From Jerusalem to the Edge of Heaven

by Ari Elon, Tikva Frymer-Kensky (Translator)

Overview

From Jerusalem to the Edge of Heaven fuses different media and styles to explore vastly different yet inescapably connected moments in Jewish history: the ancient Babylonian yeshivah at Pumbedita; Jerusalem, a decade after independence; and Gaza during the Intifada. In his explorations, the author re-imagines essential concepts and defining structures of Jewish history and identity in profound, and profoundly disquieting, ways. The theme of children pervades the writings - lost children, perpetual children, and one child, Alma Dee, in particular. The theme of children is highlighted as well in the illustrations, details from Pieter Breughel’s Children’s Games.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780827605251
Publisher:	The Jewish Publication Society
Publication date:	01/01/1996
Edition description:	New Edition

Editorial Reviews

Originally published as an issue of an innovative Israeli quarterly called Shemot, Elon's long, autobiographical, postmodern narrative is rooted in a great love of Jewish traditionin which everything is subjected to an endless process of "God-wrestling" and nothing is accepted at face value. Loaded with stories from the recent history of Jerusalem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this is a book about a panorama of Jerusalems both historic and mythic. Elon fills his book with huge vistas of learning and endlessly attractive word games, moving in time to important moments in the history of Jerusalem and the Jewish people. It's not a book for everyone, but it deeply rewards the effort required to read it. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Drawing on his Orthodox upbringing, his fascination with left-wing intellectualism, his university training in philosophy and theology, and his career in the army, Elon searches for meaning within the vast realm of the Judaic heritage to bring a new perspective to both the Jewish tradition and the current Israeli scene. His work draws on material previously published in the Israeli quarterly Shdemot and includes autobiographical data, Midrash, and now-dated reactions to the intifada. Elon weaves back and forth between Talmudic allusions and current events. In his explorations, he merges the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Elon centers on the theme of children as the single unifying thread binding together his disparate observations. While Frymer-Kensky's translation efforts are commendable, the layered levels of meaning that are inherent in the Hebrew textwhich has a strong overlay of Kabbala, New Age, and feminist ideasmay leave the uninitiated reader perplexed. A challenging book for specialized collections.Carol R. Glatt, VA Medical Ctr., Lib., Philadelphia

Library Journal

This debut by Elon, director of the Rabbinic Texts Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, is a haunting mixture of modes and voices.

Originally published as a special issue of the Israeli journal Shdemot (run by a unique group of left-wing kibbutz members involved in Jewish textual study), Elon's work is the product of a complex background. He was raised in an Orthodox family but embraced secular Zionism as an adult. He served in the Israeli army during the Intifada. And he is involved in an ambitious revisionist study of traditional religious texts. Part memoir, part social criticism, part religious meditation, this work is united by one theme: the battle for the soul of Israel between the rigidly Orthodox and the secular (a designation that actually includes many holding strong religious but non-Orthodox convictions). In the first section, Elon mythologizes his abandonment of Orthodox Judaism as a "mercy-killing" of God. In the second section, in which he traces the evolution of Zionism in modern Israel, he sets out a dialectical battle between the datti'im (strictly Orthodox) and hilonim (allegedly secular), arguing that the Zionist movement "must not be content with the liberation of [the Jewish] people from the gentile world, but must also strive for the internal liberation of the Jewish people." In the third section, Elon explores the very different attitudes toward holy texts taken by those absorbed in their study and by the ordinary Jew in the street. In the final section, a hypnotic recounting of his days on a rooftop observation post in the Gaza, Elon extends his meditations to encompass the tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, which he sees refracted through biblical and rabbinic texts. Often a difficult book, From Jerusalem is aided immeasurably by Frymer-Kensky's astute translation, introduction, and notes.

By turns dazzling, frustrating, enchanting, and vivid, this is a formidable first work whose timeliness is only underlined by recent events in the Middle East.

Kirkus Reviews