Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 29 January 2003 — Page 19

January 29. 2003 NA T11

Milk, Honey & Vinegar Book Reviews Funds are going to children Ancient texts newly viewed

By JUDY CARR I was feeling uneasy about the checks readers are sending in, made out to the Haifa Foundation. Not that the money was going into the hands of the wrong people. But whs it going to hungry children as readers intended? Haifa Foundation distributes to many funds which deal with so many different matters. Were these checks getting where they should go? So I phoned Tamat Yosef of the Haifa Foundation office and asked her straight for a proper accounting. She assured me that there was a special fund specifically for hungry children. Your checks have all been directed to feed these children. So if any reader had doubts, 1 have investigated, and there was no wrong doing or misplacement of money. Boaz Caspi has not the offi-

By SYBIL KAPLAN Strand of a Thousand Pearls. By Dorit Rabinyan. Random House. 288 pages. $23.95. When I read Persian Brides, the first novel of Israeli Dorit Rabinyan, written when she was 23 years old, my first impression was that the details were presented with an extraordinary air of authenticity. One had the feeling that she definitely had heard “grandmother's stories" and incorporated them into the novel. Although the story was earthy and there was an abundance of sexual references told matter of fact, to most readers who are unfamiliar with Jews of Middle Eastern backgrounds, the author appeared to be presenting something she had conjured up with a rich imagination. Once again, in this novel, we have a Jewish family of Persian origins, the Azizyan family. When the book opens, Iran,

cial position of a foundation. He is in charge of the Parents Association of Netanya schools, and he goes all out to get sandwiches for the school children. What they eat when they are at home Boaz does not remark on. Boaz Caspi is a little late in replying to letters and cashing checks, but he does not have staff and is probably working alone, with everything on his shoulders. He deserves support. Mercaz Aruhot is going on with its tough job of distributing meals in Haifa, meals that go to the old, the sick, and the unemployed, not only children. Yes, the situation is horrendous. I am proud that readers of The Jewish Post and Opinion are helping. Thanks to all. Judy Carr may be reached at POB 6431, Tel Avio 61 063 Israel.

the mother, is going through a serious period of depression combined with religious fanaticism. Her family had come from Persia, then they moved to Calcutta for her father's business. After his death, his widow brought Iran and the rest of the family to Israel. Her husband, Solly, is originally from Persia and a fisherman in Givat Olga, a small coastal town in Israel overlooking the Mediterranean. When they married, 27 years before, her wedding gown contained her dowry, 5,854 pearls “on a single white thread," which gleamed before her husband's eyes with an ivory sheen. She gave her husband 5,754 pearls to buy their apartment. By the time Iran was 17, their son Maurice was born. As the book opens, the 27-year-old bachelor lives at home, works in a spice shop, and dreams of finding a wife. There are also daughters. Sofia, the beauty, a hairdresser.

By ARNOLD AGES The Hebrew Bible: a Socio-lit-erary Introduction. By Norman Gottwald. Fortress Press. 702 pages. This is a new edition of a major survey of the Hebrew Bible first published in 1985 but which has been re-edited and updated for this new version, which also comes with a CD-ROM (this reviewer was unfortunately unable to open the latter (perhaps because of insufficient "system requirements"). The author, a distinguished Bible scholar, has produced a kind of summa for students and lay people wanting to know about the latest approaches to the history, development, and interpretation of the Hebrew' Bible. In 700 pages Norman Gottwald has managed to pack so much information, data, and documentation into his essay that no reviewer

is 25 years old, married to a wealthy man, 17 years older than she, who imported gold then sold tear gas; they have a perpetually sick baby. Marcelle is 23 years old and works in a bridal salon. She married then divorced her Yemenite husband immediately; she suffers from insomnia. Lizzie is 22 years old, a nurse on the night shift and obsessed with herself sexually. She marries a medical student but keeps her insatiable sexual appetite for others. The youngest, Matti, is 11 years old, is considered hyperactive and is on Ritalin and boarded at a school for children with mental problems. She mourns her dead twin, stillborn at birth. The book focuses on all kinds of love - love between Solly and Iran, love Maurice cannot find, loveless marriages of the daughters, and the insane, unreal love Matti has for a brother that never exCon tin ued on page 15

can really do justice to the scope of his research and writing talents. One must, nonetheless, offer praise for a volume that eschews traditional Christian appropriation of a work that has often been used as a proof text for tendentious purposes — in order to examine the Hebrew Bible in its own right, as the depository of the Jewish people's vision of its own history and that of heaven and earth. In executing this exercise, Gottwald ranges far and wide and includes in his analysis virtually every modern modality of interpretation to highlight the world of the Hebrew Bible. This includes searching explanations of the origins of the Hebrew' text and the relevant linguistic discoveries found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Equally attractive is the author's understanding of the way in which the different books in the Hebrew' Bible came slowly to become part of the Israelite canon — not all at once and not necessarily in the order in which Jewish and other traditions have placed them. Gottwald also suggests that socio-political factors dictated which books would form part of the canon. Among the most original insights found in this monumental treatise is a section on the literary genres found in the Torah. The author cites 59 separate categories in this context. A partial survey of these genres would include: formulas, legal maxims, oracles, oaths, judgments, cultic regulation, myths, sagas, novellas, annals, chronicles, and dirges. Most scholars would applaud this classification feat, but some would look suspiciously on the author's inclusion of fairy tales, drinking songs, and legends in his enumeration. Other critics might suggest that many of Gottwald's categories could be collapsed into a dozen or so. Although many Bible scholars today have called for a revamping of the classical JEP formula favored by the Wellhausen thesis enunciated more than a hundred years ago (the theory which states that the Torah was spliced together by editors representing three distinct theological viewpoints), Gottwald maintains a respectful stance and uses the framework of the theory.

However, unlike some of the proponents of the "Higher Criticism" who proceeded to brutally vivisect the Torah, Gottwald maneuvers skillfully to use only those aspects of the theory which support his views about the historical and sociological matrices from which the Bible text emerged. In his enthusiasm to survey what seems to be every new idea (his bibliography of books and articles covers 80 pages) about the Hebrew' Bible, Gottwald succumbs to a general fault line, that is to say, he accords equal status to suppositions that should be viewed with great reservations. This is seen particularly well in his excellent if disconcerting sections on Exodus. In his reading of the text, Gottwald inflates the importance of Kadesh, the geographical area where the Israelites planned their conquest of Canaan, to a degree unwarranted by the text. Similarly, the knowledgeable reader of the Hebrew Bible will be troubled by the author's suggestion of a "secret Exodus," which he bases on some pretty thin gruel. The same may be said of his "retrojection" assertion that the portable tabernacle in the desert was a one half-size replica of the great Temple in Jerusalem — a thesis that can be easily refuted by comparing carefully and thoroughly the dimensions and architecture of the two structures. Gottwald is also retailing once prominent but now discarded ideas about the accouterments of the portable sanctuary being modeled on those of the Temple. One also bridles at the author's section on human sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible (w'hich he bases on the famous Jephtah episode and two other texts) as if this constitutes some kind of formalized institution in ancient Israel. It is also difficult to understand, let alone appreciate, the comparison the author makes between Exodus and Euripides's The Bacchae. But the most outlandish of Gottwald's eisegesis comes in several sections in which he asks why so much energy has been expended on "only one of the many groups who became part of Israel." By this he means that the Exodus generation was only one part of the population that later colonized Canaan or Continued on page 15

Book Reviews Family saga gleams with intrigue and detail