cover image Makers of Jewish Modernity: Thinkers, Artists, Leaders, and The World They Made

Makers of Jewish Modernity: Thinkers, Artists, Leaders, and The World They Made

Edited by Jacques Picard, Jacques Revel, Michael P. Steinberg, and Idith Zertal. Princeton Univ., $39.50 (680p) ISBN 978-0-691-16423-6

The editors of this essay collection exceed their stated goal of showing how various Jewish public figures “transformed the 20th century,” through 43 profiles of subjects both expected (Freud, Einstein, Kafka, Ben-Gurion) and surprising (novelist Clarice Lispector, poet Dahlia Ravikovitch, filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen). The target audience is more academic than lay, as section headings such as “Pragmatism and Boasian Anthropology” suggest. However, those nonacademics willing to struggle through sometimes dense prose (“The codes of any transformation can generally be read in shifting episteme (or epistemes)”) will find thought-provoking explorations of the varying ways Jewish identity has influenced, and been influenced by, changes in every imaginable field, including science, art, and politics. The mix of subjects is truly diverse, embracing Jews who were deeply religious (such as Rabbi Avraham Kook) and those who were fiercely secular (such as Rosa Luxembourg), and the diversity extends to geography as well. The entries, which assume no prior knowledge, convey a great deal of information and cogent analysis in a short space. (Sept.)