What Shall I Do with This People?: Jews and the Fractious Politics of Judaism [Hardcover]

Milton Viorst (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 8, 2002

"What shall I do with this people?" was Moses' exasperated question to God in Sinai, and it is posed once more in Milton Viorst's searching account of the crisis in Judaism today. Not since the destruction of the Second Temple, argues Viorst, have Jews displayed such intolerance toward one another or battled so fiercely over ideology. And these battles are not just intellectual exercises; they exact a fearsome price in today's Middle East.

Framed by the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Orthodox extremist -- an unprecedented outburst of violence among Jews -- the book examines how religious leaders through the centuries have shaped Judaism to serve their own political ends, often with disastrous consequences. Viorst vigorously critiques Orthodox Judaism's doctrines concerning territory in the Holy Land as well as on marriage, divorce, conversion, and women's rights, contending that religious law often departs from the teachings of the Torah and has, in fact, changed over time to perpetuate rabbinic power. In recent decades, he believes, the Orthodox rabbinate has grown so intransigently political that its ideas have sundered the Jewish people, challenging their identity and, perhaps, threatening their very existence.

What Shall I Do With This People? is both a meticulously researched history and a bracing commentary. Disturbed by the impact of intolerance on Jewish politics and society, Milton Viorst calls for an end to violence in the name of Judaism and offers a stirring plea for mutual understanding among what the Old Testament God called "a stiff-necked people." Amid the heat and noise of the Middle East conflict, his is a lucid, compelling, and necessary voice.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The distinguished Jewish historian Salo Baron once disparaged the "lachrymose theory" of Jewish history because it emphasized tragic events and a sorry trail of tears. What might he have said about Viorst's reading of Jewish history as an unending chronicle of conflict among Jews? Beginning with the dispute in Exodus when many Israelites questioned Moses and created a golden calf as an idol to worship, Jews have wrangled with one other throughout the ages. Viorst traces the record of these struggles from biblical times to the present, concluding with the sharp arguments in Israel between the Ultra-Orthodox and other Israelis. He sees the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Rabin by a religious zealot as the lowest point in conflict among Jews, and he wonders whether or not this murder signals such irreconcilable differences within the Jewish community as to threaten Israel's survival. This book should be read alongside Samuel Freedman's Jew vs. Jew, which describes contemporary controversies among American Jews. Freedman shares Viorst's view that internal disputes portend a gloomy future. Viorst's lucid review of Jewish history as a saga of dissension is most effective, though highly selective. His analysis and his presentation benefit from his impressive credentials as a journalist who worked for many years in the Middle East and who has written a dozen books. Viorst is no unbiased observer; he makes clear his strong opposition to Jewish religious extremism, thus inevitably contributing to the internal discord he so vigorously decries.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Former Middle East staff correspondent for The New Yorker and prolific author Viorst (In the Shadow of the Prophet) describes the historical contexts behind Judaism's current divisiveness. The author describes Jews' responses to historical events and how these responses continue to be an influence, creating intolerance among various branches of Judaism. For Viorst, the Enlightenment was a crisis that Judaism still grapples with, and he shows how the tension it caused among various Jewish communities exists today. The book is divided into three sections: "Building a Nation," "Losing a State," "Adjusting to Exile," and "Turbulence of Return." Though he's critical of current Orthodox doctrines and Zionistic zealotry, Viorst writes in a neutral tone, laying out events and reactions and how these have defined Judaism and the Jewish people. This book will appeal to lay readers as well as those with more historical background; readable and informative, it is appropriate for all libraries. (Index not seen.) Naomi E. Hafter, Baltimore
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First Trade Edition edition (October 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684862891
• ISBN-13: 978-0684862897
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,685,412 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fascinating, interesting, disturbing, January 19, 2004

By 

Eric Weiss - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What Shall I Do with This People?: Jews and the Fractious Politics of Judaism (Hardcover)

I bought this book based on comments here, and a recommendation under a review of ONE PEOPLE, TWO WORLDS. But I have reason to question Viorst's accuracy, knowledge, and statements because of the following:

P. 79 (Re: Yochanan ben Zakkai and his yeshiva at Yavneh) "His yeshiva ... also contributed to compiling and editing the books of the Bible, and presided over the Greek translation of what has since become the Old Testament." I assume he is referring to Aquila's translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, but "the Greek translation of ... the Old Testament" began a few hundred years earlier, and many NT quotations of the OT were from this earlier Greek translation (or others). Whatever Viorst means to say, he doesn't say it clearly.

P. 87: "The word 'Torah,' which means 'guidance,' is absent from the Bible, and appeared only in Talmudic times." Huh???? The word "Torah" appears 220x in the Hebrew Bible, beginning with Genesis 26:5. How can Viorst mean what he writes here?

Thus, while I find the book an interesting history of the way rabbinic Judaism came to be, statements like the above make me wonder if what I'm reading is accurate.

The "Advance Praise" on the back of the dustjacket from Letty Cottin Pogrebin ("exhaustively researched") and Balfour Brickner ("a rich knowledge of Jewish history to produce a brilliant, accurate ... analysis") supports Viorst's veracity -- but the above two quotes undermine it, and there may be others that I won't recognize, due to being ignorant of these other matters.

Having written the above, however, this book is eye-opening and fascinating reading for those like myself who have never read about this dark side of Jewish history. And it is dark.

If the author is basically accurate (his endnotes and bibliography support him being accurate), then this is a troubling book that merits reading.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars occasionally useful but mostly disappointing, June 23, 2003

By 

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

This review is from: What Shall I Do with This People?: Jews and the Fractious Politics of Judaism (Hardcover)

This was not the book I expected from the cover and the reviews. I thought it would be a history of intra-Jewish discord; instead, the first 2/3 of the book is just a general history of Judaism (useful for the beginner, but no more so than many other books), and the rest is a discussion of Rabin's assassination and the ideological disputes within Israel that led to it.

I was disappointed in some other ways:

1. The book's discussion of Israeli politics is out of date. It ends with Rabin's assassination in 1995. But at the time I am writing this (early 2003) the Oslo peace process looks to many former doves like a sham, Israel seems more far more united (behind Ariel Sharon) than it has been in decades, and the dispute between Rabin and his enemies is about as relevant to modern events as the 18th-century disputes between Hasidim and their enemies.

2. The book is sometimes a bit sloppy; the most common distortion seems to be Viorst's belief that most Orthodox Jews (or most ultra-Orthodox, or most Hasidim) share the views of a few ideologues. For example, he cites Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum's attacks on Zionism, and asserts that "To this day, Hasidim conventionally maintain that Israel is a heresy which exposes Jews to a vengeful God." (p. 173). This view would be news to Chabad Hasidim, who conventionally are so pro-Israel they make Milton Viorst look like Joel Teitelbaum.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Fractious Jewish Spirituality", November 11, 2002

By 

Richard A. KUlick (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Shall I Do with This People?: Jews and the Fractious Politics of Judaism (Hardcover)

To begin with, this is a fine book. It is the first history of the Jewish people in many years, that starts and ends on the topic of Jewish unity and internal divisiveness. Viorst looks at how internal Jewish religious politcs have played out all through Jewish history, going all the way back to the patriarchs, through Exodus to the Temple Destructions. From then on he analyzes the Talmudic age and it's particular issues, through the medival period, down to the divisive internal politics of Israel and the Middle East conflicts in our day.

However, this is not to say this book is a neutral view. The author makes clear his dovish sympathies by mid-way through the text, and as a Conservative Jew, gives very short shrift to the many serious and valid points, at least for them, that Orthodox intellectuals and politicians raise in Israel and abroad. In addition, he presents the history of Jewish internal disagreement with virtually no reference to the spiritual issues involved, which for the Orthodox and this non-orthodox writer, are at the heart of the matter.

Lastly, as many Jewish journalists do, he tends to exaggerate the extent of the internal disagreements within the Jewish world, perhaps to increase the level of apparent urgency in his work. In Israel for example, many members of Knesset will shout insults at each other from the podium and then go sit down to lunch together in the Knesset Cafeteria, yet the media only captures the first part of the performance.

Spiritually though, the level of unity between Jews has been a crucial determinant of Jewish national fortune throughout history, for when Jews start hating each historically, is when external persecution begins to arise. This was the case before the Temple Destructions, and even more so before the Shoah, when Stalinist Jews in Russia, killed hundreds of thousands of their own, and millions of gentiles to appease Stalin.

This aspect, called Sinat Hinam or baseless hatred, is mentioned in Viorst's book, but is given nowehere near the prominence it deserves. In fact, Viorst's text looks at Jewish politics historically and currently, exclusively in that light, and that is it's signal if not only weakness. In my own book, "Jewish History and Divine Providence: Theodicy and the Oddyssey" I look at Jewish history from the standpoint of Divine Providence or Karma, and show how the rise and fall of Jewish fortunes historically, has in fact been effected by Jewish unity and piety.

This was especially the case before and after the Shoah, and with the State of Israel, for reasons I detail in the book, available here on Amazon. For those who want to know about the politics of Jewish disunity, Viorst's work is a good place to start. However, if the reader desires to get the complete spiritual picture, they should read "Jewish History and Divine Providence" in conjunction with it.