Simple Words

Rabbi Steinsaltz, the impetus behind the monumental Steinsaltz Talmud (a translation of that work into English) and author of Biblical Images (1984) and many other works, offers meditations on the "simple words and notions . . . we use [that] contain very complex ideas": nature, friends, family, God, etc. The essays are a mixed bag, some stale, some spiked with indisputable insight. In "Sex," Steinsaltz forcefully argues that to imbue lovemaking with questions of ownership is a distortion; leave ownership for food and money, says Steinsaltz, but focus on giving when you're in bed with your lover. And yet Steinsaltz's reflections on love are particularly unsatisfying. He defines love as a feeling, "the emotion of attraction toward an object—the beloved," rather than a choice, a commitment, a mode of living toward one's beloved. The reader is left wondering what Steinsaltz would suggest for those moments when the feeling has evaporated, replaced only by annoyance that our beloved bought the wrong brand of o.j. It is tempting to describe Simple Words as a Jewish version of Kathleen Norris's Amazing Grace, but there is little in these pages that is explicitly Jewish. Parsed another way: unlike Steinsaltz's earlier forays into Jewish mysticism or the Talmud, Simple Words should enjoy a wide, diverse readership. Nonetheless, it is food for thought that one of Israel's most revered rabbis has written a collection of essays in many ways indistinguishable from the musings of a Benedictine oblate. (Author tour)