In plain, graceful language, the authors of _The Battle of the Two Talmuds_ , Leon Charney and Saul Mayzlish, bring to awareness the way Jewish belief systems developed during the Diaspora. To me, the chief virtue is the introduction of general readers to the intensely spiritual deliberations of medieval Jewry. -- although the book also considers very well the whole question of the necessity of the Jews settling in Israel.
You will learn of the writings and character of the following Jewish luminaries and thinkers: Maimonides, the Saadyah Gaon, Rav Schmuel, Rabbi Yochannan, Rashi. .
The authors focus on the comfortable, wealthy secular Jewish community in Babylonia (modern Baghdad). What were the feelings of these Jews regarding the biblical declarations and prophesies about Jews returning the the Holy Land? What similarities were there between the Babylonian scholars and those who forged their own "Jerusalem" Talmud (not written in that city, for the Romans banned Jews from it).
There are similarities between the sophistication, and secularization, of Babylon and the modern Golden Land, America.
The book is excellent in covering the whole question of active rebellion against militant authority vs. passive, and prayerful, otherworldly acceptance of injustice by its victims (the condition Ashkenazim faced for centuries). If Jerusalem is the only place God wills for Jews, what must he think of the activism, as prayerful as it may be, that results in injustices perpetrated by the founders of the Jewish state? Whatever the guilt on both sides, the violence stemmed from the establishing of a regime on another people's land (at bottom, America did the same with the Native Americans). Roth and Zangwill warned against this almost a century ago.
You will learn of the writings and character of the following Jewish luminaries and thinkers: Maimonides, the Saadyah Gaon, Rav Schmuel, Rabbi Yochannan, Rashi. .
The authors focus on the comfortable, wealthy secular Jewish community in Babylonia (modern Baghdad). What were the feelings of these Jews regarding the biblical declarations and prophesies about Jews returning the the Holy Land? What similarities were there between the Babylonian scholars and those who forged their own "Jerusalem" Talmud (not written in that city, for the Romans banned Jews from it).
There are similarities between the sophistication, and secularization, of Babylon and the modern Golden Land, America.
The book is excellent in covering the whole question of active rebellion against militant authority vs. passive, and prayerful, otherworldly acceptance of injustice by its victims (the condition Ashkenazim faced for centuries). If Jerusalem is the only place God wills for Jews, what must he think of the activism, as prayerful as it may be, that results in injustices perpetrated by the founders of the Jewish state? Whatever the guilt on both sides, the violence stemmed from the establishing of a regime on another people's land (at bottom, America did the same with the Native Americans). Roth and Zangwill warned against this almost a century ago.