Creating Judaism Book

This is a history of Jewish theology, so there's a fair bit of philosophy and theology in addition to the history of the development of Jewish practices.

I personally gained a lot from this book, although it is very compact and packs a lot of information, it was a good, broad history from roughly the time of the second temple to the present.

Because of its brevity on most of the topics covered the book doesn't introduce characters or movements at length, and sometimes not at all. Most of this wasn't a problem for me since I was already familiar with the topics under discussion, but when I wasn't, I felt this lack very acutely. For example, when he mentions that the thrust of Abraham Geiger's scholarship was to show "in a manner consistent with the conclusions of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement that the Mishnah and Talmud were historically contingent, not simple and timeless statements of the divine will", without telling me anything about the movement. And although he does get back to explaining the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement four pages later, you get a little bit of a mishmash feeling.

I did come to appreciate the context within which R' Akiva and others of his generation hated Talmidei Chachomim. This is something I had never understood but learning that people who devoted their lives to studying and expositing on the Torah was a new phenomenon - shortly after priests and prophets fell out of power - this finally made sense.

I also understood why, whenever I would ask, in the yeshiva setting, for explanations as to why Torah learning was the purpose of life, I would be directed to Nefesh Hachaim and nothing earlier. That is something that had always been suspicious to me, now my suspicions were confirmed.

While I doubt that this is unique to Satlow, I did wonder about the idea of seeing all developments in Jewish theology through the lens of their local Christian or Muslim settings. While this makes sense and certainly rings true, it sounds as if the Jews were passive receivers of local culture and ideas and you have to wonder; isn't it likely that the Jews also contributed to their surroundings? And, who was influencing Muslim and Christian academia?

The epilogue is a very interesting read. In it Satlow, who is religious, basically begs the reader to not take the history he has just learned as an excuse to "throw out the baby with the bathwater"! Rather, s/he should see Judaism in all its diverse glory, as a timeless expression of human thought into timeless issues. A very short but interesting defense of religion.

I have to mention that I found a few typos, not many, but a few and that surprised me seeing that this book is published by Columbia University Press.