Weekend reading #2

From Jewish Ideas Daily, here's a review of a newly released book, John Lennon and the Jews.

Side-note: It seems that the primary placement of John's name in the title strongly oversells his role in the book. But the phrase "John Lennon and the Jews" does have a compelling ring to it.

Excerpt:
The book is an extended defense of passionate love for the Jewish people, written by an American immigrant long settled in Israel, a highly-respected professor of Arabic literature and Islamic history who also happens to be the 1983 International Frisbee Golf Champion (Junior Division) and a former member of the IDF's tank corps. Maghen's target audience is the population of tepid, English-speaking Jews whose love for their people has been displaced by the dictates of universalism and rationalism—a cohort whose instincts I know intimately.

John Lennon and the Jews opens with Maghen's chance meeting, real or imagined, at Los Angeles International Airport with Shira, Ofer, and Doron: "three Hebrew Hare Krishnas," dressed in regulation saffron robes. Maghen can't stomach that these young Israelis have abandoned Hebraism for Hinduism. Whipping out a Bible, he proclaims "This is your book!!!" But the three, dreaming of a world without nations, borders, or hierarchy—in short, the world evoked in Lennon's famous thought exercise "Imagine" ("Imagine there's no countries . . . nothing to kill or die for . . . ")—aren't impressed. Shira presents a universalist challenge to Jewish particularism; Ofer goes on the rationalist attack; and Doron basically tells Maghen to chill out.

Reflecting on this encounter at LAX, Maghen contends that Lennon's "beautiful ballad is in reality a death-march, a requiem mass for the human race." His book is an extended defense of this position, presented in three parts, each a response to the arguments laid out by Shira, Ofer, and Doron, respectively.