Judaism, and: Understanding Judaism (review)

No book, and certainly not a short one, can encompass the whole of Judaism. A short volume can, however, introduce several basic concepts in Judaism while offering a rough outline of Jewish history. The author of such a work faces at least two daunting challenges. In tackling such an immense subject, one must first decide what to include and what to exclude. One must then make the equally important decision of how to organize the contents of the work. In his one-volume Judaismpublished by Penguin in 1959, Isidore Epstein opted for a decidedly chronological approach. Although the first sentence of the preface cautions "this book is by no means a history of the Jews," Epstein presents a fairly linear account of Judaism from biblical times to the present. Arthur Hertzberg opted for a thematic approach in his Judaism, first published in 1961 and revised thirty years later. After identifying several themes such as prayer, land, doctrine, and God, Hertzberg included copious citations from "key spiritual writings" in his narrative. Both Epstein and Hertzberg wrote books just over three hundred pages; Nicholas de Lange and Jeremy Rosen have recently written books half that length.

De Lange's Judaismoriginally appeared in 1986, and the book under review presents a considerably revised second edition. In his introduction, he defines his subject "as Judaism as it exists today" (p. 7) and considers the difficulties of defining "Judaism" in exclusively theological or sociological terms. Accounts of Judaism as either a system of beliefs or a description of observable phenomena would eschew its historical dimensions. Instead of presenting a history of Judaism, de Lange adopts a historical approach to central themes in Judaism. The historical sketch that immediately follows the introduction presents a clear periodization of Jewish history into three distinct stages: ancient, medieval, and modern.

In "Torah and Tradition," the second chapter, de Lange emphasizes the historical importance of tradition within Judaism and outlines the different approaches to tradition adopted by several of the major trends within contemporary Judaism. Through this discussion of attitudes toward tradition, de Lange divides contemporary Judaism into three main streams: traditional, modernist, and secular. Traditionalism, often called ultra-Orthodoxy, describes Jews who seek "to exclude new external influences on Judaism and to preserve the values and practices which prevailed in the late medieval period" (p. 30). Within the modernist movements, de Lange includes Orthodoxy at one end and Reform at the other, and Conservative Judaism in the middle. Secular Judaism refers to "Jews who identify with Judaism but reject its religious dimension" (p. 33). Although his terminology can lead to confusion, this framework avoids using one particular movement and its institutions as representative of a whole trend of contemporary Judaism.

De Lange returns to the notion of tradition and uses it to frame the succeeding seven chapters of the book. In each of these chapters, he presents a particular dimension of Judaism, such as liturgy, law, theology, or ethics, as both an element of the Jewish tradition as well as having its own tradition itself. Chapter 4, "The Biblical Tradition," describes the importance of the Bible in both ancient and medieval Judaism before describing the different attitudes toward the Bible in some of the major trends within contemporary Judaism. This approach allows de Lange to isolate a particular element of Judaism, such as prayer, and treat it with greater specificity. Such an approach involves an obvious danger: the reader would finish the book with the impression of Judaism as a heterogeneous collection of different elements, each with its own tradition, each independent of the other. De Lange deftly avoids this through the use of historical examples and anecdotes that complement each other across the various chapters. Moses Mendelssohn appears not only as a revolutionary thinker in the chapter "The Theological Tradition" but also as the editor of a popular commentary on the Bible in the chapter "The Biblical Tradition." Through discussion of several of the same figures and...