A SEASON'S TREASURES CULTURE BEYOND LATKES ALL EDITIONS

THE JEWS: A Treasury of Art and Literature, edited by Sharon R. Keller. Levin / Macmillan, 384 pp., $75. IN THE unofficial lexicon of contemporary American-Jewish life, an "observant" Jew is one who goes to shul, keeps a kosher home and knows that there are holidays besides Passover and Yo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNewsday
Main Author BY FRANCINE PROSE. Francine Prose reviews frequently
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 06.12.1992
EditionCombined editions
Online AccessGet full text

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Summary:THE JEWS: A Treasury of Art and Literature, edited by Sharon R. Keller. Levin / Macmillan, 384 pp., $75. IN THE unofficial lexicon of contemporary American-Jewish life, an "observant" Jew is one who goes to shul, keeps a kosher home and knows that there are holidays besides Passover and Yom Kippur. All that seems like a lot of work to the "cultural" Jew, who admits a regrettable falling-away from religion but professes a passionate and unbreakable connection to Jewish heritage and tradition. When pressed, however, the "cultural" Jew frequently turns out to be the "culinary" Jew, whose deepest connection, however heartfelt, is to the matzoh ball and the gelfite fish. As we turn the pages, the last five centuries of European-Jewish culture file past in a sort of procession marked by startling juxtapositions: Spinoza's elegant meditation on the nature of God is followed by a Gluckel of Hameln's lively report on a wedding; a Sholem Aleichem story precedes Alfred Dreyfus' harrowing account of his arrest for treason. Observers as diverse as Molly Picon and Bernard Malamud describe the Jewish encounter with America; Primo Levi, Andre Schwartz-Bart and Elie Wiesel write movingly of the Holocaust. A section on Israel includes essays by Amos Oz and David Grossman, and memoirs by Theodor Herzl, David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir.