MOSES

by Sholem Asch ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 21, 1951

A monumental achievement and one into which Sholem Asch has poured the scholarship which endows remote Biblical times with an aliveness and a vitality that transforms the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses), as The Nazarene and Mary and The Apostle transformed the Gospels and Acts into human vital stories, written for our times. His is a dual function in Moses for not only has he made the epoch living drama but he has given the central characters, the basic issues and the conflicts an emotional reality that carries the reader along. And in restating the laws which have governed the Jews from Moses down, he has evidenced again the power of their moral and spiritual base which has withstood all the efforts of mankind to destroy them. At times the implacable harshness rouses the reader as it roused the new-made freedmen. At other times the justice -- in terms of that faraway era -- seems essentially timeless. As a novel, Moses lags now and again, but in its very greatness of theme the interest holds, even through passages that seem ponderous. To Jews, seeking again the roots of their nationalism and their religion, this book will be Scholem Asch's finest achievement. To non-Jews, it bears the universal message of the one God. Every reader will, I feel sure, turn again to the Old Testament to find there richer meaning, read against this vast panorama of the years of slavery, exodus, exile and achievement. (Dorothy Wilson's Prince of Egypt (Westminster Press, 1949) bears rereading since it particularly links in with the spirit of the man at the point where Asch's Moses takes up.)

Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1951

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1951

Categories: FICTION