118 SHOFAR Summer 1997 Vol. 15, No.4 question of Jews and race). JeVl:'ish race scientists were less beholden to the ideas of fixed racial qualities and racial superiority than their German counterparts. It is still, though, not a pretty picture. Steven Beller .Independent Scholar Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis Under Early Islam, by Steven M. Wasserstrom. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. 300 pp. n.p.l. The book comprises six chapters, divided into three "dimensions of symbiosis": trajectories, constructions, and intimacies. The author makes it clear at the outset that he does not intend to deal with the question of Muslim "borrowing" from Judaism, nor with Jewish "influence" on Islam. Like S. D. Goitein before him, he cautions against the use of the debtor-creditor model of influence and borrowing in relation to the historiography ofJewish-Muslim relations. He seems also quite uncomfortable in using the term "symbiosis" to characterize Jewish life under Islam. This may, to some extent, be construed as a delusion reminiscent ofthe "vaunted German Jewish symbiosis," so popularized by some Jewish scholars in the past. He would rather use the construct term "creative symbiosis," which was promulgated by Goitein and later widely adopted by others, to relate to the modes of accommodation that both Jews and Muslims developed in response to one another and in defming each other. This volume then comprises, in the main, interconnected studies, devoted to the exploration of the meaning of this concept, "rethinking" its nuances, implications, depth, and extent. The study focuses on aspects of early interaction between Jews and Muslims during the first centuries of Islam, mainly the eighth through the tenth centuries. As reflected in the rich bibliography, the author dexterously combs the wide range ofclassical Arabic and Jewish sources in order to glean every shred of information that may pertain to the topic of his study. He accords us insights into the socio-economic profile ofthe Jews under early Islam and their occupational and social differentiation. He provides a painstaking analysis ofMuslim heresiography ofthe Jews, considerably elaborating his previous analysis of this topic in his 1985 Ph.D. dissertation. Building on Friedlander's pioneering study of the elsawiyya and Abu elsa, the originator of the movement, he reviews and reassesses the state of research on this Jewish messianic pretender. The elsawiyya sect, he concludes, was not merely an ephelIleral aberration, as held by a consensus of modern scholarship; it was widely spread throughout the Islamicate world, and survived at least three hundred years, through the eleventh and twelfth century. Indeed, the author's sustained study of the elsawiyya is thus far the Book Reviews 119 most thorough and the most encompassing study ofthis area. The author devotes a thorough discussion to the Judeo-Shn "symbiosis," an area as yet only partially furrowed by the scholarly plow. He focuses mainly on the impact of Judaic messianic and apocalyptic paradigms and prefigurations on the developing Slu, sect. In addIessing this topic ofJewish-Slu, relations, the author has certainly laid some groundwork for a hopefully fuller exploration ofthis highly intriguing topic. The author also examines the so-called Isra'iliyyat traditions, appropriated mainly from Jewish lore, and their effect on Muslim theology. Isra 'iliyyat, he stresses, is unique in that it provides us with a case of open, acknowledged, and religiously condoned borrowing. The willingness ofMuslim traditionists to openly acknowledge indebtedness to Judaism stems from the desire to make Judaism, which was no longer perceived by Muslims as a serious threat, attest to the veracity of the new religion of Islam. The author provides critical reassessment of the Jewish structure of authority, as it was defmed, legitimized, and reconstituted under the impact of early Islam, particularly during the two decades of the reign of al-Man~fir (754-75). He also provides us·with a lengthy discussion ofthe Muslim comparative critical study of other religions, focusing mainly on the study ofJews and Judaism by Muslim heresiographers and the modes of classification which they applied. One is impressed by the author's profound grasp ofthe diverse extremely complex issues under discussion in the book. We must point out, however, that a study of this kind has...