Book Notes

Book Notes BOOK NOTES Reference materials in all fields are listed under "Reference." 153 Annotations written by Walter Hirsch of Purdue University are identified by the initials W.H. American Jewish Life The Assembly: A Century in the Life 0/ the Adas Israel Hebrew Congregation o/Washington, D.C., by Stanley Rabinowitz. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 1993. 592 pp. $39.50. ISBN 0-88125-443-6. The schism within Washington's first congregation that produced the Adas Israel Hebrew congregation was the reflection of the social and religious stirrings in the American Jewish world in the mid-nineteenth century. While this study focuses on the history of one congregation, it mirrors a segment of the mosaic of the American Jewish experience. Ancient World and Archaeology TheAmarnaLetters, edited and translated by William L. Moran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. 393 pp. $68.00. ISBN 0-080184251 -4. An ancient inscription identified a ruin at el Amarna as "the place of the letters of Pharaoh." Discovered there, in about 1887, were nearly four hundred cuneiform tablets containing correspondence of the Eygptian court with rulers of neighboring states in the mid-fourteenth century B.C.E. This new translation provides a record of high-level diplomatic exchanges and insight into the politics and culture of the region in which the kingdom of Israel came to exist. 154 SHOFAR Winter 1994 Vol. 12, No.2 Archaic Bookkeeping: Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East, by Hans J. Nissen, Peter Damerow, and Robert K. Englund. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 169 pp. $34.95. ISBN 0-226-58659-6. Proto-cuneiform, the earliest true writing, invented by the Babylonians at the end of the fourth millennium, has survived in the form of clay tablets that have posed barriers to interpretation, partly because their purpose was not to record language but to monitor the administration of local economies by means of a numerical system. The authors of this book, by using computer analysis, have deciphered much of the numerical information of these tablets. In reconstructing both the social context and the function ofthe notation, they consider how the development of written records affected patterns of thought, the concept of number, and the administration of household economies. Herrschaft, Konigtum und Staat (Dominion, Kingdom and State), by Hermann Michael Niemann. Tiibingen: J. c. B. Mohr (paul Siebeck), 1993. 318 pp. DM 198. ISBN 3-16-146059-6. The major question of this study concerns the ways in which the monarchy in Israel and Judah received its power. The theological and the socio-cultural aspects do not necessarily coincide. (German) (W.H.) Judische Steingefiisse und pharisaeische Frommigkeit (Jewish Stone Vessels and Pharisaical Piety), by Ronald Deines. Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr (paul Siebeck), 1993. 312 pp. DM 99. ISBN 3-16-146022-7. On the basis of archaeological findings the author concludes that religious practices and rituals spread from temple priests to the general population during Hasmodean times. (German) (W.H.) Art and Music Dachau Song, by Paul F. Cummins. New York: Peter Lang, 1993. 308 pp. $29,95. ISBN 0-8204-1729-7. Paul F. Cummins gives us a life ofHerbert Zipper, who composed and directed music for the underground cabarets of Vienna and in the camps at Dachau and Buchenwald. He conducted the Manila Symphony Orchestra before being imprisoned by the Japanese, and after moving to the United States he founded many community arts Book Notes 155 schools. Now at the end of his life he has been teaching Chinese conductors, composers, and instrumentalists about Western music. The Devil's Music Master: The Controversial Life and Career of Wilhelm Furtwangler, by Sam H. Shirakawa. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 506 pp. $35.00. ISBN 0-19-506508-5. From 1922 until his death in 1954, Wilhelm Furtwangler was the foremost cultural music figure of the German-speaking world, conductor of both the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras. But a cloud still hangs over his reputation because of his decision to remain in Germany after the Nazis seized power in 1933. In this book Sam Shirakawa surveys Furtwangler's formative years, his rise to preeminence as Germany's leading conductor...