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brassmonkey's review
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.25
PROS:
-Talmudic level analysis of the Biblical lexicon
-Revolutionary ideas about identity and liberation
-Uses the oven of Akhnai story which is always fun
CONS:
-Tries to universalize Jewish concepts without putting in the effort to contextualize them to a wider audience, often substituting Christian terms that fall short of his point
-Talks about dated neo-Freudian pseudo-psychoanalytical concepts like "necrophilous" and "incestuous" desires
-Says that Jews are clannish and xenophobic
CONCLUSION:
-???
The whole thing felt like getting trapped by an overenthusiastic Zayde at an oneg and sipping politely on your kiddush cup while you wait for him to finish telling you about how Moses was a bundist, only for him to immediately continue by explaining the rationale behind every category he sorts Psalms into. He makes some genuinely fascinating points, but part of my attention is always slightly annoyed with a desire to interrupt and challenge his ideas. I guess this is just a long winded way of saying you can get a better experience from a Parshat Ha'Shavuah.
-Talmudic level analysis of the Biblical lexicon
-Revolutionary ideas about identity and liberation
-Uses the oven of Akhnai story which is always fun
CONS:
-Tries to universalize Jewish concepts without putting in the effort to contextualize them to a wider audience, often substituting Christian terms that fall short of his point
-Talks about dated neo-Freudian pseudo-psychoanalytical concepts like "necrophilous" and "incestuous" desires
-Says that Jews are clannish and xenophobic
CONCLUSION:
-???
The whole thing felt like getting trapped by an overenthusiastic Zayde at an oneg and sipping politely on your kiddush cup while you wait for him to finish telling you about how Moses was a bundist, only for him to immediately continue by explaining the rationale behind every category he sorts Psalms into. He makes some genuinely fascinating points, but part of my attention is always slightly annoyed with a desire to interrupt and challenge his ideas. I guess this is just a long winded way of saying you can get a better experience from a Parshat Ha'Shavuah.
Content Warnings
Minor: Antisemitism
zosiablue's review
4.0
I still don’t believe in God but I really liked this book. And I’m always here for the Old Testament, that grumpy chestnut. Fromm interprets scripture in a way that really appeals to me - like, humans are meant to turn into God, not just be made in his image. God is jealous at first because humans are his competition! (This is just one concept that spoke to me.) I loved the bits on the true purpose of the Sabbath - to have one day where time isn’t your master, where you keep nature undisturbed and live out of phase. How cool and lovely. This makes me want to keep digging, for whatever I’m looking for in these things.
piccoline's review
5.0
One of those "where have you been all my life?" books. Deep but readable, perceptive, challenging. Fromm wrote on a wide variety of topics, and somehow I hadn't heard much about this book until I saw it in a used bookstore for cheap.
It's marvelous. He uses a careful reading of large chunks of the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) to propose less alienated and more fruitful ways for us to orient our lives. All of this is supported by wonderful commentary and anecdotes primarily from Talmudic scholarship, along with some key references to Christian theology. For me, reading it as a Christian, it made new and fresh many aspects of the Hebrew Bible that had become inert from repetition. He provides helpful fresh interpretations of the Hebrew at times that throw wide the curtains on rooms that had been dark.
Fromm finishes the book with a fascinating taxonomy of the psalms and a powerful new angle on Jesus' last words (from Mark) on the cross: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" The despair in those words has presented a tough theological puzzle down through the centuries. (If he is God, how can he feel such despair? If he is man, then what is his uniqueness? Etc.) Fromm does not insist on his interpretation, but he notes an important fact about how the rabbinical literature of the time functioned: when one wished to quote a text as a rabbi, one did so by stating the first line of the scripture in question. (Obviously there weren't chapter/verse numbers written in back then.) So, in his reading, Jesus was not succumbing to despair but was rather quoting, in full, a psalm which begins with those despairing words and works through to faith and hope for the future by the end. (Fromm classifies this sort of psalm as "dynamic", for moving from one stance/mood to another.)
The book is filled with powerful, thought-provoking, fresh views like this one. It also powerfully expresses the dangers of what Fromm calls "idolatry" in all its forms, whether it be idolatry of a certain alienated idea of God, or of money, or technology, or economic system, or utopian visions. (If you're into the Frankfurt School, you'll see here some resonance/influence with Adorno's emphasis on the proscription on idolatry.) Powerful challenging stuff, even all these years later.
Highly recommended.
It's marvelous. He uses a careful reading of large chunks of the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) to propose less alienated and more fruitful ways for us to orient our lives. All of this is supported by wonderful commentary and anecdotes primarily from Talmudic scholarship, along with some key references to Christian theology. For me, reading it as a Christian, it made new and fresh many aspects of the Hebrew Bible that had become inert from repetition. He provides helpful fresh interpretations of the Hebrew at times that throw wide the curtains on rooms that had been dark.
Fromm finishes the book with a fascinating taxonomy of the psalms and a powerful new angle on Jesus' last words (from Mark) on the cross: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" The despair in those words has presented a tough theological puzzle down through the centuries. (If he is God, how can he feel such despair? If he is man, then what is his uniqueness? Etc.) Fromm does not insist on his interpretation, but he notes an important fact about how the rabbinical literature of the time functioned: when one wished to quote a text as a rabbi, one did so by stating the first line of the scripture in question. (Obviously there weren't chapter/verse numbers written in back then.) So, in his reading, Jesus was not succumbing to despair but was rather quoting, in full, a psalm which begins with those despairing words and works through to faith and hope for the future by the end. (Fromm classifies this sort of psalm as "dynamic", for moving from one stance/mood to another.)
The book is filled with powerful, thought-provoking, fresh views like this one. It also powerfully expresses the dangers of what Fromm calls "idolatry" in all its forms, whether it be idolatry of a certain alienated idea of God, or of money, or technology, or economic system, or utopian visions. (If you're into the Frankfurt School, you'll see here some resonance/influence with Adorno's emphasis on the proscription on idolatry.) Powerful challenging stuff, even all these years later.
Highly recommended.
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