Cynthia Ozick’s Very Jewish Appreciation of Literary Critics

In her recently published collection, Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, & Other Literary Essays, Cynthia Ozick’s overarching concern is literature itself, its value, and those who interpret it. Dara Horn detects a distinctly Jewish flavor in Ozick’s approach to these matters:

While she doesn’t quite spell it out here, Ozick’s idea of criticism being essential to literature is itself a claim with its oldest roots in Torah study. In a passage in Deuteronomy that directly denies the rhapsodic or incantatory power of scripture, Moses informs the Israelites that the Torah “is not in heaven, . . . neither is it beyond the sea. . . . No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart.”

The rabbis later understood this passage to mean that interpreting Torah was itself an indispensable component of Torah, that God—or a Hellenistic-style muse—is not going to show up and provide an answer to the text’s many questions. Therefore, careful readers are obligated not merely to read, but to consider, compare, situate, interpret. In other words: without critics, incoherence.

And this bring us to the central Jewish idea that drives this book, along with so much else Cynthia Ozick has given us, which at last explains her enduring fascination with fame: without critical reading, no eternal life. The blessings recited at public Torah readings announce that the book itself, rather than some mystical promises, is “eternal life planted in our midst,” the Tree of Life that had been walled off in Eden returned to us—not God, a prophet, or an artist, but as a book.

Read more at Jewish Review of Books

More about: Arts & Culture, Cynthia Ozick, Jewish literature, Literary criticism

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF