In Search of Jerusalem: Religion and Ethics in the Writings of A.M. Klein by Gretl K. Fischer (review)

470 LETTERS IN CANADA 1976 H. Underhill, who coexisted so uneasily with the Toronto 'school.' Not surprisingly, Berger is unhappy that Underhill adopted a materialist interpretation of Canada's history and thus reduced the autonomy of ideas. Following from this, Berger dismisses Underhill as being an 'exhorter: not a 'trained scientific intellectual.' Underhill's greatest failure was that he used the university as a base from which to reform society, rather than as a place to write learned books. Some, of course, might consider that Underhill's saving grace. However, Berger's account of Underhill becomes so caught up with a critique of his life style and career choices that an analysis of his often confused ideology takes second place. Berger also has difficulty with the economic historian Harold Innis. The account of Innis here is often excellent, offering substantial new insights into his ideas. Nevertheless, Berger never quite makes contact with his subject. He seems unable to understand Innis's passions, the early passion for a scholarship pristine and unpolluted by the real world, or, after 1945, his passion for a Canada which he saw in mortal danger from American imperialism. Although the book ends on an optimistic note about the corning of the new history, this is not a historiography which will help that new history understand its roots. For example, J.M.S. Careless, who more than any historian before 1970 helped propel Canadian scholars towards social history, is treated only in passing. But, as his subtitle suggests, Carl Berger is writing about 'aspects' of the writing of Canadian history. Other aspects, and new passions, await their historiographer. (MICHAEL s. CROSS) Gretl K. Fischer. In Search of Jerusalem: Religion and Ethics in the Writings of A.M. Klein. McGill-Queen's University Press. viii, 256. $14.00 Gret! K. Fischer'S original and ambitious study of A.M. Klein can be read in two ways. First, it can be read as a handbook to the religious and intellectual background of Klein's writing. For the layman, Gentile or for that matterJew, Klein's allusiveness is often a barrier instead of being (as it was intended to be) a rich source of meaning. Fischer shows us how to respond more fully to appearances like that of the Baal Shem Tov, originator of the Chassidic movement, or Shabbathai Zwi, who 'for a time of life I Took to himself the Torah for a wife.' Perhaps the author is too hopeful in thinking she can invite readers 'to enter Klein's world and to feel at horne in it.' But her detailed explications of ancient and modern Jewish lore can certainly help us approach it more like guests than unwelcome intruders. However, the book is not so successful read in a second way. Fischer's HUMANITIES 47' commentary is intended to provide a kind of spiritual biography, charting Klein's 'quest for a modern faith' from its first departure out of the haven of parochial orthodoxy, through the confusing 'cross-currents of contemporary Jewish thought: to an openness to if not a settled acceptance of 'a belief in the immanence of God' and in a 'natural evolutionary process' which is 'divine.' There are two limitations to this story, interesting as the attempt to tell it is. First, it is primarily based on readings of the poems, which are necessarily open to question. Sometimes the readings are illuminating and persuasive. At other times they seem more tendentious. 'The writings here referred to indicate a repeated reversal of Klein's beliefs: the author laments at one point. But she fails to take this hint that perhaps she is expecting too much, or the wrong thing, from the poetry - building too detailed and exact an inner narrative on what may be a freer, more exploratory, more dramatic donning and doffing of costumes by the poetic imagination. Second, if Fischer's spiritual biography is to be coherent and complete it must bring within its scope, or at least point forward to, the last mysterious phase of Klein's life. If anything , In Search of Jerusalem, with its full depiction of the range and vitality of Klein's heritage, makes the poet's 'twenty years...