A. ENGLER ANDERSON, comments:

Most treatments of Jewish mysticism lean toward the ideologically critical (Graetz), the romantic (Buber), the touchy-feely (Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Breslov) or movement propaganda (Lubavitch). The academic attempts at categorizing and describing Jewish mystical movements (chiefly Scholem) also fall short of comprehensiveness because they tend to focus largely on doctrine and theology, and ignore handmaiden disciplines of history, sociology and economics.

It is precisely this gap that Sharot fills with his _Messianism, Mysticism and Magic_. Coming as part of a longer line of Jewish scholars who have attempted to apply the mindset of other disciplines to Jewish studies, the book is not as much an original contribution to knowledge, but is more of a significant re-ordering of hitherto existing knowledge in the field.

Sharot's contribution is, to my mind, much in the vein of Bentzion Dinur, whose _Bmifneh Hadorot_ (Hebrew) brought the ideas of economics, sociology (with a slightly Marxist analysis) to the way we understood the origins of Hasidism.

What is compelling is that Sharot's is a treatment that spans centuries of Jewish history. He clearly expands on Scholem's exposition of Jewish mystical theology, done decades earlier, but puts the Jewish mystical movements in a perspective that avoids mono-causal errors, and allows a more intelligent, more diverse understanding of the Jewish mystical movement of history.

This is important for the scholar as well as the Jewish layperson who is confronted in the 1990s with the resurrection, in various forms, of kabbalah centers, in-your-face Hasidic movements claiming the mantle of authenticity, and the repackaging of Jewish mysticism the contemporary, feminist-friendly form of "Jewish Renewal." There is, moreover, hardly a major Jewish religious movement that has not reached into the attic of Jewish history to come up with mystical themes they can use to get Jews back into their synagogues, or somehow affiliate and become dues-paying members. And then there are the charlatans, in California and elsewhere, who offer kabbalism seminars for high fees, which attract their share of high profile (and religiously illiterate) stars and starlets -- all making headlines and enhancing the promoters' revenue streams.

The book by Eliezer Ben-Rafael and Stephen Sharot presents a highly theoretical analysis of the characteristics and interrelationships of Ethnicity, religion, and class in Israeli society. The authors' final conclusion is that within Israel's society there are multiple cleavages where the claims of different subordinate groups are in contradiction with each other. These contradictions mean that there is no possibility that the subordinate groups will unify or push society in the same direction. This thesis derives from the centerpiece of the book: the empirical study of the divisions of ethnicity, class, and religion including their institutional, behavioral and subjective forms. The book is clearly structured by the subdivision in five larger sections for the support of the lucidity of the study. The first part includes an overview of definitions, concepts and theoretical perspectives in the sociological study of ethnicity. The authors end their introduction with the statement that "ethnicity overlaps, crosscuts, and interacts in complex ways with both classes and religious differentiation" (1991: 23). Thus, in this study, ethnicity, religiosity, and class are not only investigated as cleavages with their own particular characteristics but also as cleavages that interact and influence each other. Furthermore the authors are questioning the appropriateness of a dichotomous classification of the Israeli-Jewish society with respect to ethnic dimensions. The common crude division between Ashkenazim and Sephardim (or edot ha'Mizrach) in their opinion forestalls an adequate inquiry because of its superficiality. Therein lies the reason why the authors did decide to focus on four specific groups of origin, two European (from Rumania and Poland) and two Middle Eastern (from Morocco and Iraq), and even went further by including white- and blue-collar workers from each of the selected groups. These general clarifications are followed by information about the specific sample that took place in 1982/83 with 826 male residents of Beer Sheva The second part of the book investigates social patterns and behavior - the more objective dimensions of ethnicity, class, and religion. One thesis the authors utter is that if religiosity in Israel were an important basis of ethnicity, secularization would necessarily lead to a decline in ethnicity. Proof is tried to be given to this suggestion by the following examination of the religious behavior in the community (synagogues and neighborhoods), the religious observances at the individual and family level and finally the friendship networks of the respondents. The third part focuses on the aspect of the subjective dimensions of ethnicity, class, and religion. That includes the identification of the respondents, how they perceive the social cleavages, and how they evaluate them. By researching the ethnic- and the class-consciousness and the relationships of these consciousnesses with religion Ben-Rafael and Sharot come to the result that there is a considerable overlap of religiosity with ethnic origin, which has a high convergence with class. The main aspect of the fourth part of the study is the question whether there is an impact of stratification on ethnic solidarity and assimilation or not. Therefore the participants of the sample where asked concerning their electoral behavior and discrimination they had experienced. On reasons that there were to that date very few studies on the relationship between ethnicity and stratification that have analyzed more than one dimension of ethnicity, the authors do not claim to be right with their suggestion that ethnicity is determined exclusively by socio-economic or class factors. The last part of the book deals with social cleavages in Israeli society - some of them deeper (for example the religious cleavage) and some of them less deep (for example there is hardly any class cleavage). Here Ben-Rafael and Sharot resume and incorporate many of their previous findings and finally obtain their theory of social cleavages. Longer on theory than on empirical data, Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in Israeli Society provides a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the function of each of those concepts and their interactions in Israeli society. Despite the complexity of the study by taking four instead of just the common two groups of Jewish origin into consideration the structure of the book and the way Ben-Rafael and Sharot develop their final conclusion is lucid and logical. Nevertheless, some questions remain and the picture the authors provide of Israeli society is incomplete. One major problem, for example, is the exclusion of women in the empirical part. The fact that the complexity of the study would significantly increase and the final thesis only be negligibly influenced is not a proper excuse for not including them. Furthermore one gets the impression that the extreme conflicts in Israeli society - namely the ethnic Arab-Jewish conflict and the religious conflict between Haredim and moderate religious or secular Jews - are being almost avoided. The authors mention them briefly but do not go into details. Considering the impact that the Ultra-Orthodox have on social and political levels they should have been paid a broader attention. However, Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in Israeli Society reveals interesting and new facts concerning Israeli society and Ben-Rafael and Sharot do not claim entirety for their study, but rather see it as one first step toward further studies.