No comments about National Education Through Mutually Supportive Devices: A Case Study of Zionist Education.

No comments about Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today, Updated Edition.

2 comments about Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist's Polemic.

1. Excellent! It influenced me to make aliya (immigrate) to Israel. The situation has changed somewhat in the past few decades since Halkin wrote the book but the sentiments are still true today!



2. This is an excellent book in which Halkin explains to an American friend his reasons for choosing to live in the Jewish state even though it involves considerable material sacrifice in comparison to the life in America. Halkin's hope for and vision of a normal Jewish society living in peace with its neighbors seems farther from realization today than when he wrote the book. But the book is still a well- written and thoughtful essay in explaining the special meaning of the Jewish state.

No comments about American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise (Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture and Life & Brandeis Series on Jewish Women).

1 comments about The New Jerusalem (Zionist Power in America).

1. I picked up this book primarily because I have learned much from the author's other works, particularly his magisterial volume on the Kennedy assassination, "Final Judgment". In comparison to that and his excellent "High Priests of War", this volume is not up to Piper's standard level of excellence. But it is still noteworthy, and worthwhile.
   
   Piper's primary thesis here is that there have existed throughout much of American history a Zionist elite, who have operated, often in the shadows, and sometimes, as now, much more in the open. And Piper dutifully provides substantive data to support his theory. But, we are left in considering "The New Jerusalem" in light of his other works wishing that Piper would broaden his horizons just a bit. Piper, though an important and certainly courageous expositor, could rightly be charged with being a bit obsessed with the issue of Zionism at the exclusion of all else. Kindly note that the above is merely a gentle suggestion, and is no way intended to detract from the quality of Piper's otherwise excellent and important outreach.

No comments about My Enemy's Enemy: Lebanon in the Early Zionist Imagination, 1900-1948.

No comments about The Zionist Connection II.

1 comments about Studies in Vayikra: Leviticus.

1. 'Vayikra' is in many ways the most challenging and difficult of the books of the 'Chumash' for the modern reader. It consists by and large in regulations in regard to the Priesthood and to Sacrifice. The questions raised and the suggestions made by various commentators as brought here by Nehama Leibowitz have a special role in bringing this particular book alive. As always her approach is one which pushes the reader to think and question.

3 comments about Fifty Key Jewish Thinkers.

1. Educated persons will know at least something about such Jewish philosophers as Philo, Maimonides, Spinoza, Martin Buber, and Elie Wiesel. All of them have found their way into most major Western encyclopedias. This book offers much more. Cohn-Sherbok, a well-known writer of things Jewish, is an ordained Reform rabbi, and he naturally, and properly, concentrates on the religious aspects of his subject. Cohn-Sherbook devotes a two-page essay to each of the fifty thinkers included in this mini-encyclopedia. There are no footnotes, but numerous crossreferences. The author's deep involvement in his subject helps the reader apprehend the book as a unified whole. This becomes all the more evident if the essays are read in chronological order, which is easy to do, since the author includes a neat 2000-year chronological table of the names included. We thus get a fascinating view of how the Jewish religious landscape changed under the impact of several catastrophic events, from the Babylonian exile, over the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, to the Nazi Holocaust. The endurance of the Jewish people under such calamities is striking. So is the ability of the thinkers presented here to steer their philosophical and religious reflection into fruitful channels. This implies neither an easy optimism, nor a resigned submission to fate. Rather, we witness here a deep rethinking of the foundations of religion, obviously relevant to Jews and non-Jews alike.



2. This work competently traces the lives and outlines the thought of major Jewish thinkers from Medieval times. But it seems to me to have what might be called an ' over-liberal bias' and includes at least two people who certainly are not ' major Jewish thinkers'. It also naturally excludes many others who might be said to truly deserve a place here.
   A good work which could be better.



3. This book is about evenly divided between profiles of premodern (mostly medieval) thinkers and modern (mostly Reform or Zionist) thinkers. The quality of the profiles varied; nonphilosophers (e.g. Zionists) were dealt with fairly well, and this book made me aware of some that I knew nothing or almost nothing about. However, Cohn-Sherbock struggles to make the deeper philosophers comprehensible. General rule of thumb: if you don't understand philosopher X's own work, you won't understand it any better after reading this book.

No comments about The "Bergson Boys" And the Origins of Contemporary Zionist Militancy (Modern Jewish History).