The Jews and the Irrational

By: Morris Berman

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Shver tsu zayn a yid, goes an old Yiddish saying: It’s hard to be a Jew. In this surprising collection of essays, Morris Berman examines Jewish history and identity from a variety of angles, trying to figure out what is distinctive about Jewishness, and Judaism. He begins by exploring Canaanite culture, the matrix out of which Yahwism, the original faith of the Israelites, originally emerged. The core conflict was between Yahweh and Baal, the Canaanite god of fertility and storms, and which, he argues, was ultimately between two principles and interpretations of life—a conflict which, in various forms, is still with us today. Skipping ahead a few millennia, Berman goes on to examine the horrendous war in Gaza, and the role of Zionism in the destruction of the Palestinian people. In two final essays, he surveys the modern legacy of Jewish artists and writers, from Franz Kafka to Woody Allen and beyond, and the Americanization of the Jewish people as they emigrated from the shtetls of Eastern Europe first to the Lower East Side and then to the suburbs of Skokie and Scarsdale. In conclusion, he ponders what might be the basis of Jewish identity in the twenty-first century, and what role the historical contribution of the Jews might play in sorting out that question.

Morris Berman is a poet, novelist, essayist, social critic, and cultural historian. He has written twenty-two books and nearly 200 articles, and has taught at a number of universities in Europe, North America, Chile, and Mexico. He won the Governor’s Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, and was the first recipient of the annual Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992. In 2000, The Twilight of American Culture was named a “Notable Book” by the New York Times Book Review, and in 2013 he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity from the Media Ecology Association. Dr. Berman lives in Mexico.