In the pref­ace to his new book, Antho­ny Julius refers to it as a ​“biog­ra­phy,” but it is not a con­ven­tion­al biog­ra­phy in any sense because its ear­ly sec­tions are based on leg­ends and midrash not found in the Tanach. In effect Julius has cre­at­ed a con­tem­po­rary midrash that views the fig­ure of Abra­ham through an aston­ish­ing lens of ref­er­ences, both lit­er­ary and philo­soph­i­cal, from ancient times to post-mod­ern. Per­haps even more ambi­tious­ly, his book offers a view of what it means to be a Jew.

Julius divides Abraham’s life into two sec­tions. In the first sec­tion, he refers to Abra­ham as Abra­ham 1. This sec­tion is set in Ur and details Abraham’s break­ing away from tra­di­tion­al pagan thought and using crit­i­cal rea­son­ing to strive toward monothe­ism. This sec­tion is com­plete­ly based on leg­end and midrash. Julius cre­ates Abraham’s inte­ri­or mono­logue as well as dia­logue with fam­i­ly and those in the sur­round­ing cul­ture. Often the dia­logue is in quo­ta­tions, and foot­not­ed. The foot­notes are from a range of sources that add depth to the text; read­ing this book care­ful­ly requires fre­quent turn­ing to the notes section.

Abraham’s nascent monothe­ism leads him into con­fronta­tion with the author­i­ties. He is almost a Socrat­ic fig­ure in this por­tray­al. His ulti­mate con­fronta­tion, in dia­logue, is with the ruler, Nim­rod. This con­fronta­tion leads to a death sen­tence and to Abra­ham 1’s first crisis.

He is res­cued from the fiery fur­nace by pray­ing to God. His reach­ing out to God reveals his trans­for­ma­tion into Abra­ham 2, the man of faith. Abra­ham says, ​“God has tak­en me by sur­prise, he has respond­ed to my fer­vid plea.” The foot­note reveals that this sen­tence is a slight re-writ­ing of text writ­ten by Rab­bi Joseph Soleveitchik. This is only one exam­ple of the inter­play between orig­i­nal writ­ing and sources through­out the book. 

Abra­ham 2, the per­son of faith, is more famil­iar to most read­ers and here the biog­ra­phy hews clos­er to bib­li­cal text. But through­out, Julius pro­vides a meta crit­i­cal com­men­tary that chal­lenges and deep­ens tra­di­tion­al read­ings. Abra­ham 2 faces the ulti­mate cri­sis, the akedah.

As Julius takes us through the many inter­pre­ta­tions of the most dis­turb­ing text in our tra­di­tion, his com­ments chal­lenge and deep­en our under­stand­ing. Abra­ham, Sarah, and Isaac are all bro­ken by the akedah in dif­fer­ent ways. Abra­ham 2, in this sense all of us, must wres­tle with why the God who loves us puts us through these things. 

Jews live a dichoto­mous life, as Julius presents it, in a dialec­tic between crit­i­cal think­ing and pro­found faith; this is what he calls the agon of the Jew. This ​“biog­ra­phy” of Abra­ham is a pro­found and quirky, chal­leng­ing yet gen­er­ous, study of the first, and every, Jew.