Free as a Jew

A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation

By: Ruth R. Wisse

Narrated by: Suzanne Toren

Length: 14 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

A Jewish child born into the worst of times in Europe grows up during the best of times in North America - only to recognize that it could be moving back in the opposite direction.

First came parents with the good sense to flee Europe in 1940 and the good fortune to reach the land of freedom. Their daughter, Ruth, grew up in the shadow of genocide - but in tandem with the birth of Israel, which remained her lodestar. She learned that although Jewishness is biologically transmitted, democracy is not, and both require intensive, intelligent transmission through education in each and every generation. They need adults with the confidence to teach their importance. Ruth tried to take on that challenge as dangers to freedom mounted and shifted sides on the political spectrum. At the high point of her teaching at Harvard University, she witnessed the unraveling of standards of honesty and truth until the academy she left was no longer the one she had entered.

©2021 Ruth R. Wisse (P)2021 Recorded Books

Truth

Rarely have I devoured a book as voraciously as I have this one. I generally read fiction, but this memoir of the development of the progressive movement, in its worst iterations, is outstanding. Wisse traces the anti-semitism that grows in the universities and colleges with the failure of the institutions to stand up to the inability to educate the students rigorously. Political correctness has become a substitute for free ideas and free speech.

Amazing listen

A very important listen to Jews everywhere. Thanks to Prof. Wisse for this book and all of your other great works.

Amazing

I listened to this book a week after the massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023..
If I didn’t know better I would think this book was written after this unimaginable event. Her incite into Israeli and global politics is remarkable.
Her life experience in academia give foreshadowing of the future of antisemitism on the elite college campuses.
I highly recommend this book for a greater understanding of the past and current state of antisemitism.
Cheers to Ruth Wisse for standing up for her beliefs and not group think!!

great book

terrific! beautifully written. relevant to the sad state of academia today. I hope the book will encourage others to speak out.

a scholar’s spleen

Of Ruth Wisse’s spendid scholarship on the literature of Ashkenaz only shreds appear in this book. instead it gives us endless repetitions of a single thought, there was something wonderful, something Jewish, but nasty liberals and leftists and Arabs messed that up. Doom is nigh, Everything is going to shit and Jews must go to the right, right, right. Unfortunately this is a case of catching flies with vinegar.

Great Book Marred by Unpleasant Narration

It's somewhat a matter of taste, but the narrator of this book gives a performance that feels completely mis-judged.
The author, Ruth Wisse, is notable for her open sincerity, but the narrator of the book adopts of tone of affected theatricality, often becoming ironic and sometimes snide.
One concrete example illustrates the problem. In the beginning of the second chapter, there's a line about the author's brother giving a speech based on a book the audience was unlikely to have read. The narrator speaks "unlikely to have read" in a tone of theatrical snideness, but the context makes clear that the point is the book was in English and the audience wouldn't have read it because they're Yiddish speakers (i.e., not that the author thinks they're deserving of contempt.)
In the end, I found it impossible to overcome the jarring mismatch of the narrator's abrasive persona with the deeply-felt, often serious subject matter.