The Will to Live On: This is Our Heritage [Large Print] [Paperback]

Herman Wouk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 16, 2000

Herman Wouk has ranged in his novels from the mighty narrative of The Caine Mutiny and the warm, intimate humor of Marjorie Morningstar to the global panorama of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. All these powers merge in this major new work of nonfiction, The Will to Live On, an illuminating account of the worldwide revolution that has been sweeping over Jewry, set against a swiftly reviewed background of history, tradition, and sacred literature.

Forty years ago, in his modern classic This Is My God, Herman Wouk stated the case for his religious beliefs and conduct. His aim in that work and in The Will to Live On has been to break through the crust of prejudice, to reawaken clearheaded thought about the magnificent Jewish patrimony, and to convey a message of hope for Jewish survival.

Although the Torah and the Talmud are timeless, the twentieth century has brought earthquake shocks to the Jews: the apocalyptic experience of the Holocaust, the reborn Jewish state, the precarious American diaspora, and deepening religious schisms. After a lifetime of study, Herman Wouk examines the changes affecting the Jewish world, especially the troubled wonder of Israel, and the remarkable, though dwindling, American Jewry. The book is peppered with wonderful stories of the author's encounters with such luminaries as Ben Gurion, Isidor Rabi, Yitzhak Rabin, Saul Bellow, and Richard Feynan.

Learned in general culture, warmly tolerant of other beliefs, this noted author expresses his own other beliefs, this noted author expresses his own faith with a passion that gives the book its fire and does so in the clear, engaging style that--as in all Wouk's fiction--makes the reader want to know what the next page will bring.

Herman Wouk writes, in The Will to Live On:

"And so the Melting Pot is beginning to work on Jewry. Its effect was deferred in the passing century by the shock of the Holocaust and the rise of Israel, but today the Holocaust is an academic subject, and Israel is no longer a beleaguered underdog. Amkha in America is not dying, it is slowly melting, and those are very different fates. Dying is a terror, an agony, a strangling finish, to be fought off by sheer instinct, by the will to live on, to the last breath. Melting is a mere diffusion into an ambient welcoming warmth in which one is dissolved and disappears, as a teaspoon of sugar vanishes into hot tea....

Yet here in the United States, for all the scary attrition I have pictured, we are still a community of over five million strong. . . . At a far stretch of my hopes, our descendants could one day be a diaspora comparable to Babylonia. At the moment, of course, that is beyond rational expectation. We have to concentrate on lasting at all. . . ."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Forty years ago, novelist Herman Wouk wrote a book about his devotion to the Torah and the Talmud called This Is My God, which remains among the freshest and most quietly impassioned religious autobiographies in print today. The Will to Live On is Wouk's follow-up to that work, although its subject--the particular state of the Jewish people in the 20th century--is very different. Wouk promises to tackle all of the biggest subjects here: "the Holocaust, the reborn Jewish State, the prodigious yet precarious American diaspora, and the deepening religious schisms." And his broad-minded reflections on all of these topics--especially his explanation of modern Zionism's rise from the roots of ancient literature and history--are cleanly, forcefully, and respectfully written. Among Wouk's most penetrating insights are his reflections on Israel's struggle, throughout history, with the temptation of idolatry, and his conviction that the Holocaust at last purged Abraham's people of this "near-fatal cancer." The Will to Live On is a risky, wise book that deserves to be called prophetic. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In the 1950s, sensing a drifting of Jews away from their tradition, novelist Wouk (The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, etc.), an observant Jew, wrote This Is My God, a classic primer on Jewish belief and practices, to draw some of the curious back. Nearly half a century later, with the American Jewish community concerned with high rates of intermarriage, Wouk brings out this companion volume, a whirlwind tour of Jewish history and sacred texts. It is, he writes, his "view that any hope for our long future [lies] in a massive return to our sources, in faith, in literature, and in history." Despite its brevity, the text succeeds in conveying the large arc of 2,500 years of Jewish history and the grandeur of the Hebrew Bible and prophets, the "exalted challenge" of studying the Talmud and the complex questions of identity facing Jews today, whether in Israel or in the Diaspora. He writes with great love of his tradition and with a becoming modesty about his own impressive scholarship. He draws on incidents from his life to illustrate various points; for instance, regarding the inevitable conflict in the modern mind between rationalism and religion, he describes a meeting between two of his mentors: the philosopher Irwin Edman of Columbia University and Wouk's grandfather, an unworldly Talmudic scholar. Wouk discusses all these issues clearly without oversimplifying them; he confronts head on, for example, the dilemmas facing Zionism in an age when Israel is a military power and a mature, internally divided country. This fine volume deserves to become a classic alongside its predecessor. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Harper; Lrg edition (February 16, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060955880
• ISBN-13: 978-0060955885
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,228,051 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Herman Wouk earned his living as a scriptwriter for Fred Allen before serving in World War II. His career as a novelist spans nearly six decades and has brought him resounding international acclaim. He lives in Palm Springs, California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Portable, Pleasant, and Not Pedantic, February 23, 2000

By 

"research7" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Will To Live On: This is Our Heritage (Hardcover)

I read this book in three evening sessions, and, like his book written 40 years ago (This Is My God) Herman Wouk is at his relaxed best.

The Will to Live On is a delightful one-sided conversation in which the 82-year-old author talks about the loves of his life: Judaism, his family, and his people, or amchka (your people), sweeping through several thousand years of Jewish history and a lifetime of study, work, and just living as a Jew, son and grandson of immigrants, an American and a patriot.

Wouk, an ever-observant Orthodox believer, is a facinating person and believable because he has lived well, written well, and lived what he believes. But not only for his religious core is he interesting, but because, as the Jewish people like to say, he is a person, and the kind of person who can be truly Orthodox, without orthodoxy, and respectful of the vast differences within the Jewish experience, leaving no one out.

And while being Orthodox, Wouk calls himself a humanist, for which he gives only scant definition or explanation in his book... my only criticism. His claim to be a humanist, unless he has redefined the term in some cleaver way, does not jibe with his core message. Possibly, in spite of his full reading of Jewish scripture, the author has not read or understood the passage, "I will raise up your sons, O Zion, against your sons, O Greece."

He addresses himself largely to the great American Jewish community, which, he strongly implies, has gone about as far as it should go into the vanilla world of assimilation, better known to all ethnic and religious Americans as "the melting pot."

I saved the last few pages to read very slowly because they contain the reason for the book. The Will to Live On, of course, deals with the eternal and earthly struggle, miracle, and adventure of a people who, in spite of their unique relationship with their G-d, still need to seriously take stock of their heritage and their origins, lest they have nothing uniquely Jewish to pass on to their children, or no children to pass it on to. The last few pages contain Mr. Wouk's key to this restoration and I won't tell you what it is because you need to read the first 300 or so pages to appreciate the last two.

As a proper antecedant to Mr. Wouk's discussion, and for full impact, I would recommend Ehud Havazelet's recent book, titled Like Never Before.

May the author's your years continue, as he brings to completion more of those unfinished titles from his worn and torn file folders. Forty years was too long to wait for this one.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another fine Wouk book, January 6, 2002

By 

mrliteral - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Will To Live On: This is Our Heritage (Hardcover)

In a career of fifty years or so, Herman Wouk has published less than a dozen novels. Fortunately, the time he puts into his work shows and nearly all of his works are five-star quality. This book, a non-fiction follow-up to This Is My God (which is the only book of his I haven't read), continues the high-quality trend.

Although designed for a Jewish audience, this book has plenty to offer anyone who wishes to learn more about Judaism and the direction it is going. This is a good blend of history, theology and memoir, well-organized and filled with detail without losing readability. I found of particular interest the second part, "The Heritage, or the Power of a Dream" which describes the sources of Jewish thought and tradition.

Although not very religious myself, I am often fascinated with religion, and this book is a good addition to my collection on the subject. As he states in the Afterword, "If this book in any way helps readers to rethink the [future of Judaism] for themselves, I will have done, to the best of my ability, what I set out to do." He has accomplished this task very well.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A heartfelt look at Jewish survival!, December 2, 2000

By 

M. T. Guzman "squeakychu" (Rockville, MD, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Will To Live On: This is Our Heritage (Hardcover)

At 84 years of age, Herman Wouk, one of the giants of contemporary American Jewish literature, presents his view of the survival of the Jewish people. His narrative moves back and forth between a thumbnail sketch of Jewish history and a colorful personal history . He indicates that the two motivating forces that have kept Judaism cohesive and growing during the twentieth century--the Holocaust and the birth of the state of Israel--are no longer of recent enough memory in the younger generation to ensure Jewish survival. Are there other factors, as the twenty-first century begins, that can influence young Jews to preserve their ancient heritage? This is the tough question the author attempts to address.

Wouk's whirlwind tour of Jewish history is unsatisfactory because it flies through time and presumes an in-depth knowledge by the reader. Far more satisying are the author's personal reflections as to how his life experiences and knowledge of the past allow him to appreciate his Jewish heritage. What seem to be lacking at the beginning of the book book are fill-in-the-blank kind of things. It is almost as if the author's intention is to get his readers to find the missing information by going to Judaic sources and reading what they need to know to preserve the Jewish faith. Nice ploy!

THE WILL TO LIVE ON concludes with Wouk's thoughts about the survival of the Jewish people into the distant future. His impressions differ regarding the Jews of Israel and those of the diaspora. He has one especially important thought to share about how diaspora Jewry can ensure their survival. It's not worth peeking at the last few pages of the book ahead of time, however, because the strength of Wouk's case slowly builds throughout the narrative. The reader can then sit back and truly savor the elderly author's insightful conclusion.