/ articles for review

 

The problem is that we know in some deep way that our past is essential, but we are lacking the critical tools necessary to understand our deep relationship to that past without either tearing it down or being obsessed with it.

In his new book, Kurtzer has tried to advance an almost theological approach with regard to “how Jews in the past take things historically very real to them and still craft a system where they could take what they needed from the past and leave what they didn’t need behind, in some ways transcending history… If it going to matter to Jews about the past, it has to not be about historic memory but about mythic meaning.”

“Shuva is a book of rare academic and spiritual depth. In its pages, Yehuda Kurtzer draws effortlessly and brilliantly upon Jewish and western intellectual and religious traditions to create a work of constructive Jewish thought at its best. Shuva should be read and considered by all who are interested in charting a course for a Judaism that is intellectually compelling and religiously vibrant now and in the future.” – Rabbi David Ellenson, President, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion

“Shuva is an important and provocative book that asks deep questions about identity, our shared past and the Jewish future. Yehuda Kurtzer has become an important guide to vital issues of memory and meaning.” – Rabbi David Wolpe