The review about this product
I have encountered Rabbi Telushkin's work before and in this (revised) text he agian brings tremendous clarity to his message. Never strident, never unkind that book is fair and balanced. The authors stand their theses on historical reactions to Jews aas a nation, as montheists, as successful, as a coheent social group. Many of the analyses are equally found in other texts but Praeger and Telushkin speak to the reader with exceptional simplicity and directness (by simplicty here, I mean unadorned jargon, not monosyllables). I have only two quibbles with the book. One is terminological and the other analytical. A fundamental thesis of the text is that anti-Zionism is a cloak for recompiled antisemitism. The authors use the term 'non-Jewish Jews' to refer to those Jews who are anti-Zionism. It is an awkward word cart and i hope the authros rethink its usage in subsequent additions. On the analytical front, the authors point out that while most Jews are not radicals, most radicals are Jews (ok, probablty stretching a statistic slightly, but only slightly). I would have liked to authors to have got 'stuck in' here and offer a detailed analysis as to why this occurs. There is some analysis along the traditional lines of Jews being somewhat on the outside and using their observer status, (which I find either suggests an exotic or even quixotic dimension to the Jewish character or else descends into just mythic waffle) It could have been plumbed more thoroughly connecting more with biblical exemplars possibly. Leaving those issues aside, the book is direct and thoughtfully free of propaganda.
