The Book and the Sword: A Life of Learning in the Shadow of Destruction [Hardcover]

David Weiss Halivni (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 1996

The author describes how his lifelong involvement with the Jewish Talmud and the problems of its interpretation persisted from his childhood in the Carpathian Mountains, through his internment in the concentration camps, and into his late adulthood.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Romanian-born Halivni (Sources and Traditions), who hails from the same village, Sighet, as Elie Wiesel, with whom he became friends after the war, comments that "There is no dearth of memoirs by survivors" of the Holocaust, which he calls "an event without explanation." Halivni began his studies of the Talmud at the age of five and was considered a prodigy. The only member of his immediate family to survive WWII, he eventually settled in the U.S., where he became a Talmudic scholar and teacher at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City and eventually was made a professor of religion at Columbia University. His reason for writing his memoirs now is "to define myself spiritually in the light of the Holocaust." Remembering the suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis, he maintains, is an "act of defiance," because the aim of the Hitler regime was to wipe out European Jewry. This searching, honest work, told with passion but no sentimentality, will speak to those who have sought to maintain a belief in God despite evils witnessed in this life.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Halivni (classical Jewish civilization, Columbia Univ.) describes in affecting detail his isolated upbringing as a child prodigy of the Talmud in Sighet, Romania. Although he spent time in a Sighet ghetto, and then was successively in Auschwitz, Wolfsberg, and Ebensee, he does not dwell on the Holocaust in this memoir. Rather, he traces the journey of an intellectually gifted young man whose faith and devotion to the Talmud, the critical study to which he has devoted his entire life, has never wavered, even while simultaneously pursuing his yearning for secular knowledge. Halivni's descriptions of yeshiva learning, his break with the Jewish Theological Seminary (where he taught for 30 years) over reforms that he believed were contrary to Halakkah (Tamudic law), and his joy at acquiring a torn page from a Talmudic text while in a concentration camp are among the elements that should appeal to all those interested in Holocaust and Judaic studies. At times gripping and inspirational, this work is recommended for informed readers.?John A. Drobnicki, York Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 212 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (October 2, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374115451
• ISBN-13: 978-0374115456
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,759,034 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a book you'll learn from, June 23, 2003

By 

Michael Lewyn (Forest Hills, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book And The Sword: A Life Of Learning In The Shadow Of Destruction (Paperback)

As another reviewer wrote, this is not just a Holocaust memoir. Halivni writes about his Holocuast experiences, but many others have done the same at greater length. What I got out of this book was:

1. His discussion of pre-Holocuast shtetl life: its scholarship, its isolation, its sheer backwardness in many areas (for example, when one relative told the author's grandfather that the boy was "turning modern" because he ate with a fork instead of with his hands, and read secular newspapers). Unless you eat with your hands and avoid newspapers, you will find it much harder after reading this book to believe that Jews should be bound by every custom of their ancestors.

2. His attempt to describe his own ideological position: more respectful of traditional halakhah than modern Conservatives, more critical of traditional interpretations than some Orthodox commentators. You can find plenty of books by commentators to Halivni's right, and plenty by commentators to his left, but I would be surprised if you could find any by people who think exactly what he thinks (assuming there are any). As a result, his book is unique or nearly so - and for this reason alone, his book is worth reading and will probably challenge you whatever your views.

Another reviewer said that Halivni is not among the "first rank" of scholars. (I am not enough of a scholar to intelligently agree or disagree). But even if this were the case, I would recommend this book. I've learned quite a bit from people who weren't in the "first rank" of scholars - many of whom, I suspect, are not of Halivni's rank.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating autobiography, January 8, 2006

By 

A reader "seferor" (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Book And The Sword: A Life Of Learning In The Shadow Of Destruction (Paperback)

Prior to reading this book, I was curious about Rabbi Weiss Halivni. What kind of man, I wondered, would stand up against the left wing of the Conservative movement, at the potential cost of his own career? In reading this book, I have been richly rewarded with an understanding of him. Rabbi Weiss Halivni is searchingly honest, even brave in his degree of self-revelation, as he describes his life in a backward village in Hungary in the lead-up to the Second World War, the troubled psychological dynamics of his family, most of whom were subsequently murdered by the Nazis, his experiences in the death camps, and the course of his career in the United States as a scholar at the Jewish Theological Seminary and then Columbia. He explains the origins and process of his style of Talmudic analysis; an unusual blend of the traditional and the critical analytic methods, coming in part from his grandfather, but also a product of modern scholarship. He laments that he's been unsuccessful in fostering it in his students (they find it too difficult I think).

But it is his self-analysis if his own character, his simultanously anxiety-ridden and courageous life, that makes this such worthwhile reading. I think that he is just not afraid to be different, and he values honesty more than most; his stance on preserving halachah in the face of tremendous pressure from liberal "progressives" at the JTS is one outcome of these traits.

[...]

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unusual memoir by a remarkable Jewish scholar, March 11, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Book and the Sword: A Life of Learning in the Shadow of Destruction (Hardcover)

This small book covers an enormous range of subjects. Chasidic life in a shtetyl, the Holocaust, conflict within the Jewish institutions of higher learning in post war America, the personal psychological impact of being a Holocaust survivor, and the various modes of Talmudic scholarship - Halivin's great accomplishment is to bring meaning to this wide spectrum of topics in few words. This is a book by a serious thinker who is not afraid to risk revealing his innermost feelings and conflicts. A courageous work