The Jewish Renaissance and Some of Its Discontents (review)

Book Reviews 107 TheJewish Renaissance and Some onts Discontents, by Lionel Kochan. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1992. 125 pp.£35.00. Lionel Kochan's contemplation of the current and recent predicaments of Judaism is structured in bipolar ethics: the false diasporic emancipation that ends in assimilation vs. authentic emancipation that results in renewed Jewish identity. Orthodox exclusiveness vs. the reintegration into the Jewish community of alienated secular Jewish intellectuals. Territorial vs. spiritual]udaism. Obsession with the Holocaust as the defining principle of a Judaism that sees itself as a historical and helpless victim of gentile civilization vs. incorporation of the massacre of European Jewry into a view of the Jewish community as historically vibrant, resistant, and enduring. The discussion of these issues is consistently valuable, but the first and last antitheses are better founded than the others. A Judaic identity derived from a spiritual, inclusive, and selfconfident commitment to Jewish history and belief and their persistent relevance to present and future times is the unexceptionable, if somewhat obvious, solution to the problems and discontents of the Jewish renaissance in and outside of Israel. Kochan is much more plausible in analyzing issues and developments within the Jewish community than he is in relating these matters to broader historical changes. Jnan otherwise perceptive exploration of the problems and potential of the post-World War II unprecedented tolerance of Jews, he alleges that the concomitant emergence of a "pluralist, multicultural society" encouraged acceptance of "the self-expression of minorities" (p. 4). This pollyannaish evaluation of ethnic interactions ignores the rise of bitter ethnic conflicts in the wake of the break-up of Yugoslavia, the recent rise of antisemitism in eastern Europe and of xenophobia throughout that continent, and the signs of increased hostility toward Jews in America. Two more fundamental misinterpretations of Jewish consciousness detract from Kochan's intelligent investigation of the opportunities and pitfalls, and attendant strains, that confront contemporaryJewry. Although he allows for many exceptions, Kochan generally affirms the claim that observant Jews are not intellectual and vice versa. But the alleged battle between the intelligentsia and orthodoxy is not that clear-cut. Most Jews are neither orthodox nor intellectual. Moreover, while many secular intellectuals are non-observant, Talmudic studies in Yeshivas can be highly 108 SHOFAR Summer 1994 Vol. 12, No.4 analytic and intellectually creative. In fact, modern Jewish intellectuals are basically Yeshiva buchers transposing the scholarly traditions of their orthodox ancestors to a worldly context. To deny this source of modern Jewish intellectuality is to cut off contemporary Jews from their roots. Equally misdirected is Kochan's disjunction of landed and spiritual Jewry. He perceives an opposition between commitment to the land of Israel and to the spirit ofJudaism-to the detriment of the former. In fact, the history of the Jews emphasizes the importance of the land of Israel. The postwar reestablishment of Israel marks the third return of the Jews to their Holy Land. If not in Kochan's mind, certainly in the convictions of most Jews, allegiance' to their faith and to earthly Israel are inseparably integrated. The recreation of Jewish Israel after the Holocaust-Judaism again triumphing over its setbacks and enemies-and the existence of Israel as a guarantor of the survival of the Jews if the diaspora demographic decline and trends toward assimilation end in the disappearance of nonIsraeli Jews, make eretz Yisrael even more inextricably connected than in the past with the Jewish faith. IfJehovah has a divine plan for the survival of His people, it could be argued that the modern Hebrew nation was made possible by the sacrifice of European Jewry and that if diaspora Jews disappear, Jewish existence depends on that country alone. Frederic Cople Jaher Department of History University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana Religion and the Individual: A Jewish Perspective, by Louis Jacobs. Cambridge: Cambridge University l'ress, 1992. 163 pp. £30.00. To focus on the individual as a basic subject of religious and moral predicates, as this book does, goes against two substantial bodies of opinion. One is contemporary. "Individualism" is denounced as parasitic on "thick" communities it proceeds to undermine. Its "atomistic" assumptions promote ways of life where too many...