The Book and the Sword: A Life of Learning in the Throes of the Holocaust

by David Weiss Halvini and David Weiss Halivni

Book Overview

"A slim, largely cerebral, yet sometimes deeply engaging autobiography by a Holocaust survivor who has become one of the greatest talmudic scholars of the postwar era ... succinct, intellectually... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374115451
• ISBN13: 9780374115456
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 197 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating autobiography

Prior to reading this book, I was curious about Rabbi Weiss Halivni. What kind of man, I wondered, would stand up against the left wing of the Conservative movement, at the potential cost of his own career? In reading this book, I have been richly rewarded with an understanding of him. Rabbi Weiss Halivni is searchingly honest, even brave in his degree of self-revelation, as he describes his life in a backward village in Hungary in the lead-up to the Second World War, the troubled psychological dynamics of his family, most of whom were subsequently murdered by the Nazis, his experiences in the death camps, and the course of his career in the United States as a scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary and then Columbia. He explains the origins and process of his style of Talmudic analysis; an unusual blend of the traditional and the critical analytic methods, coming in part from his grandfather, but also a product of modern scholarship. He laments that he's been unsuccessful in fostering it in his students (they find it too difficult I think). But it is his self-analysis if his own character, his simultanously anxiety-ridden and courageous life, that makes this such worthwhile reading. I think that he is just not afraid to be different, and he values honesty more than most; his stance on preserving halachah in the face of tremendous pressure from liberal "progressives" at the JTS is one outcome of these traits. [...]

a book you'll learn from

As another reviewer wrote, this is not just a Holocaust memoir. Halivni writes about his Holocuast experiences, but many others have done the same at greater length. What I got out of this book was:1. His discussion of pre-Holocuast shtetl life: its scholarship, its isolation, its sheer backwardness in many areas (for example, when one relative told the author's grandfather that the boy was "turning modern" because he ate with a fork instead of with his hands, and read secular newspapers). Unless you eat with your hands and avoid newspapers, you will find it much harder after reading this book to believe that Jews should be bound by every custom of their ancestors.2. His attempt to describe his own ideological position: more respectful of traditional halakhah than modern Conservatives, more critical of traditional interpretations than some Orthodox commentators. You can find plenty of books by commentators to Halivni's right, and plenty by commentators to his left, but I would be surprised if you could find any by people who think exactly what he thinks (assuming there are any). As a result, his book is unique or nearly so - and for this reason alone, his book is worth reading and will probably challenge you whatever your views. Another reviewer said that Halivni is not among the "first rank" of scholars. (I am not enough of a scholar to intelligently agree or disagree). But even if this were the case, I would recommend this book. I've learned quite a bit from people who weren't in the "first rank" of scholars - many of whom, I suspect, are not of Halivni's rank.

An unusual memoir by a remarkable Jewish scholar

This small book covers an enormous range of subjects. Chasidic life in a shtetyl, the Holocaust, conflict within the Jewish institutions of higher learning in post war America, the personal psychological impact of being a Holocaust survivor, and the various modes of Talmudic scholarship - Halivin's great accomplishment is to bring meaning to this wide spectrum of topics in few words. This is a book by a serious thinker who is not afraid to risk revealing his innermost feelings and conflicts. A courageous work