Diminutive sex therapist ``Dr. Ruth'' presents a sex guide for Orthodox and traditional Conservative Jews. ``People pick up the Bible for many different reasons but rarely, if ever, as a sex manual. That is their mistake,'' writes Westheimer. Here, with Jewish Week associate editor Mark, she sets out to correct this error. Westheimer begins by explaining Judaism's attitude toward sex, one which she considers particularly healthy. Judaism doesn't exalt celibacy; in fact, it frowns upon it. Women's satisfaction in marriage is not only discussed among the Talmudic sages, it is absolutely required of the husband. Lust and sexual impropriety are acknowledged and treated within Jewish law. In addition to the commandment against coveting thy neighbor's wife, Westheimer finds many explicit and implicit references to sex in the Hebrew Bible and rabbinical literature, focusing in particular on Genesis, Ruth, Song of Songs, and Talmudic and Kabbalistic sources. This last especially provides much fodder for the author. Westheimer also covers the commandments, the ritual bath, or mikvah, weddings, and the Sabbath, a day on which it is a special mitzvah (commandment) to have sex. Here the author offers a lovely metaphor for the relationship between husband and wife on the Sabbath: At the beginning of the day, the woman lights and blesses two candles, which according to Westheimer may represent the man and woman. At the end of the Sabbath, another blessing is made by candlelight, only this time the two wicks are joined together, often intertwined, representing the married couple, who have been brought closer through their sexual union. But this small gem is a rarity in a basically didactic and monotonous little book.
Pub Date: Nov. 6, 1995
ISBN: 0-8147-9268-5
Page Count: 188
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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
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