MAKING THE BIBLE MODERN: Children's Bibles and Jewish Education in Twentieth-Century America

"Why was the Bible elevated over the Talmud as the central text of Jewish education?" Gold asks. She writes that while the Bible "was seen as consonant with modern sensibilities" in the interwar period, the Jewish-specific Talmud was jettisoned to make room for a new cultural setting. Moreover, she argues that the advent of "Bible stories" for Jewish children in the 1920s and 1930s—stories that often only superficially resembled the original biblical tales—tells us a great deal about the changes that second-generation Jews were facing. Gold focuses on the Reform movement's broad attempts to fashion Bible stories that would teach children to be both Jewish and American, and her exegesis of the cultural messages of some of the retooled Bible stories is the most compelling part of this absorbing book. (Dec.)