The Jewish War

By Tova Reich

Book Overview

It is sometime in the near future, and the Israeli Army is about to descend upon a band of militant settlers who have proclaimed the secessionist Kingdom of Judea and Samaria. So begins this timely... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0815604521
• ISBN13: 9780815604525
• Release Date: March 1997
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Fiction on a High Wire

As in most of her other works, Tova Reich has much to say about Jewish Messianic movements in The Jewish War; for the most part, she shows the horrible outcome when Jews try to bring about the redemption themselves, revealing her knowledge of Jewish history, with its failed Messiahs like Sabbatai Zevi and Jacob Frank. But she adds more modern concerns about cults and their charismatic leaders, making the mass suicide at the end, with shades of Jonestown, all the more plausible. As readers of Reich's fiction know she also brings in characters from previous works, here particularly from The Master of the Return. And as in all of her works (with the exception of My Holocaust) Reich balances satire and pathos like a woman on a high wire.

Portrait of spiritual futility

The other reviewers' notes on this book's humor notwithstanding, do not expect to laugh out loud, IMHO. Although Reich valiantly attempts to convey an important story through humor, her approach ultimately fails to make good on the best outcome of humor: to take us out of our limited perspectives and connect us to deeper meaning. The book does convey the deep emptiness of fundamentalist thinking and its spiritual depletion. Unfortunately, unless you can follow Reich's path closely, the novel itself has that feel by the end, not having created any larger framework of meaning around the profound futility of what is described.

brilliant satire

This is as provocative and timely a book as it was when it appeared in the middle of the last decade. Achingly funny and profund, it goes far to delineate the psychology and religious doctrine that guides Jewish fundamentalists. It is rare to encounter a book so funny that never diminishes the complexity it aspires to portray. Reich is a magnificient writer and a very sharp thinker.