Book Reviews

wars associated with religious causes is one of the major reasons there is only
a declaration on religious freedom rather than a covenant open to ratification
by individual nations” (15–16). Religion, all religion, Drinan acknowledges, has
a lot to answer for. Why does it deserve special legal privileges?
The finessing of the relationship between religious freedom and freedom of
conscience allows Drinan to avoid addressing this question head-on. Some of
the most absolutist statements in this book are about conscience: “Conscience
should never be violated” (231); “Each person is entitled to respect for the
basic reason that each person is unique and has a conscience” (104); “Every
nation must offer the fullest possible protection so that no individual will be
required to go against the dictates of her or his conscience” (66). Yet it seems
self-evident for many reasons, including the many injustices committed in the
name of religion, that no law can, or should, defer to each person’s con-
science. Law has its own values, values expressed in the rule of law and subject
to judicial and legislative oversight. In the past, religious traditions have at
times been a form of proxy for conscience—but in radically disestablished
pluralistic societies religious authority, and therefore conscience, is reduced to
the individual. Law arguably has no way of acknowledging “authentic” claims
of “conscience,” except through the political process.
A related troubling and unresolved tension at the heart of Drinan’s argu-
ment, as well as at the heart of the current political conversation about this
subject, is his treatment of Islam. As a general rule, Drinan is religiously in-
clusive in his rhetoric while being open about his own religious commitments
as a Jesuit priest and his liberal and expansive reading of what he understands
to be the Christian understanding of the importance of religious freedom. But,
while he finally refers on page 186 to the Qu’ranic prohibition on coercion in
matters of faith, in most of the book Islam is presented as the obstacle to the
enforcement of religious freedom, indeed as a religion that always demands
state enforcement of Shari’a, that sponsors terror, and that has a limited tol-
erance for the rights of women. Muslims are swept into a monolithic “Islam”
while other religionists have individual consciences that ought to be respected.
Ultimately what Drinan fails to acknowledge directly is the hypocrisy at the
heart of legal protection for religious freedom: you cannot call it religious
freedom if you mean only freedom for the right kind of religion.
WINNIFRED FALLERS SULLIVAN, American Bar Foundation.

MAGID, SHAUL. Hasidism on the Margin: Reconciliation, Antinomianism, and Mes-

sianism in Izbica and Radzin Hasidism. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
2003. xxvii⫹400 pp. $45.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).

In Hasidism on the Margin, Shaul Magid undertakes close readings of the pri-
mary texts of the Izbica/Radzin school of Hasidism, which emerged in Con-
gress Poland in the second half of the nineteenth century. Although modern
scholars have tended to dismiss nineteenth-century Hasidism as the pale re-
mains of what had been in the late eighteenth century a vital revivalist move-
ment, the audacious expression of antinomianism and determinism in Izbica/
Radzin Hasidism has attracted no little scholarly attention. Antinomianism and
determinism are the central concerns of Magid’s study as well, explored by
means of a novel methodology that focuses upon the hermeneutical construc-
tion of these notions. Hasidism on the Margin is a model study of how Hasidic

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masters read canonical texts and the ways in which they explore philosophical
and theological issues in exegetical frameworks.
Magid begins the work with an exploration of the concept of a “Primordial
Torah of Abraham” in the 1890 Introduction and Preface monograph written by
R. Gershon Henokh of Radzin. (The grandson of the dynasty’s founder, R. Mor-
decai Joseph, R. Gershon Henokh is regarded by Magid as the real architect of
this school of Hasidism. He therefore subjects the grandson’s systematic mono-
graph to a thorough treatment, whereas earlier scholars focused upon the bold
aperçus of R. Mordecai Joseph.) This “unwritten and originary” (2) Torah, which
preceded Sinai and its commandments, constitutes esoteric Judaism. Intention-
ally shrouded by the classical rabbinic tradition and only partially revealed in
the Kabbalah, R. Gershon Henokh argued, this secret Judaism could be retrieved
through a synthesis of insights gleaned from the Zohar (Kabbalah) and Mai-
monides (philosophy) when suffused with Hasidic faith-devotion.
Magid continues by exploring the Izbica/Radzin readings of the Bible and
the ways in which antinomianism and determinism are read into and out of
its narrative structure. Magid shows “the exegetical development of various
biblical and rabbinic figures as they are used to construct a deterministic re-
ligion whereby free will dissolves as the messianic personality emerges in the
protomessianic world” (110). Thus the biblical characters of Genesis, as arche-
types, are shown to represent stages in the attainment of a redeemed person-
ality—in which the illusion of free will is overcome through unity with God.
While “Joseph Jews” take a halakhic (legal) approach to Judaism, they cannot
see what “Judah Jews” know to be true: “that God’s will is the fabric of all
of creation” and thus that “divine will can sometimes be fulfilled outside the
realm of halakha” (199). Magid stresses that what is unique to Izbica/Radzin
Hasidism is its placement of the redeemed personality in the here-and-now
“exile,” living in (and in tension with) normative Judaism before messianic
times. The tension with normative Judaism is the focal point of the third and
final section of the book, which is devoted to the nature of Izbica/Radzin
antinomianism. After discussing the history and varieties of antinomianism,
Magid argues that Izbica/Radzin Hasidism should be considered a kind of “soft
antinomianism.” This category is meant to describe “antinomian strains in highly
nomian systems” that justify only “interim abrogation of halakha” (215). More
profoundly, this “soft antinomianism” challenges the normative view of the ha-
lakha as the sole arbiter of God’s will. In Izbica/Radzin Hasidism, personal il-
lumination grants individuals the authority to determine God’s will for them at
any given moment, whether or not such will is in conformity with the halakha.
Magid approaches Hasidism, as Gershom Scholem might have put it, as the
latest of the major trends in Jewish mysticism. Where earlier scholars of mys-
ticism have placed their emphasis upon Hasidic ideas, Magid’s innovation is
to shift attention to the “hermeneutical schemes and methods employed by
Hasidic exegetes” (251). Ironically, while Magid’s work can serve as a model
for inquiry into other forms of Hasidism, it seems to me that Izbica/Radzin
Hasidism is so exceptional that for all its illumination, the hermeneutical ap-
proach should have been augmented to provide a more holistic understanding
of the phenomenon. Many readers will want to know more about the contexts
in which these fascinating texts were written and read. After all, texts are not
radical only in relation to previous texts; they are (or are not) radical in re-
lation to their readers. What is radical to one community is a given to another.
We cannot fully understand these texts, then, without knowing more about the

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Izbica/Radzin community and how this community received (and lived by?)
them. What did it mean to be part of an ultra-Orthodox community led by
“soft antinomian” masters who granted individuals the authority to act outside
the law? More broadly, how did the radical notions traced in such detail by
Magid reflect and engage with larger trends in the outside world? Though
Magid declares that R. Gershon Henokh’s project was designed to “stem the
tide of modernity,” the book provides little discussion of the relation of Izbica/
Radzin Hasidism to modernity.
That said, Hasidism on the Margin is an exemplary and innovative study of
Hasidic hermeneutics. Though the book may be described as Magid’s reading
of Izbica/Radzin readings and thus very much inside its texts, the theoretical
approach and clear argumentation make it not only accessible but meaningful
to a broad scholarly readership.
J. H. CHAJES, University of Haifa.

KLEIN, LILLIAN R. From Deborah to Esther: Sexual Politics in the Hebrew Bible. Min-
neapolis: Fortress, 2003. xi⫹154 pp. $15.00 (paper).

SAKENFELD, KATHARINE DOOB. Just Wives? Stories of Power and Survival in the Old
Testament and Today. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003. vii⫹136 pp.
$14.95 (paper).

SAWYER, DEBORAH F. God, Gender and the Bible. New York: Routledge, 2002.
vii⫹184 pp. $27.95 (paper).

These books all analyze some key biblical texts about women. They differ,
though, in the specific texts on which they focus: only Sawyer considers texts
from the Christian tradition. More important, they differ in the overarching
questions they address.
Sakenfeld’s interests are theological/hermeneutical and multicultural—
theological/hermeneutical given Sakenfeld’s concern with the meaning that
the texts she examines have “for people in their own situations today,” multi-
cultural given Sakenfeld’s acknowledgment “that meaning . . . is not the
same” for those of different national, racial, ethnic, religious, and class back-
grounds (1–2). Sakenfeld’s book thus presents (1) her own analysis of the
stories of eleven different biblical women (Sarah, Hagar, Ruth, Naomi, Vashti,
Esther, Michal, Abigail, Bathsheba, Gomer, and the ideal woman of Proverbs
31), using an approach that describes the sociocultural background and rhe-
torical design of each text, and (2) interpretations offered by other contem-
porary readers and hearers of Sakenfeld’s focal texts. The book is furthermore
an invitation to us; in Sakenfeld’s words, she seeks “to encourage you [the
reader] to think your own thoughts and even lend your own voice to the on-
going conversation” (2). Despite, then, Sakenfeld’s avowed concern with her
texts’ sociocultural background, the stress is really on reading biblical stories
“today” (as indicated in Sakenfeld’s subtitle). The primary title, Just Wives?,
alludes to the fact that all the women considered are presented in the Bible
“primarily in their role as wives” (3), although, as Sakenfeld’s use of a question
mark suggests, she thinks their significance transcends marital identity.
Klein’s book is a collection of seven essays about sixteen different women (the
“eleven fully differentiated females” found in the book of Judges [9] and Han-

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