Review
A top-notch roster of scholars has produced an exceptional collection of essays, breaking new and fruitful ground in the study of religion. . . . Contributors continually test the far-from-simple relationship between crying and emotion, and carefully probe the complicated meshing of personal history with collective memory.
(
Choice )
Review
Fascinating and original,
Holy Tears is impressively coherent and should be compelling both to scholars of religion and to cultured readers who normally don't go in for religious themes. It is a model of comparative method in the study of religion, conveying, with all the delight of discovery, many parallels, analogues, and 'braided' similarities in the way religious weeping is understood in different settings while successfully avoiding the 'stuffed birds in a natural history museum' approach. I can't recall the last time I read a comparative or thematic book so rich in ethnographic, mythological, ritual, historical, theological, literary, and iconic anecdotes and detail. Each individual essay is superb; the scholarship throughout is impeccable. This book is truly a feast.
(
Carol Zaleski, Smith College, author of "Otherworld Journeys: The Life of the World to Come" )
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