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Kertzer, Morris, and Lawrence Hoffman - What Is a Jew?
Sun, Aug. 27th, 2006 11:56 pm(subtitle: A Guide to the Beliefs, Traditions, and Practices of Judaism That Answers Questions for Both Jew and Non-Jew)
To clarify, I am in the non-Jew category.
I feel incredibly stupid reading this book, since I feel like I should know more about this topic. But after several completely random anti-Semitic comments that sprung up during the PotC2 debate and IBARW, I realized that I knew pretty much nothing about Judaism the religion, and even less about Jewishness (is that the proper term?) as a culture.
I've learned more about Passover and the seder from LJ and from books, but most of what I know about Judaism is from the Bible, from the extremely obscure Kabbalistic references that anime and manga so loves to use, pop culture Yiddish, and the Holocaust. In fact, I feel extremely stupid just typing all that out and exposing the depths of my ignorance.
Anyhow. I learned quite a bit from the book, from how the Torah is different from the Bible to the importance of Israel, which I hadn't really understood before. I understood it intellectually, but never quite got why emotionally. I'm not saying that I do now, but it's more understandable now.
But I'm leaving the book with more questions than answers, including questions on how accurate the book is. I have no doubt that the rabbis who wrote it are factually accurate, but it's the emotional accuracy that I'm not sure about and that probably no one can answer, as the emotional accuracy will differ with each individual. At least now, I have the terms to think about things in, and a broad framework for questions, which is much more than I had before this.
But I find that I want to know more; I want to know what the culture is like when lived in, what it means when you're half in it and half out of it, what it means for a strict Orthodox, what it means for a Reform Jew, what it means for a non-religious Jew. And I'm sure all these things aren't something that can be answered by anyone, just like questions on Chinese culture will have a broad framework but vary on the individual level.
I'm glad I read it, and that I know more now about Jewishness as a living culture, as opposed to the oft-frozen-in-time culture that it felt like to me in books (probably because most books on Jewishness that I have read have been about the Holocaust).
Need to find more books now.
To clarify, I am in the non-Jew category.
I feel incredibly stupid reading this book, since I feel like I should know more about this topic. But after several completely random anti-Semitic comments that sprung up during the PotC2 debate and IBARW, I realized that I knew pretty much nothing about Judaism the religion, and even less about Jewishness (is that the proper term?) as a culture.
I've learned more about Passover and the seder from LJ and from books, but most of what I know about Judaism is from the Bible, from the extremely obscure Kabbalistic references that anime and manga so loves to use, pop culture Yiddish, and the Holocaust. In fact, I feel extremely stupid just typing all that out and exposing the depths of my ignorance.
Anyhow. I learned quite a bit from the book, from how the Torah is different from the Bible to the importance of Israel, which I hadn't really understood before. I understood it intellectually, but never quite got why emotionally. I'm not saying that I do now, but it's more understandable now.
But I'm leaving the book with more questions than answers, including questions on how accurate the book is. I have no doubt that the rabbis who wrote it are factually accurate, but it's the emotional accuracy that I'm not sure about and that probably no one can answer, as the emotional accuracy will differ with each individual. At least now, I have the terms to think about things in, and a broad framework for questions, which is much more than I had before this.
But I find that I want to know more; I want to know what the culture is like when lived in, what it means when you're half in it and half out of it, what it means for a strict Orthodox, what it means for a Reform Jew, what it means for a non-religious Jew. And I'm sure all these things aren't something that can be answered by anyone, just like questions on Chinese culture will have a broad framework but vary on the individual level.
I'm glad I read it, and that I know more now about Jewishness as a living culture, as opposed to the oft-frozen-in-time culture that it felt like to me in books (probably because most books on Jewishness that I have read have been about the Holocaust).
Need to find more books now.