from this week's FORWARD.
I don't particularly care for the opinions of journalists, especially from a Socialist paper like the Forward, but sometimes you take what you can, and these guys CAN be objective.
The reviewer is reviewing Steinsaltz's new books and and in between tries to analyze the success of Chabad today amongst non-religious Jews. He does get a little testy when speaking of the uniqueness of the Yid, with the nefesh elokis being exclusive to Jews and such, something that doesn't work well with today's "we're all G-d's children" philosophy. He claims that Steinzaltz beats around the bush when it comes to these and similar issues in his new books, and attributes the AR's opinions to "persecution".
Read the article in its entirety if you can, then we'll talk about it, iy"h.
HT
ReplyDeletedo you mean this:
"In both "Learning From the Tanya" and "We Jews," Steinsaltz maintains this acute ethnocentrism but tries to explain it by saying that religiosity, faithfulness and an impulse to monotheism are "almost biological" traits of the Jewish people. In the Tanya, this supposed trait is expressed as a distinct soul that is turned always toward the Divine. In "We Jews," Steinsaltz says that a Jew is just "geared to think this way."
Is that what he's really saying there?
Pretty interesting.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what kind of a thesis (which could turn into a book) this author might write someday.