Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable (The Franz Rosenzweig Lecture Series) [Paperback]

Professor Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 28, 1993 | ISBN-10: 0300057563 | ISBN-13: 978-0300057560

This remarkable book provides fascinating new insights into Freud's intentions in writing Moses and Monotheism-his only work specifically devoted to a Jewish theme. Yerushalmi presents the work as Freud's psychoanalytic history of the Jews, Judaism, and the Jewish psyche-his attempt, under the shadow of Nazism, to discover what has made the Jews what they are. In the process, Yerushalmi's eloquent and sensitive exploration of Freud's controversial final work provides a reappraisal of Freud's feelings toward his own Judaism. "Yerushalmi has written a dazzlingly brilliant book. Reading it is to take an exciting journey through the spaces of mind-an adventure of intellect. This book is an extraordinary achievement, one that will be discussed and debated for many years."-Irving Howe

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Delivered as a series of lectures at Columbia, Yale, Smith, and in Paris, this eloquent, scholarly, and perceptive study explores the significance of Moses and Monotheism, Freud's last major work, written in 1934 when the impending Holocaust led him to reflect on his own Jewish identity and on psychoanalysis as a ``Jewish science.'' Yerushalmi (Professor and Director, Center for Israel and Jewish Studies/Columbia) treats Moses and Monotheism as a historical as well as a psychological document, tracing its origins to a 1822 text by Ernst Sellin, the first to claim that Moses was an Egyptian who gave monotheism to the Jews, rescued them, and in turn was slain by them in retaliation against the strict regulations he imposed on them. The murder of the father, the repression, guilt, and rehabilitation or return became part of the Jewish character, according to Freud--an inherited characteristic. In the last chapter, a dramatic monologue with Freud, Yerushalmi applies the theory to Freud himself, a secular Jew, with Freud as Moses and his father as the god who gave him a sacred text, a personally inscribed Bible with the implied mandate that he accept his Jewish heritage. In ``deferred obedience,'' he writes Moses and Monotheism and, identifying with an Egyptian rather than a Jewish Moses, expiates his guilt for rejecting his father. The text in turn becomes the ``Torah'' to the psychoanalytic movement in its ``diaspora'' following WW II. In the end, however, being a Jew to Freud was ``something miraculous'' and ``inaccessible to any analysis.'' A stimulating study (including Freud's original manuscript and unpublished letters to his father, all in German) that has ranging implications for students of Judaism, religion, Freud, and the psychoanalytic movement. Cautious, penetrating, well- focused, it raises many interesting and original questions. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (July 28, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300057563
• ISBN-13: 978-0300057560
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #577,868 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #40 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( F ) > Freud, Sigmund

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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating read, January 5, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Freud's Moses: Judaism Terminable and Interminable (The Franz Rosenzweig Lecture Series) (Hardcover)

This is scholarship at its very best. Freud's struggle with his self-identity and the identity of his science is clearly documented in this book. Better than most trained psychoanalysts, the author detects most subtle ripples of the human mind, using clues provided by Freud's language, in his books and in his personal letters. By far the most nuanced study of the most complex personality of the century. I suspect Freud himself, being the cunning self-concealer that he was (like Goethe), would have resisted this interpretation, but to anyone who wants to understand psychoanalysis and its father, this book is indispensable.