Bestselling Conservative rabbi Kushner (Who Needs God, 1989; When Bad Things Happen to Good People, 1981) on the joys of Judaism. Kushner tilts this good-natured panegyric toward practicing Jews, who would be most willing to embrace his view of Judaism as God's greatest gift to humankind. ``Life is the question, Judaism is the answer,'' he exhorts, with such ebullience that even nonbelievers may be swayed. He promotes the Jewish people, tiny in numbers, as ``the most influential group on earth,'' producing everything from the theory of relativity to psychoanalysis to Marxism, and, through the Hebrew Bible, shaping ``the way the world thinks about God.'' Judaism, he emphasizes, is primarily a community rather than a theology, finding expression in its own calendar, holidays, rituals, and land (for Kushner, love of Israel as the ancestral home is incumbent upon all Jews). He's at his best when justifying religious customs—for instance, he explains kosher dietary laws, which may strike non-Jews as needless complications, as ``spiritual calisthenics'' that ``sanctify the act of eating''; the same applies to laws on sexuality, speech, Sabbath behavior, and so on. Discussion of controversies like abortion or homosexuality is glaringly absent, although he argues for traditional religious language—i.e., referring to God as ``He'' rather than ``She'' or, God forbid, ``It.'' Kushner never minces his beliefs, explaining why he won't officiate at marriages where one partner is non-Jewish (the ``words and rituals do not apply to non-Jews''). This ardency, which has much to do with the rabbi's popularity, doesn't prevent him from striking an alliance with his potentially vast Christian readership; these two religions are both part of ``God's ultimate plan for the world,'' allies in a sacred battle against ``apathy and selfishness and a neo-paganism that sees Man as an animal and his every urge as legitimate.'' Kushner at his very best, abubble with enthusiasm. L'Chaim!
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-316-50735-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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