Loss, Discovery, and a Lost Discovery in “Reading Ruth”

The Mosaic contributor Leon Kass and his co-author, Hannah Mandelbaum, have recently published a new commentary on the book of Ruth, which is traditionally read during the upcoming holiday of Shavuot. Below, the writer Hillel Halkin reviews their commentary, and the rabbi Meir Soloveichik reflects on their relationship.—The Editors

Hillel Halkin

Parent-child collaborations are extremely rare in literary history. Of grandparent-grandchild collaborations, I had never heard—never, that is, until the publication this spring of Reading Ruth: Birth, Redemption, and the Way of Israel, a slim book jointly written by the eminent American-Jewish thinker, author, Bible commentator, and Mosaic contributor Leon Kass and his granddaughter Hannah Mandelbaum. As told by Kass in a brief preface: