Jews, Idols and Messiahs. The Challenge from History.

Strictly speaking, the new book by Lionel Kochan, Jews, Idols and Messiahs. The Challenge from History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990; pp. 231. [pounds]35) is not a work of historical scholarship, but rather an attempt to isolate certain trends and grand themes in the Jewish experience, and to test them in application to two specific examples, the Jews of Berlin and of London. Kochan's thesis is that there are 'two conflicting themes in Jewish history -- the communal and the messianic -- which are in fact one'. The communal side to the Jewish experience derives from the practical need to establish Jewish societies in which the requirements of Jewish law, the Torah, can be …