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  • Book Notes

American Jewish Life

Judaism in America, by Marc Lee Raphael. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 236 pp. $35.00. ISBN 0-231-12060-5.

Beginning with a chapter on traditional and non-traditional beliefs, festivals, and life-cycle events, Marc Raphael explores Jewish history in America, from the arrival of the first Jews to the present. He highlights the emergence and development of the four branches—Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform—and addresses the ocntroversies between them. He then discusses eight important American Jewish thinkers and closes with an examination of prospects for each branch of Judaism for the future.

The Jews in Early America: A Chronicle of Good Taste and Good Deeds, by Sandra Cumings Malamed. McKinleyville, CA: Fithian Press, 2003. 196 pp. $25.95 (c); $15.95 (p). ISBN 1-56474-408-6 (c); 1-56474-407-8 (p).

This volume tells the story of how Jews lived between 1654 and the Civil War, how they made their livings, how they formed a community based on shared faith and common values, and how those people interacted with and contributed to the rest of early American society.

Looking Backward: True Stories from Chicago’s Jewish Past, by Walter Roth. Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers in association with the Chicago Jewish Historical Society, 2002. 273 pp. $27.95. ISBN 0-89733-513-9.

This book illuminates the largely unknown characters and events that defined Jewish life in Chicago from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War II and explores Jewish participation in art and industry, culture, and progress.

Key Texts in American Jewish Culture, edited by Jack Kugelmass. New Brunswick:: Rutgers University Press, 2003. 308 pp. $60.00 (c); $24.00 (p). ISBN 0-8135-3220-5 (c); 0-8135-3221-3 (p).

This collection of texts that embody the distinct experience of the American Jew covers a broad range of topics that extrapolate Jewish identity from every aspect. The six categories are literature, film and theater, television, the arts, nonfiction, and religion. [End Page 182]

Ancient World and Archaeology

The Dead Sea Scrolls Rediscovered: An Updated Look at One of Archaeology’s Greatest Mysteries, by Stephen Hodge. Berkeley: Seastone, 2003. 253 pp. $13.95. ISBN 1-56975-333-4.

While providing a comprehensive introduction to the Dead Sea Scrolls, with examples from the 840 different kinds of texts, this book also takes a fresh look at questions such as: Why were the scrolls written? Are they prophetic? How are they related to Christianity and Judaism?

King, Priest, Prophet: Positive Eschatological Protagonists of the Qumran Library, by Géza G. Xeravits. Leiden: Brill, 2003. 262 pp. $89.00. ISBN 90-04-12892-1.

Among the newly published texts of the Qumran Library there are a good number with eschatological content. Some of these texts relate the eschatological activity of certain figures who seem to play an important role in the events of the eschaton. This study explores these figures.

Sacrificing Truth: Archaeology and the Myth of Masada, by Nachman Ben-Yehuda. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2002. 300 pp. $35.00. ISBN 1-57392-953-0.

According to a patriotic legend still current in Israel, in 73 C.E. 960 Jewish rebels committed mass suicide at the desert fortress of Masada rather than surrender to the force of their Roman oppressors. This version of what happened is based on the 1963–1965 excavation of Masada led by Yigael Yadin. Nachman Ben-Yehuda in this book argues that in this case the search for scientific truth was influenced by the pressures of a cultural agenda. Ben-Yehuda examines the day-by-day transcripts of the archaeologists’ conversations at Masada to determine how they evaluated the findings and argues that they ignored scientific evidence in favor of what now appears to be a myth. Ben-Yehuda considers the larger question of how society creates the symbolic moral boundaries between truth and deception.

Art, Music, and Film

Fixing the World: Jewish American Painters in the Twentieth Century, by Ori Z. Soltes. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England for Brandeis University Press, 2003. 163 pp.; 90 illus. $50.00. ISBN 1-58465-049-4.

Ori Soltes focuses on the...