cover image GOD'S SACRED TONGUE: Hebrew and the American Imagination

GOD'S SACRED TONGUE: Hebrew and the American Imagination

Shalom Goldman, . . Univ. of North Carolina, $34.95 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-8078-2835-9

Fascination with the Hebrew language has been a recurring motif in Christian America, and Emory University's Goldman surveys four centuries of American "Hebraists"—Protestant clergy and scholars who specialized in the Hebrew language and scriptures. He also provides nuanced portraits of a few Jewish scholars whose conversion to Christianity gained them access to, but never full acceptance among, university faculties in the 18th and 19th centuries. Among Goldman's recurring and disconcerting themes is how little the study of Hebrew did to prevent anti-Semitism from flourishing. Yet Goldman suggests that Hebraists also laid the groundwork for America's support of Zionism in the modern period—he devotes an intriguing chapter to the late-19th-century Hebraist George Bush, an ancestor of the American presidents of the same name. Unfortunately, this book hardly settles the question of how much difference the study of Hebrew has made in "the American imagination" at large. By focusing so narrowly on scholarly biographies, Goldman cannot avoid giving the impression that Hebraism was a distinctly rarefied field. In the hands of a more skilled storyteller, perhaps a clearer pattern would emerge, but Goldman's writing is prosaic and his narrative is somewhat stilted and sloppily edited—one quotation from John Adams appears, without elaboration, in three different places. Specialists will appreciate Goldman's historical spadework, but outside of the guild this book is likely to have a limited audience. (Mar. 29)