Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) April 27, 2024: I recently read Pope Francis' accessible new book A Good Life: 15 Essential Habits for Living with Hope and Joy, translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky (Worth Publishing/ Hachette Book Group, 2024; orig. Italian ed., 2021). In the pope's new 2024 book, he addresses young Catholics.
I reviewed it in my short OEN article "Pope Francis on a Good Catholic Life" (dated April 25, 2024):
Now, Rabbi Shai Held (born in 1971; ordination, Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, 1999; Ph.D., Harvard University, 2010) hopes that his massively researched new 2024 book Judaism Is About Love: Recovering the Heart of Jewish Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) "will change your perception of what's possible and required in living a good life" (p. 19).
Rabbi Held is the president and dean of the Hador Institute in New York City. But he and his wife "for more than sixteen years now" (p. 522), Rachel Forster Held, and their three children live in White Plains, New York.
Rabbi Held is also the author of the 2013 book Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call to Transcendence (Indian University Press).
Now, also in the "Introduction" (pp. 3-19), Rabbi Held says that "Centuries of Christian anti-Judaism have profoundly distorted the way Judaism is seen and understood, even, tragically, by many - probably most - Jews" (p. 3). He also notes that Christian thinkers "created a 'theological discourse about the supersession of a loveless Judaism by a loving Christianity" (p. 4).
"Along the same lines, we are told that whereas the god of the New Testament is a God of love and mercy and grace, the God of what Christians refer to as 'the Old Testament' - that is, the Hebrew Bible - is angry, vindictive, and bloodthirsty. This idea, an enduring legacy of anti-Judaism, tends to be treated as an unquestioned commonplace in our culture" (p. 4).
But Rabbi Held intends to question this "unquestioned commonplace."
In addition, in Rabbi Held's "Introduction" in his massively researched new 2024 book, he includes a subsection titled "Judaism Is Not Christianity" (pp. 13-15). In it, he says, "As religions of love, Judaism and Christianity have much in common. But it's crucial to emphasize: Judaism is not Christianity avant la letter. There are obviously foundational theological disagreements between the two traditions. To encapsulate two thousand years of theological debate in one sentence, Jews reject the idea that God is a trinity and the notion that God became incarnate in a human being: And, living in a thoroughly unredeemed world, Jews insist that the messiah has not yet come. But even where love itself is concerned, there are essential differences between Judaism and Christianity" (pp. 13-14).
Of course, you do not have to interpret the historical Jesus as God become incarnate or as the Messiah to see him as a Jewish prophet - and as a talented storyteller.
Now, in Rabbi Held's "Introduction" in his massively researched new 2024 book, he has another subsection titled "Quoting and Interpreting: What Jews Do" (pp. 16-18). In it, he says, "Traditions do not interpret themselves" (p. 17). Rabbi Held undertakes to interpret the Jewish tradition of thought.
Now, the medieval Rabbi Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon, 1138-1204; also known by the Hebrew acronym as Rambam) famously interpreted the Jewish tradition of thought in The Guide for the Perplexed.
If you are perplexed by the Jewish tradition of thought, perhaps you could see Rabbi Held's carefully nuanced new 2024 book as a new guide for the perplexed today.
Now, here is how Rabbi Held proceeds to question the Jewish tradition of thought in his carefully nuanced new 2024 book Judaism Is About Love:
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