5 - “Judaism rightly reverenced”: Grace Aguilar's theological poetics

Summary

INTRODUCTION: FROM “PECULIAR” TO “ELOQUENT”: POETRY AS THEOLOGICAL STRATEGY

A lady, and that too young a lady, whatever the advantages of quick perception conceded to her sex, is, by the iron rule of custom, limited to fewer opportunities of acquiring that information and experience, which might restrict a too apt disposition to generalize from few facts. The notions which many form of Talmudic study, or of traditional doctrine, are founded not on what they sift from them, but on what they are told concerning them. The book before us bears evident traces of the peculiar readings of its fair writer, not designedly or even avoidably peculiar, so far as she is concerned … We will now turn to the more agreeable task of pointing out the many beauties that the work contains. Miss Aguilar is a poet, and of no mean grade … and wherever she quits the province of schoolmen and pours forth her own pious sentiments of the heart's duties, and the soul's destiny, she is fervid, eloquent and truthful.

(Review of Grace Aguilar's The Spirit of Judaism).

We want Jewish writers, Jewish books … There is none now, and the fault is our own! We make no effort to enlighten our neighbors as to the true spirit of the hope that is in us, though no struggle is too great to obtain a proper position and estimation in the Christian world. […]