kyatic's review
3.0
ARC received in exchange for a review.
An interesting book which packs a lot of ideas into its short page count. I'm not sure I can agree with where Halter ultimately lands in his attempt to answer the question posed in the title; it seems to rely a little too heavily on the general public understanding more about Judaism and Jewishness than I think the majority of us actually do (Halter places a lot of emphasis on the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments) but I think it's a question which is really ultimately unanswerable anyway, so the fact that I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion isn't altogether surprising; I'm not sure there's any conclusion any of us can realistically agree on entirely.
Although I expected a more direct attempt to engage with the question of the book's title, a good third of the book turned out to be a historicising of the writing of the Ten Commandments rather than grappling with the question at hand. Halter clearly has an impressive breadth of ideas and influences, evidenced by the numerous philosophers and theorists he quotes from (Durkheim works particularly well here with his theory of scapegoating) and I feel like perhaps this book would have worked better if Halter had the space to go off on the tangents he evidently enjoys, and which are often ideologically fruitful. In a short work like this, it sometimes felt more as though the tangents evaded the central thesis.
As I say, it was an interesting book, but not necessarily one I feel gave me as much insight as I expected.
An interesting book which packs a lot of ideas into its short page count. I'm not sure I can agree with where Halter ultimately lands in his attempt to answer the question posed in the title; it seems to rely a little too heavily on the general public understanding more about Judaism and Jewishness than I think the majority of us actually do (Halter places a lot of emphasis on the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments) but I think it's a question which is really ultimately unanswerable anyway, so the fact that I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion isn't altogether surprising; I'm not sure there's any conclusion any of us can realistically agree on entirely.
Although I expected a more direct attempt to engage with the question of the book's title, a good third of the book turned out to be a historicising of the writing of the Ten Commandments rather than grappling with the question at hand. Halter clearly has an impressive breadth of ideas and influences, evidenced by the numerous philosophers and theorists he quotes from (Durkheim works particularly well here with his theory of scapegoating) and I feel like perhaps this book would have worked better if Halter had the space to go off on the tangents he evidently enjoys, and which are often ideologically fruitful. In a short work like this, it sometimes felt more as though the tangents evaded the central thesis.
As I say, it was an interesting book, but not necessarily one I feel gave me as much insight as I expected.
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