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The Binding of Isaac, Religious Murders & Kabbalah: Seeds of Jewish Extremism and Alienation?

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Lippman Bodoff has succeeded in condensing a lifetime of scholarship and innovative thinking into a highly readable 463 pages of insights into current Jewish thought and practice. In seven chapters replete with extensive footnotes that evoke comparisons with the more lucid Biblical commentators, his topics range from the Akeda to History, Mysticism, Literature, Science, and Music.

Whether the subject is common misreadings of Abraham's true intentions when he bound his son on the altar, the origins of mysticism and Kabbalah, or the authenticity of newer forms of cantorial expression in synagogue music, a central theme of the book is that, over the years, leading streams of Judaism took a wrong turn. Instead of continuing involvement with the rational, cultural, classical interest with everything that God has given us, powerful historic factors influenced Jewish leaders to turn inward and develop a rigid, insular, and kabbalistic world view which can stifle creativity and a continuing religious interest in making the world a better place for all people. Tensions deriving from this historic turn are still with us today, and Bodoff shows how the different approaches taken by Haredi and Modern Orthodox Jews can be traced to the history of the 13th to 16th centuries.