Abraham Cohen (1) (1887–1957)

I took an incredibly long time to read this. I guess I have a hard time maintaining interest in books that offer a distillation of the ethical teachings of religious texts, because those teachings are largely what I would have assumed them to be from the beginning. This is a very detailed and informative work, just not one that I found very engaging to read. It did pick up toward the end with the sections on folklore and magic, jurisprudence, and eschatology, which were the subjects I was most interested in.

Cohen maintains a fine balance between scholarship and apologetics, which also puts me off a little: I don't need to be convinced that rabbinic Judaism is worthy of my respect, and I'm intrigued by many of the talmudic statements that seem to make Cohen uncomfortable. He tries to dampen many extracts that do not seem to mesh with his worldview, but to his credit he does not leave them out.

While I found this book to be a bit dull, it served as an excellent introduction to the subject. I am glad to have tackled it because I now feel ready to move on to more interesting studies on the Talmud and rabbinic Judaism.… (more)