Book Review: "Daven Your Age" by Rabbi Yehoshua Grunstein

In Daven Your Age, Rabbi Yehoshua Grunstein makes a sincere attempt to respond to a well-known dilemma; the fact that many adults have failed to grow up in their approach to prayer and still see it from the perspective of when they last studied it, in grade school. Rabbi Grunstein therefore attempts to reintroduce many aspects of this most basic element of Jewish spirituality in a way that is intended to appeal to adults and their concerns.

The book is divided into five sections. The first section is a general overview of basic ideas about prayer. The second section discusses the importance of communal prayer, and the next three sections discuss various aspects of the daily morning prayer service. Each chapter is followed by a brief summary of the topics covered, and these summaries are then collected as a final appendix to the entire book.

One of the difficulties I had when reading this book is that it is fairly obvious that I am not part of Rabbi Grunstein's target audience. While I will readily admit that I am very far from where I ought to be with regard to my prayer, I found the topics that Rabbi Grunstein discussed to be very elementary and I often felt that he was glossing over many major issues, topics, and sources that I would have expected to be covered. This was especially true in the first section of the book. In my opinion, the final three sections, which deal with the details and language of the prayers are far stronger than the first two.

I had similar issues with the style of presentation, which I often felt was excessively informal and "chatty".

However, ultimately these are a questions of taste and style, and it is difficult to judge whether Rabbi Grunstein made the right decision in these areas, especially as I am not really clear on the nature of his target audience.

While I have a number of criticisms of the content of the book, most of these criticisms are about minor details that aren't really worth detailing. The one exception is in the first chapter of the book, where Rabbi Grunstein incorrectly assumes that the Biblical concept of "service of the heart" refers exclusively to a spontaneous, emotional experience. Rabbi Grunstein then compounds this error by reading this idea into the words of two major Jewish authorities, Maimonides and Nachmanides, in their debate over the Biblical obligation to pray. While there is no question that spontaneous, informal prayer is a very important aspect of Jewish prayer, there is no question whatsoever that formal, structured prayer is also a fulfillment of the Biblical commandment of "service of the heart." The debate between Maimonides and Nachmanides is on the nature of the obligation, but all sides agree that all sincere prayer, whether spontaneous or formal, is a fulfillment of the commandment to serve God "with all your heart."

However, with the exception of this one error (which, unfortunately, is in the first chapter of the book), the book is reasonably well-done. The basic themes that Rabbi Grunstein focuses on are all valid and important (even if I would have presented them somewhat differently), and I am sure that there are many people who would benefit from reading his book.

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Book Review - "The Neshamah Should Have an Aliyah" by Rabbi Tzvi Hebel

When I started this blog, I was approached by a good friend, Rabbi Moshe Haikins, the founder and director of the Chevrah Lomdei Mishnah - The Society for the Mishnah Study, with the request that I read and review a book that they had published (in cooperation with Judaica Press). Of course, there is a danger in accepting such a request from a friend, as it entails the risk of having to inform your friend of your true opinion of the book. This is especially daunting when the book is already in print and your criticism can no longer serve any constructive purpose.

Thankfully, I was not faced with this difficulty in this case. In The Neshamah Should Have an Aliyah, Rabbi Tzvi Hebel has succeeded in producing an outstanding work that will probably become a standard text in the English speaking Jewish world. The work deals with an issue that everyone is eventually faced with; how to properly memorialize a deceased loved one according to Jewish tradition.

The book begins with a general overview of the different concepts that underlie the various traditional Jewish practices for memorializing the departed. All of these concepts are based upon the basic principle that the departed do not cease to exist at death, and that even after death, it is possible for the living to continue to contribute to the welfare of our loved ones who have passed on. Most significantly, the departed continue to gain merit through the good deeds of their children and family. Moreover, good deeds done with the intent to bring merit upon the deceased, are themselves raised to higher level, for in addition to the good deed itself, such acts also include the elements of chessed (kindness) and kibbud av v'eim (honor of parents).

However, the real strength and uniqueness of this work is in the next section, which makes up the bulk of the work, titled, "What You Can Do - A Practical Guide." This is a comprehensive, and very practical, guide to the many different traditional practices used to memorialize and gain merit for the deceased.

The only way to really appreciate how comprehensive this work is to look over the table of contents. The topics covered include Torah study (both during the period of mourning and afterwards), charity and chessed, prayer (covering the recitation of kaddish, yizkor, and other such practices), the tombstone, visiting the grave, naming children after the deceased, the yahrtzeit (yearly anniversary of the deceased's passing), and so on.

All of these are accompanied by highly practical advice and information. Thus, in reference to the practice of studying mishnayos during the shivah (first seven days of mourning) based upon the name of the deceased (in which each mishnah begins with a letter from the Hebrew name of the deceased), the publishers included an appendix to the book that has a mishnah with translation for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Similarly, when discussing charity and chessed, the author includes an introduction to setting up a gemach - a fund for free loans of money or other acts of kindness - which can be an outstanding source of merit for both the deceased and the living. This book even includes names and phone numbers of organizations and experienced individuals who are willing to help you set up a gemach.

And, in connection to the practice of visiting the grave site, the book includes a separate pamphlet, printed on glossy card-stock, with the traditional prayers that are recited at the cemetery. The book also includes a CD with a presentation, both in audio (for a conventional CD player) and video, titled, "Providing Eternal Merit" by the world-famous speakers, Rabbi Yissocher Frand and Rabbi Paysach Krohn. (Obviously, these items are not included in the Kindle edition.)

The book even includes a sample agenda for a family meeting for discussing what the family can do to memorialize their departed loved ones.

Yet despite the comprehensive and practical nature of this work, Rabbi Hebel has succeeded in producing  a book that is of a reasonable size (well under 200 pages) and which is written in clear, accessible language. The book includes an index and glossary, and the longer sections are followed by bulleted summaries. 

In short, with this work, Rabbi Hebel has performed an extraordinary service for the Jewish community. He has provided us with a user-friendly guide to a topic that we are often first confronted with at a time of great stress. I highly recommend this work for every Jewish home.

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Rabbi Hebel and the Chevrah Lomdei Mishnah have also published Mishnas Chayim, a collection of insights on the weekly Torah portion from the Mishnah originally published in their popular weekly parsha sheet.

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Book Review: "Echoes of Eden" by Rabbi Ari D. Kahn

In many ways, the book of Genesis is one of the most esoteric books of the Bible. On the surface, Genesis appears to be a simple narrative of the origins of the Jewish people, beginning with the creation of the world until the beginning of the Egyptian exile. However, a careful reader will quickly recognize that a great deal of explanation is needed to make sense of much of the narrative. This is true not only for the early chapters of Genesis, which deal with obviously difficult topics (such as the creation of the universe, the original sin, Noah and the flood, etc.) but also for the later narratives about the Patriarchs and their families. Stories that, at first glance, appear to be quite simple, such as the tales of sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau or Joseph and his elder brothers, quickly become far more complex, even incomprehensible, when read with a more careful eye.

In his recent book, Echoes of Eden, Rabbi Ari D. Kahn attempts to shed light on many of these difficult topics, through a series of essays working through the entire book of Genesis. Towards this purpose, Rabbi Kahn marshals a broad host of traditional commentaries and midrashic sources (including a number of important kabalistic works), many of which are not well known. Indeed, much of the value of Rabbi Kahn’s work is precisely in the sources that he quotes. Even experienced scholars will find a number of gems here that they were unaware of previously. In addition, Rabbi Kahn provides a number of valuable original insights. I was particularly impressed by an insight that Rabbi Kahn gives over from his teacher, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, in the essay, “The Universal and the Particular.” Rabbi Soloveitchik notes that, in Genesis 22:5, when Abraham and Isaac separate from the two young men accompanying them to complete their journey to the “binding of Isaac”, Abraham tells the young men that he and Isaac would “go yonder and worship and return to you.” Rabbi Soloveitchik explains that these last words indicate that the religious experience would not be complete until Abraham returned and shared his experience with others. As Rabbi Kahn goes on to explain, this is an important aspect of all Jewish spirituality, that while we may need to separate ourselves from others at times to achieve spiritual heights, we must ultimately bring these experiences back with us to those we “left behind”. On a cosmic scale, this is the role of the Jewish people relative to the world as a whole.

Unfortunately, however, despite these virtues, the book suffers from a number of major flaws that severely undermine its usefulness, especially for readers who are not equipped to study the original sources that Rabbi Kahn cites. First of all, it should be noted that many of the sources that he quotes in his footnotes are quoted in the original Hebrew without translation. This is a major loss for those readers who are not literate in Hebrew. However, a far more serious problem is that the book’s presentation of these sources is often inaccurate and misleading. Many of the translations are substantively erroneous, frequently in matters directly relevant to the discussion. Sources are often cited as stating or supporting ideas that are not to be found in the original material. In some cases this appears to have been the result of a misunderstanding of the material, itself a serious problem. However, in most cases, it seems as if the author is unjustifiably reading his own original ideas into the sources. While, in themselves, many of these insights may be legitimate, the attempt to give them a false pedigree is very problematic. Errors of this sort abound throughout the book, in some cases the errors are minor (but irritatingly elementary - as in his commentary on Genesis 27:1 that Isaac enjoyed the aroma of the meal that Jacob had brought to him, when the verse states that he smelled Jacob’s garments!), and in other cases the errors are very substantial, fundamentally undermining the validity of the entire essay.

Even when the author’s presentation of a source is correct in substance, the tone of his presentation may be very discordant with the intent of the original source. As an example, the author quotes, in Hebrew, a commentary of Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (d. 1893) that states that because Abraham was so deeply immersed in theological and philosophical thought, his father was the one who initially led the family in their travels. In English, the author gives Rabbi Berlin’s commentary a rather different tone, saying that Abraham “was a luftmensch – his head was in the clouds”, which has a rather derogatory tone that is completely absent from the original commentary.

A related problem is the author’s tendency to unjustifiably jump to conclusions that are unsupported by the sources and, in many cases, to then present these conclusions as settled fact. For example, in his essay on the wife of Noah, “Na’amah”, he asserts early on that “Noah’s wife could only be Na’amah [the sister of Tubal-cain].” Yet the midrash explicitly states that this was a matter of debate and that the Rabbis believed the wife of Noah to have been a different woman with the same name. Later, when the author quotes this very midrash, it is erroneously translated to say that the rabbis agreed with the identification of the sister of Tubal-cain with the wife of Noah and the debate was only about her moral character.

In other cases, the author takes what would otherwise be a valid insight and carries it too far. Thus, the author asserts that, although Abraham erected numerous altars, “he never brought an offering upon them.” He bases this assertion on the fact that, in several locations, when Scripture tells us that Abraham erected an altar, it does not mention any offerings (with the exception of the binding of Isaac). While this is a valid textual insight (not restricted to Abraham), it does not support the author’s conclusion, which he presents as self-evident. On the contrary, the commentaries, quite reasonably, take it for granted that Abraham offered sacrifices upon these altars (that is what altars are for, after all). Later in the same essay, the author actually quotes a commentary by Nachmanides that explicitly contradicts this assertion, but the quote is not translated into English.

Finally, I felt that many of the essays were written in a confusing manner, without a clear presentation from the beginning to the conclusion. The essays often feel unfocused and meandering, as if the author got sidetracked from his initial point and went off on a tangent and never quite found his way back. Many of the essays suffer from poorly presented reasoning, as if important steps were omitted or insufficiently stressed, so that the reader is unsure how he got from one point to the next. Many of the essays seem rather pointless, where a great amount of effort is expended to bring us to an anticlimactic conclusion that is not particularly interesting or meaningful. For example, in the essay, “Clothes Make the Man”,  the author goes on for twelve pages, citing a number of interesting sources, but comes to no meaningful conclusion except that “clothing” symbolizes sin. And what, exactly, are we supposed to do with that?

I suspect that most of the problems with this book are due to the essays being based upon oral lectures that Rabbi Kahn delivered to different audiences over a few years. The dynamic nature of such, often partially extemporaneous, oral lectures generally cannot be simply transcribed into print. Such material needs to be very carefully worked over (and, often, completely rewritten), by the author himself with the help of competent proofreaders. The failure to do this can cause even a highly competent scholar to appear incompetent.

While Echoes of Eden has some valuable insights, I cannot recommend it to anyone who is not able and ready to work through the essays critically and to research all of the sources that are quoted. The reader cannot simply rely on the author’s presentation of the sources as reliable. It is my hope that future volumes of this work will be handled more carefully (as well as, hopefully, a revised edition of this first volume), as I believe that Rabbi Kahn has a great deal to offer.

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Book Review: "Maimonides:Reason Above All" by Israel Drazin

Maimonides was one of the greatest rabbinic figures in history. He made a profound and permanent impact upon the Jewish world, and his influence spread well beyond the borders of the Jewish community. He was universally recognized as a great scholar of the Bible and Talmud, and his works have become basic texts of the Jewish canon. At the same time, Maimonides was an original thinker who put forth a number of opinions that were controversial in his own time and some of these controversies resonate until today. The bulk of the controversy surrounds his efforts, mainly in his great philosophical work, Guide for the Perplexed, to resolve conflicts between traditional Jewish teachings and Aristotelian philosophy.

Because of the importance of Maimonides and the debates surrounding some of his opinions, a good introductory work to the thought of Maimonides and his contemporaries, clearly explaining where and how he differed from other major figures, would be highly desirable. Unfortunately, that is not what the reader will encounter when reading Israel Drazin's new book, Maimonides: Reason Above All.

Despite the book's promising description and the author's apparent qualifications, the book not only fails to live up to expectations, but it even fails to attain the most minimal standards of academic competence and intellectual honesty. The book is replete, page after page, with misstatements, distortions, and dishonest citations and quotations. After a great deal of effort, I was forced to conclude that I could not find a single redeeming characteristic in the book.

Drazin fails to understand the opinions of any of the scholars he is discussing, whether it is Maimonides himself, other Jewish scholars, or even non-Jewish philosophers. He appears to have difficulty with even basic reading comprehension. For example, on page 26, Drazin begins a detailed analysis of a statement from "the poet Yehuda Halevi" in which Halevi negatively contrasted Maimonides with his father. This is an amazing statement, in that Yehuda Halevi, one of the greatest Jewish philosophers and poets, died in 1141, when Maimonides was about two years old. (This should be immediately obvious to anyone with even a passing familiarity with Jewish intellectual history.) The quote that Drazin is discussing - which he got from a secondary source (which does not ascribe the quote to Yehuda Halevi) - was actually written by L. M. Simmons, an English rabbi, in the Jewish Quarterly Review in 1890. Drazin's failure in this simple citation is unfortunately typical of his entire work. Over and over again, Drazin makes basic errors of fact and comprehension.

The quality of this work is so poor that it does not really deserve a detailed response. There is, quite literally, not a single issue that Drazin presents accurately. When attempting to present a dispute, Drazin usually gets both sides wrong, and misses the actual point of disagreement entirely. In other cases, Drazin creates disputes where none exist. Drazin's presentation of Maimonides is so heavily biased, that it quickly reaches the point of absurdity.

Drazin attempts to reconstruct Maimonides as a religious naturalist who rejected creation ex nihilo, miracles, providence, prophecy, the existence of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, and any God-oriented purpose in religion. Drazin openly admits that it is only possible to do so by denying many - many!! - of Maimonides' own statements. Drazin believes that Maimonides' was simply lying when he said these things. This is a major theme of Drazin's work, that Maimonides engaged in a "holy lie" (a phrase coined by Nietzsche that Drazin uses repeatedly) and knowingly made completely false statements to deceive the masses (for their own good, of course). Drazin makes this claim not just of some of the more difficult passages in Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed (even this is debatable), but of vast swathes of his writings, including large amounts of material that was unique to Maimonides. For example, Maimonides was the first Jewish scholar to create a formalized dogma of Judaism, his 13 Foundations, which Maimonides argued must be fully accepted in order for one to be a legitimate member of the Jewish faith. This idea was original to Maimonides, and, indeed, many authorities disagreed with his formulation (although, by and large, they agreed with its content). Drazin, however, would have us believe that Maimonides himself did not believe many, possibly most, of these foundations.

Even when Drazin directly quotes Maimonides (and others), he does so dishonestly, carefully editing the quote (using ellipses to remove inconvenient material and inserting material in brackets) to support his point even when the full quote, in context, would not only fail to support Drazin's point, but actually contradict it. This betrayal of the reader's trust is exacerbated by the fact that many of Drazin's most radical assertions are supported by nothing more than anonymous "scholars" without any reference to who these scholars are, what they actually said, or where and when they said it. Given Drazin's repeated inability to comprehend the material he is writing about, and his dishonest citations of material that people can actually check for themselves, it is simply impossible to trust his assertion of the opinions of scholars whom he fails to even identify.

If Drazin's presentation of Maimonides is absurd, his presentation of other Jewish thinkers is grotesque. For example, Drazin apparently understands all anthropomorphic depictions of God, midrashic, kabalistic or liturgical, to have been intended in the full literal sense. Thus, his presentation of Lurianic kabbalah on page 241 is beyond laughable; it is a caricature of a caricature.

Even Drazin's discussion of non-Jewish philosophers is incompetent. For some reason, Drazin chose to include an entire chapter on Rene Descartes, apparently to argue that Descartes was not sufficiently "rational". In the course of this discussion, Drazin completely mangles Descartes, and demonstrates a complete failure to grasp even the most basic elements of his thought. Drazin's "refutation" of Descartes' "cogito" - again given in the name of anonymous scholars - is so shallow that it wouldn't past muster in a seventh grade classroom discussion.

If Drazin's work were of a better quality, it would be worthwhile to enter into a deeper discussion of some of the arguments he puts forth. For example, the relationship between the thought of Maimonides and the thought of his son, Abraham, is one that requires serious study. However, Drazin's presentation of the thought of both figures is so distorted that he contributes nothing to the discussion except confusion.

In short, Drazin's book is so... awful... that readers will not only learn nothing new, but, far worse, they will learn a large number of things that are not so. If a reader wishes to educate himself about the thought of Maimonides, there are many vastly superior works. My personal recommendation as a basic introduction would be A Maimonides Reader by Isadore Twersky.

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Book Review: "Truths Desired by God" by Meir Tamari

While the last few decades have seen a wonderful outpouring of excellent English works on the Torah itself, there is very little available on the weekly Haftarah reading. Dr. Meir Tamari's new book, Truths Desired by God, does an excellent job filling this gap. On each Haftara reading, Dr. Tamari has prepared a stimulating essay summarizing the major themes of the reading, how it relates to the Torah reading of the week, and presenting a wide range of commentaries taken from the full range of Jewish tradition. He cites major medieval authorities, such as Maimonides and Abarbanel, as well as more recent works, including chassidic commentaries, R' Samson Raphael Hirsch, and R' Kook. Dr. Tamari does not just compile sources for us; he also introduces us to the geographic, political, and economic realities of the periods in which the prophets functioned and helps us understand the broader implications of their words.

My only complaints on the book are the lack of an index (an index of verses and sources cited would be especially useful) and the fact that the table of contents does not inform us of the Scriptural source of each haftara. This means that if you are looking for his discussion of a particular Scriptural passage, you will need to consult another reference to find out which haftara it is in.

However, these are very minor complaints. Overall, Truths Desired by God is an excellent work that will be read with interest by any serious student or teacher of Scripture. Even experienced scholars will find these essays to be useful.

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