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Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot

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If you like George Eliot's books you should read this short essay. It is one that any reader can understand and enjoy. Here are some of the highlights of her life, her strong personality and individualism against the prejudices of her day. She was an honest intellectual: a rare species at any given time in history. She (George Eliot)cared for Judaism and Jews before the Holocaust or the Dreyfus affair took place, when Jews were the usual suspects, the easy prey; she demanded a right for a national home for the Jews in Palestine when it was not yet an issue (a right that Muslims already enjoyed multiple times).

A courageous woman indeed. Daniel Deronda was her last novel, right after Middlemarch, her greatest book and one of the very best in the English language. I recommend that you read the book before you read this essay. There is also a section on how the critics of her time received the book (Daniel Deronda) -which for the most part was not positive, specifically due to the Jewish element in it, which section is probably the least interesting of this essay.

George Eliot was an intellectual giant, a size only matched by her honesty, straightforwardness independence and compassion. She was no blind follower of the crowd; a serf to nobody; a truly great writer with her heart in the right place. God bless her.

Himmelfarb, one of the formost specialists on the Victorian period, writes engagingly about a subject she knows in depth. Her treatment of George Eliot does not disappoint. She places Eliot in the period and setting of Victorian London, and brings her to life with personal anecdotes, and has unerring aim at the Jewish milieu. It's a good read.

Sometimes support comes from the strangest of sources. "The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot" tells the story of Victorian era novelist George Eliot, an agnostic writer, and her heavy involvement in early Zionism before the movement had a name. The origins of her opinions boggled her readers, and Gertrude Himmelfarb does her best to explain the enigma of Eliot. An intriguing read about an interesting figure, "The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot" is of high recommendation for any collection on early Zionism.

I discovered "Daniel Deronda" this year, and then read it twice. I was baffled how a gentile like George Eliot could have been able to write so accurately about Jewish culture and anticipate the Zionist movement and the re-establishment of the State of Israel. This scholarly work also illustrates gentile views of Jews and Judaism before, during, and after Eliot's lifetime. If you enjoy "Daniel Deronda," this book is a must-read.

Impeccable scholarship and the luminous intelligence one has come to expect from Gertrude Himmelfarb shine through this valuable book.

I bought this book with high hopes. Unfortunately, it proved to be ponderous and tough going. From the outset, when the author places the history of European anti-semitism "in context", I was put off by the heavy hand of scholarship. The first chapter of Ms. Himmelfarb's book relied on philosophical heavyweights (like Feuerlicht and Hegel) and important critics (F.R. Leavis and Edmund Wilson). At the mention of these names, I did not thrill with anticipatory joy. The ensuing footnoted plot summary was unnecessary. Why would anyone who is not already familiar with the novel Daniel Deronda be reading this critical essay? Much of Himmelfarb's material on Deronda has been treated before, notably in the introduction to the hefty paperback published by Barnes & Noble, the edition I read. The only moment that caught my interest was on Lionel Trilling, to the effect that the Jewish characters in the novel were idealized, not fully realized creations, and that Jews range the gamut of character. This had been my own reaction as I read the novel. If only Himmelfarb had provided more of her own ideas, gone beyond what others have written. The chapter on Natan Sharansky as an example of a Jew who discovered his "mission" to go to Israel in Soviet Russia, was an excellent, interesting analogy. But most of the book seems to be at third hand, a summary of critical sources, when I was looking for an individual critical perspective.