It’d be lovely to read a more fully fleshed-out family reminiscence, but this is a disappointment.
How do we mix ancient wisdom and modern technology? The author of Eve's Apple (1997) and former culture editor of the Forward seeks an answer.
When his elderly maternal grandmother died, Rosen began a self-questioning journey into the Talmud, the 2,000-year-old collection of commentaries and other texts assembled by the brilliant rabbis of the Second Commonwealth era of Jewish history. Rosen reflects on that search and on the two streams of Jewish history embodied in his two grandmothers: one American-born and raised, a defiantly unreligious woman but also a believer in God; the other East European, Orthodox, murdered by the Nazis. In the same way, Rosen believes, the dialectic of his very modern American maternal grandmother counterpoised to his no less traditional European paternal grandmother is enunciated in the contradictions between the "ancient tradition and contemporary chaos" as represented by the book's title. The crux of his odyssey is an attempt to unite and embrace the contradictions inherent in these seeming polar opposites. The result is a slender volume that drifts from Homer to Henry Adams to Josephus, trying to find a thread in Jewish and American history that will allow Rosen to reconcile the poles. Rosen writes quite well. The book is full of handsomely crafted passages that yearn to be read aloud. But the connections he makes are tenuous, forced, and arbitrary. The Talmud and the Internet are both collections of seemingly random scraps; granted, but united to what purpose? A Web page and a page of Talmud are both jigsaw-like constructions, palimpsests built around intricately interlocking commentaries—but so what? Regrettably, the results are aesthetically pleasing but intellectually facile and attenuated.
It’d be lovely to read a more fully fleshed-out family reminiscence, but this is a disappointment.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-374-27238-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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