The Jewish Idea and Its Enemies: Personalities, Issues, Events - Hardcover

Alexander, Edward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0887381758 ISBN 13: 9780887381751

Publisher: Transaction Pub, 1988

Synopsis

This volume deals with the modern fate of the traditional conception of Jews as a covenanted people chosen to receive the Law, whose ultimate purpose is contributing to the universal salvation of mankind. The author shows how, under the influence of liberalism, rationalism, relativism, and other Enlightenment ideologies, this idea was distorted, denied, inverted, yet never entirely obliterated. In his discussions of modern Jewish thinkers and writers and the ideological and political struggles of Zionism and the state of Israel against enemies from without and from within, Alexander shows that the ancient idea of covenant is still alive today, if only in the assumption that Jewish life can lead somewhere so long as Jews remember that it began somewhere. Ranging from literary criticism and the history of ideas to journalism and politics, the book is unified by a point of view unabashedly espousing the Jewish idea and challenging its enemies.

About this title

About the Author

Edward Alexander is professor emeritus of English at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of The Jewish Idea and Its Enemies, The Holocaust and the War of Ideas, Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew, and Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe.

 

Review

"Edward Alexander is a master of the essayist's art. His writings on literature, politics, and Jewish history enrich us with the knowledge and understanding he brings to each subject. With razor-sharpness his essays clarify issues that have been blurred and confused. They also entertain us with their rapier-like wit, for Alexander is a brilliant polemicist. Above all, these essays are alive with passion for Judaism and Israel and they quicken our pulse as we read."

—Lucy S. Dawidowicz

"Edward Alexander is a superb polemicist, an essayist of wit, elegance, logic, irony, and allusive power. His targets are keenly selected and cleanly struck; and his instinct for what ought to constitute the cargo of a civilized mind is always on the mark."

—Cynthia Ozick

"The title does not do justice to the diversity and intellectual scope of Edward Alexander's essays. Though committed to his thesis-that modern Jews are "worm-eaten by liberalism "-he brings so much wit and literary discernment to his discussion that opponents will often be stimulated rather than outraged. Because his passion and consistency are enriched and refined by unexpected literary references and historical parallels, he can be read with profit and appreciative chuckles even by those who disagree with his position."

—Marie Syrkin

"Edward Alexander is one of the best writers around. He is a marvelous polemicist. This book of his essays is as polemical as it is fair. It is as literate and urbane as it is passionate. Best of all, it focuses with unerring certainty on the issues most vital to the Jewish people in the present age."

—Emit L. Fackenheim

Edition details

• Publisher: Transaction Pub
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0887381758
• ISBN 13: 9780887381751
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264