I found the book very accessible, and I'm betting it'll prompt interesting debates at coffee klatsches as well as in the classroom. Thus the rating: 5 stars (of David)!!
To me, jewishness was almost always inextricably linked to middle-easterness.For those of us who don't hide our Middle Easterness under one Jewish "we," it becomes tougher and tougher to exist in an American context hostile to the very notion of Easterness. As an Arab Jew, I am often obliged to explain the "mysteries" of this oxymoronic entity. That we have spoken Arabic, not Yiddish; that for millennia our cultural creativity, secular and religious, had been largely articulated in Arabic(as well as judeo-arabic and aramaic. Maimonides being one of the few middle-eastern Jewish intellectuals to "make it" into the consciousness of the West. His famous "Guide to the perplexed" was written in arabic under the title "Dalalat Al-Hai'reen"); and that even the most religious of our communities in the Middle East and North Africa never expressed themselves in Yiddish-accented Hebrew prayers, nor did they practice liturgical-gestural norms and sartorial codes favoring the dark colors of centuries-ago Poland. Middle Eastern women similarly never wore wigs; their hair covers, if worn, consisted of different variations on regional clothing (and in the wake of British and French imperialism, many wore Western-style clothes). If you go to our synagogues, even in New York, Montreal, Paris or London, you'll be amazed to hear the winding quarter tones of our music which the uninitiated might imagine to be coming from a mosque.
I strongly reccomend this book!
To me, jewishness was almost always inextricably linked to middle-easterness.For those of us who don't hide our Middle Easterness under one Jewish "we," it becomes tougher and tougher to exist in an American context hostile to the very notion of Easterness. As an Arab Jew, I am often obliged to explain the "mysteries" of this oxymoronic entity. That we have spoken Arabic, not Yiddish; that for millennia our cultural creativity, secular and religious, had been largely articulated in Arabic(as well as judeo-arabic and aramaic. Maimonides being one of the few middle-eastern Jewish intellectuals to "make it" into the consciousness of the West. His famous "Guide to the perplexed" was written in arabic under the title "Dalalat Al-Hai'reen"); and that even the most religious of our communities in the Middle East and North Africa never expressed themselves in Yiddish-accented Hebrew prayers, nor did they practice liturgical-gestural norms and sartorial codes favouring the dark colours of centuries-ago Poland. Middle Eastern women similarly never wore wigs; their hair covers, if worn, consisted of different variations on regional clothing (and in the wake of British and French imperialism, many wore Western-style clothes). If you go to our synagogues, even in New York, Montreal, Paris or London, you'll be amazed to hear the winding quarter tones of our music which the uninitiated might imagine to be coming from a mosque.
I strongly recommend this book!