This is a must for anyone who wishes to find out more about the quintessence of Old Testament piety and scepticism as found in Ecclesiastes with its famous cry "Vanity, vanity all is vanity".

A breathtaking one volume achievement which takes the reader through the pre-history of the book and allows one to make ones own informed interpretation for today. I have yet to find anything to match it.

Before praising such a controversial book highly, I ought to point out how non-partisan I am. Professor Gordis is my arch-enemy in an old religious war. I wouldn't drink his wine or eat his food, and if I ever met him, we would probably come as close to a fist- fight as our aged dignities would allow. In addition, I attempted several times to read one of his books on has own religious philosophy, and always died of boredom before page 8.

So much for entertainment. Now to get down to business.

Ecclesiastes is one of the most difficult books of the Bible to understand, and in fact, one of the most difficult books of philosophy ever written. The reaction of most modern commentators has been to emend the text so much that there's really nothing left to either edit or comment on, as Prof. Gordis also notes. Gordis himself manages to understand the Masoretic text by placing it in context, and by reading it as a whole, making no assumptions in advance as to what it should say. He solves many of the contradictions by pointing out that the Biblical wisdom books often present a statement not as a simple truth, but as a subject for discussion or refutation, or even ironically. He solves the problem of Koheleth's own personal philosophy, his knowledge of the evils of this world and lack of knowledge and comfort from another, by making him an existentialist. It works, but for an explanation, you'd better read the book.

Gordis' attempts at dating and identifying Koheleth are less convincing. His argument that we know of very few philosopher-kings doesn't work: statistical arguments break down completely long before N=1. In addition, the totality of the evidence is that the courts of David and Solomon were centers of philosopical thought. As to his evidence for the date of the book from a few Persian linguistic influences, there are many American books which include the verb "to boomerang", but they weren't written after the conquest of the United States by Australian aborigines. Again, his sample is too small. His etymological researches are a pleasure, though, in a book which greatly gains from them: look, for example, at 'hevel', 'amal' and 'anah'.

His new translation aids greatly in understanding the book; printing it facing an unvowelled Masoretic text was a smart move. The bibliographical work is also excellent.

(This review is based on the old Schocken edition. Even if you had to hunt for that, it would be worth the trouble and expense.

He then examines how halakha has developed from Talmudic times to the medieval period, and then shows us Judaism's reaction to the Enlightenment, which produced the modern denominations.

He has several chapters which particularly address the concerns of women in Jewish law, especially marriage, divorce, annulment, and the role women as rabbis and cantors.