How Jewish is Jewish History? Book

Rosman's How Jewish Is Jewish History first and foremost is a challenge to essentialist historiographies of Judaism. As someone who doesn't buy fully into the triumph of the postmodern critique over the validity of truth-claims but does take its concerns quite seriously, his perspective is somewhat refreshing. Neither a reactionary nor a member of the choir, his survey of relevant theories and the attempts to integrate them into Jewish Studies is an earnest account of his own making sense of how to do historiography today. I hope that later editions of his Founder of Hasidism will include an introduction that attempts to situate the research therein within the context of this book's concluding argument.

I can comfortably recommend How Jewish... to those with an interest in historiography in general or in Jewish Studies specifically. It might also be a helpful resource to individuals of faith who take the problematization of grand narrative seriously but don't see this as a hopeless situation by any means for religious traditions, for those who are wrestling with concerns about the challenge to grand narrative and for those seeking to infuse their own religious identity and praxis with an awareness of contemporary theoretical concerns.