THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Friday, September 28, 1984
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world will be perfected and all
humanity set free from war, op-
pression, poverty and sickness.
Therefore, the Rabbis were not
satisfied just to evoke memory —
i.e., to look back for the sake of
mercy and just to proclaim God as
Ruler in the present. They added a
third dimension to the liturgy —
called Shofrot (literally — shofars
or shofar sounds) — which sum-
mons up the verses of future re-
demption. "On that day, a great
shofar will be sounded and all
those lost in the land of Assyria or
scattered in the land of Egypt will
come and bow to the Lord in the
holy mountain, Jerusalem." Thus
the "oldest" sounds were to carry
the message of the "newest" faith
— of the three thousand year old
dream of the Kingdom of God that
is yet to be born.
In sum, the Rabbis insisted that
the shofar sounds incorporate the
extraordinary contradictories
which are yoked together in
Judaism — the gentleness of cries
for mercy, the strength of procla-
mation of divine power, the in-
exhaustibility of future hope. By
mixing the versions of the blasts
together, the Rabbis sought to
teach that the sounds also repre-
sent unity — the unity of the di-
vine and the human, the unity of
the diverse Jewish people.
Copyright 1984, National Jewish
Resource Center
BOOKS
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5744: Good publishing year
BY LAWRENCE EPSTEIN
Special to The Jewish News
This past year has been an
especially strong one for books
about Israel. The continuing emo-
tional tie American Jews have
with the Jewish state is made
clear by the number of fascinating
and significant works that con-
tinue to be produced. The
Holocaust has also remained a
vital subject, with several impor-
tant volumes published during
5744.
Each of the ten books listed here
is highly recommended. All are
informative and quite readable:
The Campaign to Discredit Is-
rael, published by the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC), is both interesting and
useful. Compiled by the pro-Israel
lobby, the volume analyzes the
anti-Israel campaign in the
United States and includes a
guide listing various anti-Israel
organizations headquartered in
this country.
Cynthia Ozick's The Cannibal
Galaxy (Knopf), is a brief, tightly
written novel that is both complex
and fascinating. Ozick, one of
America's most gifted writers,
weaves her latest novel around
the character of Joseph Brill, a
middle-aged headmaster of a
highly-touted private school seek-
ing for the perfect student.
From a Ruined Garden: The
Memorial Books of Polish Jewry
(Schocken), edited by Jack
Kugelmass and Jonathan Bova-
rin, reconstructs the vanished
world of East European Jewry in
writings by survivors.
From Time Immemorial
(Harper and Row) may be the
most important book of the year.
Author Joan Peters analyzes the
origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict
and, using original research, pro-
ves that the Arabs did not live in
western Palestine from time im-
memorial, but moved there, often
illegally, only after Jews had set-
tled and helped develop the area.
The demographic and historical
facts assembled in this book pro-
vide turning point for the
arguments over the moral right-
ness of the Jewish claims to their
ancient homeland.
In The Haj (Doubleday), Leon
Uris tells the story of modern Is-
rael from the viewpoint of an Arab
narrator. Although critics have
complained that the book is overly
sympathetic to Jews and hostile to
Arabs, readers will be propelled
by the story itself.
The High Walls of Jerusalem
(Holt, Rinehart and Winston), by
Ronald Sanders deals with the
Balfour Declaration and the be-
ginnings of the British Mandate.
The book is well written, and al-
though it covers familiar ground,
fascinating because the known in-
formation is refreshingly told and
supplemented by new facts.
An Interrupted Life: The
Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-
1943 (Pantheon) is an absorbing
account of a life robbed by the
Nazis. It differs from Anne
Frank's account of the Holocaust
in that Hillesum describes an
adult's life and one that is sepa-
rated from Jewish identity.
Amos Oz recorded the feelings
of his fellow countrymen in Israel
for In the Land oflsrael (Harcourt,
Brace, Jovanovich). Even readers
who disagree with the author's
views (which are liberally sprin-
kled throughout the volume) will
find the Israeli soul that is re-
vealed here highly intriguing.
Peter Gose's Israel in the Mind
of America (Knopf) examines the
150-year relationship between
the United States and the move-
ment for a Jewish state in detailed
and suspenseful fashion.
A Vanished World (Farrar,
Straus and Giroux), by Roman
Vishniac, captures the onset of
the Holocaust in some 200 photo-
graphs taken by Vishniac be-
tween 1934 and 1939. The volume
includes an introduction by Elie
Wiesel.
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