It’s a funny world we live in when reviews get reviewed by the creators of that which they review. Which is not a criticism of anyone. It’s just an observation.
Yesterday, New Voices published three reviews of the revised edition of “Jewish U,” a book for Jews about to enter college about what to expect from Jewish campus life and how to cope with it. I proposed that we do these reviews because I think the book is worth reviewing and because New Voices has the right people to do such a review–current Jewish college students. To make sure our commentary was as balanced possible, I suggested to New Voices Editor Ben Sales that we have the book reviewed by multiples students from different types of school in different parts of the country. The hope was that this would result in the most complete look at the book possible.
The author of the book, Scott Aaron, as well as Aaron Weil (I’m assuming the same Aaron Weil that is executive director of Pittsburgh Hillel) have already commented on the reviews. Weil was way more indignant than the author himself–a little insulting, even.
Though I can’t speak for Levi or Judah, the other two reviewers, I thought I’d use the blog to respond to the comments, which you can read at the bottom of this page.
First, my response to Aaron Weil:
I’m not sure how someone three years older than the target audience for the book can be akin to an adult critiquing a children’s book for being too juvenile, as Weil suggests. I’m perfectly capable of recalling what my expectations of college life were like before I got to college, including expectations that turned out right and those that turned out wrong.
It’s true that I’m not the target audience for this book, in two important ways. First, I’m already in college. And second, before I got to college, I didn’t really need any guidance on any of these points. Clearly, the book is for less engaged students than I.
But I think an engaged Jewish college student is also about the only person with any business reviewing the book–and any book is worth reviewing, if you can get the right reviewer. The target audience itself definitely has no business reviewing the book! How would someone who is not yet in college review a book about what to do when they get there? It’s impossible to know if the advice is any good before the reader has had the opportunity to use it. I suppose we could have convinced a not-so-engaged Jewish student, currently in college, to write a review, but how would that person know if the advice in the book is any good either? So if we’d taken Weil’s advice, there would be no review at all.
Weil wrote: “In reading the material through their own eyes rather than the intended audience, they completely missed the point of the book and thus their conclusions were as erroneous as they were berift [sic] of meaning.” I guess I don’t know who else’s eyes I could have read the book through. Part of my job in reviewing the book was to provide the perspective of a Jewish student on a small liberal arts campus–while Levi Prombaum wrote from a Midwestern campus and Judah Gross came it as a student at an east coast school with a large Jewish population. My point here is that our perspectives weren’t a encumbrance to our reviews, but what makes our reviews relevant.
Weil also said: “I, along with many of my colleague [sic] came to quite a different conclusion, but then again, unlike the reviewers themselves, the author actually is completing his Phd on the topic he sought to address!” I can’t speak to what Scott Aaron is studying as a doctoral candidate. But I can say that if Weil was referring to other Hillel employees when he mentioned his many colleagues, then I guess I’m not surprised that they liked it. After all, one of my main critiques was that the author relied to heavily on Hillel as a cure for what ails you.
My response to the comment by Scott Aaron, the book’s author:
The author has plenty of class, beginning his comment by saying, “I’m not writing to refute or disagree with anything said because they are legitimate critiques.”
He also says, “The reality is that one enters the freshman year an adolescent wanting to be an adult, and leaves it having evolved out of that adolescence towards adulthood.” I know a few sophomores (and juniors… and seniors) whose actions don’t exactly agree with that statement, but I get the point. As with Weil’s comment, what’s troubling here is the notion that because current college students don’t need this resource at this stage in their education, they’ve got not business reviewing it. On the contrary, as I said above, engaged Jewish college students are the only people fully qualified to review it, other than, perhaps, Jewish college students who actually read the book before college.
He also wrote, “…at least this book gives you a place to start thinking about it so you have some Jewish food for thought if you need it.” It certainly does. You’ll get no disagreement from me on that. What I quibble with, as you can see in my review, is that idea that the tone of majority of the book is even remotely appropriate for high school students.
But forget about me. What about y’all? Did you read our reviews? Have you read the book? What do you think?
