DAVID C. JACOBSON, Does David Still Play Before You? Israeli Poetry and the Bible (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997). Pp. 283. $34.95.

Extract

David Jacobson's 1997 study, written in the early 1990s, was completed before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. In his author's note, he states that “if I had not completed the manuscript before the assassination, I would have referred to it in parts of the book that deal with this theme”—the chapter on the Arab–Israeli conflict and the section on secular Israelis and religious faith. Although the author cannot be faulted for the intrusions of history into scholarly inquiry, one wonders whether today's reader might not agree with his assertion that Rabin's murder is “not representative of mainstream trends in religious Jewish thinking in Israel”. Many observers of contemporary Israel would disagree.