Shapiro left wife, mistress, and business,nand flew to Israel: “The Jew in mensuddenl)- gained the courage to spit at allnthe idolatries.” He saw many of the samenidolatries in Israel. Looking at books andnposters in Tel Aviv, he tliought; ‘Tes, thenEnlightened have attained their goals.nWe [Jews] are a people like all othernpeoples. We feed ourselves the samendung as they do.” Communism offers nonbetter “culture” than capitalism does,nand it adds tj-ranny. At a leftist kibbutznportraits of Lenin and the anti-SemitenStalin hung in the “Culture House.”n3hapij-o contrasts modern “culture”nwith the learning attained in a Hasidicnstudy house in Jerusalem. He goes so farnas to charge that “All the heroes innworldly literature have been whoremongersnand evildoers,” citing AnnanKarenina, Raskolnikov, and Taras Bulba.n”Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Dante’snDivine Comedy, Goethe’s Faust, rightndown to the trash aimed at pleasing thenstreet louts and wenches, are full ofncruelty and abandon.” To those whonwould reply that the Old Testamentncontains its share of vice, Shapiro agrees:n”The Scriptures were a great beginning,nan enormous foundation, but the Jews ofnthe Scriptures were, with few exceptions,nstill half Gentiles.” The Talmudncontains more refined spirituality: “TlienJew has attained his highest degree ofnspirituality only in the time of thenDiaspora,” and today’s genuinely religiousnJews are “Jewry’s greatestnachievement.”nShapiro sets his way of life against thatnof a young woman he met on the plane tonIsrael. Priscilla, “ashamed of [her]nJewishness since childhood,” engaged tonbe married to another secularized Jew,nquickly seduces Shapiro. They meetnagain after several months in Israel. Thenlast two chapters consist of a dialoguenbetween them. Priscilla argues fornatheism. As with all such arguments, hersnlogically justifies no more than agnosticism.nShapiro replys that moralitynrequires choice, and that her choicesnimply humanism, which “doesn’t servenone idol but many idols,” all of themneventually destructive of the verynpleasures they promise. Even if thenJewish God is an idol, the morality Hencommands brings no destruction. IMoralitynleads to faith, not the other waynaround,nJjQ the “Author’s Note,” written for thisnedition. Singer “cannot agree withn[Shapiro] that there is a final escape fromnthe human dilemma” because “a totalnsolution would void the greatest gift thatnGod bestowed upon mankind—freedomnof choice,” But Shapiro nevernclaims that his solution is total, that henhas escaped from the human dilemma,nas distinguished from the modern one.nHe explicidy insists on the Evil Spirit’snpower and doggedness. A more tellingncriticism begins with noticing thatnmorality finds support in non-Jewishnreligious practices also. If the cjuest fornnnmoral strength leads us to more th;m onenpath, we are not by any means “backnwhere we started” but we are gi-vennpause.nThere is also a practical difficulty.nShapiro’s highly spiritualized Judaismnrejects the political and military aspectsnof Judaism seen in ancient and modernnIsrael. He praises the Diaspora because itnremoved Jews from the responsibilitiesnand temptations of rulership; he says thatn”when it suits the Evil Spirit, he cannbecome a fervent Zionist, a burningnpatriot.” Thus Shapiro speaks in thenaccents of mart)’rdom. Pacifist Judaismnresem-bles pacifist Christianity, HerenSinger’s charge of escapism would hitnwith force, Shapiro could reply, withnother pacifists, that “God will fight fornus,” if not in this world then in the nextnworld, or ia this world on the day of thenMessiah, Paradoxically, this faith thatnbegins with practice, with moralit)’ notnsn,13n1984n