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In this remarkable offering of probing and enlightening studies, editors Lewis Aron and Libby Henik make the bold claim that they have gathered, “for the first time in the English language,” an investigation of the mutual relevance and influence of current psychoanalytic theory and the Jewish interpretive tradition. The bridging of psychoanalysis and Judaism is not new, but it has not been attempted in the decades since the explosion of theorizing of the post-classical psychoanalytic turn. Certainly, posing the question of what is to be gained by such a juxtaposition is valuable in and of itself—this volume is proof enough of that. The importance of the analyst's subjectivity, the contribution of cultural factors on the psychoanalytic enterprise, and the hermeneutic perspective all come across dramatically.
All of the authors have made an invaluable contribution in the volume's open ended, the-question's-the-thing spirit. Although each chapter nourishes the editors' challenge to apply new perspectives to timeworn issues, Aron and Henik have also posed new dilemmas. They wonder, for instance, whether psychoanalysis remains a “Jewish science” and they ask if psychoanalysis is inseparably embedded in the Jewish hermeneutic. To the mind of this reviewer, even if the idea that psychoanalysis' origins in the Jewish minds of the 19th and 20th centuries might have suggested such, it is now clear that the field of psychoanalysis is its own body of theory and practice, owned by no religious, cultural, or social group. This volume also suggests as much. Goodman, for example, draws on the Jewish philosopher Levinas to understand his deeply moving