Book of Legends/Sefer Ha-Aggadah: Legends from the Talmud and Midrash Review

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(More customer reviews)One of the other reviewers on this website makes the bizarre and incorrect assertation that it is wrong to study aggadah (the non-legal sections of rabbinic works) without first mastering Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism). This is ignorance of the highest order. Even if one were to adopt fundamentalist Orthodox Judaism, that comment is still wrong. In fact, orthodox Judaism explicitly teaches that one should astudy aggadah first, and then only learn Kabbalah after one is at least 40 years old.
Further, the previous reviewer incorrectly charged the editors with falsely mistranslation passages in order to please a certain point of view. This is pure fiction.
The fact is that the Jewish tradition has always held the aggadah in the highest esteem, and it is only among the post-16th century Ashkenazi Orthodox that we find it reduced to the pathetic state that is has been in. Fortunately, the editors of this compilation come to the resuce by presenting all the classic aggadic passages from the Mishna, both of the Talmuds (Yerushalmi and Bavli), and most of the major midrash compilations.
I cannot overemphasize the ease of use; any English speaker will find it extremely easy to look up any aggadic passage based on subject or verse. further, it is comprehensive beyond anything that I couldhave wished for. if you are secular, or religious Jew, this book is for you. If you a Reform Conservative or Modern Orthodox Jew, it is for you. If you are a gentile who wants to learn about Judaism, this is for you.
However, as the above reviewer demonstrates, if you are an uneducated religious fundamentalist, this book may not be to your liking.

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The Fruit of Her Hands: The Story of Shira of Ashkenaz Review

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(More customer reviews)Michelle Cameron's THE FRUIT OF HER HANDS tells the surprisingly fascinating story of Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg, Germany, the greatest Talmudic scholar of the 13th century, as seen through the eyes of his wife and soulmate, Shira.
The recorded history of Rabbi Meir, who is Cameron's ancestor, says nothing about his family other than he had a son, Suesskind, and several unnamed daughters. But Cameron reasoned that such a remarkable man would have had an equally remarkable wife, and so she invents Shira, the only daughter of a widowed French rabbi with a thirst for learning and a mind of her own.
The novel deftly weaves Meir and Shira into some of the darkest chapters of medieval Jewish history: The Paris disputation (trial) and mass burning of the Talmud in 1240-42, the blood libel of Little St. Hugh of Lincoln in 1255, and King Rudolph I's decision in 1286 to enslave the Jews of Germany, which forced Meir to flee to Palestine, only to be captured en route and imprisoned for ransom.
Meir and Shira also become entangled, politically and personally, with the villainous Nicholas Donin, a radical Jewish scholar who is rejected as a suitor for Shira's hand, excommunicated by the Chief Rabbi of Paris, and eventually becomes a Franciscan monk. Donin takes his revenge by convincing Pope Gregory IX to condemn the Talmud for blasphemy and King Louis IX of France to confiscate and burn 12,000 copies in Paris.
Cameron stays true to history and does not inflate Shira's role unduly. She is no proto-feminist or free-thinking firebrand, but rather an obedient daughter, a loving wife, and a restrained (if highly intelligent) observer of events whose greatest concern is keeping her family safe. Her greatest enemy after Nicholas Donin is her hypercritical mother-in-law.
Even so, Meir and Shira's struggle to survive and even thrive in an increasingly anti-Semitic Europe, the wealth of detail about Jewish life 700 years ago, the illuminating snippets of Talmudic wisdom and Jewish poetry, and Cameron's clean and lyrical writing make THE FRUIT OF HER HANDS a marvelous read and a remarkable achievement for a first-time novelist.

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