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Dennis Gura

Dennis Gura

Jews in the Nazis’ Ranks

\”Hitler\’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and the Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military\” by Bryan Mark Rigg (University Press of Kansas, $29.95).

Bryan Mark Rigg\’s most controversial assertion is \”Hitler\’s Jewish Soldiers\’\” least relevant matter. In a complicated opening chapter, he claims that 150,000 individuals (almost exclusively male) served in the German military who were, by Nazi racial standards and laws, Jews of some quantity. By his calculations, perhaps as many as 6,000 \”full\” Jews (with four Jewish grandparents) were in the Wehrmacht — but the greater number comes, of course, from the highly assimilated, aggressively nationalistic, and thoroughly acculturated \”quarter\” and \”half\” Jews, those with one or two Jewish grandparents, respectively. (The mathematics is darkly amusing: two half-Jewish parents make up one half-Jewish child.)

Rabbis and Ravioli

Years ago, UCLA visiting professor Luisa Del Giudice discovered she was more interested in the way ordinary people remembered their past than the way writers and academics recorded formal history.

In pursuit of that interest, she founded the Italian Oral History Institute (IOHI), a project dedicated to documenting the groups typically unacknowledged in Italian life and history. This year, the IOHI presents \”Italian Jews: Memory, Music, Celebration,\” a far-ranging survey of Italian Jewish life including music, food, cinema, history and language. The Jewish presence — and now absence — in the Italian landscape, in the small towns and large cities, inspires a new generation of both Italian and American scholars.

The Failed Intellectuals

Fouad Ajami\’s \”Dream Palace of the Arabs\” lacks Benda\’s harshness and polemics, but illustrates how fragile and tenuous are the intellectuals\’ claims on political life.

The Poetry of Lamentations

\”The Book of Lamentations: A Meditation and Translation\” by David R. Slavitt (Johns Hopkins University Press. $15.95).

David R. Slavitt\’s new translation of Eicha (Lamentations) demonstrates his masterful sensibilities and poetic fortitude. Avoiding the abstract and distant language typical of academic poetry, Slavitt\’s poetry and translations are accessible to the common reader, but written without compromise.

Judaism Through Adversity

\”A Letter in the Scroll: Understanding Our Jewish Identity and Exploring the Legacy of the World\’s Oldest Religion\” by Jonathan Sacks. (The Free Press, $25.)

Gently, gracefully, thoughtfully, Jonathan Sacks unfolds an emotionally compelling argument for Jews to reclaim and engage with traditional faith, traditional texts and traditional acts. Wisely, he eschews philosophic reasonings: Jews teach by words, with words, through stories, songs, psalm, exegesis. Logically constructed arguments cannot convince one of religious veracity nor demonstrate a revealed truth.

Feast and Help Yourself

\”Finding Each Other in Judaism: Meditations on the Rites of Passage From Birth to Immortality\” by Harold M. Schulweis. (UAHC Press, $12.95)

\”Finding Each Other in Judaism\” distills decades of those quiet, private moments when a curious, wounded or concerned congregant asks the rabbi: \”What do I do now?\”

California Jews

The 1904 construction of Sherith Israel\’s dramatic window, a survivor of the great 1906 earthquake, brought Moses and Mosaic law west.

A Father’s Loss

Against the Dying of the Light: A Father\’s Journey through Loss\” by Leonard Fein (Jewish Lights Publishing, $19.95)

Divine Love Diluted

James Carroll loves the Roman Catholic Church. Unfortunately, the church he loves isn\’t the church he has. Carroll yearns for that short, winsome time when he was ennobled by liberation theology, Vatican II and his bold opposition to the war in Vietnam. But the hopes of that moment faded away as first Pope Paul VI and, later, Pope John Paul II extinguished John XXIII\’s reformist platform.

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