings and of how Jewish tradition does teshuvah, are the keys to spiritual rehabilitation and reconciliation. Even long after we have committed a wrong, he shows us — through rabbinic and theological sources —how Jewish tradition teaches us ways to process and retrieve our sense of direction.

Among the many dimensions he explores are seven distinct steps to teshuvah: culpability, remorse, confession, apology, restitution, soul reckoning — a spiritual accounting — and transformation. If confronted with the same situation again, we would not behave the same way. His use of three words panah, sur, and shuv to describe turning is very evocative. Panah is related to the word face and suggests turning our gaze in a certain direction. Sur evokes turning aside; a person moving in a certain direction wavers or strays off course. Sur, he says, is neutral while panah has a negative connotation. Shuv refers to returning — back to our origins or to our proper natural place, to righteousness. This book is a spiritual GPS that reminds us where we might have made a wrong turn and how we can recalculate and get back on the right path — returning to our home.

Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism by Dvora E. Weisberg, Brandeis University Press, 2009, 246 pp, $70.00.

Reviewed by Leonard Gordon

Kristina Grish’s confident assertion in Boy Vey! The Shiksa’s Guide to Dating Jewish Men, that Jewish men are “generous and thoughtful, thanks to a matriarchal culture that taught them to appreciate women’s strength … and intelligence” resonates as a cultural stereotype. By contrast, the scholar smiles at the presumption of any such entity as “Jewish men,” instead identifying an evolving concept so plastic and contingent as to be virtually meaningless. The two new books reviewed here, Gail Labovitz’s Marriage and Metaphor: Constructions of Gender in Rabbinic Literature and Dvora Weisberg’s Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism, are the work of scholars. This newest generation of rabbinic scholarship revisits the texts of ancient Judaism and exposes the origin of some of our most abiding and egregious prejudices.

Both of these works were published with the support of the Hadassah-Brandeis Research Institute on Jewish Women; the authors reference one another, and both focus on rabbinic literature to question the underpinnings of modern Judaism’s support for the so-called traditional family. Despite these important points of connection, these are very different projects. Labovitz’s close textual analyses emerge from the intersection of linguistic theory and Jewish studies. She forces a confrontation with a metaphoric constellation in rabbinic literature that has abiding consequences for gender roles in marriage. Weisberg, who traces the fate of biblical legislation that requires a man to marry his deceased brother’s childless wife (levirate marriage) through different rabbinic traditions, excavates an early history of one aspect of Jewish marriage and family.

Evoking speech act theory, Labovitz reminds us that language is so pervasively metaphoric that entrenched metaphoric systems become invisible. These metaphors are, however, not benign. For example, the fact that English speakers think about differences of opinion in terms of war (arguments have winners and losers; we marshal evidence and attack one another’s position), has consequences for how we behave and feel when we disagree. Analyzing the texts addressing marriage as kinyan, the purchase of the wife by the husband, Labovitz brings the reader to recognize that this underlying premise of Jewish marriage has a range of enduring implications, from a wife’s lack of control over the fruits of her labor to women’s exclusion from the realm of Torah study.

Labovitz persuasively disputes earlier apologetic characterizations of rabbinic thought and legislation as expanding the freedom and autonomy of women. Instead, she underscores the value and necessity of developing alternative metaphors to replace the classic ones, as author/scholar Rachel Adler does, in constructing new marriage rituals that might better promote the egalitarian relationships to which many Jews aspire.

Weisberg asks what we can learn about rabbinic family values by looking at the extreme situation of levirate marriage (classically articulated in law in Deuteronomy 25:5-10). Here we have a marriage between two partners that under other circumstances would have been seen as incestuous, a perfect case for the early rabbis, who relished the opportunity for the legal gamesmanship offered by marginal cases. Making reference to anthropological data on family relations in a diverse array of cultures, Weisberg finds that the rabbis overturn the Bible’s preference for levirate marriage of release (halitzah), valorizing the needs of the living (including the preferences of the widow) over the claims of the dead. Moreover, Weisberg finds in the history of levirate marriage evidence for a rabbinic preference for the nuclear over the extended family. The smaller unit of wife, husband, and child is given primacy as interpretations that might widen the definition of family are gradually rejected.

It is not an accident that these new forays into rabbinic literature come at a time when we can no longer entertain long popular myths about the stable Jewish family: Jewish husbands do not drink or batter, and Jewish women are devoted, if overbearing, mothers. In the face of increasing divorce rates, as well as a surge among affiliating Jews who come from households that do not conform to antiquated idealizations, in a world of blended families, interfaith and multifaith families, interethnic adoption, fluid gender identity, diverse and changing sexual identities, and polyamorous unions, these myths are weakening. As early as 1989, David Kraemer’s anthology, The Jewish Family: Metaphor and Memory demonstrated diversity in Jewish families from rabbinic to modern times. We learned about wealthy women who farmed out childrearing to facilitate their work lives and about the “slave girl syndrome” impacting medieval Jewish families.

Weisberg extends this historical research in her informative history of levirate marriage.  Labovitz advances the project to a new level, revealing, through her readings, false dichotomies in our thought processes themselves.

Far From Zion: In Search of a Global Jewish Community, by Charles London, William Morrow, 2009, 320 pp, $25.99

I am troubled by Charles London’s latest book, Far from Zion: In Search of a Global Jewish Community. The award-winning journalist,  activist, and author of One Day the Soldiers Came: Voices of Children in War, raises complex questions about the links between Jewish history and Israel that are not easy to answer. How does one place Israel and Zionism within the constellation of one’s own Jewishness? Can one be a good Jew and not support the State of Israel? How does one bridge the narratives of the particular with a universal vision of tolerance and love for all?

In an attempt to answer these questions in this book, London has chosen to explore and portray communities that can only be described as being on the fringe. He begins with the empty synagogue of Burma (and I wonder why he chooses to use the colonial name rather than “Myanmar”) where, basically, only a father and his son remain; it was a community that could never have been described as anything other than merely surviving. He then moves to the newly formed Bentonville Jewish community in Arkansas, and afterward to the decimated but renewed community of post-Katrina New Orleans. From there, the author focuses on Bosnia, the community that first moved him to make the footsteps of his own personal Jewish journey. He then travels to the wild safari lands of Uganda and a community that appears — though barely genetically Jewish — alive with passion and song. From Uganda, he goes to the tiny Jewish community of Iran, and then to an even smaller one in Cuba.

London explains his voyage as a global journey seeking answers to questions of how to relate to Israel. It is curious, then, that he only visits Israel at the end of his travels, and then only for a short stay. Even more strange is that he only achieves a self-proclaimed epiphany about the reason for and fundamental importance of Israel’s existence during his visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial. There is something too simplistic about both this journey and this conclusion. There is a naïveté to London’s exploration and, while his descriptions of each location are moving and powerful, his story lacks an overall narrative arc.

London does not share with the reader how he chose which communities to explore. Even more important, he has left unanswered his own evolving process of discovery. He begins his journey with the metaphor of leaving Egypt to find a promised land, but the reader remains clueless about how he evolved from an assimilated Jew to — by the end of the book — someone who has clearly gained knowledge of Jewish history and ritual, and Hebrew, the language of Zion and Israel. He knows blessings and prayers and recites them by heart while praying in a mosque in the city of Qom in Iran. The greatest missing piece in London’s story might be this: Where does he place knowledge of Hebrew in this mélange of troublesome questions of identity?

I, too, have been on a journey, one that has led me (at least for the time being) to Jerusalem. I’ve lived in London, South Africa, and New York. I’ve been immersed in communities of diverse Jews, with a range of practices, non-practices, beliefs, and ideologies. I chose to move to Israel when my wife received a job offer, and I was excited by the opportunity to explore another Jewish community, one for which our tradition historically longs.

Note that I use the verb “move” and not “make aliyah,” the words traditionally used for “going up” to Israel, obviously implying that the rest of the world is spiritually lesser than the land of Israel. I am not comfortable with this notion of Israel’s spiritual superiority, implied in the Tanakh, that the Jewish people always knew something better was waiting for them in the land of Israel. It is implied in the imperative of God’s words through the prophets: If we, as a people, do not follow his commandments, then the land will become sickened and will eject us. The land of Israel needs a special commitment of the Jewish people.

I sometimes wonder whether I have that commitment. I loved being a Jew in New York and found it in many ways easier than living as a Jew in Jerusalem. I, like the author Charles London, am uncomfortable with the actions of the Israeli government and the everyday complex realities of our life here. I am discomfited by the fact that 20 minutes away from where I live, there are thousands of men, women, and children who do not have sufficient water, electricity, or hope for a better existence.

The final chapter on Zion is perhaps the most disappointing of the book. London’s realization at Yad Vashem of the necessity of the Jewish state is too easy an answer for the complex questions he raises throughout. For a book about Zion, it seems perverse not to have actually met committed Zionists in Israel to understand their narrative. While the Holocaust is a critical part of Israel’s establishment, it is not the reason for its existence. Jews survived 2,000 years of exile, and they could survive for another 2,000 years. Zion has been the goal of the Jewish people for all time, expressed in all of our prayers, festivals, and celebrations. It is fundamental to Judaism and indeed created a marked division when the Reform movement made Germany its own Zion at the beginning of the 19th century.

What is missing from the book is an exploration of this kind of Zionism — the culmination of hopes, yearnings, and narratives of Jewish history. London’s understanding of this yearning, of the ingathering of the Jewish people, would be greatly deepened not by searching for exotic communities, but rather by visiting mainstream communities — thriving and diverse Jewish places — to gain a real understanding of the Jewish people’s relation to Zion. And, most important, he needs to understand why, even as many Jews say words that bind them to Zion, they still choose to remain far from Israel.

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.