The Woman Who Laughed at God: the Untold Story of the Jewish People.

Jonathan Kirsch. 2001. Read by the author. Books on Tape. 9-1.5 hour tapes. 0-7366-8091-8. $64.00. Vinyl binder; content notes. JSA 

Kirsch has established himself as a prolific writer of Jewish Bible tales for modern readers--to a well-known story, add a few radical tidbits of recent scholarship, then retell it all in an easygoing style that hints at mildly titillating, hitherto suppressed secrets. Here Kirsch has extended his range to include all of post-biblical Jewish history, but he sticks to the formula. This is not "in-depth" or analytical history. Kirsch is usually condensing ideas he found in popular magazines or in significantly out-of-date, popular histories. He doesn't always appreciate the nuances of his story, nor does he know when his source has been surpassed or dismissed by more recent scholarship. But on the whole he can be forgiven, because he knows how to tell a good story.

Kirsch's book is a sustained defense of diversity within Judaism, and a polemic against rabbinically imposed uniformity and orthodoxy. In order to maintain his theme, Kirsch sometimes has to stretch his points--to confuse folk customs with theology or to equate ignorance with principled dissent. His heroes are rebels, but for him this category is pretty broad. Kirsch is nothing if not enthusiastic for the panorama of Jewish experience. He reads smoothly with only occasional mispronunciations of Hebrew words. Bernard D. Cooperman, Assoc. Prof., Univ. of MD, College Park, MD