As A Driven Leaf

As a Driven Leaf

This book is a marvelous period piece set in the late 1st century in Palestine. The author takes a rabbinical figure (Elisha ben Yehuda)who was excommunicated, and creates a narrative that describes how this person possibly became disillusioned. There's some fascinating philosophical discussions that contrasts the Jewish point of view with Greek thought. Although the writing may not be at a great literary level, I thought the author told a compelling story.

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Elisha ben Abuya does not do Teshuvah

Ihad heard so much about this book that I thought it would be a work of great spiritual inspiration.I thought it would question the Tradition in the deepest way in order to affirm it. To my surprise the spirit of the heretic pervades and overwhelms the book. The life is long and interesting to a point. Then somewhere along the way it seems much of the same, and without real inspiration and faith . I too had thought there would be much more Jewish learning in the book than there is .Still it is a very readable story.

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Not the book I hoped for

Iwanted to love this work as I had been told so much about it. I wanted to understand in a deeper way the questioning soul of Elisha ben Abuya, and the arguments by which his friends and contemporaries would prove him wrong. I was swept up by the book in the beginning. A good read. But it never really turned in the way I hoped, and did not become the passionate defense of the Jewish faith I expected. It seemed to me instead to disintegrate into a kind of ' speculative fiction' about realities of no real central importance to the Jewish living of the good life.

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A Troubled Soul

This book gives the reader a good historical perspective of Rabbibic Judaism during the time Rome ruled Palestine. The author does a good job of drawing the reader into both the internal and external struggles Elisha the sage encounters when he abandons his faith, and spends a tragic life attempting to replace faith with scientific and philosophical reason.

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makes talmudic figures come to life

This is the tragic and disturbing story of Elisha son of Abuya, a great sage turned heretic. The author portrays the rabbis of the talmud as real people. One comes away with a picture of Akiva, Joshua, Eliezer, Meir, Gamliel and Beruria. One also gains a picture of the political and intellectual challenges for Jews in Roman Palestine. This alone makes it worthwhile reading. If you study Talmud but can't seem to get a clear picture in your head of what sort of situation these rabbis were living in, this is a good book to read.

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An Insightful Look into the Soul of Doubt

Although this tale is somewhat wooden in execution and its characters never come fully to life, and while the thrust of the tale, itself, is an intellectual rather than a visceral one, I was greatly moved by it. There is a tradition in the Talmud that four great sages sought to go beyond the realm of man's knowledge. One died. One went insane. One became a heretic. And only the great Akiba came out of it whole, only to be tortured to death by the Romans in the aftermath of the third abortive rebellion against the Empire. Well, Elisha ben Abuyah, the central character of this tale, is the one who became a heretic. He is recalled in the Talmud as a member of the Rabbinate who forsook his faith and people for the Greek way, thereby condemning himself, in life and memory, to excommunication and the label of heretic. This tale attempts to visualize what might have driven such a man and where it would have taken him in the end. The actions of the story are really quite commonplace until one gets to the final Roman war against the Jews in Palestine. But even these events are seen only from a distance. The real crux of this tale is the seeking and the life-events which might have underlay the tale of Elisha and help explain why he did what he did. His is the tale of the child of a Hellenized father, wrested at his father's death from the larger, intellectual Greek world and shoe-horned into a realm of orthodoxy in keeping with the narrow prejudices of his deceased mother's brother. His Greek learning aborted, Elisha becomes an enthusiastic student of his people's traditions rising, in time, to membership in the revered Sanhedrin. But the Greek seeds (or something else) have been planted and in time take root, pushing out the superimposed shrubbery of orthodxy. And Elisha begins to doubt and question. Unable to reconcile his restless questioning to the blind teachings of orthodxy, he seeks wider knowledge, causing a rift with the community of the orthodox. Driven into exile in Antioch he begins a life of study and inquiry, trying always to use his reason to erect an edifice in which he can wholeheartedly believe. But events catch up with him even as his understanding increases. There is a very fine rendering here of that process by which we try to understand the underpinnings of the world in which we exist and one sees clearly the metaphysical problems and Elisha's burden in grappling with them. He does seem a bit simple at times and one can't help thinking that this, in some sense, is the author's own tale, writ into a fable about a first century Jew in the Roman world. But it's all very compelling and, at times, riveting, especially as it captures the hellenistic world and its thought. But it's a book of ideas rather than people -- ideas which tear at all of us in the end.

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