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cebolla's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
4.0
From a very young age I wondered what it meant that I was Jewish. When I was younger, I went to temple on high holidays and attended Hebrew School. After a short time, I got thrown out of Hebrew School (don’t ask), which lead to us going to temple less and less. Despite this total separation from the religion of Judaism, I was still a Jew (as other kids loved to point out). But why? If a Catholic person stopped going to church and didn’t believe in god, wouldn’t they no longer be Catholic? I wasn’t religious, I didn’t have a community of fellow Jews, and I times I was even embarrassed of my Jewishness; yet I was still a Jew. It’s obviously a religion, but equally obviously something more. A race? A nationality? An ethnicity? I don’t know.
In Not in the Heavens, Biale takes us on a journey from Maimonides to Spinoza to more modern day Jewish thinkers. First there are arguments over the meaning of god (a big white guy in the sky? Nature? Everything? Nothing?) and whether the bible is the word of god, a historical document, or just a book with some good (and bad) life lessons. From there, we move on to debates about how to revive Jewish culture—mainly whether or not Jews should revive Hebrew or spread Yiddish and, of course, how to look at ourselves. There’s some talk about Palestine and other fun stuff too.
This book is pretty dense and my brain has been very distracted, so I’ll end the review here. If this niche topic is something that interests you, I’d recommend reading this book. And then maybe hit me up and let’s talk about it.
In Not in the Heavens, Biale takes us on a journey from Maimonides to Spinoza to more modern day Jewish thinkers. First there are arguments over the meaning of god (a big white guy in the sky? Nature? Everything? Nothing?) and whether the bible is the word of god, a historical document, or just a book with some good (and bad) life lessons. From there, we move on to debates about how to revive Jewish culture—mainly whether or not Jews should revive Hebrew or spread Yiddish and, of course, how to look at ourselves. There’s some talk about Palestine and other fun stuff too.
This book is pretty dense and my brain has been very distracted, so I’ll end the review here. If this niche topic is something that interests you, I’d recommend reading this book. And then maybe hit me up and let’s talk about it.
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