Review by Choice Review
A scholar of the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic thought, Zornberg provides a biography of the biblical Moses. She mediates Moses's biography through rabbinic readings and supplements those rabbinic interpretations with citations from contemporary literature and philosophy. Arguing that Moses struggled to articulate his own subjectivity throughout his life, the author examines Moses's ambiguous cultural identity as Egyptian and Jewish; his inarticulate verbal skills in response to God's call; his breaking of the tablets of the Torah in response to Israel's idolatry; his veiled mediation of the divine present to Israel; his traumatic relationships with his family; and, ultimately, the pain of his exclusion from entering the promised land. In Deuteronomy, Moses finally articulates a "complex I" through whom he creates his own autobiographical account. Even so, Moses ends his life in tears, as he wrote his own death before dying. Presenting a very human Moses, this book will be particularly valuable for students of contemporary Judaism. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; professionals; general readers. --John W. Wright, Point Loma Nazarene University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
"MOSES FAILS TO ENTER Canaan, not because his life is too short, but because it is a human life." So read Franz Kafka's diary entry on Oct. 19, 1921. The subtitle of Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg's new biography of Moses, "A Human Life," is a tribute to Kafka. By casting her psychological portrait of the prophet under the auspices of the Prague writer, Zornberg ushers the reader into the sinuous, metaphysical angst of a man facing the divine and the elusive meaning of life. A celebrated biblical scholar, keen on weaving together traditional Jewish exegesis, psychoanalysis and postmodern criticism, Zornberg always displays minute attention to the psychological subtext of the Scriptures. Her previous work, "Bewilderments," had already captured Moses in the desert, ridden by skepticism. Expanding her inquiry to his whole existence in this current book, she shows how Moses' flaws and shortcomings function as a metaphor for humanity as he confronts God's will and struggles to convey his word. Moses is a stammering leader whom God prevented from entering the Promised Land. When he glimpses that place of milk and honey shortly before his death, it only emphasizes the incompleteness of his life's work. Since the Jewish tradition holds Moses to be the author of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, and even more specifically of the fourth book, Numbers, Zornberg claims to find autobiography in the biblical text. She conjures up the world of Moses as an adopted infant, his origins cloaked in silence, a Hebrew raised at the Egyptian court whose identity was revealed to him only as an adult. Zornberg sees these beginnings as the reason for his "fragmented state of being." It is the lot of prophets to accept their task reluctantly - it is even more accurate for Moses, whose own identity as a Hebrew was fraught with uncertainty and who, as a result, could never act as a natural leader. Zornberg's central and boldest proposition is that Moses was "born into a world of genocide" and unconsciously "nurtured in fear." She posits him as a survivor and examines his life in the light of abundant scholarship on memory and trauma studies. Her use of the term genocide - coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944 - might be questionable or anachronistic, yet Zornberg builds on this comparison to offer an insightful dialogue between Moses, "heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue," and the poet Paul Celan. Celan's post-Holocaust poetry tests the limit of what can be uttered, of what it means to be a witness in the wake of the catastrophe. Certain things cannot be articulated. Both the divine and the disaster exceed our faculty of representation. In "Moses," Zornberg captures a man and prophet of melancholy. This distinct pensiveness is, in the words of another post-Holocaust writer, W. G. Sebald, "the realization of the impossibility of salvation." Moses is, in fact, the scribe of an interminable mourning. BRINGING TOGETHER COPIOUS, diverse and sometimes dissonant references (spanning Hasidic masters, George Eliot, Zizek and Beckett, among others), Zornberg gives a new tour of the life of Moses. However, she may amalgamate a bit too far, as she herself seems to imply when she quotes the philosopher Stanley Cavell: "To attribute the origin of my thoughts simply to the other, thoughts which are then, as it were, implanted in me . . . is idolatry." And as she herself claims, "The hazard of idolatry is the wish to have an object perfectly adjusted to our needs." The failure of the book is also its success: It could be no such object. CLÉMENCE BOULOUQUE is an assistant professor of Jewish studies at Columbia University and a novelist and essayist in France.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 10, 2017]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this slim volume, acclaimed scholar and lecturer Zornberg (Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers) offers another richly textured and nuanced biblical study. Early on she sets an academic tone, writing of Moses that "he exists in a metonymic relation to the relation to the people who are, at first, both his and not his." That kind of language will be a barrier to some, but those who persist will find Zornberg's illuminating use of both midrash and literary sources, such as George Eliot's Daniel Deronda and W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz, worth the effort. She gives her commentary immediacy not usually found in similar titles by opening with an anecdote about her affecting experience during a rabbinical retreat, where she envisioned Moses pleading with God to allow him to enter the promised land. That blend of the personal and scholarly supports her ultimate argument about the biblical figure's enduring significance: "Veiled and unveiled, he remains lodged in the Jewish imagination where in his uncompleted humanity he comes to represent the yet-unattained but attainable messianic future." For those wishing to engage the legacy of Moses more deeply, this is a must-read. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Widely published Torah scholar Zornberg (The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious) continues here her method of reading and interpreting biblical texts through an amalgam of literary theory, psychoanalysis, midrash, and the arts, with a perspective on biblical leader and lawgiver Moses. As with her previous works, this is not for the faint of heart. Zornberg does not so much tell a story as weave a complex web of signifiers that are intended to augment the brevity of biblical narrative with the nuance, spirituality, and psychological insight that she argues is missing from the text. For instance, speaking of Moses's prophetic voice, she writes, "The murmuring deep gives voice to those chinks in the carapace of meaning," a sentence that demands reflection as well as the energy to challenge all that is behind it. Ultimately, Zornberg concludes that Moses is for her "the quintessential voice of Israel," simultaneously personal and transcendent. VERDICT A thoughtful work that is worth the effort for spiritually erudite and patient readers.-SC © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A unique examination of Moses.In her latest book, National Jewish Book Award winner Zornberg (Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, 2015, etc.) presents a rich, erudite study of Moses. This is a true readers biography, drawing on a full range of commentators and writers, including the great ancient rabbis, more modern scholars and philosophers, and secular writers ranging from George Eliot to W.G. Sebald. The author seeks to find the human Moses behind the great biblical legend; this is not the same as seeking a historical Moses but instead, a discovery of the humanity behind the great leader of Israel. To do so, Zornberg painstakingly excavates seemingly familiar passages for hidden nuances and signs of Moses own trials. She finds, among other things, a man of two cultures and two peoples yet comfortable in and accepted by neither. She finds a man lacking the confidence to address his people directly yet willing to make demands and complaints to God himself. She finds a man who encounters his people both veiled, and thus cryptic and unknowable, and also unveiled as a vulnerable leader. Finally, she finds in Moses a man who wrote his own story. What we know of Moses we know through the books of Moses. He is his own biographer. With the help of the many thinkers Zornberg cites, readers are introduced to nuanced yet eye-opening new views and interpretations of otherwise familiar texts. For instance, at the Burning Bush, God tells Moses, they will listen to your voice, but Moses eventually argues, they will not listen to my voice. God then delegates Aaron to do the speaking, but Zornberg asks if Gods plans might have been more readily fulfilled had Moses himself believed in the promise and spoken for God as originally planned. A meaty, worthwhile biography by a great interpreter of Jewish texts. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
