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JACOB

Name: JACOB
Author: Yair Zakovitch
ISBN: 978-0-300-14426-0

UNEXPECTED PATRIARCH

by Yair Zakovitch translated by Valerie Zakovitch ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2012

Intensely scholarly at times, but also an engaging analysis of one of the Bible’s most complex figures.

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A professor takes on the troubling story of Jacob, a deeply flawed man who later earned punishment, redemption and a unique and honored place in Jewish history.

Part of the publisher’s Jewish Lives series, this volume immediately acknowledges that source material on Jacob resides principally in the biblical accounts. Zakovitch accordingly realizes he must rely on what he calls “literary archaeology”—close reading and searches for biblical and extra-biblical parallels—to unearth the story’s significance. The author relates the principal events in Jacob’s life, then reflects on what the biblical writers emphasized and deemphasized, altered or buried in a word or phrase. Zakovitch begins with the clash between Jacob and his twin brother, Esau, over the birthright from their father, Isaac. In these episodes, we see the fundamental ambition that impels Jacob to deceive and betray. Zakovitch spends a chapter on the well-known “Jacob’s ladder” story, then moves on to his troubles with Laban, whose daughter Rachel Jacob wished to marry. Laban practiced some deception of his own, but after much hardship, Rachel delivered sons to Jacob, including Joseph. Off to Canaan went Jacob, then, later, to Egypt, where Joseph gained power. Zakovitch recounts the death and burial and notes how his sons would go on to head the 12 tribes. The author continually points out the similarities in other Bible stories and ends with a discussion of the conflicts in Jacob’s character. Throughout, Zakovitch analyzes the stories as stories and does not explicitly insist that they are either certain history or sacred texts.

Intensely scholarly at times, but also an engaging analysis of one of the Bible’s most complex figures.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-300-14426-0

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
FROM GODS TO GOD
by Avigdor Shinan ; Yair Zakovitch translated by Valerie Zakovitch

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.