It's unfair to rate this book so low, even though I disliked the experience of reading it and I truly hate the post-modern language that speaks its convoluted way around something without ever getting to or making a point.
Call me old-fashioned
Still, I was assigned this book and would never have picked it up without the impetus of class, so perhaps I'll refrain from being too harsh.
Or not.

If you have a high tolerance for heresy, this is a really interesting book. I'm not fully qualified to disagree with the premises, although the literary scholar in me is a bit appalled at the jumps made from the contents of the texts to the circumstances of their authorship. Literary archeology is interesting, but I'm not sure how behind it I'm willing to get.
Having said that, the way that Zakovitch fits the sociocultural elements of the ancient world together with the text and examines how different biblical stories relate to and draw on one another is very cool and it was worth reading for that.
I just wish it had...a point, perhaps? I mean, much of the point was "look at what I can do!", which is not a bad scholarly endeavor. But, as the Little Mermaid says, "I want more." Zakovitch writes a biography of a ficitonal(ized) character and I expect literary analysis to go somewhere. Where exactly is this supposed to be headed?

The title of the cover image is "The Medium is the Matzo". I have no words.

There was something fascinating about reading this book as a work of nonfiction since the style felt familiar from Jewish folktales and Hasidic stories. And, while it is not meant to fictionalize an account, it is also not written as a history in the sense that we're used to historiography. It's written as a...shtetl story almost. Which was nice from the perspective of a reader who likes fiction, but also a bit odd from the perspective of someone wondering about scholarly utility.

Obviously I read this for my dissertation.

And I had a blast doing so, even if I needed to keep the Soloveitchik family tree open in a browser the entire time.