''As a Driven Leaf'' is a 1939 novel by

Milton Steinberg Milton Steinberg (November 25, 1903 – March 20, 1950) was an American rabbi, philosopher, theologian and author. Life Born in Rochester, New York, he was raised with the combination of his grandparents' traditional Jewish piety and his fath ...

based on the life of

Elisha ben Abuyah Elisha ben Abuyah ( he, אלישע בן אבויה) (spelled variously, including Elisha ben Avuya) was a rabbi and Jewish religious authority born in Jerusalem sometime before 70 CE. After he adopted a worldview considered heretical by his fellow ...

. Steinberg's novel wrestles with the 2nd century

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

struggle to reconcile Rabbinic Judaism both culturally and philosophically with Greek

Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

society. In Elisha's struggle, Steinberg speculates about questions and events that may have driven such a man to apostasy, and addresses questions of Jewish self-determination in the Roman Empire, the Bar Kochba Revolt (132–135), and above all the interdependence of reason and faith. Although the novel draws on Talmudic tradition to create the framework for Elisha's life, Steinberg himself wrote that his novel "springs from historical data without any effort at rigid conformity or literal confinement to them."Joshua N. Lambert, American Jewish Fiction, Jewish Publication Society, 2009, p. 50. https://books.google.com/books?id=08QctHhKdcgC&dq=Steinberg++%22As+a+Driven+Leaf%22&client=firefox-a&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Notes

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External links

A philosophical critique of ''As a Driven Leaf''
1939 American novels Jewish American novels Novels set in ancient Israel Novels set in the 1st century Novels set in the 2nd century