Forty years ago, novelist Herman Wouk wrote a book about his devotion to the Torah and the Talmud called This Is My God, which remains among the freshest and most quietly impassioned religious autobiographies in print today. The Will to Live On is Wouk's follow-up to that work, although its subject--the particular state of the Jewish people in the 20th century--is very different. Wouk promises to tackle all of the biggest subjects here: "the Holocaust, the reborn Jewish State, the prodigious yet precarious American diaspora, and the deepening religious schisms." And his broad-minded reflections on all of these topics--especially his explanation of modern Zionism's rise from the roots of ancient literature and history--are cleanly, forcefully, and respectfully written. Among Wouk's most penetrating insights are his reflections on Israel's struggle, throughout history, with the temptation of idolatry, and his conviction that the Holocaust at last purged Abraham's people of this "near-fatal cancer." The Will to Live On is a risky, wise book that deserves to be called prophetic.


From Publishers Weekly
In the 1950s, sensing a drifting of Jews away from their tradition, novelist Wouk (The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, etc.), an observant Jew, wrote This Is My God, a classic primer on Jewish belief and practices, to draw some of the curious back. Nearly half a century later, with the American Jewish community concerned with high rates of intermarriage, Wouk brings out this companion volume, a whirlwind tour of Jewish history and sacred texts. It is, he writes, his "view that any hope for our long future [lies] in a massive return to our sources, in faith, in literature, and in history." Despite its brevity, the text succeeds in conveying the large arc of 2,500 years of Jewish history and the grandeur of the Hebrew Bible and prophets, the "exalted challenge" of studying the Talmud and the complex questions of identity facing Jews today, whether in Israel or in the Diaspora. He writes with great love of his tradition and with a becoming modesty about his own impressive scholarship. He draws on incidents from his life to illustrate various points; for instance, regarding the inevitable conflict in the modern mind between rationalism and religion, he describes a meeting between two of his mentors: the philosopher Irwin Edman of Columbia University and Wouk's grandfather, an unworldly Talmudic scholar. Wouk discusses all these issues clearly without oversimplifying them; he confronts head on, for example, the dilemmas facing Zionism in an age when Israel is a military power and a mature, internally divided country. This fine volume deserves to become a classic alongside its predecessor. (Mar.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
It is indeed impressive that at age 84, Wouk, the famed American novelist, is prepared to revisit the spiritual and historical territory that he first explored in This Is My God. Wouk, a deeply committed and educated Jew, explores the mystery of the survival of the Jewish people through the ages. The three main sections of this book cover the Holocaust, surveys of Jewish sacred and historical literature, and contemporary Jewish life in Israel and the United States. Throughout, Wouk intersperses biographical details that make the reader yearn for a more complete autobiography. Readers seeking an introduction to Judaism will be enlightened by the depth of knowledge here, as Wouk tells a complicated story so simply, and those who have read widely in Jewish literature will be entranced by his deeply felt and articulate sense of the importance of being a committed and believing Jew. Recommended for all collections.-Olga B. Wise, Technical Lib., Compaq Computers Inc., Austin, TX Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Kirkus Reviews
The celebrated author's post-Holocaust living will. What can Pulitzer Prize-winning Wouk add after thirteen novels, four plays, and more? This valedictory, darker than The Hope (1993), includes various wars and remembrances. When the winds of war settled, the Holocaust and Israel provided Jews with ``the energy of guilt and the energy of pride. Both are waning . . . [and Jewry is now] running on empty.'' The destruction of European Jewry is compared to the epic loss of the Second Temple, and the Rabin assassination put in terms of a biblical analogy. Wouk, noting that the commandant of Auschwitz predicted that Western Jews would assimilate and seal Hitler's victory, worries about Jewry's cultural mutiny. The grandchildren of Marjorie Morningstar are demographic icicles. The hope, if not the glory, of a Jewish future may have to be qualitative rather than quantitative. Wouk, urging cultural survival through cultural literacy, devotes his large central section to a brisk but skillful summary of the Jewish classics: all the books of the Hebrew Bible, plus the talmud, the kabbalah, and Yiddish culture. His anecdotal evidence suggests that even secular Jews might enjoy his daily mental workout on the monkey bars of talmudic law. Wouk sees learning and living by Judaism's classics as Jewry's only hope for living on in the diaspora. Despite his dire predictions, his testamentenlivened by memories of Rabin, Ben-Gurion, Bellow, Agnon, and his family patriarchsis more optimistic than ominous. The first and perhaps the last learned American-Jewish novelist begins his Afterword, ``So my task ends.'' Like Moses the Lawgiver in his book-length farewell address in Deuteronomy, Wouk at 84 leaves us with a recap of Torah wisdom and the encouragement to choose survival. Here is the lion of Judah in winter. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Will to Live On is a major new work of nonfiction, an illuminating account of the worldwide revolution that has been sweeping over Jewry, set against a swiftly reviewed background of history, tradition, and sacred literature.

Forty years ago, in his modern classic This Is My God, Herman Wouk stated the case for his religious beliefs and conduct. His aim in that work and in The Will to Live On has been to break through the crust of prejudice, to reawaken clearheaded thought about the magnificent Jewish patrimony, and to convey a message of hope for Jewish survival.

Although the Torah and the Talmud are timeless, the twentieth century has brought earthquake shocks to the Jews. After a lifetime of study, Herman Wouk examines the changes affecting the Jewish world.