This new edition of As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg, which has captivated generations of readers since it was first published in 1939, includes a foreword by award-winning author Dara Horn.
With a New Foreword by Dara Horn
Read it again for the very first time.
In a powerful foreword that considers the events of October 7, acclaimed writer Dara Horn invites us to look beyond the theme of assimilation vs traditionalism and read As A Driven Leaf now to explore the challenge of maintaining a distinct Jewish culture while engaging with an outside world that is too often bent on conquest.
Like Rabbi David Wolpe and Chaim Potok, the foreword authors for previous editions of this enduring classic, Horn views the novel's themes through the lens of contemporary experience, offering interpretations and insights for a whole new generation of readers while inviting a refreshing reread by those for whom it is already beloved. All three forewords, as well as two discussion guides and a note from the publisher, are included in this updated version.
A literary masterpiece, As A Driven Leaf is still regarded as a major influence on contemporary Jewish life and thought. Its gripping tale of renegade Talmudic sage Elisha Ben Abuyah's struggle to reconcile his faith with the allure of Hellenic culture during the Rabbinic age in Roman Palestine transcends its historical setting with its depiction of a timeless, perennial feature of the Jewish experience: the inevitable conflict between the call of tradition and the glamour of the surrounding culture.
As a Driven Leaf is an ideal selection for adult education classes and as recommended reading for congregational lay leadership.
“An extraordinary historical novel…” —Joseph Epstein, The Wall Street Journal
"The extraordinary success of The Nazarene will in a sense pave the way for this book, which also has a Palestinian setting, and a religious motive. The period is later -- the early second century -- and the story deals with Elisha ben Abuyah, Jewish rabbi, a dissenter whose life was torn by internal struggles towards faith. It is a book which should appeal to the market of Lion Feuchtwanger's The Jew of Rome, for Elisha ben Abuyah was virtually another Josephus, betraying his people to the Romans, despised by both sides. A childhood under Hellenistic influence; an adolescence and early youth under strict Jewish teachers, a marriage without love, and the beginning of a lifelong attempt to rationalize his beliefs. The story of a failure, of the ultimate discovery that Faith is essential to Life, and that not all elements can be fitted into the pattern of Euclid, that reason alone cannot control life. Semi-historical, semi-biographical, but written as fiction, with whole periods -- unknown to historians -- filled in. Not a book for the average reader, but a book that those interested in far off periods of history which have their parallels today, and in the search for a faith as a motive of life, will find interesting and challenging."—Kirkus ReviewsJan. 29, 1940
“Perhaps so completely frustrated a life has never before been presented in fiction. Sheer beauty!” —Christian Herald
"Fresh and exciting...Its people are as vibrant as the jostling shopping crowds in the Loop." —Chicago Tribune
Milton Steinberg, a great American rabbi and writer, served as the rabbi of the prestigious Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City from 1933 until his early passing in 1950. Steinberg became renowned for his thought-provoking sermons that combined contemporary philosophical ideas with insights into traditional Jewish texts.In addition to his widely popular novel As a Driven Leaf, Steinberg published The Making of the Modern Jew, A Partisan Guide to the Jewish Problem, and Basic Judaism. He also wrote a series of theological essays before his passing. His unfinished second novel, The Prophet’s Wife, was published posthumously in 2010.Dara Horn is the award-winning author of five novels about Jewish culture—In the Image, The World to Come, All Other Nights, A Guide for the Perplexed, and Eternal Life—as well as the essay collection People Love Dead Jews, and the Passover-themed graphic novel, One Little Goat. She currently lives in New Jersey. Rabbi David Wolpe is an author and lecturer and the Emeritus Rabbi of Sinai Temple. He has been listed as one the most influential rabbis in America by Newsweek, The Forward, and The Jerusalem Post. Wolpe’s column “Musings”, appears weekly in The Jewish Week. He lives in California. Rabbi Chaim Potok was an award-winning author, novelist, playwright, and editor. His first book, The Chosen, was a New York Times bestseller and was later adapted into a film of the same name in 1981. Before he died in 2002, he lived in Merion Station, Pennslyvania.
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