God was the first Lover of words, but Jews were a close second

Jews and Words by Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, ISBN 978-0-300-15647-8 ©2012, $25.99, p. 204, plus source listing and index

By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.

WINCHESTER, California — The Hebrew Bible announces that God created the heaven and the earth. How did God form them? Through the spoken word, which appear in the Book of Genesis as the expression, “And God said….” Renowned author Amos Oz and his daughter, history professor and writer, Fania Oz-Salzberger in their joint venture Jews and Words explore what they believe to be the inexorable links between words and Jews. As secular Israeli Jews, Oz and Oz-Salzberger have no preconceived notions about biblical truths, allowing them to assess the historical record through dispassionate eyes, interpreting words and thoughts in context and assigning them, if necessary, to the Jewish collective memory and mythology, as well as judging their impact on the Jewish people.

For them, words spell the difference (no pun intended) between Jewish survival and Jewish extinction. Jews and Words is a fascinating essay with numerous digressions, showing that more than the Jews have kept the holy books, the holy books have kept the Jews. Words, even when they make up poems and prose, are sacred to the Jews, and Jews and Words considers the import of secular writings on modern Jewish thought.

The Bible, Talmud, and post-rabbinic literature have predominantly male voices, which drown out the female words. Oz and Oz-Salzberger have an entire chapter that examines women’s roles in the word-history of the Jews. They argue that the biblical book The Song of Songs is not written by King Solomon, as proposed by Jewish tradition, but rather by one of his consorts. The authors also maintain that women’s voices can be extraordinary: Miriam singing at the Red Sea, Ruth speaking with her mother-in-law, Queen Esther pleading before the king, the daughters of Zelophehad petitioning Moses, Hannah praising God, and so forth. They do not stop with the Bible, but continue with the importance of the wives of the famous rabbis of the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods and into modern times and the changing portrait of women in Jewish literature.

Although biblical and modern Hebrew are separated by a couple of millennia, the ancient words still have meaning for many people, setting the stage for the present-day battle between creationism and natural selection, and projecting the words of the prophets into the future, particularly when they spoke of a messiah and the “end of days.” Jews and Words is a brief but thought-provoking treatise, which reminds us of the timelessness of the Hebrew language and its indelible mark on the Jewish people.
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Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. He is the author of The Standard Guide to the Jewish and Civil Calendars; Ancient Secrets of Creation: Sepher Yetzira, the Book that Started Kabbalah, Revealed; and a fiction book, Reclaiming the Messiah. The author can be reached via fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com