Despite the fact that Judaism has sur­vived three thou­sand years — ​“the senior nation of the West­ern world” — today Amer­i­can Jews are fast dis­ap­pear­ing. David Gel­ern­ter believes the rea­son is that most Jews see a frac­tured Judaism — a set of rit­u­als, a his­to­ry, a cul­ture — and fail to grasp the grand scheme and under­ly­ing ideas of Judaism. In this brief but intel­lec­tu­al­ly packed book, Gel­ern­ter attempts to present Judaism as a total struc­ture, to begin a Torat ha-lev, the Torah of the mind and heart that can lead to under­stand­ing the press­ing ques­tions of human existence. 

A pro­fes­sor of com­put­er sci­ence at Yale, Gel­ern­ter is also an artist, nov­el­ist, and con­tribut­ing edi­tor to the Week­ly Stan­dard. He brings to this deeply felt book the full impact of his under­stand­ing of lit­er­a­ture, sci­ence, art, phi­los­o­phy, and Chris­tian­i­ty as well as his broad knowl­edge of Judaism. 

To view Judaism from dif­fer­ent angles, Gel­ern­ter iden­ti­fies four theme-images to explain some of the issues that con­tem­po­rary Jews may find dis­tant or archa­ic. The theme of ​“sep­a­ra­tion” address­es the intri­ca­cies of halakha. ​“The veil” explains how to expe­ri­ence an inde­scrib­able and abstract God. ​“Per­fect asym­me­try” describes the rela­tion­ship of men and women, fam­i­ly and sex­u­al­i­ty, and ​“inward pil­grim­age” wres­tles with the prob­lem of evil and a just and mer­ci­ful God.

Through these themes, which Gel­ern­ter paints in vivid and poet­ic lan­guage, he presents a mul­ti­lay­ered pic­ture of Judaism. Image is laid on image — the veil is the tal­lit that allows the wear­er to feel God and is also the cur­tain behind which the tran­scen­dent dwells, as God dwelled in the Temple’s Holy of Holies; it is the wed­ding veil; it is the reverse side of the mezuzah scroll on which Shad­dai is inscribed. And so with Gelernter’s three oth­er images; they embrace, enfold, and unrav­el lay­ers of bib­li­cal, lit­er­ary, and midrashic ref­er­ence, each lay­er offer­ing anoth­er view and entry into Judaism. Inner pil­grim­age, the final image, is a mov­ing and intel­lec­tu­al­ly exalt­ed vision of each individual’s strug­gle to the place, deep with­in your mind, where you will meet your­self and your God. 

Chal­leng­ing, often exhil­a­rat­ing, rich­ly learned, intense­ly per­son­al, and tough-mind­ed, Judaism offers a pas­sion­ate pic­ture of Judaism. This said, the Judaism that Gel­ern­ter describes is not one that all Jews will rec­og­nize. For him nor­ma­tive Judaism is Ortho­dox Judaism. This def­i­n­i­tion throws up stum­bling blocks for many prac­tic­ing non- Ortho­dox Jews in Unit­ed States. With the state­ment “‘female rab­bi’ and Jew­ish law are mutu­al­ly exclu­sive,” he dis­en­fran­chis­es large num­bers of Jews; ref­er­ences to the Lord and man, rather than human being, under­cut his asser­tion of the asym­met­ric but equal role of women in Judaism. Con­cepts of com­mu­ni­ty and social jus­tice, vital to many Jews, have no men­tion in Gelernter’s Judaism.

In Gelernter’s desire to address both Jews and non-Jews, Judaism requires no knowl­edge of Hebrew or Judaism.