An ingenious idea whose moment has come, Congregation offers a fresh read-ing of that oldest of books: the Hebrew Bible. In essays that are by turns witty and profound, lyrical and erudite, whimsical and meditative, thirty-seven leading American writers-novelists, poets, and critics-take a new look at an ancient literary text and discover therein a source of inspiration and reve-lation for our own time.

The authors are as disparate as Isaac Bashevis Singer, who writes on Gene sis, and Leslie Fiedler on Job. They are as temperamentally unlike as Elie Wiesel (Ezekiel) and Herbert Gold (1) Kelines) Each contributor tackles a differ-ent volume of the Old Testament and comes to personal grips with its impli-cations. The effort may take autobiographical form, as in Mordecai Richler's good-humored-piece on Deuteronomy and Max Apple's equally affectionate account of Joshua; or it may take a more scholarly bent, as in Harold Bloom's cogitations on Exodus and Geoffrey Hartman's complex dissection of Num-bers. Yet another approach is a deft interweaving of the interpretive and the creative, manifested in Cynthia Ozick's essay on Ruth, Jay Neugeboren on Ezra, Daphne Merkin on Ecclesiastes, and Francine Prose on Malachi