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Title: As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg, Chaim Potok ISBN: 0-87441-103-3 Publisher: Behrman House Pub. Date: October, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.64 (28 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: As A DRiven Leaf
Comment: As A Driven Leaf is a novel about Elisha Ben Abuya, a character in the Talmud who became a heretic, a non-believer, an apikoras to Judaism. He was one of the most learned rabbis of his generation who nevertheless lost faith, who abandoned the Jewish community, who denounced the Jewish religion and way of life as false, and who sought to find the absolute truth of the universe in the Graeco-Roman world around him.
Elisha dies a lonely, isolated, and tragic man, not at ease in either the Jewish or Graeco-Roman world. As I read this beautifully written novel, I felt empathy for Elisha Ben Abuya, for as a committed Jew, I too am on a personal quest. Abraham Joshua Heschel once defined the purpose of Judaism as "seeking answers to ultimate questions of existence." When I engage in Jewish life, I often feel compelled to look inside myself and to search for answers to life's ultimate questions.
On the other hand, I feel alienated from Elisha Ben Abuya in that I have a different starting point in my search and a different area where I am searching.
Elisha Ben Abuya was born and educated in an isolated Jewish community. He chose to abandon that community and to search for answers to life's ultimate questions in another world. I, conversely, have been born and have been educated in an open, secular world. I have not necessarily chosen to abandon that world. I have chosen to explore Judaism, however, and to seek answers to life's ultimate questions through that exploration.
Milton Steinberg's As A Driven Leaf is a book which has helped me in that intellectual and spiritual search. I am sure it has helped others who feel they are living in two worlds simultaneously to search on that path as well.
Elliot Fein teaches Jewish religious studies at the Tarbut V'Torah School in Irvine, California.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Ancient Look Back at a Current Problem Facing Modern Jews
Comment: "As a Driven Leaf" is a magnificent work of historical fiction. Brings to life a little know time of ancient Israel. Steinberg paints a picture of life in ancient Israel during the time of the Roman occupation just prior to the final days of the Judean War that answers so many questions of those of us who only knew the period through religious readings. The dilemma that faces the novel's protagonist is a problem that is as current in today's assimilated society as it was in the days when Jews were facing the pull toward Hellenism. Unwilling to accept Judaism's blind faith in God, the protagonist returns to the Hellenistic roots of his childhood, only to find that he loses his place in either world. Great book that should be the subject of discussion groups in synagogues across the country. Highly recommended.
Rating: 4
Summary: readable but not 100% satisfying
Comment: This book was very readable, and in many ways it brought the great sages and their era to life. (And I did not think that it was anti-traditional Judaism; in a way it supports traditionalism by showing the vapidity of secularism). I mildly recommend it.
Why only mildly? Because I think that had Steinberg been willing to write on a higher intellectual plane, this book could have been a great book instead of an OK one. Steinberg keeps asserting that Elisha ben Abuyah (the main character) finds traditional Judaism, and later secularism, intellectually unsatisfying. But he doesn't really explain WHY Elisha found the alternatives so unsatisfying; to do so probably would have required spending dozens (if not hundreds) of pages on theological arguments, and perhaps Steinberg couldn't find a way to make this kind of discussion boht readable and intellectually worthwhile.
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Title: Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard E. Friedman ISBN: 0060630353 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 07 May, 1997 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel, Ilya Schor ISBN: 0374512671 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1975 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Back To The Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts by Barry W. Holtz ISBN: 0671605968 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 02 January, 1986 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Jewish Way : Living the Holidays by Irving Greenberg ISBN: 0671873032 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1993 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: From Text to Tradition, a History of Judaism in Second Temple and Rabbinic Times: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism by Lawrence H Schiffman ISBN: 0881253723 Publisher: KTAV Publishing House Pub. Date: March, 1991 List Price(USD): $28.69 |
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