H-JUDAIC book reviews

BOOK REVIEWS (the H-JUDAIC links are here and here):

Robert Eisen. The Peace and Violence of Judaism: From the Bible to Modern Zionism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 280 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-975147-1.

Reviewed by Robert Tabak (St. Joseph’s University and Cabrini College )
Published on H-Judaic (August, 2012)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

Swords and Plowshares: Confronting Peace and Violence in Judaism

Robert Eisen’s study The Peace and Violence of Judaism is a major contribution, bringing carefully selected texts and analysis to two key questions that confront scholars of Judaism as well as those seeking ethical and religious guidance today: What does Judaism say about peace and violence? And how have “Jews as a people envisioned their relationship with other peoples”? (p.11). Eisen, a professor of religion and Judaic studies at George Washington University, steps beyond his specialty as a medievalist to cover critical and controversial Jewish texts, ethical questions, and historical events from many centuries, including a wide range of recent secondary sources. This is a daring move, one which generally succeeds admirably.

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Aryeh Cohen. Justice in the City: An Argument from the Sources of Rabbinic Judaism. Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2011. 160 pp. $59.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-936235-64-3.

Reviewed by Jonathan K. Crane (Emory University)
Published on H-Judaic (August, 2012)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

Humane Urbanism Rabbinically Conceived

It is always refreshing to read a book that renders the ancient Judaic textual tradition relevant to the complexities of modern living. Aryeh Cohen’s Justice in the City delves into the Babylonian Talmud and finds there ample ethical, philosophical, and legal sources that paint “a compelling picture of what a just city should be” (p. 9). A just city is not just any city in which residents go about their daily routines with mind-numbing hedonism. Rather, it is to be a “community of obligation” in which those “who are not always in view”--such as the homeless, poor, and working class--are nonetheless attended to and cared for (p. 9). Lest one worry that Cohen’s is an argument for each individual citizen to take on the burdens of caring for all the marginalized in a city and do nothing else, he stresses that it is the city’s responsibility as well to notice and attend to them. In this way a just city is precisely that: a city as a whole that is just (not just the individuals therein).

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