Burnt Books

My review of Burnt Books, a dual biography of Kafka and the Breslover rebbe by the Jubu hipster Rodger Kamenetz, is out in the February Commentary. While the book is “practically worthless,” as I conclude, it is an interesting example of what passes for religiously engaged writing by someone who is satisfied neither with the Jewish tradition nor with Jewish scholarship.

To be a fully committed Jew, a person might devote himself to the Jewish religion or he might devote himself to Jewish learning; he might even do both. A great many Americans with one or two Jewish parents dabble in this or that fraction of the whole and call it Judaism. Kamenetz is their master.