From world-renowned public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy comes an incisive and provocative look at the heart of Judaism.

“A smart, revealing, and essential publication for our occasions.”—The Washington Post

For more than four decades, Bernard-Henri Lévy has been a singular body in the world stage—one of the great moral voices of our period. Now Europe’s foremost philosopher and activist confronts his religious roots as well as the religion which has usually inspired and formed him—but that he hasn’t fully about The Genius of Judaism reckoned with.

The Genius of Judaism is definitely a breathtaking brand-new vision and knowledge of what it means to be a Jew, a eyesight quite different from the main one we’re used to. It really is rooted in the Talmudic traditions of discussion and conflict, instead of biblical commandments, borne out in struggle and study, not in blind observance. At the very heart of the problem is an responsibility to the other, towards the dispossessed, also to the ignored, an responsibility that, as Lévy vividly recounts, he provides sought to embody over years of championing “lost causes,” from Bosnia to Africa’s neglected wars, from Libya to the Kurdish Peshmerga’s desperate fight the Islamic Condition, a fight raging as we speak. Lévy offers a fresh, astonishing critique of a new and stealthy type of anti-Semitism on the rise as well as a provocative defense of Israel in the remaining. He reveals the overlooked Jewish root base of Traditional western democratic ideals and confronts the current Islamist risk while intellectually dismantling it. Jews are not a “chosen people,” Lévy explains, but a “treasure” whose soul must continue steadily to inform moral considering and courage today.

Lévy’s most passionate book, and in lots of ways his most personal, The Genius of Judaism is a superb, serious, and hypnotic intellectual reckoning—indeed a call to hands—by one of the keenest & most insightful writers in the world.

Compliment for The Genius of Judaism

“In The Genius of Judaism, Lévy elaborates on his credo by rebutting the pernicious and fake logic behind current anti-Semitism and defends Israel as the world’s most effective multi-ethnic democracy created from scratch. Lévy also makes the case for France’s Jews getting integral to the establishment from the French country, the French vocabulary, and French books. And last, but definitely not least, he presents a striking interpretation from the Book of Jonah . . A tour de pressure.”—Forbes

“Ardent . . . Lévy’s message is actually uplifting: the outstanding scholars of Judaism, the writers of the Talmud, provide elucidation into ‘the great queries that have stirred humanity since the dawn of your time.’ . . . A philosophical special event of Judaism.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Lévy (Remaining in Dark Occasions), a prominent French journalist and politically involved philosopher, transforms his observations inward here, pondering the teachings of Judaism as well as the part they have played in contemporary Western european history as well such as his own lifestyle and intellectual inquiry. . . . [Lévy’s] musings on the meaning of the story of Jonah and the relevance of symbolic Ninevahs in our period are both original and poetic. . . . A welcome addition to his oeuvre.”—Web publishers Weekly