When Principles Collide
SINGER, SUZANNE F.
PERSPECTIVE When Principles Collide Principles sometimes collide in a painful way. This happened to me on page 47 of the last issue of moment (October 1991), where we published a review of Joseph...
...Who was Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan and what ideas led him to break away from Conservative Judaism to establish the Reconstruc-tionist movement...
...The most basic terms in Judaism, the most significant facts in Jewish history and contemporary Jewish life, are either vaguely familiar or unknown to most modern Jews...
...Telushkin includes "the unappealing feature of the Kuzari," its racial bias in favor of Jews' inherent superiority but then explains why "it would be unfair simply to dismiss Halevi as a racist...
...As they hang meaning onto these words the result may be trivia, but it is a beginning and neither you nor I can disparage where that may lead...
...They often have little more than the vocabulary that literate people pick up...
...It was, in my judgment, grossly unfair, a review that asked the book to be something it never intended to be, that failed to appreciate what Telushkin had accomplished and that expressed all this in a dismissive and supercilious tone...
...He came down from Baltimore and we had a pleasant and frank talk, and I asked him whether he wanted to give the review another try...
...Whether we are succeeding in our different ways is only something that you, our readers, can tell us...
...It's unfair— book is panned for not being what it was never designed to be...
...I would find another reviewer...
...I gave it to a distinguished American rabbi and educator whose comments echoed my own: "Tone is snide, nearly vituperative...
...knowing that to be a Jew is to be born with a gift that offers the possibility of immense enrichment to family and to our search for purpose and significance beyond our selves...
...One is Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism (Touchstone, 1986), co-authored by Telushkin and Dennis Prager...
...Hardly a positive word about the book's merits or even an outline describing it...
...I solicited this review from Noam M. M. Neusner because I had read his article in the Baltimore Jewish Times that reflected a serious interest in Jewish literacy...
...What are the distinctions between the oral and the written law...
...They can tell you the three components of the trinity but have an infinitely harder time explaining mitzvah...
...What happened in the pogrom in Kishinev on Easter 1903...
...Sources and further readings at the chapter's end guide the reader to a translation of The Kuzari and to additional information regarding its racial bias...
...Cocktail party facts they call it...
...But it often answers just what you wanted to know...
...I invited Neusner to lunch if he cared to discuss the matter...
...Here, too, is a description of Judah Halevi's The Kuzari: A Book of Argument in Defense of a Despised Religion that imaginatively reconstructs the arguments that may have been made by Christian, Muslim and Jewish spokesmen before King Bulan, arguments that led Bulan to choose Judaism...
...Now, having done what editorial integrity seemed to call for, I have more to say about this book, about the task of filling in Jewish gaps and about the larger purpose of moment...
...Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of teenage and adult Jews are seekingjewish involvements—even Jewish leadership positions—all the while hoping no one will find out their unhappy little secret: They are Jewishly illiterate...
...Other questions answered by Telushkin in separate chapters: What does Judaism teach us about tzedakah, a word we usually translate as charity but that means justice or righteousness...
...This happened to me on page 47 of the last issue of moment (October 1991), where we published a review of Joseph Telushkin's recent book Jewish Literacy (William Morrow, 1991...
...Obviously it's concise and obviously it's not where learning should end...
...This chapter also illuminates the structure of James Kugel's recent book, On Being A few (Harper Collins, 1990...
...We argued—he for the principle of allowing our authors to express viewpoints different from moment's editors and I that it is wrong to slam a book I knew to be successful and important Hershel raised the possibility that my friendship with Telushkin might have biased my views...
...At an impasse, we decided to consult others...
...Beginnings are always incomplete, but they are foundations...
...There are only a few books in my home that my family frequently pulls out when Jewish questions arise, often at our Shabbat table...
...and, when a young friend recently left for a semester in Israel, heavy as Jewish Literacy is, he carried it on the plane...
...three others aFe Rabbi Hayim Donin's volumes, To Be A Jew (Basic, 1972) and To Pray as a Jew (Basic, 1980) and Rabbi Irving Greenberg's The Jewish Way (Summit, 1988...
...I also know it is a daunting task to start learning Jewish history that you never learned, classic Jewish writings that are only names, traditions that are only vague memories left by grandparents, ethical dimensions of Judaism that you know are important but don't know where they come from, the meaning and history of prayers that may be familiar snatches of Hebrew or a mystifying part of synagogue services that leave you disconnected and uninvolved...
...Hershel passed the review by a well-known American Jewish journalist who said it was by no means beyond the pale and that we should publish it...
...I rejected the review, sharing the rabbi's comments with Neusner and adding in my letter: Today many Jews—many are your contemporaries, many are in my generation—seek to bring into their lives the richness of Judaism...
...When I leave it on my living room table, guests head for it...
...What are the rituals for Shabbat in the home...
...Jewish Literacy is a doorway book...
...Here is the astonishing story of the eighth century kingdom of Khazaria, between Russia and Turkey, whose king, Bulan, converted to Judaism, establishing an independent Jewish kingdom that lasted 200 years...
...Maybe I know you because I am one of you, trying to build Jewish learning and practice into my life...
...In my mind Telushkin and moment are in a partnership...
...It's difficult for me to know who is out there reading moment, but I think I know some things about you...
...It opens onto 346 one- to three-page entries covering an immense range of Jewish knowledge...
...The second review came in—more civil in tone, somewhat more descriptive, but, to me, still inadequate...
...How can we celebrate the birth and naming of baby girls...
...Telushkin explains why he wrote this book...
...I think moment readers include many questing Jews, Jews who are trying to connect to what they didn't learn well or at all as they grew up...
...see review, October 1991), modeled on The Kuzari...
...Now what...
...mean review...
...our principle of not censoring moment's authors won out and Neusner's review went in...
...Generally that view is snobbish...
...He and we seek to be entry points for questing Jews as well as en-richers of those already deeply imbedded in Jewish life...
...it entices you to learn more and suggests sources for doing that It is written with Telushkin's engaging voice, with humor and passion from a person who loves to teach, who loves Judaism and who is clearly someone who wouldn't be disdainful of our big gaps in Jewish knowledge...
...Ever since, I have been troubled by this decision...
...The collision came when the review arrived...
...They contain accessible, pertinent and reliable answers...
...I told our editor, Hershel Shanks, that I did not want to use it...
...I bought 10 copies for myself and 15 for a friend because both of us give this book as b'nai mitzvah presents and to adult friends, even if they are knowledgeable about Judaism...
...He said, "Yes...
...For the past days, I have suffered from a letter I received from Joseph Telushkin, a letter that described what I had done as publishing a "hatchet job, designed to convince would-be readers—and the sort of people who read moment definitely encompass a healthy section of my would-be readers—that it would be a waste of their time and money to acquire this book, since it does not teach, is not interesting, and is not rooted in scholarship...
...I thought that Neusner, a young journalist, himself well-educated Jewishly, would read Telushkin's book from the perspective of young Jews and have something fresh and valuable to say...
...They know what happened to Columbus in 1492 but not what momentous event shattered the whole Jewish world that year...
...Having gone this far, I caved...
...Some people scorn knowing a little about a lot...
...Now there is another, Jewish Literacy...
...Read, for example, Telushkin's chapter about the great Middle Ages Jewish poet, Judah Halevi, and his philosophic masterpiece, The Kuzari...
Vol. 16 • December 1991 • No. 6
