THE BLESSING & THE CURSE

Attentive review of major writings by Jewish authors in a century marked by tragedy and promise.

In this natural follow-up to The People and The Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature, Kirsch impressively surveys more than 30 significant Jewish authors of the 20th century. At the beginning, the author admits that any such study has its limitations, but the works he chooses are representative of the geographic, ideological, theological, and gender diversity of modern Jewish thought. They also focus the reader’s attention on a century of monumental change for global Judaism, marked by mass immigration, brilliant philosophical movements, the horrors of the Holocaust, the creation of Israel as a sovereign state, and unprecedented secularism. Kirsch divides his review into four sections, looking first at Jewish writers in or from Europe whose works relate to the seismic changes that led to the Shoah. Readers will be familiar with many of the authors: Franz Kafka, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anne Frank, Hannah Arendt. Moving on, the author explores books by American Jews, juggling their place in American society with their Jewish heritage; forming a new, uniquely American Jewish identity; and battling, or embracing, assimilation. The author then looks at the writings of Israeli Jews, astutely examining the realization of Zionism from a variety of angles. As Kirsch shows, S. Yizhar studied the irony of an exiled people creating new exiles of the Arabs; Hannah Senesh, through her diary, exposed the guilt of being a survivor in 1940s Palestine whose mother was left behind to suffer persecution. Finally, Kirsch discusses some of the great thinkers, including Martin Buber and Mordecai Kaplan, who have helped create the version of Judaism that the current century has inherited from the last. Kirsch’s work serves as an engrossing overview and introduction to a wide variety of writers, making it especially useful to general readers.

Well-crafted, expertly balanced, and deeply humane.