In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

214 SHOFAR Spring 1996 Vol. 14, No.3 Greenberg; Carole Kessner on Marie Syrkin; Arthur Goren on Ben Halpern; Deborah Dash Moore on Trude Weiss-Rosemarin; Milton Konvitz on Morris Raphael Cohen and Horace Kallen; Stanley Chyet on Ludwig Lewisohn; Ira Eisenstein on Henry Hurwitz; Susanne Klingenstein on Marvin Lowenthal; Emanuel Goldsmith on Maurice Samuel; Milton Hindus on Charles Reznikoff; Rachel Feldhay Brenner on A. M. Klein; Jack J. Cohen on Mordecai Kaplan; Simon Noveck on Milton Steinberg; and David Datin on Will Herberg. The essays on the whole are elegantly written and informative biographically, and reflect really ripened thinking by the authors about their respective subjects. Some of the contributors have written prior books on their subjects and/or knew their subjects personally and intimately. Although most of the essays celebrate rather than criticize, their thoughtfulness, engaging style, and evocative admiration for the Jewish thinkers discussed make the book a pleasurable and, in many respects, insightful volume for anyone interested in Jewish culture in America between the '30s and '50s. While one can quibble with the categorization of certain individualsit is not clear, for example, why Cohen and Kallen were placed within the "Men of Letters" unit and not that of "Opinion Makers," while one can more seriously question the representative selection here-most of the subjects are secular cultural Zionists or come out of Conservative Jewish orientations: were there no Reform or Orthodox Jewish intellectuals of note in this period?-nevertheless, one can still admire the end product. Among those essays that particularly stood out for their freshness, subtlety of interpretation, and penetrating critical perspectives, I especially commend those by Seltzer on Greenberg, Goren on Halpern, and Chyet on Lewisohn. Benny Kraut Judaic Studies University of Cincinnati Agnon's Art of Indirection: Uncovering Latent Content in the Fiction of S. Y. Agnon, by Nitza Ben-Dov. Brill's Series in Jewish Studies, Volume VII. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993. 167 pp. $57.25. Agnon's fascination with dreams and dream-like accounts has been known since his early years when, as a young boy, he began composing stories inspired by hasidic themes, among them that of the dance of death. Book Reviews 215 Undoubtedly, his development was also affected by the legacy of the likes ofthe master ofHebrew (and Yiddish) literature, Mendele Mocher Seforim, against whom he continued to write his fiction for years. It is out of these wells that Agnon drew inspiration in launching his tales which, while emerging from the roots cultivated by his predecessors, took Hebrew literature to new heights. Nitza Ben-Dov's reading of a selection of Agnon's fiction focuses topically on the protagonists' dilemmas and repressed psychic world. In so doing, she indirectly demonstrates Agnon's leading role in pointing the way for today's Hebrew writers' preoccupation with the deeper layers of the psyche driving the modern hero. In more than one instance, Agnon's hero is shown struggling with a series of repressed sexual urges or personal fantasies which, when confronted by reality, come up short in realizing for him the Edenic life slhe has constructed in herlhis imagination . So whether it be the protagonist of Thus Far, whose "cherchez la femme" is thwarted by his ambivalence, or Hirshl ofA Simple Story, whose longing for Blume is forever blocked, the message Agnon shares with his reader is that in order to realize the ideal in this world, one must learn to accept the sobering message that half a loaf is all one can have, at best. The book's seven chapters are devoted to a close examination, in reverse chronology, of four of Agnon's works-the yet-untranslated "CAd bena," (Thus Far, 1952), A Simple Story (1935), "In the Prime of Her Life" (1923), and the also untranslated "The Dance of Death" (1907, 1920) accompanied by a lesser emphasis on other stories to which these tales are compared. In her central thesis, the author asserts that the latent meaning in Agnon's narratives is concealed in accounts of dreams, dream-like situations, seemingly innocuous remarks, and, of course, his rich allusive style. Through a close reading, these accounts may be elucidated to reveal the complexities of an...

pdf