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“Socher is one of the sharpest observers of Jewish America in our times. These essays, tracing a journey from a yeshiva to Oberlin College and from Franz Kafka to Rabbi Kook, are a loving, cutting, whimsical, and wise look at a Jewish moment that he senses might be ending.”—Matti Friedman, author of Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel
“A lively gathering of essays . . . Socher’s mode of close reading demonstrates the interpretive power that resides in deep Jewish learning.”—Jewish Book Council
"A true reckoning of Jewish ideas and Western thought and culture—both classic and popular—and its discontents, especially as played out on the contemporary university campus.”—Tradition
How did Humphrey Bogart end up telling Lauren Bacall a Talmudic story in the film Key Largo, and what does that have to do with Plato’s theory of recollection—or American Jewish assimilation? Precisely what poem of Robert Frost’s inspired Nabokov’s Pale Fire, and how did Walter Benjamin learn about the remarkable stones of Sinai? Abraham Socher wears his learning lightly. These witty and original essays embody the spirit of the liberal arts, but the highlight of this collection may be his devastating account of the illiberal arts at work in Oberlin College, where he taught for eighteen years.
“A lively gathering of essays . . . Socher’s mode of close reading demonstrates the interpretive power that resides in deep Jewish learning.”—Jewish Book Council
"A true reckoning of Jewish ideas and Western thought and culture—both classic and popular—and its discontents, especially as played out on the contemporary university campus.”—Tradition
How did Humphrey Bogart end up telling Lauren Bacall a Talmudic story in the film Key Largo, and what does that have to do with Plato’s theory of recollection—or American Jewish assimilation? Precisely what poem of Robert Frost’s inspired Nabokov’s Pale Fire, and how did Walter Benjamin learn about the remarkable stones of Sinai? Abraham Socher wears his learning lightly. These witty and original essays embody the spirit of the liberal arts, but the highlight of this collection may be his devastating account of the illiberal arts at work in Oberlin College, where he taught for eighteen years.
Price: $19.95
Pages: 232
Publisher: Paul Dry Books
Imprint: Paul Dry Books
Publication Date:
15 March 2022
Trim Size: 8.50 X 5.50 in
ISBN: 9781589881600
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
LITERARY CRITICISM / Jewish, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays, RELIGION / Essays, RELIGION / Judaism / General, RELIGION / Judaism / Theology
"With a lightness of touch and freshness of interpretation, Socher’s essays flash with wry humor and measured chagrin. They are also an eloquent, exacting defense of moral seriousness—and of Jewishness itself.”—Benjamin Balint, author of Kafka’s Last Trial
“These beautiful essays by a leading Jewish-American intellectual portray with minute precision our cultural moment—a pleasure and an alarm at one and the same time.”—Yitzhak Melamed, Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, author of Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought
“In an era where our intellectual life is muddy with ideology, our religious life muddy with politics, our political life muddy with moral posturing, and our morality muddy with self-righteousness, Abe Socher performs an enormous public service and clears away the mud. In this moving collection, he offers us what we direly need: clarity.”—Dara Horn, author of People Love Dead Jews
“Few master the complexities of contemporary culture as deftly as Abraham P. Socher whose breadth of knowledge never fails to astonish. To all that he touches, he brings an uncommon blend of erudition, wit, and moral engagement.”—Steven J. Zipperstein, Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History, Stanford University, and author of Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History
“These beautiful essays by a leading Jewish-American intellectual portray with minute precision our cultural moment—a pleasure and an alarm at one and the same time.”—Yitzhak Melamed, Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University, author of Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought
“In an era where our intellectual life is muddy with ideology, our religious life muddy with politics, our political life muddy with moral posturing, and our morality muddy with self-righteousness, Abe Socher performs an enormous public service and clears away the mud. In this moving collection, he offers us what we direly need: clarity.”—Dara Horn, author of People Love Dead Jews
“Few master the complexities of contemporary culture as deftly as Abraham P. Socher whose breadth of knowledge never fails to astonish. To all that he touches, he brings an uncommon blend of erudition, wit, and moral engagement.”—Steven J. Zipperstein, Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History, Stanford University, and author of Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History
Abraham Socher is the editor of the Jewish Review of Books, which he founded, and a professor emeritus of Jewish Studies and Religion at Oberlin College. His recent edition of the Autobiography of Solomon Maimon (Princeton University Press) was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. Socher lives with his family in Beachwood, Ohio.
Introduction
I Getting Culture
1. How the Baby Got Its Philtrum
2. Take Your Son . . .
3. Books vs. Children
4. Salsa and Sociology
5. Exit, Loyalty . . . Crowdsource?
6. Hebrew School Days
7. Hello, I Must Be Going
II Liberal and Illiberal Arts
8. Party in Boisk
9. Solomon Schechter and the Saint in the Drawing Room
10. The Chabad Paradox
11. Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem and the Stones of Sinai
12. Live Wire: Saul Bellow’s Life in Literature
13. Shades of Frost: a Hidden Source for Nabokov’s Pale Fire
14. Cynthia Ozick’s Dictation
15. Its Spring Again: Don Delillo on Resurrection
16. Says Who? The Sociologist’s Secret
17. Oberlin and the Illiberal Arts
18. Nonsense is Nonsense, but the History of Nonsense . . .
III Life and Afterlife
19. Accounting for the Soul
20. Is Repentance Possible?
21. No Game for Old Men
22. Light Reading
23. Something Antigonos Said
24. The Digression
25. Kaddish and Eternity
I Getting Culture
1. How the Baby Got Its Philtrum
2. Take Your Son . . .
3. Books vs. Children
4. Salsa and Sociology
5. Exit, Loyalty . . . Crowdsource?
6. Hebrew School Days
7. Hello, I Must Be Going
II Liberal and Illiberal Arts
8. Party in Boisk
9. Solomon Schechter and the Saint in the Drawing Room
10. The Chabad Paradox
11. Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem and the Stones of Sinai
12. Live Wire: Saul Bellow’s Life in Literature
13. Shades of Frost: a Hidden Source for Nabokov’s Pale Fire
14. Cynthia Ozick’s Dictation
15. Its Spring Again: Don Delillo on Resurrection
16. Says Who? The Sociologist’s Secret
17. Oberlin and the Illiberal Arts
18. Nonsense is Nonsense, but the History of Nonsense . . .
III Life and Afterlife
19. Accounting for the Soul
20. Is Repentance Possible?
21. No Game for Old Men
22. Light Reading
23. Something Antigonos Said
24. The Digression
25. Kaddish and Eternity