By
– August 30, 2011
This short book is a highly theoretical exploration of how to engage in original and erudite Jewish Studies. Andrew Bush, a professor of Jewish Studies and Hispanic Studies at Vassar College, draws upon constructs found in the Jewish tradition of “learning,” with its Talmudic scholarship and sources, and the sizable body of academic literature (sociological, historical, literary, and cultural studies), that explore the Jewish experience.
Bush creatively employs the Kabbalistic metaphor of the eminent Jewish Studies scholar Gershom Scholem, and argues that Jewish Studies should be conceptualized as a “container” that is broken and so its “contents, all them sparks of Jewishness, are scattered.” To build a complete body of work in Jewish Studies, researchers must engage in “a patient effort to collect the scattered shards of material and textual culture.”
Jewish Studies: A Theoretical Introduction is not an easy book to read, but complexity and challenge are also hallmark aspects of the Jewish experience. To me this book is an academic plea for giving up clichéd views of the discipline of Jewish Studies. It encourages the reader to seek new avenues for source material and develop innovative analytical models to better understand the Jewish experience. Endnotes, index.
Bush creatively employs the Kabbalistic metaphor of the eminent Jewish Studies scholar Gershom Scholem, and argues that Jewish Studies should be conceptualized as a “container” that is broken and so its “contents, all them sparks of Jewishness, are scattered.” To build a complete body of work in Jewish Studies, researchers must engage in “a patient effort to collect the scattered shards of material and textual culture.”
Jewish Studies: A Theoretical Introduction is not an easy book to read, but complexity and challenge are also hallmark aspects of the Jewish experience. To me this book is an academic plea for giving up clichéd views of the discipline of Jewish Studies. It encourages the reader to seek new avenues for source material and develop innovative analytical models to better understand the Jewish experience. Endnotes, index.
Carol Poll, Ph.D., is the retired Chair of the Social Sciences Department and Professor of Sociology at the Fashion Institute of Technology of the State University of New York. Her areas of interest include the sociology of race and ethnic relations, the sociology of marriage, family and gender roles and the sociology of Jews.
